Steve McIntyre has uncovered a blunder on the part of Pachauri and the IPCC that is causing waves of doubt and calls for retooling on both sides of the debate. In a nutshell, the IPCC made yet another inflated claim that:
…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…
Unfortunately, it has been revealed that this claim is similar to the Himalayan glacier melt by 2035 fiasco, with nothing independent to back it up. Worse, it isn’t the opinion of the IPCC per se, but rather that of Greenpeace. It gets worse.
Steve McIntyre discovered the issue and writes this conclusion:
It is totally unacceptable that IPCC should have had a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author of the critical Chapter 10, that the Greenpeace employee, as an IPCC Lead Author, should (like Michael Mann and Keith Briffa in comparable situations) have been responsible for assessing his own work and that, with such inadequate and non-independent ‘due diligence’, IPCC should have featured the Greenpeace scenario in its press release on renewables.
Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.
Those are strong words from Steve. Read his entire report here.
Elsewhere, the other side of the debate is getting ticked off about this breach of ethics and protocol too. Mark Lynas , author of a popular pro-AGW book, Six Degrees, has written some strong words also: (h/t to Bishop Hill)
New IPCC error: renewables report conclusion was dictated by Greenpeace
Here’s what happened. The 80% by 2050 figure was based on a scenario, so Chapter 10 of the full report reveals, called ER-2010, which does indeed project renewables supplying 77% of the globe’s primary energy by 2050. The lead author of the ER-2010 scenario, however, is a Sven Teske, who should have been identified (but is not) as a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace International. Even worse, Teske is a lead author of the IPCC report also – in effect meaning that this campaigner for Greenpeace was not only embedded in the IPCC itself, but was in effect allowed to review and promote his own campaigning work under the cover of the authoritative and trustworthy IPCC. A more scandalous conflict of interest can scarcely be imagined.
…
The IPCC must urgently review its policies for hiring lead authors – and I would have thought that not only should biased ‘grey literature’ be rejected, but campaigners from NGOs should not be allowed to join the lead author group and thereby review their own work. There is even a commercial conflict of interest here given that the renewables industry stands to be the main beneficiary of any change in government policies based on the IPCC report’s conclusions. Had it been an oil industry intervention which led the IPCC to a particular conclusion, Greenpeace et al would have course have been screaming blue murder.
And, Bishop Hill reports other rumblings in AGW land with a consensus that the IPCC is “dumb”.
What a mess. The IPCC and Pachauri may as well give it up. After a series of blunders, insults of “voodoo science” to people asking honest, germane, questions, Africagate, and now this, they have no place to go, they’ve hit rock bottom.
The credibility of the IPCC organization is shredded. Show these bozos the door.
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Theo Goodwin says:
June 16, 2011 at 2:49 pm
“The moral wrongness is in his willingness to beat the drum for ideas that are designed to deceive an uninformed public and to promote a political agenda using false claims under the good name of science. Did I miss anything?”
I’d like to express Theo’s idea in a way that even a Warmist can understand. The Zeroth Rule of the Scientific Method: When you put on your scientists’ hat, tell the bloody truth, warts and all.
“The credibility of the IPCC organization is shredded. Show these bozos the door”
All the IPCC doors are apparently revolving ones. So it wouldn’t do any good.
@Martin Brumby
“Solar? You are having a laugh. Maybe in daylight hours in the middle of the Sahara (if you need electricity in the middle of the Sahara).”
I have friends in several countries who are making money by selling solar power into the grid, because they are generating quite a lot more than they need. There is the cost of installation, which they are paying back fast, and they should be in the clear somewhere between 6 and 10 years, depending on the country. Generally the solar they sell is peak rate power – generated when it is most needed, thus it doesn’t impact on baseload power generation, but what it does do is reduce the need for far more expensive and carbon producing capacity to sit idle during off peak periods. It really is win-win.
I am waiting until I renovate my house in a year or two before I sign up, but I am enjoying reading through my different options. And by the time I do install, the technology will be one stage further on. One of the better ideas is reusable frames, which will have drop in replaceable PV cells, so you can upgrade with minimal fuss and not worry too much about being left behind in the technology race.
The way to tackle man made climate change is for man to change the climate ??
I suppose that makes sense in their world.
It is getting interesting! See Mark’s Lynas’ latest response…… I think Jo Romm has got to him
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/06/questions-the-ipcc-must-now-urgently-answer/
Mark Lynas: That this was spotted at all is a tribute to the eagle eyes of Steve McIntyre. Yet I am told that he is a ‘denier’, that all his deeds are evil, and that I have been naively led astray by him.
Mark Lynas: Well, if the ‘deniers’ are the only ones standing up for the integrity of the scientific process, and the independence of the IPCC, then I too am a ‘denier’.
@Martin Brumby says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:36 am
REPLY I’ll give you a few:
4. Passive solar – a no-brainer, just build your house correctly. I have a friend who builds houses in Oklahoma using thick foam sheets for roofing sections (same as we use in food industrial cooling buildings), orients the houses according to annual sunlight, and incorporates heat pumps & other tricks. He tells me that, during a typical Oklahoma winter, the heat generated from incandescent lighting, clothes dryer and compressor from refrigerator usually supply all the heat for house.
Martin, while I’m completely in favour of renewables where appropriate (even though I don’t believe AGW is the problem it’s been painted as), giving examples of things that work technically does not mean those things are appropriate to the time scales we’re told we have to change on.
A house that only needs incandescent lighting (already banned over here btw), clothes driers (already too expensive to run over here) and a fridge to stay warm in winter is a fantastic piece of design and may well be a benefit for the future. But:
How fast are you intending to replace the entire housing stock of the planet to realise this benefit?
Who (the poor) will be left living in the old, cold, housing as the stock is replaced and with fuel bills rising to encourage people to change?
How exactly are you going to convince the Suburban Jones’, who currently fight tooth and nail to stop the Smiths next door from building a conservatory, that the Smiths should be allowed to rebuild their house and “align it with the sun”?
The point is, something being technically feasible in a given time scale is completely different to it being a real possibility for a host of practical, economic and sociological reasons. It isn’t a case of “just need the will to”, it’s a case of “need to create unimaginable hardship for a huge number of people to”.
I’m very socialist by nature and have an intense dislike for huge corporate cartels like the international oil industry. BUT, the idea of “those who have” all settling into their new, green, lifestyles while leaving the proles (who will never afford the new housing or the solar panels or even the replacement, more efficient boiler) to go cold, hungry, and without transport seems to me a far greater danger to the future of mankind than any degree or two of warming.
Paul: “BUT I found out through extensive investigation that he used to be a mining consultant. Don’t fossil fuel companies use mining consultants a lot? Now, I’m not trying to say anything, BUT…”
There is a big difference between a private company employing a leading expert, and the IPCC employing a political activist who reviewed and published his own work grey literature (non peer reviewed) which amounted to little more than an advert for his own industry and by doing so helped push the IPCC’s political agenda and fill his own bank balance, but also failed to provide any independent scientific evidence of a way forward.
The IPCC has been shown to be either completely inept, or corrupt, but in either case, utterly unfit for purpose.
“Tune into the blogosphere and drop out of the MSM. It’s there that you’ll find people like Steve McIntyre. Investigative journalism is alive and well; it’s just moved house.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/the-death-of-journalism-and-the-irresistible-rise-of-the-blogosphere/
Pointman
Those friends of yours may be able to pay off their investment in PV in 6 to 10 years. The problem is that thanks to govt subsidies, their investment is only about 10% of the true cost of PV.
@Mark Wilson
Costs for PV cells are declining 22% for every doubling of capacity, which is happening now every few years. Subsidies will no longer be necessary in about 6 years time for solar (same amount of time it takes to build a coal or gas-fired power station). But we’ll probably still be subsidizing fossil and nuclear at that point anyway, thanks to some idiots in Congress.
Sorry, I forgot what your argument was again…?
CRS, Dr.P.H. :
Sincere thanks for the laugh you gave me at June 16, 2011 at 5:45 pm in your answer to my question that was intended to demonstrate the complete inadequacy of your suggested ‘renewables’ as a method to power industrial activity.
Your answer says;
”REPLY Indeed, I do provide international clients with exactly the type of information you seek. I’ll offer you the same billing rate, US$250/hour, that I charge them. Hell, I’ll make it US$225/hour since I like you.
I apologize if I cannot answer your question because you refuse to pay my fee.”
OK, so I suppose you would charge a fee for selling me a bridge over the Thames in London, too.
Richard
Duckster says:
June 17, 2011 at 6:52 am
Costs for making the cells themselves are one of the smallest costs in the building of a panel.
The only subsidies that oil gets is the depreciation allowance, which is the same allowance that every other business in the country gets, even your PV manufacturers.
The only subsidy that nuclear gets is a govt guarantee on it’s liability insurance.
Now, do you even have an argument, or are you just going to keep spouting propaganda?
Tsk Tsk said on A blunder of staggering proportions by the IPCC
June 16, 2011 at 10:12 pm ” …….. They make some very generous assumptions about the availability of wind, but the true flaw in their analysis is that they completely gloss over the rare earth requirements for their utopian scheme and simply point out that availability of some other materials(lithium, indium) may be a problem……….”
Tsk, I concur with your assessment of the paper- which I classify as a marketing or sales presentation- vs an engineering or even economic analysis of what it would take to actually implement the plan. The other detail they leave out is how in the world can we stabilize the grid (energy storage, demand response, etc, etc,) in a cost effective manner if one were to follow the base outline of what in theory is technically feasible (with a few caveats).
As noted earlier in this post I completely agree with this statement- “The point is, something being technically feasible in a given time scale is completely different to it being a real possibility for a host of practical, economic and sociological reasons. It isn’t a case of “just need the will to”, it’s a case of “need to create unimaginable hardship for a huge number of people to”.
The Jacobson et al paper is a bit dangerous in that the assumptions that you pointed out get glossed over and the practical solutions to what is economically and socially possible get ignored as not meeting the ultimate goal of going completely fossil fuel free for our energy supplies…………………
MarK:
At June 17, 2011 at 9:58 am you say;
“The Jacobson et al paper is a bit dangerous in that …”
Yes, but it is only one of the IPCC SRES scenarios. And those scenarios are really, realy dangerous: please see my posts in this thread at June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am and June 16, 2011 at 10:44 am.
You question the viability of the Jacobson et al paper but viability and consideration of reality has no relevance to the selection of IPCC WG3 scenarios. To explain, I again quote from my paper that I referenced in my previos two posts on the SRES analyses. My paper explains the model procedure then says:
“The Chapter considers only one type of quantitative future-predictive climate model and “does not include quantitative scenarios produced using other methods; for example heuristic estimation such as Delphi”. The Chapter does not state why it chooses only to consider one type of quantitative model, but says that its ‘Writing Team’ listed 519 scenarios of the type they decided to accept, and that 150 of these “were mitigation (climate policy) scenarios”. Also, “Of the 150 mitigation scenarios, a total of 126 long-term scenarios that cover the next 50 to 100 years have been selected for this review”. So, from the 519 scenarios of the only type they were willing to consider, the Writing Team considered 126. The ‘Writing Team’ formulated “narrative storylines” for the future and selected four models – from their selection of 126 models – to describe their four “storylines”. The Chapter says the Writing Team used few “storylines” because they “wanted to avoid complicating the process by too many alternatives”. But they later increased the “storylines” from four to six to obtain the 5.8 deg. C projection in the Chapter’s final draft. The Writing Team formed “modelling groups” that each had “principal responsibility” to develop a “marker scenario” for one of the “storylines”. The Writing Team’s choice of the marker scenarios “was based on extensive discussion” that included “preference of some modelling teams”. An original total of 40 scenarios were generated from four storylines and this was increased to 60 scenarios generated from the six storylines in the Chapter’s final draft. The Chapter says, “the markers are not necessarily the median or mean of the scenario family, but are those scenarios considered by the SRES writing team as illustrative of a particular storyline”.
Simply, the Chapter explains that the six models selected as “markers” by the Writing Team are those that the Writing Team most liked, and these “markers” cannot be claimed to be typical of anything.
Put another way, the “storylines” are a selection made using personal preference of 6 untypical models from 126 models that were chosen from a list of 519 quantitative models of one particular type, and other types of quantitative model also exist. The Chapter does not state the simple truth that such selection permits almost any storylines that could generate almost any preferred projections of the future.”
Now, please remember that as you again read my two previous posts on the matter above.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
June 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm
I thank you for the great work you have done on this forum. It seems to me that the information that you provide is of vital importance to any assessment of the IPCC’s work. I will have it in mind when I post here and on other sites.
Richard S Courtney said at 2:15 pm 17 June ….
“Yes, but it is only one of the IPCC SRES scenarios. And those scenarios are really, realy dangerous: please see my posts in this thread at June 16, 2011 at 5:20 am and June 16, 2011 at 10:44 am…….
Richard,
Thanks for noting your earlier posts. I tried to get a copy of the paper you referenced for my edification, but alas it’s pay walled-
CRYSTAL BALLS, VIRTUAL REALITIES AND ‘STORYLINES’ Journal Energy & Environment
Publisher Multi Science Publishing
ISSN 0958-305X
Subject Environment, Climate Change, Energy Economics and Energy Policy
Issue Volume 12, Number 4 / July 2001
Category Research article
Pages 343-349
DOI 10.1260/0958305011500832
Online Date Wednesday, July 29, 2009
If I hadn’t just paid $1500.00 to replace the heat exchanger in my super doper energy efficient furnace (somehow a hole developed on the back plate of the heat exchanger……… acidic water from combustion or some X in my propane are the likely causes……… ). I would of considered purchasing a copy of the article otherwise.
It worse then I thought after having read your posts. I wonder what Mr. Putin, or the current Chinese government, would say about the process used to screen the scenario’s down and the conclusion/suggestions of the report. I am sure their governments would be more then happy to follow the approach laid out by the IPCC team/SAC. Maybe they would even be willing to pay for the group to go off and do another series of simulations or even better yet make them go out in the real world and do some experiments say in a few third world locations to see how their approach to fixing societies ills work out. Yes, I think a little field work would be a good for the authors. Ok maybe not only a third world country how about heading to a spot in the far north of Russia, and then to Sudan. Personally, I will recommend to my congressmen that we stop funding anything to do with a group that wastes resources with such shot ass processes. Alvin Toffler would be screaming what the hell were your (as in the IPCC) thinking.
Thank you and Martin Manning for having the courage to stand up for the scientific method a few years back AND now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mark
Unfortunately, the IPCC will continue on; the Church of Greenpeace will continue on. The tranzie jet-setters have too much invested, too lose to let this bother them. As long as the UN gets money with no accountability, this vileness will persist.
Some of Andrew Bolt’s readers suggested I post this here:
This appeared in yesterdays Tips section in the form of a link to Watts, but disappeared during the day.
I did not have to dig and dig to find the link to McIntyre as it was in Watts report. Watts has a habit of misrepresenting what is in the links, as he did last week with one to Clive Best which used the uncorrected rather than corrected graph and neglected to mention Best’s conclusion that the data was consistent with the IPCC projections because that was not the spin Watts was putting on it.
Note that McIntyre does not dispute the accuracy of the submission. And indeed given the state of science and technology now and in 40 years time, the remark about ”political will”, in other words the cost people are prepared to bear (an entirely legitimate point) does not sound like such a very big call.
McIntyre only complains about its “provenance”. Which is in fact a review article which does in fact include references to peer reviewed literature. and an article which is in fact peer. The paper by Teske et al which McIntyre also complains about is in a peer reviewed journal.
There have indeed been complaints about the IPCC’s handling of non refereed material, which are a small minority of material in the IPCC report. The IPCC has already acknowledged this and has tightened the rules for the next report.
Watts’ headline: A blunder of staggering proportions by the IPCC is another Watts beat up.
The following is posted in reponse to Jo Nova’s hysterical headline on her blog:
“Greenpeace-gate breaks and the IPCC is busted. The shock. (Could they really be this dumb?)”
Steve McIntyre has not “discovered” anything. The paper was in a peer reviewed journal, the “Greenpeace employee” (Sven Teske) was one of six authors of the paper, and he is one of eleven chapter authors in the IPCC report. The idea that chapter authors must not have published anything in the area which they are responsible for providing a knowledgeable overview of the science is ridiculous.
REPLY: Yeah sure whatever. So we get that you don’t like it, but it changes nothing. It’s still a blunder, it’s one of several major blunders, it’s still a conflict of interest, and it’s still wrong. See what Mark Lynas wrote about it regarding if the situation were reversed. – Anthony
Richard North nails it, as usual.
“Thus, as long as the IPCC satisfies its true clients, it can – like its clients – completely ignore the critics. They are valueless, unimportant and powerless. That is what it has learned – the classic “mind over matter” trick. It doesn’t mind and we don’t matter. That is the way modern government works, and the IPCC is part of it – as this brazen example shows.”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/06/mind-over-matter.html
Hi guys – I had a chance to read the actual report tonight and I guess was expecting something pretty different based on the comments here specially right up front where the authors are listed;
Coordinating Lead Authors:
Manfred Fischedick (Germany) and Roberto Schaeffer (Brazil)
Lead Authors:
Akintayo Adedoyin (Botswana), Makoto Akai (Japan), Thomas Bruckner (Germany), Leon Clarke (USA),
Volker Krey (Austria/Germany), Ilkka Savolainen (Finland), Sven Teske (Germany), Diana Ürge‐Vorsatz
(Hungary), Raymond Wright (Jamaica)
Contributing Authors:
Gunnar Luderer (Germany)
Review Editors:
Erin Baker (USA) and Keywan Riahi (Austria)
Anyway there are actually four illustrative scenarios and 13 pages of references starting on page 93 here http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10
Pretty interesting read.
Mark Wilson says@ur momisugly June 17, 2011 at 9:38 am “The only subsidies that oil gets is the depreciation allowance, which is the same allowance that every other business in the country gets, even your PV manufacturers.’
Hi Mark – maybe I missed this qualification elsewhere in your posts today, but I’m not quite sure what you wrote above is completely accurate. Sorry if I missed the full explanation form you elsewhere, but in case anyone else cannot find it either here is a quick summary from the GAO from 2000.
“Over the years, the federal government has granted tax incentives, direct subsidies, and other
support to the petroleum industry, as well as some tax and other benefits to the ethanol
industry, in an effort to enhance U.S. energy supplies….
There is a table – which doesn’t format here properly – that has a number of items here.
Excess of percentage over cost depletion
Expensing of exploration and development costs
Alternative (nonconventional) fuel production credit
Oil and gas exception from passive loss limitation
Credit for enhanced oil recovery costs
Expensing of tertiary injectants
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00301r.pdf
Now I will be the first to admit that this is somewhat dated, but I don’t believe all of these save one have gone away in the tax code. Have they?
Sorry – I am a dope. I missed including another one, which I am sure Mark Wilson covered somewhere that I just wasn’t able to find.
“Multiple studies completed as early as 1994 and as recently as June 2007 indicate that the U.S. government take in the Gulf of Mexico is lower than that of most other fiscal systems. For example, data GAO evaluated from a June 2007 industry consulting firm report indicated that the government take in the deep water U.S. Gulf of Mexico ranked 93rd lowest of 104 oil and gas fiscal systems evaluated.’
That kinda reads like a subsidy, but I may be misunderstanding the impact of charging low rates on a resource that is then processed and resold.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08691.pdf
Moderate Republican:
At June 17, 2011 at 8:35 pm you say;
“Anyway there are actually four illustrative scenarios and 13 pages of references starting on page 93 here http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Ch10”
OK. Please read my above post at June 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm and then tell me why those ” illustrative scenarios” are – as you assert – a “Pretty interesting read”.
I have been waiting for a decade for anybody to explain to me why IPCC “illustrative scenarios” can be considered as being anything other than political propoganda generated by pseudoscientific trash.
Richard
Hi Richard – hope you are doing well.
Richard S Courtney says @ur momisugly June 17, 2011 at 9:50 pm “OK. Please read my above post at June 17, 2011 at 12:16 pm and then tell me why those ” illustrative scenarios” are – as you assert – a “Pretty interesting read”.
I must be reading that wrong, but it almost looks like you are suggesting that you need to approve of what I find interesting.
In any case I find lots of things interesting, for example I found a site called CoalTrans International which has some interesting things too.
Thank you Mr Watts for your response to my earlier post. In fact one of Mr Bolt’s contributors drew my attention to Mark Lynas’ comment and I included it in my later posting on Bolt. My point is that it is impossible to avoid what you term a “conflict of interest” when forming such expert panels. It is not a conflict of interest at all. Both the peer reviewed articles and the summaries which the authors provide as an expert panel have the same function, to put a case which has passed the peer review process.
Part of my post on Bolt:
I have written before of my dislike for Greenpeace and that I close the door on them when they come calling. I don’t have any particular beef with Exxon-Mobil. I’m sure many Greenpeace supporters do.
What possible reason could there be for my personal like or dislike for an organisation to form the basis of a demand anyone should seriously entertain for exclusion or inclusion of qualified individuals from an expert review panel?
What expert on the face of the planet would be universally acceptable on that basis? But the “skeptics” think that their opinions are the only ones that should or would count in the culling process.
I repeat, not only is it ridiculous for persons on such a review panel not to have published in that area of expertise, having publications in that area is clearly the only way anyone could qualify as an expert worthy of inclusion on that panel, and the more publications the better.
The fact that the publications have been through the peer review process means they have already passed a rigorous independent examination of their worth. It is perfectly appropriate that a lead author’s work appear in the summary of the science prepared by the expert panel.