From the “I’ll believe it when I see it” department comes this story in Nature News:
I thought this was interesting:
A new conflict-of-interest policy will require all IPCC officials and authors to disclose financial and other interests relevant to their work (Pachauri had been harshly criticized in 2009 for alleged conflicts of interest.) The meeting also adopted a detailed protocol for addressing errors in existing and future IPCC reports, along with guidelines to ensure that descriptions of scientific uncertainties remain consistent across reports. “This is a heartening and encouraging outcome of the review we started one year ago,” Pachauri told Nature. “It will strengthen the IPCC and help restore public trust in the climate sciences.”
Which is a far cry from “voodoo science”:
Told ya so…IPCC to retract claim on Himalayan Glacier Melt – Pachauri’s “arrogance” claim backfires
Next on the forefront of “voodoo” science we have this:
The first major test of these changes will be towards the end of this year, with the release of a report assessing whether climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events. Despite much speculation, there is scant scientific evidence for such a link — particularly between climate warming, storm frequency and economic losses — and the report is expected to spark renewed controversy. “It’ll be interesting to see how the IPCC will handle this hot potato where stakes are high but solid peer-reviewed results are few,” says Silke Beck, a policy expert at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany.
I predict they will botch this too.
Full article here h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard
Is Patchy still there? If yes, nothing has changed. That means they are still in a state of true denial, and the rest of the organization will just follow that example.
Al Gored @ur momisugly May 18, 2011 at 9:39 pm says
“Is Patchy still there? If yes, nothing has changed.”
Indeed so, AlGored. Climate catastrophes have bedevilled eastern Australia lately. Pachauri’s appearance in Queensland this week was the most recent. His rant promises no change in alarmist hooey from the IPCC, only the delivery of “detail”.
“… the general observation that climate change was bringing about an increase in extreme weather events was valid but scientists needed to provide much finer detail… What we can say very clearly is the aggregate impact of climate change on all these events, which are taking place at much higher frequency and intensity all over the world.
On that there is very little doubt; the scientific evidence is very, very strong.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/summer-of-disaster-not-climate-change-rajendra-pachauri/story-fn59niix-1226057100026
How can there be honest science or anything from the World High Priests of Collectivism?
Jerzy says:
May 18, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Do you know of any new species that have come about due to developing advantageous traits in response to humans’ effect on the environment?
Sure, there are multiple cases of insects, plants, and higher animals (such as urban pigeons, wild dingo, urban racoons and foxes) that developed new and advantageous (for them) traits in response to humans’ effect on the environment — not to mention virus and bacteria mutations, too numerous to count and largely escaping attention.
In particular, every domesticated breed that becomes feral is a candidate for new species, as is every feral species continually influenced by man’s activities.
The first textbook example would be the white English butterfly that became black in the vicinity of coal-powered factories, back in the 18th century.
The other example dictated by my personal experience:
Russian northern capital, St. Petersburg, is beset by mosquitoes that “learned” to live and breed in urban sewerage and water supply systems. In old 19th-century houses, even if you install screens on all windows and doors, these mosquitoes get to you, flying out in hundreds from the spaces behind the walls, where pipes are installed. They are somewhat smaller and much whiter than their forest brethren, perfectly blending with ceilings and whitewashed surfaces, and it is so much more difficult to catch them that they certainly exhibit new, “advantageous” software developed and installed, giving them an amazing escape maneuverability.
On the other hand, the infamous spotted owl serves as the textbook example of environmentalists’ blind ignorance: they ascribed to human influence an extinction process driven by the natural evolutionary expansion of a habitat by another species of owl (capable of interbreeding with the spotted variety).
People who instigated and supported this “spotted owl hysteria” must stand trial and recompense enormous financial and other losses caused by their irresponsible activism.
Alas, we live in times of utter irresponsibility: just look at Pachauri’s face! This schmuck is heading an international organization that claims respectability? Reminds me of a joke about the original Star Trek characters: “These guys… run a spaceship???”
P.S. Regarding Al Gore and IPCC standing in a lineup with Yasser Arafat: AFAIK, peace prizes are given by the pacifist (formerly pro-Soviet, and now anti-American and rabidly anti-Semitic) committee of self-appointed nobodies in Oslo; their relation to actual Nobel Prizes is tenuous, to say the least. Even if anybody still pays any respect to Nobel Prizes in literature and economics, which is difficult, taking into account such blistering blunders as Steven Pinker and Paul Krugman.
When it happens belief will raise its head.
I believe their charter stated that they were to formulate the mechanism whereby CO2 drove climate. Until you remove that nothing changes.
Theo Goodwin http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/18/ipcc-agrees-to-major-reforms/#comment-663248
Perceptive comment about all good communists. However scientists that followed also received wages and grants without it seems questioning the integrity of the work.
‘Pachauri proves how reckless the seekers of world domination are. No sane person or committee would choose Pachauri as front man for a scam, no matter how innocuous the scam.’
This is an understatement. It is one of the most fraudulent episodes in history that we are aware of. And as such Pachuri may well have been chosen to lead that purpose.
Alexander Feht
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/18/ipcc-agrees-to-major-reforms/#comment-663585
Much appreciated comments, thank you.
What is the butterfly study, as I had thought it the ‘Peppered Moths’ on birch trees?
Good news on No Frakking Consensus being added to blog roll. This was also how I came to find WUWT.
The heirarchy of the UNIPCC did not do this out of the goodness of their hearts!
Read the conclusions and recommendations of the Inter Academy Council at
http://www.reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/ReportNewsRelease.html
Sorry. That link above doesn’t seem to work.
Instead, Google InterAcademy Council Report 2010.
Climate Change Assessment. Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC.
It starts off reading like a bit of a whitewash, but go through to the Conclusions and recommendations where they really lay out the shonky previous procedures.
Jessie,
Peppered Moths on birch trees they are!
I just vaguely recalled reading about this several times.
“the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has agreed on reforms intended to restore confidence in its integrity and its assessments of climate science.”
That’s sort of like a tame tiger who ate someone. That tiger will be a maneater for the rest of its life even if it never does it again. The IPCC will be a corrupt organization for the rest of its existence.
Now will be a good time for the IPCC to tighten up on their procedures.
Their next Report is likely to become a scientific best-seller, and unlike dear old Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’ which many bought and few apparently actually read, it is unlikely to just sit on coffee tables worldwide.
The only snag is its likely cost: I considered buying a copy of AR4 last year, but found that in paperback form it cost approx. £50 per section, ie. c.£200, errors and all.
If enough sceptics were to read the next one, or at least a part of it, it should be possible to ‘smoke out’ dud references in short order, whether or not they are flagged by the authors.
Jay Curtis says:
May 18, 2011 at 8:55 pm “More people need to start asking these questions of their representatives.”
Really, we have FOIA, even with some recent improvements it essentially has been circumvented . . .
I have never gotten an answer from my representative, I wonder if their office even gets my communications . . . It’s like asking the IRS a question and expecting any other answer than . . . . “this is what we say you owe” . . . . “but, I’m not bitter!”
mikemUK says:
May 19, 2011 at 10:41 am
Actually, this has been done for AR 4; see:
IPCC Report Card
and
AccessIPCC
The IPCC Report Card is the result of 3 sets of eyeballs reviewing all 44 sets of chapter references and AccessIPCC (while still a work in progress) is the result from a computer generated assessment of the references and citations – which also flags a number of other potential concerns.
So, I think we’ll be ready to deal with AR5 🙂
Alexander Feht says:
May 19, 2011 at 12:21 am
Jerzy says:
May 18, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Do you know of any new species that have come about due to developing advantageous traits in response to humans’ effect on the environment?
“Sure, there are multiple cases of insects, plants, and higher animals (such as urban pigeons, wild dingo, urban racoons and foxes) that developed new and advantageous (for them) traits in response to humans’ effect on the environment — not to mention virus and bacteria mutations, too numerous to count and largely escaping attention.
In particular, every domesticated breed that becomes feral is a candidate for new species, as is every feral species continually influenced by man’s activities.
The first textbook example would be the white English butterfly that became black in the vicinity of coal-powered factories, back in the 18th century.”
Alexander, thanks for responding to my question.
By “the white English butterfly that became black in the vicinity of coal-powered factories, back in the 18th century,” I assume you are referring to the 19th century example of the peppered moth in England, when the light-colored typica morph mostly died off due to predation by birds, and the dark-colored carbonaria morph flourished, when industrial soot darkened the trees on which the typica morph rested during the day. To the best of my knowledge, no new species of peppered moth developed at this time. “[T]here is only one peppered moth species.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth#Morphs)
As for pigeons, dingoes, raccoons and foxes, what are the new species that developed as a result of humans’ effects on the environment? Please identify them.
It did occur to me that there are possibly new species of bacteria that have evolved due to humans’ injudicious use of antibiotics–although, offhand I cannot name any. In any case, if true, this hardly seems worthy of celebration.
As a sort of general comment: the post I responded to (by Paul) seemed to suggest that humans’ effect on other species is basically innocuous, that all we really need to do is look at the “half-full” side of the equation in order to see that human activities have resulted in new species. This seems to me a rather dangerous and irresponsible attitude. Humans can and do wreck habitats and cause species to go extinct. It is only mature and honest to acknowledge this, and we should maintain an utmost awareness of our detrimental effects on other species. And, as of now, I know of no species that has developed due to our effect on the environment.
hro001 says:
Understood.
I was thinking of the speed and scale of the attention which could be applied to exposing dubious material.
The Himalayan glacier “error” seemingly sat unchallenged as a highly emotive piece of propaganda for 3 years; the climategate emails notwithstanding, if this had not come to light until 2 or 3 months later, the outcome of Copenhagen might have been a lot different.
mikemUK says:
May 19, 2011 at 2:11 pm
You seem to be suggesting that such external review (and flagging) be done before an assessment report is finalized. It’s certainly a great idea that an organization committed to “transparency” would want to support; but, alas, one which the IPCC continues to head off at the pass:
Source: p. 6 of http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session33/ipcc_p33_decisions_taken_procedures.pdf
OTOH, I somehow doubt that the IPCC will be given a 3 year “grace” period on any dubious aspect of AR 5 once it reaches the public domain 😉
Jerzy,
Dingo is a recognized separate species.
Anyway, definition and recognition of “species,” as opposed to “subspecies,” “races,” “varieties” and “breeds,” is always debatable and decided by committees.
And we all know, what kind of an animal committee is.
Jerzy says: May 19, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Apologies, I had not read that Alexander Feht’ was responding to your quip.
Jerzy says:
May 18, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Do you know of any new species that have come about due to developing advantageous traits in response to humans’ effect on the environment?
The clip below might be some light entertainment on evolution (besides the Guinness Evolution ad) which I discovered recently. Not quite species but….
Ok Jerzy and Alexander
Having briefly also read Willis E extinction blog (and also his previous excellent expose Where are the Corpses) I was wanting an answer to the following please.
The reason for this question is because our very own Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) which does the five yearly census that informs most policies and operations [and expenditure] had recently proposed a census methodology based on an ecological model premised on rare species count [animal]:
As such, what does this really mean?
“Although concepts in this Acausal Interaction category are acausal, in the
Sense that they process strictly according to constraining relations among their components and not because some external agent or internal intention is driving them, certainly causality, external to the concept, may be involved in defining the onset of the process. For example, in electrical current, an external causal agent might be the flipping of a switch to connect a battery to the circuit; similarly, English peppered moths’ evolution from a relatively dark colour can be seen as causally related to the smoke from nearby factories. Smoke itself, however, did not change the colour of the moths; smoke was the external agent that caused a change in the moths environment, after which the acausal process of evolution proceeded to change the colour of the moths. Thus, these concepts become defined only after such initial internal external cause, but the concepts exist from then on in the absence of any cause.”
Chi MTH & Sloota JD (1993) The Ontological Coherence of Intiutive Physics Cognition and Instruction 10(2/3) p249-60
‘Whatever may threaten the continuity of life itself is expendable and subject to modification by evolution, whether gills or social rituals. To evolution and to comedy, nothing is sacred but life itself.’
The old Italian whoremaster in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 teaches a similar lesson:
I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American.
Meeker JW (1972) The Comedy of Survival North American Review 257(2) p11-7
For Alexander and Jerzy,
Nothing like post-modernism or is that post-normal science?
….’Whatever may threaten the continuity of life itself is expendable and subject to modification by evolution, whether gills or social rituals. To evolution and to comedy, nothing is sacred but life itself.
The old Italian whoremaster in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 teaches a similar lesson:
I was a fascist when Mussolini was on top, I am an anti-fascist now that he has been deposed. I was fanatically pro-German when the Germans were here to protect us against the Americans, and now that that the Americans are here to protect us against the Germans I am fanatically pro-American.….’
Meeker JW (1972) The Comedy of Survival North American Review 257(2) p11-7
Alexander Feht says:
May 19, 2011 at 6:36 pm
“Jerzy,
Dingo is a recognized separate species.”
Alexander, what does that have to do with the price of rice? Are you suggesting that because someone claimed the dingo is its own species, one should therefore conclude that there are species that have come about due to humans’ effects on the environment?
Should we conclude that those awful glass-half-empty “environmentalists” are just blind to all the species that humans have brought into existence as a result of the marvelous things we do to the planet?
You haven’t yet identified a new species that has developed due to humans’ effects on the environment, have you?
Jessie says:
May 20, 2011 at 3:36 am
“Ok Jerzy and Alexander
Having briefly also read Willis E extinction blog (and also his previous excellent expose Where are the Corpses) I was wanting an answer to the following please.
The reason for this question is because our very own Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) which does the five yearly census that informs most policies and operations [and expenditure] had recently proposed a census methodology based on an ecological model premised on rare species count [animal]:
As such, what does this really mean?
“Although concepts in this Acausal Interaction category are acausal, in the
Sense that they process strictly according to constraining relations among their components and not because some external agent or internal intention is driving them, certainly causality, external to the concept, may be involved in defining the onset of the process. For example, in electrical current, an external causal agent might be the flipping of a switch to connect a battery to the circuit; similarly, English peppered moths’ evolution from a relatively dark colour can be seen as causally related to the smoke from nearby factories. Smoke itself, however, did not change the colour of the moths; smoke was the external agent that caused a change in the moths environment, after which the acausal process of evolution proceeded to change the colour of the moths. Thus, these concepts become defined only after such initial internal external cause, but the concepts exist from then on in the absence of any cause.””
Jessie, you are asking me what the paragraph you quoted “really means”?
Frankly, I couldn’t make much sense of it, but the title sounds interesting. I enjoy any occasion when “ontological” and “physics” are used in the same sentence.
What do you think the paragraph “really means”?
I certainly do agree that “[s]moke itself, however, did not change the colour of the moths”.
Jerzy says: May 20, 2011 at 11:42 am “You haven’t yet identified a new species that has developed “due to humans’ effects on the environment”, have you?”
Without getting into nit picking about “humans’ effects on the environment” . . . How about the Modern Jersey, Gernzie, or Holstein Cow . . . The wooley Sheep we raise . . . Poodles, Great Danes, and all those other fancy dogs, cats, chicken, and rabbits . . All a result of creating civil communities . . . that do change the “wild” environment. . .
Or maybe you are proposing a secret gene splicing competition . . . It can be done . . . . “wouldn’t be prudent” . . . .
Jerzy: On second thought . . . is the nit picking on “species”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species