Tom Nelson points this out –
IPCC sausage-making details: Saudi Arabia cautioned against “giving policy makers the message that CO2 drives global warming”
Summary of the Twelfth Session of the IPCC WGI and IPCC-36, 23-26 September 2013, Stockholm, Sweden
Saudi Arabia proposed clarifying that evidence of future climate change is based on models and simulations only.
…
Concerning the evidence that the key findings of the report are based on, Saudi Arabia suggested adding “assumptions” or “scientific assumptions” to the list. The addition of “scientific assumptions” was supported by Brazil and opposed by Austria, Canada, Germany and Belgium. The latter underscored that assumptions are already implicitly included in the already-listed theory, models and expert judgement. The Group rejected the insertion.
…
On the headline statement, which states that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and, since 1950, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia, Saudi Arabia said the statement was “alarmist,” urged qualifying the terms “unequivocal” and “unprecedented,” requested using the year 1850 instead of 1950, and called for a reference to slowed warming over the past 15 years.
…After some discussion, Saudi Arabia agreed to accept the statement as presented.
…
On lower rates of warming in the last 15 years, there was broad agreement on the underlying science as well as on the importance of addressing the phenomenon in the SPM, given the media attention to this issue. A lengthy discussion occurred regarding how to communicate the underlying scientific explanation clearly and in an accessible manner to policy makers to avoid sending a misleading message.
…
Addressing the atmospheric concentrations of GHGs, Saudi Arabia cautioned against “giving policy makers the message that CO2 drives global warming” and further highlighted that not all CO2 emissions result from fossil fuel combustion. Many delegates attempted to clarify and simplify language, while Argentina urged participants to “save energy for more controversial chapters.”
…
On Thursday morning, Germany and the UK said that their objections were not noted the previous evening when a sentence on overestimates in some models introduced by Saudi Arabia was adopted. Saudi Arabia, supported by Sudan, expressed grave concerns in opening up agreed text, emphasizing that “we are in dangerous waters,” while Sudan added that opening up agreed text raises the issue of equal treatment of countries. No changes were made to the text.
…
The allegations of climate skeptics of a global warming slowdown in the popular media had some bearing on the emphasis placed on communicating the messages of the SPM. Many delegations highlighted the possibility of climate skeptics misrepresenting, or “cynically” taking sentences out of context. This in turn led to extra-careful deliberations and some time-consuming wordsmithing around the key findings. Delegates debated at length to find the clearest language possible to explain that a claimed “15-year hiatus” is based on a single variable (global mean surface temperature), too short a period of observation for climatic significance, and sensitive to the choice of the starting year from which a 15-year period is calculated.
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You know what they say! With friend’s like Saudi Arabia – who needs enemies.
Saudi Arabia, that bastion of free inquiry [/sarc]
The true purpose of the Global Warming lie was for quite a while now to bolster public support in the West for biofuel (and wind and solar) subsidies; to become less dependent on Saudi goodwill. Saudi knows this, of course.
I’m still scratching my head about why our political nomenclatura found it so necessary to sell this policy by deception. When they have the choice of explaining the real reason or lying, do they instinctively choose lying because they hate us?
@Adam – with saviors of the world like the IPCC, who needs euthanasia?
Also, I suspect, the ultimate source of opposition to the Keystone Pipeline.
DirkH, you’ve not got it quite right. Margaret Thatcher started it all in a political struggle with the British coal miners. Independently, a decade later, the despairing Socialists grabbed hold of the Brundtland Report as a means to enforce their socialist program on the world. The global warming idea, originally designed to boost nuclear energy in the UK, was just laying around and adopted by these Watermelons.
The Saudis don’t want development of competing economic fuel sources, and I suspect they support the Watermelons in their battles against fossil fuels (in the West only, of course) just as the Russians oppose fracking in Western Europe.
Oh, is this rich! It’s almost as if the Onion wrote this. This should be required reading in all student text books followed by a test based on only a mere two multiple choice questions in which the multiple choice involves simply answering true or false.
A) Is global warming a science issue? True or False.
B) Is global warming a political issue? True or False.
The correct answers should be followed by the award of a graduation certificate. Take your pick; kindergarten, grade school, high school, trade school, school of cosmetology, community college, divinity school (for you, Al), school of journalism (ok, skip that one), medical school, university…
Answer: A) False, B) True
When Dr. Pielke, Sr. pointed out for years that surface temperatures were not a good way to measure any alleged AGW, he was dismissed out of hand. By James hansen in an email posted at Dr. Pielke’s own website.
Now, just like with Polar Bears and Tibetan glaciers and storms droughts and slr and tropospheric hotspots, when the facts don’t fit the AGW claims, the AGW promoters claim the inconvenient facts were not important any way.
“Cynical cowards”is a kind way to describe the AGW hype and promotion industry.
Sorry, Robert, I don’t agree with you. The watermelons had various weather-related, global-catastrophes-caused-by-man way back long before Margaret came to power. I remember well the ozone hole and the “threat” those posed to the world way back in the early 70s, and the so-called destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. Prior to that it was a list of resources we were going to run out of – fuel, food, even room – People were always to blame and always the solution was socialism, communism and/or the destruction of humankind. We have long been held up as a blight to nature, putting the planet itself at risk. Might we please leave Thatcher out of it?
Politics…plain and simple
And this is just the English language version. It boggles the mind that we can mince words in so many languages. How far we’ve come.
The time duration since my team last one a championship is sensitive to the year my team last one a championship.
Boffins at the IPCC allowed me to figure that out.
A.D. Everard
October 1, 2013 at 6:03 pm
There was also the population bomb. I believe there were UN meetings held in Cairo about it. I’m not real familiar with the whole issue but I believe they even went so far as to have engaged in forced sterilizations in developing countries. In the US Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren collaborated on a book on the issue. I believe Ehrlich stated that the US could not carry a population over 280 million and mass famines would result if it grew beyond that. It is important to note that John Holdren was chosen as Barack Obama’s science adviser.
Before the widely heralded population bomb the UN also worked on the Law Of the Sea Treaty which began, I think, in the 1960s. Certain aspects of treaties regarding global warming (such as wealth and technology transfers) almost seem like a reincarnation of the LOST treaty to which Ronald Reagan hammered in the last nails of its coffin.
I believe this kind of nonsense may haunt us forever just like the ghouls that keep coming back to life in Hollywood thrillers.
A.D.Everard, I take your points; there were various hippy and enviro groups before. But the Socialists muscled in big-time in the 1980s. I know, I saw it happen; they seized upon the Brundtland report like a life belt in the Atlantic..
So, that which purports to represent definitive science is actually the product of political and ideological negotiation. If it walks like a duck….
This in turn led to extra-careful deliberations and some time-consuming wordsmithing around the key findings.
As an aerospace systems engineer with 30 years in the business, I have watched how wordsmithing has supplanted a solid focus on science and engineering in my craft. Unarguably, this loss of focus on what really matters is what has lead to ALL major US aerospace projects being over budget, with blown schedules, and inability to deliver on the original requirements. It pains me enough to see the US cede its leadership in my industry because of careless politicizing of the laws of Nature. It is even more painful to see my country cede its leadership in truth and the basis thereof in evidence to serve political whims. It has and will continue to have the same atrophying effect on our freedoms as it has had on our ability to engineer the best aerospace systems known to mankind.
I’ll trade you two Denmarks and a Bosnia for one Saudi Arabia. Deal? Roll the dice.
When Saudi Arabia is the lone, sane voice in the debate, you know the world has turned upside-down.
hahaha. these anonymous money boys at the start had no interest in (financially exploiting) CAGW before Aug 2012!!!!
their solution? “That will almost certainly have to be making carbon dioxide emissions expensive by either taxing or regulating the gas on a global basis”, Steyer says. very lengthy piece that hits all the buttons, including Hank’s far bigger worry – leaving the children & grandchildren with a “catastrophic burden”! can’t stop laughing:
11 Oct: Bloomberg: Edward Robinson: Climate Change Rescue in U.S. Makes Steyer Converge With (Hank) Paulson
Billionaire Tom Steyer recalls a dinner at the U.S. Treasury in Washington with two senior department officials and six money managers. It was August 2012, and the meal was part of an effort by the agency to keep up with what the financial community was worrying about. The diners discussed China’s slowdown, Federal Reserve policy and other trends affecting the U.S. economy.
Steyer says they were overlooking the biggest game changer of all. He told the group the country would have to overhaul its energy policy to address greenhouse gas emissions, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its November issue. His fellow guests were skeptical.
“It’s like I was saying that what’s going to make a difference in the economy is unicorns,” says Steyer, 56, the founder of Farallon Capital Management LLC, a San Francisco hedge-fund firm with about $20 billion in assets. He declines to name the other people present because the meeting was off the record but says they control a lot of money. “I thought to myself: These guys need to be made aware of the risks here.”
So in December, Steyer ended his 26-year career as a hedge-fund manager and set out to make an economic case for addressing climate change. He wasn’t the only person from the financial world to have this idea: Henry Paulson, Treasury secretary from 2006 to 2009 and a longtime conservationist, and Michael Bloomberg, the outgoing mayor of New York, which had suffered the costliest hurricane damage in its history, were also plotting how to reframe the issue…
Paulson and Steyer each consulted (Nicholas) Stern separately last spring as they formulated their thinking on the issue…
Paulson and Steyer make an odd couple…
They have two things in common. One is Goldman Sachs. Steyer began his career at the investment bank in the early 1980s on the risk arbitrage desk run by Rubin, who went on to become the firm’s co-chairman, from 1990 to 1992. The other is a conviction that Americans will get serious about climate change if they understand how much it’s going to cost…
The Risky Business analysis will draw on climate models used by the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-01/climate-change-rescue-in-u-s-makes-steyer-converge-with-paulson.html
Think of it as progress. In this conclave, the pause was openly discussed. In the last one, Christopher Monckton had to take over the mic to get it talked about.
Go Saudi Arabia – Yallah!
Why start in 1998? Heck, start in 2000. It makes no difference, you still get a pause or very slight mean decline.
The starting moment is right now. The result is the same whether you go back 5, 10, or 16 years. Only someone who is delusional or blinded by ideology would consider that “cherry picking”.
This is rich. Really rich!
I never expected to see the day when an absolute monarchy makes the quite reasonable request that the propagandists of the West be more transparent and stop fabricating lies and misinformation.
This is rich. Really rich!
Since they are speaking of anyone skeptical as being “cynical” and picking short phrases to pick on I’d rather, just for a monent, talk about what comes with and after the IPCC sausage. Give me a minute to complete their ‘view’ of us in words to fulfill their expectations. Or should I? Not sure if Anthony will allow me to post such thoughts I have at this very moment. 😉
Maybe Phil Jones will straighten those Saudis out.
http://mpc.kau.edu.sa/Pages-Prof-Philip-Jones.aspx
(H/T Tallbloke)