Via the Stanford University press room: Stanford’s Chris Field has spent five years leading a large team of international scientists as they prepared a major United Nations report on the state and fate of the world’s climate. The hours were long, the company was good and the science is crucial.
By Rob Jordan
In the summer of 2009, Stanford Professor Chris Field embarked on a task of urgent global importance.
Field had been tapped to assemble hundreds of climate scientists to dig through 12,000 scientific papers concerning the current impacts of climate change and its causes.
The team, Working Group II, would ultimately produce a 2,000-page report as part of a massive, three-partU.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which details a consensus view on the current state and fate of the world’s climate.
The job would take nearly five years, spanning time zones and languages, and requiring patient international diplomacy, dogged organizational discipline and a few napkin doodles. Marathon debates conducted over Skype crashed the service more than once.
“It’s got lots of moving pieces, personalities and opportunities for things to go right or wrong,” said Field, who co-chaired the effort. “You end up with a report that reflects the balance of understanding across the scientific community.”
In addition to being a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science, he heads the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and is a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.
This team conducted most of the work behind closed doors, but Field and other Stanford faculty members who played key roles shared a behind-the-scenes story of what it takes to generate the most comprehensive diagnosis of the health of the planet and the risks it faces.
Beginning the journey
For Field’s group, the long road began in earnest at a July 2009 meeting in Venice, Italy, where 209 scientific experts and IPCC members from around the world developed a chapter-by-chapter outline of the report. Their outline was later formally accepted at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
But before Field and his team could begin the heavy lifting of writing the report, they hosted a kind of American Idol-style search for scientists to serve as authors and editors.
Over several months, they sifted through 1,217 nominations representing 73 countries. Field’s team read every nominee’s resume and consulted with observer organizations and senior climate science leaders on each. “There’s a full diversity of opinions,” Field said, pointing out that some of those selected are outspokenly skeptical of computer climate modeling, for instance.
After participants from all IPCC countries vetted the final selections, the 310 new colleagues – including a number of Stanford researchers – were ready.
Putting the pieces together
Much of the work was done at night or on weekends. Among the authors and editors staying up late were Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellows Terry Root, a professor, by courtesy, of biology, and David Lobell and Noah Diffenbaugh, both associate professors of environmental Earth system science. “There is no institution as richly represented as Stanford,” Field said.
Stanford even hosted a U.S. government-funded office on campus, with five scientists and four technical staffers. The university also provided library research privileges for IPCC authors from developing countries.
“Stanford didn’t see it as a distraction, but as a fundamental function of the university,” Diffenbaugh said. His 9-year-old daughter, however, had a different perspective. Her father, worn out from after-hours work on the assessment, would often fall asleep while reading bedtime stories.
“There were definitely a lot of late nights,” Diffenbaugh said. “You want to know the answer, and you want to get it right. In that sense, it’s not a punch-the-clock kind of activity.” Authors were told during orientation that they should expect to devote about 25 percent of their time for three years to the report.
“Overall, it’s a process designed to not let any nonsense through, so that policymakers get only the best of what science can say,” said Lobell, a lead author on a chapter about food production systems and food security. “That takes a lot of checking, rechecking and outside review, which is not always the most exciting, but you do it realizing that it’s part of the process.”
Sometimes, it took pen sketches too. Lobell recalled a group effort to come up with a key summary figure for the chapter he worked on about food security. “We ended up doodling on napkins over dinner, and then I went back and made a version that ended up in the final report. One of the senior authors described that as the highlight of his career.”
Reaching consensus
The journey to the final draft was a delicate exercise in international relations.
“It is a tough job,” said Root, a review editor for a chapter on terrestrial and inland water systems. “You must be very current with the literature, and due to space constraints there are always ‘battles’ to include what each author thinks is important. It is wonderful, though, getting the opportunity to work with the best scientists around the world.”
Root and her fellow chapter editors in Spain and Switzerland would hash out their different perspectives during early-morning conference calls. Their Skype sessions sometimes went for more than four hours.
The chapter teams pored over dozens of peer-reviewed studies, some of them from nonscientific journals, discussed and debated findings, and then settled on language they were all comfortable using. “Instead of telling your fellow scientists they were full of it, you just had to say, ‘Where’s the traceable evidence?’ and they would change their tune,” Lobell said. Still, “there was nearly always a friendly atmosphere.”
“The challenge is also to communicate things clearly,” he added. “For example, it doesn’t help much to say, ‘Things are uncertain.’ It’s better to say something like, ‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A.'”
With consensus on their minds, representatives of IPCC member countries met in Switzerland in late February to review the report’s final draft.
“If the countries don’t agree on particular text, generally the text doesn’t get in there,” Field said. In some cases, representatives from a small group of countries might decamp to a separate room to work out differences of opinion. “For the exceptionally rare cases where every country but one agrees on something, sometimes text will go into the report saying every country but one agrees on this.”
The homestretch and beyond
Leaders in business, national security, public health, agriculture and other fields can make good use of the data, said Michael Mastrandrea, a Stanford Woods Institute consulting assistant professor. “Climate change is not just something for governments to be thinking about.”
Field acknowledged that the report’s continued value depends on making it more accessible and relevant to a wider audience. “There are a number of things I think the IPCC does spectacularly well. There are some things we don’t do so well,” he said. Field would like to see more author participation from the private sector, such as oil companies and reinsurance firms, and more integration of IPCC working groups.
Perhaps most important, Field envisions providing more user-friendly, customizable and interactive electronic data on an ongoing basis, as opposed to one massive report every six or seven years.
The report will serve as a foundation for international negotiations at events such as the U.N. Climate Leaders Summit scheduled for September. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to make “bold” pledges at the meeting and to demonstrate they will achieve ambitious emissions cuts as part of a legal agreement to be signed in early 2015. Field remains optimistic that the report can spur policy and technology that will steer the Earth toward a more sustainable future.
“Even though we face some serious challenges, we have some really attractive opportunities for building a better world in the future,” Field said. “The thing we need to wrap our collective brains around is that building a better world is going to require taking advantage of the scientific knowledge and being smart about managing the risk.”
-30-
Yuck.
“Perhaps most important, Field envisions providing more user-friendly, customizable and interactive electronic data on an ongoing basis, as opposed to one massive report every six or seven years.”
Am I the only one who perceives this as potentially self-defeating? Either the data presented will be accurate, and thus falsify their claims, or inaccurate, and eventually proven so.
Or perhaps I’m biased by the reporting in this blog.
‘All good friends and jolly good company’ – as they construct and re-constructtheir Heath Robinson climate contraption behind closed doors, spiced up with numerous 5 star field trips.
My first question, who was sleeping with whom as they partied all over the globe?.
So they do all that and then they let politicians interpret any old way they want, which is what folks read. Which is why they get one of their authors to say “take my name off that thing your being alarmist”.
I was almost moved to tears by this tale of heroism and hard work, then I remembered the grotesque gravy train that is climate science, the manipulation of the pre-satellite GISS temperature statistics, Lewandowsky, the Hockey Stick, Climategate and the Hansen stunts.
But most of all, I remembered the refusal of most ‘climate scientists’, especially the very dodgy ones, to make freely available their data and methodology and so I had to ask: “How can anyone call this science?”
April Fools joke more like
Disney woulda loved this.
Wow! The big chunks coming right up in my throat;
“Overall, it’s a process designed to not let any nonsense through, so that policymakers get only the best of what science can say,” said Lobell, a lead author on a chapter about food production systems and food security.
As long as there isn’t any “nonsense” I’ll sleep better tonight. Right.
Not surprised Stanford, a hotbed of CAGW true believers played a big role in shaping this report.
Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford, mentioned in the article above, has a long history of publishing alarmist articles with little basis in fact.
A few months ago he published claims the current pace of zero climate change is 10 times faster than any time in past 65 million years
http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-flimsy-pro-global-warming-science.html
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/stanford-scientist-claims-current-pace.html
And published a 2011 paper predicting a collapse of the California wine industry due to AGW by 50% over the next 30 years, despite a marked increase in California grape production over the past 30 years of global warming.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/06/despite-marked-increase-in-california.html
And a paper predicting an increase of thunderstorms, even though the data shows US thunderstorms peaked in the mid-20th century and declined since.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-paper-predicts-increase-of.html
etc etc and the new WG2 IPCC report is much more of the same modeled nonsense, using models already falsified with 98% confidence.
Too many in media take to propaganda like ducks take to water. This piece of work by Mr. Jordan walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and certainly looks like a duck.
And to think I used to respect Stanford. They should stick to college sports.
Is there some weird natural law at work that says that if you’re an advocate of AGW you have to be bald with a scruffy beard to be in the exclusive dorky club? I’m serious, all these guys, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Ben Santer, Chris Field, Gleick, etc. all look like clones. Maybe human cloning has been successful and they’ve all been constructed with defective brains that don’t quite understand science or statistics or especially honest observation or common sense. But as is obvious, they’re all first rate BS artists.
Projectile vomit inducing.
CAGW is a dead horse theory.
The Dakota native Americans have a philosophy that has been passed down from generation to generation …
“When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”
The “more advanced” Government based philosophy is to perform one or more of the following actions;
– Buying a stronger whip.
– Changing riders.
– Appointing a committee to study the horse. Better yet, bring in an army of consultants to over study the horse.
– Say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
– Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
– Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
– Ride the dead horse “outside the box.”
– Compare the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
– Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
– Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
– Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
– Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
– Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than do some other horses.
– Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
– Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
– Declare that “This horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.”
– Form a charity so that others can pay for the dead horse.
– Get the horse a Web site.
If you read between the lines here, it’s clear this has nothing to do with climate change. CC is only the “disaster du jour” that forms the basis of a massive ego-stroke. As I read this I’m immediately reminded of my disaster planning exercises I and my team would conduct from time to time, as we brainstormed on meeting the imaginary demons of some unnamed disaster. The disaster itself was always more or less irrelevant – we catalogued the infrastructure shortfalls, plotted and sourced and delegated our materiel and people, and were satisfied that we were ready to “handle” the disaster when and if it arrived. Then we went for beer and pizza, all smug in our knowledge that we knew what we were doing and were, therefore, good to go. Like these wiseguys, we first had to invent a crisis, then go “solve” it. Party on, dudes.
“With consensus on their minds…”
Really tells me all I need to know right there.
I don’t know what’s sadder; their delusion that what they were doing had anything to do with actual science, or the delusion that what they were were working on was of “urgent global importance”.
The NWO wannabe’s plan of the “better world in the future” would be like a global battery hen farm for the human masses…fortunately it’s not going to happen folks, lets us make sure of that!
grumpyoldmanuk says: “Yuck.”
Sums up the press release very well.
And these mighty labours brought forth………..A Mouse.
Kindest Regards.
I’ve been part of large group brought together (alot of ivys, british accents and MITers) to develop a corporate strategy for a successful company. Majority ruled and we barreled ahead and never launched another product. Lesson learned – the consensus is generally wrong when trying to predict future events. Fact is someone is right and someone is wrong, average the two and you get wrong answer.
What if the scientific community are correct and any further delays in mitigation could be catastophic? The US Secretary of State seems to think so. It probably won’t affect older white American males that seem to dominate this site that much but think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.
With no political or financial influences, a consensus might have some merit, but with the IPCC it’s a consensus of two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
Noah Diffenbaugh attended the Environmental Resources Engineering seminar I gave at Stanford in February 2013. The subject was a way to propagate climate model cloud error through air temperature projections. No published climate model study has ever included confidence intervals from propagated error.
In fact, all my experiences with climate modelers, including reviews of the manuscript stemming from the work going into that seminar, has indicated that modelers don’t understand propagated error at all. Neither why it’s important, nor what it means.
Anyway, Noah stood up after the seminar and asked questions. He saw the wide confidence intervals that follow from error propagated through 100-year projections — typically (+/-)15 C. They show that climate models have zero predictive value. There is no way to attribute any of the recent warming to human GHG emissions. Noah could not refute the analysis. Nevertheless, he has continued the alarmist song and dance.
I presented a poster at the 2014 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco last December on the same work. The download is here (2.9 mb). Zero predictive value; it’s all there for critical examination.
Truthseeker says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:29 pm
CAGW is a dead horse theory.
The Dakota native Americans have a philosophy that has been passed down from generation to generation …
“When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”
=========================
Spot on.
As C.S. Lewis postulated, Hell is a bureaucracy, and apparently interchangeable with the I.P.C.C.
I wasn’t aware that demographic data had been made public about the commentariat over here. Or that the US Secretary of State was considered an authoritative source on climate. The things one can learn here…
“For example, it doesn’t help much to say, ‘Things are uncertain.’ It’s better to say something like, ‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A.’”
This is the epitome of international committee-speak. Even George Orwell couldn’t make up this stuff.
@Truthseeker, thank you for the dead horse item. It’s a masterpiece.
Having been presented with my fair share of dead horses, I could not resist going through the “more advanced” actions as a checklist. Yep – tick, tick, every one of those at some time or another.
As former gov. Richardson wrote in CNN today, last winter was the eighth-warmest on record and for the last 348 consecutive months global temperature has been above average. It is worse than we think it is.
Simon says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
…think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.
We are. Science by consensus isn’t science at all, but ideology. What- ifs aren’t science either, but simple alarmism.
Simon, I’ve looked in detail at what that “scientific community” has produced.
I’ve examined the air temperature measurement record, studied the meaning of the paleo-temperature reconstructions, and quantitatively evaluated climate model projections. In every single case, study has turned up the worst cases of negligence bordering on incompetence I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.
The scientists publishing on the global air temperature record studiously ignore systematic temperature sensor measurement error, which puts at least (+/-)0.5 C uncertainty into the measurements. These scientists decide the Central Limit Theorem applies to systematic error, discount it, and then stop thinking.
Those doing paleo-temperature reconstructions are substituting statistics for physics. In fact, the published so-called paleo-temperatures are not temperatures and the reconstructions have no particular physical meaning at all. This is how bad the normative view has become.
Climate models produce huge uncertainties when their error is propagated through air temperature projections — making those projections of zero informative content. I’m presently trying to publish this study against a serious reviewer headwind of indignant modelers.
But in any case, I’ll have a paper in Energy & Environment later this year demonstrating all of the above.
Meanwhile, I suggest you put aside your vaguely racist dismissals of skeptical views and pay attention to the substance of the debate.
dogged organizational discipline and a few napkin doodles. Marathon debates conducted over Skype crashed the service more than once.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Napkin doodles! That’s what all those goofy diagrams are!
The think is filled with them, and interpreting them is near impossible.
There’s almost nothing quantitative in any of the graphs and charts, and napkin doodles is probably as good a description as any. Certainly not science.
As for the notion that there were enough of them to crash Skype, apparently their sense of their numbers is as inflated as their egos.
I wonder if any of them have considered the professional and personal consequences of being wrong? And with no warming for 15+ years there has to have been some thought (however transient) of being wrong, some concern, some doubt, some… Truly this is a religion not science. If the Islamists have jihad what do we call this?
“Too much hard work makes Chris a dull boy”
Nod to ‘The Shining’
“Simon says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
What if the scientific community are correct and any further delays in mitigation could be catastophic? The US Secretary of State seems to think so. It probably won’t affect older white American males that seem to dominate this site that much but think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.”
/sarc
There, I fixed it for ya. You forgot the tag.
cn
I’ve got an idea, this one again from the UN.
Instead of a consensus, the IPCC should give each country veto power like the Security Council ?
Sure that would work.wouldn’t it ?
The end game for me always comes down to two simple questions:
When will the Holocene end?
Could AGW deter glacial inception?
(IPCC? Hello, come in?)
Simon wrote;
“It probably won’t affect older white American males that seem to dominate this site that much but think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.”
As an “older white American male” (how the validity of your assumption in anyway “proves” AGW it beyond me, but that’s a different topic) I can assure you that I am “thinking of the children”;
How they will never see a majestic Golden Eagle soaring after they all get chopped up by wind turbines
How they will be shivering in the dark when the solar cells don’t work and there is no wind
How 80% of what they earn is taxed away from them to pay off ridiculous debt taken on in part to “save the planet” and “make life fair”, both very noble goals but also extremely naïve undertakings
How working two 29 hour a week jobs to make ends meet will wear them out
How they will be asking: “What FOOLS thought they could model the climate, jeeeze what jerks”
How they will still be waiting for that battery “breakthrough” their grandparents were promised
How with all the abundance of food in American we still can’t get places like Africa to stop starving each other to death
How in a hundred years they will stare in wonderment at a nice modern “fossil fuel” fired power plant that can produce electricity that is “too cheap to meter” and why some fools thought those plants where some kind of “existential threat” that had to be eliminated
So yeah, I am, in fact, “thinking of the children”, and I hope this AGW debacle will not forever tarnish their expectations of real scientists (you know, the ones that manage to match their predictions with their observations).
Cheers, Kevin.
Truthseeker says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:29 pm
CAGW is a dead horse theory.
…And of course, the dead horse died from CAGW!
If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A. [So they don’t know B either.]
Translation: We don’t know anything.
Well I think they have achieved something really spectacular. They have completely destroyed the maxim that you can’t polish a turd. What they have produced is a very shiny and slippery turd that is impossible to grab hold of.
Congratulations to all involved.
Figures TS1, TS4, TS10 and TS11.
Napkin doodles.
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-TS_FGDall.pdf
I read this whole thing and was waiting, waiting, waiting for the “punch line” at the end, but it never came…
Five years with their heads buried in paper, never once thought of checking the real world.
I’m having fun over at the NY Times. Anyone care to join in? You may have to create a NYT account, but that’s not a big deal. It’s fun to barge in on their IPCC party. Just click the comment bubble at the upper right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/science/earth/climate.html
Oh, this crew must be a deeeelight at candlelight suppers. Some Joan Baez in the background, the finest vegan nibbles, cheeky snipes at “flyover country”, planning on how best to re-educate the dullards…
There goes my gag reflex.
“Overall, it’s a process designed to not let any nonsense through…”
Yeah, no doubt gatekeeping is a big part of this napkin doodle exercise. How are you going to get a diversity of opinions if you have things run by fringing ideologo-science types. If your job position is Chair of the end of the world studies, you certainly aren’t going to be swayed by data and facts.
A Public Relations piece, beginning to end. I couldn’t get past the second paragraph before feeling nauseous. Predictably congratulatory and fawning.
Drivel.
I listened to this being discussed today on NPR, and it just stuns me how the reporters gullibly report it all without so much as one question. They don’t even mention temperature any more, just climate change which is nothing but so much anecdotal evidence which could be produced at any point in time that you decided to go out and look for it. It’s actually a little frightening.
Hoser says:
March 31, 2014 at 5:38 pm
“I’m having fun over at the NY Times. Anyone care to join in?”
I set up an account, but don’t see any comments or comment bubble??
How disappointing it was to hear the media interpretation of this document. In fact, it was their opinion of someone else’s opinion from reading parts of the document in all cases.
Interesting number of papers they reference filtering through. I wonder if they subcontracted that to Cook. Just sayin,,,,,,
Simon,
The US Secretary of State is, as they say, “A dull boy’ of ‘Noble’ (read “privileged”) birth (and marriage). taking climate policy advice from him is like taking investment advice from a compulsive gambler, or sobriety advice from a distiller of spirits.
Why not just have an attorney seek Ward of The State status for you, and be done with it?
Upon further review, Cook only had 11,994 papers used in his study, not 12,000 /sarc
While they were working to find a “consensus” of science results, boss man was already calling for “ambitious emissions cuts”. That’s what’s called “objective science” nowadays. Science with a given objective.
Thanks for including the photo of the group. They may have worked behind closed doors, at night or on weekends, but fortunately they appear well-fed.
jaypan says:
March 31, 2014 at 5:01 pm
“As former gov. Richardson wrote in CNN today, last winter was the eighth-warmest on record and for the last 348 consecutive months global temperature has been above average. It is worse than we think it is.”
At 55 years old, and 70 inches tall, I shall soon be a GIANT among Hominids. Of course you MAY have forgotten /Sarc?
Why should any of us give a Mangy Rat’s Ass what a Filthy, Fork-Tongued, Lying Sack Of Shit, Vote-Buying POLITICIAN thinks?
Politician:Critical Thinking ][ Witch Doctor:Medicine
Five Years???….and they forgot earthquakes
It is a belief system, he is a believer, you are a denialist, I am right, they are misguided – make it up as you go along
Simon, do you drive a car? Heat your home? Oh I notice you use electricity, or did you buy it all on carbon offsets? No warming in 17 years is the bottom line.
Is this the same Stanford Uni GCEP (Global Climate & Energy Project) that is sponsored by big oil (ExxonMobil & Schlumberger) to the tune of $225M if memory serves correct.
When are expecting your next big pay cheque from the above companies A.W.?
I found myself feeling bad for these sincere looking, obviously bright human beings who’s well intended purpose was to present important information that represents what they feel is legit based on the criteria they established.
They worked diligently for years on this with information that unfortunately, contains massive bias’s and flaws because the sources are biased, with flawed assumptions.
If we take a large sample size of experts and their work, shouldn’t the consensus represent the best in that field?
Since most of my day for the past couple of decades has been spent analyzing global weather patterns, I walk the walk and have high confidence that the experts in this particular field continue to make numerous, (some critically) wrong assumptions.
Related to this but the most baffling of all, is how the heck people have forgotten the basics of the LAW of photosynthesis and the key role of CO2. We all learned this in elementary school but how does somebody with a PHD in biology, view increasing carbon dioxide as pollution when all the studies show the powerful link with our booming biosphere, increasing vegetative health and big increases in world food production???
Of course the answer is that this is not what these smart people are looking for. They are looking for something else and will present that something else because it matches up well with their belief system.
I forecast crop yields and the resulting effect on commodity prices using the influence of global weather and all other elements/factors during the growing season.
Increasing CO2 is the best dang thing that ever happened to this planet and humans are likely responsible for most of it!
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/co2benefits/MonetaryBenefitsofRisingCO2onGlobalFoodProduction.pdf
Actually full biographies of these people should be posted with current photos.
Lest we forget.
Apparently the intelligence of an IPCC committee is inversely proportional to the square of the number of bureaucrats present.
This bunch may push that out to the cube.
There is an air of despair about these fawning articles by those formerly gushingly enthusiastic presstitutes of the old media.
I guess when you know your regular readers are counted in the single digit range, it is tough to convince yourself you matter, let alone that you are saving the world.
Who was it? Who said the IPCC had a crisis coming and we would see their fate by the choices they made this report, back when the science first leaked out?
Cause they were dead right, the cult has chosen to go full doom, while conceding no global warming for 17 years.
Only a religious order bordering on full blown cult would make this choice, the desperation to control all, to extort wealth from every human breathing, the shrill desperation…Trust the gospel of our divine computer models, deny your lying eyes. Somebody should make a movie…
Mike McGuire – so are those puts or calls I need for HRW wheat?
Would that the institutions of higher learning in this country and around the world would stop trying to rescue humanity from a hypothetical catastrophe that looks less and less likely as the years go by and get back to imparting knowledge to young people. I get the feeling that many of these people are no longer interested in the mundane chore of teaching their students, Traveling to Japan and hobnobbing with your comrades in the global warming industry is so much more exciting, I suppose.
So this is what 100 million dollars of big oil money from Exxon buys you.
Falling asleep, because of the long hours, while reading bed time stories to his daughter really brought a lump to my throat.
“The report will serve as a foundation for international negotiations at events such as the U.N. Climate Leaders Summit scheduled for September. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to make “bold” pledges at the meeting and to demonstrate they will achieve ambitious emissions cuts as part of a legal agreement to be signed in early 2015. Field remains optimistic that the report can spur policy and technology that will steer the Earth toward a more sustainable future.”
Doesn’t this say it all?
Did Ki-Moon say this before the report was published?
Political agenda is obvious.
I don’t know why but this report is getting to me. The scientific process is tripe, but it all is…and people continue to buy it!! It’s reported on all the new channels, printed in the paper, crammed down the throat of impressionable children and so on.
They don’t even talk about data anymore. They talk about emotions and what they believe and how they want to “fix” the world. It’s entrenched in everything and I can’t go a damn day without it getting thrown in my face. I am really getting the dreading sense that this is an unwinable war for us.
Someone please tell me I’m wrong and that people will finally begin to think for themselves!
CBS News just reported the IPCC’s bullshit like it was the Gospel According to St. John. Amazes me how these retards in the MSM don’t seem to realize they are threatening their own press freedom by going along with the UN’s klepto-tyrannical elite. Christiana Figueres, anyone? Democracy isn’t compatible with saving the planet, says she. No democracy – no press freedom. This is what the MSM really supports, and it should be held to account for it.
And tomorrow we have His Hitlerness’s April Climate Fool Day – which I’m sure fits right in with the alarmists’ Hate Week.
Pardon me while I go throw up somewhere.
Another nobel prize!!!
on aussie taxpayer-funded ABC last nite:
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 31 March: ABC 7.30 Report: Climate change effects already ‘widespread and consequential’ says IPCC co-chair
Professor Chris Field from Carnegie Institute in the US is one of the two lead authors. He describes the knowledge contained in this report as the top of a gigantic pyramid of scientific knowledge…
CHRIS FIELD: Thanks very much. Let me start out by saying that the IPCC is not trying to galvanise public opinion, the IPCC is trying to provide a unbiased picture of what we know and what we don’t know about impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change…
CHRIS FIELD: The IPCC is an amazing enterprise. It involves the direct work of hundreds of scientists who are interacting with thousands of colleagues around the world to do the best job they can do to distil the scientific information into the most understandable, most useful threads for policymakers. And it is really difficult to make sure that no errors at all creep into a report. The Himalayan Glacier error was unavoidable, but it was really serious and we’ve tried to double check and triple check and quadruple check everything in this report. We’re really confident that we’ve provided information that is robust and useable…
SARAH FERGUSON: Just to stay with the critics for a brief moment, the press, including myself, have woken up to the comments of Richard Tol, who I think started saying last year that in his view the risks were being overstated and he asked for his name to be withdrawn. Is it true that the risks as he stated them, his views, were ignored?
CHRIS FIELD: Richard is an author of the report. He’s one of the co-ordinating lead authors of the chapter on key economic sectors and services and he was up on the podium just yesterday explaining the findings in his chapter to the collected group of all the world’s governments. You know, the IPCC does a really good job of representing the considered evaluation of the entire scientific community. It doesn’t represent the opinions of any individual and I can tell you with confidence that every individual thinks the report would be better if it put more emphasis on his or her own research. The idea is that we have a process that brings together all the scientific information to create an accurate picture of what we know and what we don’t know. Every individual will have a personal interpretation that’s somewhat different, but the real value of the IPCC is being able to present a comprehensive, community-wide overview of the things we know…
SARAH FERGUSON: I appreciate, Dr Field, on such a busy day, you taking the time to talk to Australia.
***We*** have of course a great interest in the subject…
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s3975401.htm
Everyone should re-read Pat Frank’s comments. This is central to this discussion. Nothing is more important than whether the models are useful in making predictions (projections) into the future. As the late Dr. Joanne Simpson said, the science consists “almost entirely” of these computer simulations. As someone who has spent over two decades modeling commodity prices using fundamental data, I am well aware of the limitations of computer models of non-linear, coupled chaotic systems. The climate models are junk at this point, and that is really all there is to the science that says CO2 is a significant factor in any current warming.
@Kermit –
May I respectfully suggest that you rephrase your comment to speak of “convoluted rationale” instead of “science,” in your last sentence.
Seriously, point very well made.
There is both sadness on my part and a deep sense of tragedy that both UC Berkeley and Stanford have devolved from top research universities to propaganda centers that only serve to destroy science and the scientific method. Anthony, you should take care not to rely heavily on the work of scientists from those centers in contrast to those from blogs with a devotion to integrity and who attempt to explore the unknown, the non-consensus. I hope I am not being too cryptic, but I am beginning to think that most of their (UCB-Stanford) scientists’ productions should be relegated to the junk heap at first, and only accepted after a very careful detoxification processes. They are determined to prove AGW in every way, even using the most devious and insidious methods to prove they are friends to WUWT. Your stature, and the excellence of WUWT, will draw them like flies (or cockroaches).
What a warm fuzzy, positively uplifting, endearing work supporting earth caring earth loving humans…..I think I will go be sick now.
Think about it: how can you possibly come up with a consensus view with this many scientists?
A better model might be to have a process to ferret out the handful of evidence-supported theories, and present as many as you can in 2,000 pages.
Supreme Court decisions, with their dissenting opinions, are a model.
In sciencey reviews, we should be including decent sections on “controversies.” We should fairly well spell out the various opposing sides, the data used to support the claims, and any consequences. Such as how a future study might be designed to address the controversy.
Hmmm… just had a thought, the last time I looked at a large bulk of mathematics papers, there were quite a few lunkers in there. Pieces of poorly worked material and thoughts. How is it we have 12,000 good peer-review quality pieces of climate science? Seems outright impossible. On top of that, if you go back and look at the course load in climate science, I would put any Ph.D in Chemistry, Physics and Math, head to head in intellect against them and I believe the climate scientists would be last of the bunch.
‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A.’”
Translation
If the sea rises 50 feet it will flood most seaside towns and cities, and we expect sea levels to rise between 1/2 inch to 2 feet or even more a decade.
April 1?
1 April: Australian: AAP: Microbes blamed for mass extinction
CLIMATE-CHANGING microbes may have caused the biggest mass extinction in history 252 million years ago, scientists believe.
Volcanic eruptions had previously been blamed for the sudden loss of 90 per cent of all species on Earth at the end of the Permian era.
But new research suggests volcanoes only played a bit part in the catastrophe.
The chief perpetrators were a microscopic methane-producing archaea life-form called Methanosarcina that bloomed explosively in the oceans…
Alarmingly, the same effects are starting to happen today as a result of global warming caused by man-made carbon emissions.
Analysis of geological carbon deposits reveals a significant boost in levels of carbon-containing gases – either carbon dioxide or methane – at the time of the mass extinction…
“A rapid initial injection of carbon dioxide from a volcano would be followed by a gradual decrease,” said US scientist Dr Gregory Fournier, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Instead, we see the opposite: a rapid, continuing increase.
“That suggests a microbial expansion. The growth of microbial populations is among the few phenomena capable of increasing carbon production exponentially, or even faster.”…
A timely combination of two factors may have sent Methanosarcina into overdrive, according to the findings reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/microbes-blamed-for-mass-extinction/story-fn3dxix6-1226870748281
Simon,
You are so bigoted that you think “older white men” do not care for their children. Which makes you not only bigoted, but full of bigot’s close cousin, ignorance. And last time I checked, Secretary of State Kerry is old, and white. And has not a lick of sense about science. But always seems to pick the wrong side.
You two seem to have at least some things in common.
If I want to watch a profession fawn all over itself, I will watch the Oscars. The people there are much better looking, and the work they do is more meaningful and in touch with reality.
And published a 2011 paper predicting a collapse of the California wine industry due to AGW by 50% over the next 30 years, despite a marked increase in California grape production over the past 30 years of global warming.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/06/despite-marked-increase-
Noah must like beer and,
Noah took advantage of the movie exposure this weekend,
But, seriously, the thing that really gets to me is the photograph of all four of them standing on some rocks with big fancy smiles on their faces proclaiming the world is coming to an end. That makes me p..ke! That snobbishness and smugness reminds me way to much of some of the teachers my wife and I had through the years. But it was sure fun when you tripped them ! (although it cost us grades).
I’m pretty sure most of this temperature data is already available here…
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/
They’ve got hadcrut, gisstemp, uah, etc.
Self serving and no doubt planned exaggeration. The psychology of the (catastrophic man made global warming horror) religion is second only to proven science in importance.
I believe that the backbone of psychology is motive.
When you see a zealot you can see a motive unrelated to reason.
We are not as dumb as their arrogant minds expect we should be.
How many of the 12,000 papers they referred to provided their data, methods, programs, etc so that this esteemed group could validate the results and conclusions of same?
How many of the same 12,000 papers were at odds with each other in their results and conclusions and how did they reconcile the differences? Perhaps a very scientific “In my opinion I think this one is right and that one is wrong”.
Why was this done as a part-time, after hours exercise if the fate of the world relies on the conclusions?
Shouldn’t such a review be conducted by a range of full-time professionals with access to the aforementioned data, methods, programs, etc?
How efficient and effective are they if they are falling asleep due to their workloads?
With my head in the fridge and my feet in the oven, on ‘balance’ I should be comfortable.
It’s a pity that only Mr Tol has had the moral courage to remove their name from this report or point out the bias contained within it.
The report was released on Monday, Yokohama time … talk about premature release … if they’d only waited one more day, the release on Tuesday would have been so much more fitting … sort of giving it the level of dignity it deserves with an April 1 release on an unsuspecting world.
asybot said:
“But, seriously, the thing that really gets to me is the photograph of all four of them standing on some rocks with big fancy smiles on their faces proclaiming the world is coming to an end. That makes me p..ke!”
Amen to that. I see that look, compare it to what they wrote, and three possibilities come to mind:
1) they really are genuinely happy that the evil species known as “mankind” (though, they would probably script it as “womynkind”) is about to be punished and assume they – the chosen ones – will be granted salvation,
2) they are completely unable to connect what they wrote with what it means for our future, leaving the impression that one of their handlers feverishly wrote it back in the suite while the crew was napkin-doodling in the tequila lounge, or,
3) they truly believe what they wrote will actually “save” our “dying” planet, finally getting all the little people-on point and in-line, “frogmarching” to the same tune.
All three are terrible outcomes, but I suppose I would pick ‘2’.
Dead-on about the models, Kermit — their centrality and their complete unreliability.
Lipstick on a pig.
I suppose we should be grateful that hordes of hand-picked environmentalists are prepared to endure so much for our benefit. All that arduous foreign travel, to hell-holes like Venice, Bali and Switzerland. Those long discussions in Harry’s Bar at the Cipriani, that continue way into the night as they move between each other’s hotel rooms to successively demolish their mini-bars: one can barely imagine the tension as they draw straws to see who gets the Toblerone.
Not only that, they force themselves to keep some pretty unsavoury company.
“Some of the people we chose to be part of the in-crowd are actually sceptical climate modellers,” said Field with a shudder. “They say we’re only looking at a rise of 5 degrees in the next few years, when the best estimates from the peer-reviewed non-scientific sources are closer to 10 degrees, with 98% certainty. That gives you some idea of the intellectual breadth and open-mindedness of the consensus we’re running here.”
When asked about the carbon footprint of the international group’s activities, Prof Field was less communicative.
“We’re saving the world here,” he snarled, “so don’t bother me with trivialities.”
“I presented a poster at the 2014 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco last December on the same work. The download is here (2.9 mb). Zero predictive value; it’s all there for critical examination.”
Pat your work was torn to shreds by JeffId (skeptic), Lucia (lukewarmer) and every person who looked at your nonsense. When asked tough questions you avoided them and changed the subject.
The models are wrong as all models are. But your stuff isnt even wrong
Lobell recalled a group effort to come up with a key summary figure for the chapter he worked on about food security. “We ended up doodling on napkins over dinner, and then I went back and made a version that ended up in the final report. One of the senior authors described that as the highlight of his career.”
Climate science in a nutshell, at least they are upfront about their methodology now.
This Stanford crew is sure impressed with themselves. They even stayed up late at night making sure the 3rd world will never advance to cushy life at available at Stanford.
A committee’s IQ: the score of the smartest person, divided by the number of legs.
“1 April: Australian: AAP: Microbes blamed for mass extinction
CLIMATE-CHANGING microbes may have caused the biggest mass extinction in history 252 million years ago, scientists believe.”
Not so far fetched if you look at the ridiculous crescendo of isotope swings in the early Triassic after the extinction. CO2 was just along for the ride, duh, but something was KILLING everything periodically. Sea level was very low, amazingly so for a period when it was seemingly 5 degrees hotter.
The 18O shallow marine carbonate signal we use for temperature may well be skewed by biologically driven isotope swings as it is rejected for the same reason as 13C.
The revenge of the anaerobes…
31 March: Reuters: Anna Driver: Exxon sees little climate change risk to assets
Exxon Mobil Corp, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said on Monday that risks related to climate change pose little risk to its oil and gas reserves because the resources will be needed to meet expected growth in energy demand.
Responding to queries from shareholder activists, the company also said it is “confident” that none of its oil and gas reserves will lose value or become “stranded” if governments act to slash carbon emissions.
“We believe producing these assets is essential to meeting growing energy demand worldwide, and in preventing consumers – especially those in the least developed and most vulnerable economies – from themselves becoming stranded in the global pursuit of higher living standards and greater economic opportunity,” Exxon said in a report released in response to call from activist shareholders…
Based on its previously published long-term outlook, Exxon expects the world to require 35 percent more energy by 2040 and greenhouse gas emissions are expected to plateau in that period…
To mitigate risk from climate change, Exxon has a “constant focus on efficiency” and looks for ways to reduce emissions from its own operations, it said.
(FINALE) Also on Monday, the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report that global warming poses a growing threat to the health, economic prospects and food and water sources of billions of people
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/exxon-carbon-idUKL1N0MS1UF20140331
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“But before Field and his team could begin the heavy lifting of writing the report, they hosted a kind of American Idol-style search for scientists to serve as authors and editors.
Over several months, they sifted through 1,217 nominations representing 73 countries. Field’s team read every nominee’s resume and consulted with observer organizations and senior climate science leaders on each. ”
That how you hand pick your own consensus. Stanford provides a most “respectable” academic fig leaf though for the “natives” of non US (non) academics. Politicians love this stuff.
welcome to Rachel Elizabeth Sooy, a new reader to WUWT who would like to know the truth I think – we’ll know for sure soon…I said you can post anything here as long as you don’t use the word de-nye-er…
Dave the Engineer says:
March 31, 2014 at 5:07 pm
I wonder if any of them have considered the professional and personal consequences of being wrong? And with no warming for 15+ years there has to have been some thought (however transient) of being wrong, some concern, some doubt, some… Truly this is a religion not science. If the Islamists have jihad what do we call this?
————————————————————————————————————————-
We’vebeenhad …
My questions are very simple – Are the American & Canadian farmers going to get their wheat crops in the ground this year?. Remember they grow huge bulk of worlds wheat.
Where are you going to get your bread from?. Wheat prices already up.
How much of your food is grown in glass/plastic houses, artificial warming to keep plants alive and producing, I know of Tomatoes, Beans, Cucumbers, etc.
Always puzzled me that we use this method to grow our food, but its BAD BAD BAD if the earth provides as part of natural cycle, maybe.
AGW pundits better find a very secure hiding place when people are starving, King of France didn’t hide well enough.
Simon; I care very deeply for my children, that is why I have taught them to question everything; if it sounds like b******t it most probably is b******t! AGW is b******t!
Yes,I am a white 58 year old male, over these 58 years, I have heard and read the full range of apocolypticle drivel spouted by so called experts, who are in reality are self-serving and misinformed, who wish to milk the public purse and taxpayer for all they can get their greedy hands on.
Prophecies of Armageddon included:
1) In the Seventies, an Ice Age.
2) In the Eighties, AIDs
3) The Nineties brought us CJD
4) The Noughties AGW, including the nonsensical scare that if we keep emitting CO2, the Earth will have the same climate as Venus, with temperatures of 400 Celsius.They conveniently overlooked the fact that although the Venusian atmosphere is mainly CO2, it is the same density as the oceans here at a depth of 10 miles.
There have been many others, including bird flu, swine flu (which two winter’s ago,our UK Dept of Health told us would kill 60,000 people, in reality it was 200), bubonic plague, Spanish Flu etc etc etc.
In five years, when the temperature of the world still hasn’t risen and energy prices have gone through the roof, the proponents of AGW will quietly sneak back under their rocks and find another apocolypticle trough they can stick their collective snouts into at our expense!
Simon says;
March 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
What if the scientific community are correct and any further delays in mitigation could be catastrophic? The US Secretary of State seems to think so. It probably won’t affect older white American males that seem to dominate this site that much but think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.”
———————————————————————————-
This is how the US Secretary of State understands things:
“Try and picture a very thin layer of gases – a quarter-inch, half an inch, somewhere in that vicinity – that’s how thick it is. It’s in our atmosphere. It’s way up there at the edge of the atmosphere. And for millions of years – literally millions of years – we know that layer has acted like a thermal blanket for the planet – trapping the sun’s heat and warming the surface of the Earth to the ideal, life-sustaining temperature. Average temperature of the Earth has been about 57 degrees Fahrenheit, which keeps life going. Life itself on Earth exists because of the so-called greenhouse effect. But in modern times, as human beings have emitted gases into the air that come from all the things we do, that blanket has grown thicker and it traps more and more heat beneath it, raising the temperature of the planet. It’s called the greenhouse effect because it works exactly like a greenhouse in which you grow a lot of the fruit that you eat here.”
I assume that quote resembles your grasp of ‘THE SCIENCE’, since you so blithely invoked his authority.
He’s an older, white, American male that almost certainly doesn’t visit this site; judging by his idiosyncratic take on the make-up of the atmosphere.
If he’s correct, the learned books on botany will have to be re-written to reflect the way plants strive to reach the upper troposphere (maybe even the stratosphere) so as to acquire the CO2 they putatively require for photosynthesis.
The problem is their starting point; concerning the current impacts of climate change and its causes. So their starting point is an assumption not a question.
Then they finished with a consensus view.
In between everyone went into meeting rooms and played politics and diplomacy.
This is how science is done nowadays??
This is all we really need to judge this guy and his cabal:
“Even though we face some serious challenges, we have some really attractive opportunities for building a better world in the future,” Field said
Simon says;
March 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
What if the scientific community are correct and any further delays in mitigation could be catastrophic? The US Secretary of State seems to think so. It probably won’t affect older white American males that seem to dominate this site that much but think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.”
__________________
Simon, I’m going to give some links to sites which discuss “logical fallacies”, where you can go to discover just how many you included in your short illogical post.
http://carm.org/logical-fallacies-or-fallacies-argumentation
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/index.html
The Globe and Mail is Canada’s alarmist Thomson Reuters owned newspaper. Serious stuff!
1) Front page story of their website at the time I write is “hot and hostile future: Dire UN reports sounds the alarm over environmental threat to billions”
2) Scrolling down is a poll:
How concerned are you about Climate Change?
48% are “Very disturbed” (we figured that one out 😉
25% are “Somewhat concerned”
26% are “Not worried at all”
3) But the best part comes scrolling down at the Most Popular articles in their latest edition:
Most Popular
1. Rob Ford sets crosshairs on Toronto city councillors’ expenses
2. New Quebec poll points to shift among francophone voters
3. Malaysia changes version of last words from Flight 370’s cockpit
4. Woman spends $25,000 on cosmetic surgeries to resemble Jennifer Lawrence
5. Marois’s husband under microscope over political fundraising
6. Hudak overplays his hand on the gas-plant scandal
7. Mirtle: Carlyle’s failure to adapt could cost Leafs more than playoff spot
8. Four things millennials hate about you
9. Justin Trudeau shrugs off criticism over dropping F-bomb at charity boxing match
10. Parody anti-Ford election signs pop up in downtown Toronto
So here we have it and that must really annoy them at Reuters, that despite all their efforts of propaganda of doom and gloom for no less than billions souls -and we can be sure many ad hoc academics will be given plenty of Op Ed to hammer the UN message-, none of the 10 most popular articles of their newspaper mentions climate or is remotely related to climate change, the best one of course being about this woman spending $25,000 on cosmetic to look like some Hollywood star!
Sir Crispin must be green… of rage! 😉
My disdain for the academic world soon has no bounds. At least prostitutes sell and hurt only themselves. But these guys, they sell something that is not even theirs to sell but prostitutes they are nevertheless. First time I visited Stanford U I was in awe, I would do anything to put my kids there. But now, what sane person would spend a cent to risk the future of their kids by force feeding them propaganda by prostitutes that call themselves scientists?
I cry inside when I see these institutions fall pray to Mammon. There really are no values left and people will do just anything to get their face on the news.
broadcast twice on ABC overnite. interview done at Deakin University in March. no transcript provided. extraordinary claims by Williams & Krebs:
AUDIO: 31 March: ABC Big Ideas: Robyn Williams with Lord John Krebs on Climate Change Adaptation
Extreme weather events, like bushfires and droughts in Australia, can awaken us to the impact of climate change, even if a direct link is hard to establish. The UK has just experienced the most devastating storms and floods in many years. Some wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come. Lord Professor John Krebs, a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change, speaks with Robyn Williams about what the UK and Europe are doing to prepare for, and respond to, climate change and what action Australia should be taking.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/lord-john-krebs-on-climate-change-adaptation/5341474
only place to find excerpts from the audio above:
26 March: Deakin University: Beyond the Impasse
The challenge of reconciling science with politics was one of the key issues raised during the recent visit to Deakin of one of the world’s most eminent ecologists, and climate change expert, Professor Lord Krebs FRS…
Lord Krebs was brought to Australia by Professor Andy T.D. Bennett, from Deakin’s Centre for Integrative Ecology, in partnership with the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research…
So how can scientists affect change? Professor Krebs said that if an issue concerns people’s health, such as tobacco use, it is not so hard for governments to take an intrusive stance. Climate change, however, is a very different ball game.
“Where the benefit will be to our children and grandchildren, it is more complicated, and the response required is not a simple action, like stopping smoking. It is multi-factorial, requiring reducing greenhouse gas emissions, achieving global agreement and developing alternative technologies.
“I think that climate change is driven by ideology. The argument that climate change is a figment of the imagination and ‘the weather has always changed’ is not good enough. I don’t think it’s a valid reason not to act. The weight of the science is too strong.”
The book “Merchants of Doubt,” by Naomi Baskis, clearly outlines the tobacco industry tactic of “conflating uncertainty with doubt,” Professor Krebs explained.
“While there is doubt, there is no need to take any action. This tactic was successful for decades for the tobacco industry.
“For various reasons, exactly the same tactic is being used with climate change. The difference is that we know from the isotopic signature – from burning hundreds of millions of years of carbon that has been stored underground, that the rate of change is ten times that of the last ice age. It is not just the result of natural variation, when the animals coped with the change.
“As recently pointed out in “The Economist,” the change in temperature has not been a predictable increase. But, in the past three decades, each decade has been hotter than the previous one and each one has been the hottest since records began.”
So why is the world moving so slowly?
In their public discussion, Professor Krebs and Robyn Williams agreed that, while change may not be happening fast enough, there is a great deal going on, with all but five of 66 countries passing around 500 pieces of relevant legislation by 2013, and only Japan and Australia “going the other way.”…
The final “crucial element of the story” concerns consumption, with the world’s population currently growing by about 80 million a year.
“As pointed out in “Freefall,” by (economist) Joe Stiglitz, if everyone consumed what the average US or Australian citizen does, it would have the same carbon footprint as the equivalent of a world population of 77 billion,” said Professor Krebs.
“If we could all reduce our carbon footprint to two tonnes of carbon per person per year, we could bring levels down to below 1990 levels. In Australia, the carbon footprint is 20 tonnes per person per year. (The footprint) would need to go down more than 90 per cent to achieve this goal.”…
The conversation between Professor Lord Krebs and Robyn Williams will be broadcast Monday 31 March on Radio National’s “Big Ideas” program, from 8.00pm.
http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/stories/2014/03/26/beyond-the-impasse
Simon says;
March 31, 2014 at 4:43 pm
“What if the scientific community are correct and any further delays in mitigation could be catastrophic? The US Secretary of State seems to think so. It probably won’t affect older white American males that seem to dominate this site that much but think of the rest of the world and future generations for a change.”
CO2CAGW “climate change” has been falsified via its 100% Prediction Failure Rate, while it is obviously mitigation that is catastrophic. In fact, within “the rest of the world” India and China see the opposite of mitigation as a component necessary to getting their countries out of their current catastrophe known as “underdevelopment”; and they are thus building nearly as many coal-fired electricity plants as possible. Meanwhile, you labor away irrelevantly to heighten the exquisite ecstasy you can apparently always engender within your breast by demonizing “older white American males” and holding yourself out as an icon of ‘caring’…snif…against them, meaning that all you have proven is that you are a bigoted Narcissist Climate Change Believer.
Truthseeker – the dead horse post was awesome!
Here’s something I hope you find equally fun:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
From Nasa
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Clouds/clouds.php
“The balance between the cooling and warming actions of clouds is very close although, overall, averaging the effects of all the clouds around the globe, cooling predominates.”
WOW, the effect of clouds on the climate is really an important component. Certainly, these effects MUST be well understood and detailed with high confidence in the IPCC report, right?
From the IPCC Report
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf
While trends of cloud cover are consistent between independent
data sets in certain regions, substantial ambiguity and therefore
low confidence remains in the observations of global-scale cloud variability and trends.
I would like to know how they are getting paid and by whom the gravy train is at full speed it is about time somebody stopped it before it crashes
I read this as a T&M contract with hourly billings…. SKYPE??????
Hey Hunter, is it DUCK season yet? I need to go get my stamp…:) sarc/off
What a bunch of desperate grant-funded schmucks. Reminds me of the joke about building a freeway in the jungle. The newbie climb a tree and proclaims ” We are headed in the wrong direction!!!” From below you hear a voice, “Shut-up, we are making progress.”
Peter Miller says:
“…But most of all, I remembered the refusal of most ‘climate scientists’, especially the very dodgy ones, to make freely available their data and methodology and so I had to ask: “How can anyone call this science?”
And these so-called “scientists” also refuse public debate with anyone who doesn’t agree with them, especially if their opponents are better informed then them and are in possession of proven scientific facts.
In Australia we say, “What a bunch of wankers”
It’s so very sad. These collectivist delusionals think we are all going to fry.
They filter out data that disagrees with there catastrophic theory and use data that is marginal at best to support their theory. On top of this where no data exists the ‘model’ or ‘ construct’ it.
Causality needs to be top of the list of buzz words not consensus .
They are akin to sports fans who blame everything on the field on whether the have their lucky socks on. The quarterback didnt throw the dodgy pass because you drank with you left hand or because of not wearing an even number of clothes.He threw the dodgy pass because he is an idiot.
Climate changes because t always has. If the earth warms up for a while maybe its some freakish winning streak maybe its because of the sun it’s not very likely that it is caused by a tiny amount of a relatively insignificant gas.
Maybe the ipcc next time will tell us all to spin rond three times and spit. That’s about as,likely not help as buying a Toyota Pious.
Hmmm.
And during all this time, what was the rate of consumption of: sandals, cardigans, brightly colored anoraks, gluten-free bread, fat-free butter, vegan meals, sustainable this, sustainable that, roll-up ciggies, bicycle tires, battery-packs…… 😉
Does anyone else see us being led and influenced by a very narrow clique within society, who are demanding that we duplicate their chosen lifestyle, and pay for their chosen lifestyle too. I think it is our national duty to buy red meat, full-fat milk, and something with a V8 in it.
Ralph
cwon14 says: March 31, 2014 at 4:14 pm
Wow! The big chunks coming right up in my throat.
________________________________
I told you not to go to that curry-house. Have you not noticed that there are no cats and dogs within 5 miles of the place….?
R
I have put in a complaint to 3 UK media outlets, including the BBC, for claiming that Climate Change was caused by Global Warming. I included Monkton’s graph of graphs:
http://oi62.tinypic.com/294o3l5.jpg
It matters not if this claim came from the IPCC, the media is still duty-bound to check the facts rather than broadcasting nonsense and lies. And the facts are – there has been no warming this century.
I urge you all to take 10 minutes, to complain to your local or national media outlet.
R
What glurge. Infused with their own sense of heroics and nobility. Blecch.
Do comments sent by ‘phone disappear? I thought I had filled in the correct details.
“The challenge is also to communicate things clearly,” he added. “For example, it doesn’t help much to say, ‘Things are uncertain.’ It’s better to say something like, ‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A.’”
Yep, very much better to obfuscate and use 14 word when 3 will do the job.
ralfellis says: April 1, 2014 at 1:54 am
and something with a V8 in it.
Love red meat, only drink full-cream milk and…..meet my baby;
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/DSC00435_zps861d60ea.jpg
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh154/crocko05/DSC00445_zps4e06e568.jpg
(hope the links work)
Annie – I find that sometimes they do – I lose stuff sent off my tablet from time to time into the phone network – one thing – don’t be in too big a hurry to sign off after you’ve sent it – phone networks seem a lot slower in getting all the acknowledge packets back and forth.
Correct me if I am wrong but somewhere along the line I remember that the IPCC hypothesis was that Co2 caused warming and that warming causes climate change. WGII appears to ignore the fact that rising levels of Co2 are not causing warming saying that Co2 by some miracle causes climate change without warming having taken place first. Not once yesterday did the BBC during its obsessive coverage ask Dr Chris Field exactly how Co2 had mutated from a molecule into an intelligent being able to directly influence our climate – without warming it first – and specifically target developing countries who if you look at coal consumption are directly responsible for the spike in Co2 with Asia burning 5 million tons a year and America just 1 billion tons. Why is the UN asking Asia to compensate us for damage to the Somerset levels caused by the developing world causing climate change?
You all do realize that Paul Ehrlich, who – in any truly sane, rigorous academic world – shouldn’t be allowed to teach a 4th grade science class – is (from Wiki) the – “Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology”
These guys are set for life in Palo Alto.
Authors were told during orientation that they should expect to devote about 25 percent of their time for three years to the report.
“It is wonderful, though, getting the opportunity to work with the best scientists around the world.” … Root said.
Well if they are the “the best scientists around the world” how come they have so much free time?.
Just wondering….
“The challenge is also to communicate things clearly,” he added. “For example, it doesn’t help much to say, ‘Things are uncertain.’ It’s better to say something like, ‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A.’”
Saying “Things are uncertain” is much clearer.
so they did all that work . What for when Pachauri knew what this report was going to say back in 2009 that it would be a call to action that would be both alarming and dramatic?
‘In September 2009, he told religious leaders in New York: “When the IPCC’s fifth assessment comes out in 2013 or 2014, there will be a major revival of interest in action that has to be taken. People are going to say, ‘My God, we are going to have to take action much faster than we had planned.’”
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_uns_climate_change_chief_puts_politics_first#sthash.pHLZwryM.dpuf
so the ipcc and their reports have a show trial of co2, go through the motions of investigating 12,000 reports but knew what the report would say 5 years before?
if i had sent a team thro 12,000 reports only to find out the conclusions and main message of the report had been worked out anyway i would be in need of detox gaia retreat.
TomRude says:
March 31, 2014 at 10:52 pm
“Sir Crispin must be green… of rage! ;-)”
Crispin Tickell has been replaced by ur globalist Pascal Lamy on the board of trustees of Thomson-Reuters, last time I checked.
contd from prev
which reminds me of what some guy who had been on the greenpeace boats said happened with decision making. That they would have meeting where everything was discussed and voted on then an earth mother type would come in and tell everyone what they were going to do.
looks like its not changed much.
“The thing we need to wrap our collective brains around is that building a better world is going to require taking advantage of the scientific knowledge and being smart about managing the risk.” Oh, Gawd! That is just so 1950s “Leave It To Climate Beaver.” Here is a recent song that comes to mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StTqXEQ2l-Y
– – – – – – – – –
They were an instrumental part of the “behind closed doors” process that decided the staff working on AR5 WGII.
Then they contribute to this PR piece that is just an anecdotal account of what they did ““behind closed doors”, that we must just accept as being true.
No. Anything done behind the closed doors is not acceptable. Their work product is invalid until a full accounting in a formal privately funded and independently staffed audit is conducted on it. It must be an audit that has in process full transparency and openness to every member of the public.
Their WGII report is not a science assessment until such an audit is performed, and even then the WGII report cannot ignore contrary climate observations that WGI failed to handle scientifically.
John
Napkin Doodle went to Bali town
A-riding on a granted-pony
Stuck a number in his hat
And called it global-warmin.
Chad Wozniak says:
March 31, 2014 at 7:08 pm
“Amazes me how these retards in the MSM don’t seem to realize they are threatening their own press freedom by going along with the UN’s klepto-tyrannical elite. ”
The MSM doesn’t care whether they print truth or lies. They’ve been printing and broadcasting lies since at least the Lisbon treaty, 2009, in the EU, for all I know, and seem to be happy with it. Guess they all want to be obedient sycophants, hoping that the regime throws them a bone. The regime must, after all, keep a certain number of them alive to maintain the illusion of truthful reporting.
Where, oh where is Dr. S?
“There are some things we don’t do so well,”
Like, predicting future temperatures. But we’re really good at spending taxpayer money.
KevinK says:
March 31, 2014 at 5:13 pm
“…So yeah, I am, in fact, “thinking of the children”, and I hope this AGW debacle will not forever tarnish their expectations of real scientists (you know, the ones that manage to match their predictions with their observations).”
Regrettably, Kevin, there seems to be a distinct lack of real scientists studying climate. Many of those in the field are ideologues and propagandists for AGW/climate change or priests and acolytes, if you wish.
Doesn’t this article give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? The type where you just want to shut off your heater when it 10 below ZERO, either C or F take your pick, to save the planet. But then that’s because you really don’t have a choice do you? With most people paying $5/gal for propane during an extremely cold winter, brought on by GW no less, just get use to. I wonder if the price will go up next year? … As if we are going to have a warm winter and lower fuel bills… just wait till they add the carbon tax!!! Can’t wait!!!
Glad to hear they had a nice time costing us billions.
Thanks, I’ll add Stanford to my Watch List of universities to second guess on cost and quality for a rising honor student. It’s one thing to snicker at such academic excursions from afar, it’s quite another thing to unload a life’s savings rewarding that kind of bad academic behavior. I guess it’s time to start the Feynman-type quality check list and update it regularly by school and department.
Steve Mosher, you’ve never given any evidence of having read my work. That makes your opinion worthless.
Jeff Id and Lucia claimed I had mistaken weather noise for measurement error. They were wrong. When I challenged them to show that error in any of my Tables or Figures, they couldn’t do it. The reason is because it’s not there. Jeff grudgingly admitted as much. Lucia tried to lie her way out of her prior position. None of that apparently made any impression on you.
So, I offer you the same challenge, Steve. Point out the error. Which figure, which table? Here’s your chance. Let’s see if you can figure it out.
Their other claim was picayune, based on a mistaken reading of the obvious. They claimed that I mistook state variability for an error. Except I’m clear on the distinction throughout the paper.
You’ve evidenced a consistent inability to grasp any of that. Maybe that’s due to laziness, or maybe willful blindness, or just incompetence. Whichever, the observable is the same. You’ve been consistently wrong.
Maybe you’d be able to figure that out, if you’d actually read the paper. But speaking confidently from ignorance seems to be your preferred motif here.
And your statement, “When asked tough questions you avoided them and changed the subject.” is an outright lie.
I’ve read your ideas about models, and your views about choosing the ‘best one.’ They’re hopelessly naive.
“Napkin doodle science” says it all.
I am sure that the parts of the report that matter to other people, namely all the parts, will be subjected to critical reviews before the next IPCC report comes out. Already, NIPCC has a report that can be read as a companion/complement. This IPCC report is an improvement over IPCC AR4. No one should dismiss this report outright. Much of it is hard to improve upon, with current evidence.
That the debates were done behind closed doors is no longer a problem, because the work itself is public and can be openly reviewed. The much shorter US Constitution was debated and written behind closed doors, then publicly debated. It also has proved hard to improve upon.
It is a major step forward to have so much emphasis on adaptation: with or without CO2 involvement in climate, the weather will oscillate pretty much as it always has, and adaptation to alternations of drought and flood, cold and hot, will be required. It would be a mistake to devote too much resource to mitigation and delay adaptation, the strategy taken by California.
Steven Mosher: Pat your work was torn to shreds by JeffId (skeptic), Lucia (lukewarmer) and every person who looked at your nonsense. When asked tough questions you avoided them and changed the subject.
Links please, or quotes. His conclusions look sound:
1. Climate models are unable to resolve the effect of anthropogenic GHGs.
2. Global air temperature projections presently have no predictive value.
3. Detection and attribution currently remain impossible.
The uncertainties in the cloud responses to warming/CO2 propagate through the models to produce such large forecast variation that the models are essentially worthless for those purposes. The poster is possibly flawed, but certainly not nonsense.
Two Points based on the lead article:
(1) “The challenge is also to communicate things clearly,” he [Lobell] added. “For example, it doesn’t help much to say, ‘Things are uncertain.’ It’s better to say something like, ‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A.’”
Amazingly, Lobell appears to advocate for a binary approach to risk assessment (i.e.. we know or we don’t know). During my 30 year engineering career, I don’t recall any non-trivial situation wherein certainty of “A” implied certainty of “B”. System status analysis (PIRT & FMECA), and risk assessment along with model Verification and Validation methods are commonly used in engineering to provide, at the very least, semi-quantitative measures or risk, importance, and uncertainty. I’m thankful that these so-called climate scientists don’t rule other science and engineering fields.
(2) “If the countries don’t agree on particular text, generally the text doesn’t get in there, Field said” . “In some cases, representatives from a small group of countries might decamp to a separate room to work out differences of opinion.”
Well, there Field admits it; it’s all about ironing out differences of opinion. . . at least, I suspect, as long as the final result promotes the AGM meme!
Dan
Pat Frank: So, I offer you the same challenge, Steve. Point out the error. Which figure, which table? Here’s your chance. Let’s see if you can figure it out.
Have at it Steven Mosher: defend your claim or withdraw it. Let us see it and evaluate it.
Matthew R Marler says:
It may be better-smelling, and a bit tidier garbage, but I still wouldn’t want it on my lawn. What they are producing, even the adaptation stuff is completely useless, since it is still based on false assumptions. They don’t have a clue what our climate is doing, much less what it will be doing. The rest is all just common sense stuff we knew already, about maybe not building in areas prone to floods, and generally preparing sensibly for weather disasters of all kinds which have always happened and always will. We don’t need the IPCC to tell us that.
Will that masterpiece become famous as the “Warmists’s Digest”???
A few years ago, I had a discussion with someone involved in climate modeling. He had a PhD and was working on what I’m sure was the terribly complex physics involved. He claimed that the historical data was NOT used in the modeling. It was pure physics. I kept asking whether the historical data really was not used at all, and after several pages of comments, he angrily agreed that, yes, it was used to “verify” that the models were valid. My next question stopped him cold. I asked how many times, since the 1980s, the historical data had been used to “verify” climate models. Now, anyone who does any modeling knows the importance of out-of-sample data. And, everyone should know how, the more times the models are “verified” on “out-of-sample” data, that data becomes more and more “in-sample” and useless for verification. This surely seems to be a problem that can never be overcome with climate models. The models end up being curve-fit to the historical data. And, as anyone who has read this blog is well aware of, the quality of that historical data is questionable. But even if the data were good, this is a sure fire way to get models that will inevitably fail when running in real time. I’ve done this in the markets for quite some time now, and when my models are wrong, it costs me money. The problem is a lack of accountability in climate modeling. When the models are obviously wrong, the modelers keep getting paid. They simply come out with a new and “better” model that is curve fit to the latest climate data.
The emperor truly has no clothes. This is the central point that needs to be discussed, and this is why I tried to draw attention to Pat Frank’s comments here. IMHO, everything else is secondary.
By the way, it took me some time to realize that Jeff and Lucia had criticized my paper without actually having read through it. I respect Jeff’s work a lot. That he’d made a mistake like that was a realization a long time coming.
The problem only became obvious when I challenged them to produce the weather noise error they claimed was there, and they could not. Up to that point, I had thought their problem was a misunderstanding and had directed my explanations to clearing that up. It didn’t occur to me, til the end, they were criticizing what they hadn’t read.
And now you’re doing the same thing, Steve; criticizing what you’ve never read. Arguing from the authority of mistaken views that you’ve taken as true and never bothered to understand.
You’re up to your neck in a swamp and don’t even know it.
Real science stands on its own; CAGW needs circle-jerks like these to motivate the minions to keep up the activism.
Kermit, you’ve captured a central error of modelers. They don’t think at all like scientists.
Two reviewers of my manuscript essentially said that all the errors in the models are already present in a spun-up equilibrated base-state 1850 simulation. The errors are taken as constant from then on. Differencing subtracts away these errors, leaving them with accurate anomaly trends.
But the only way to know what the errors are in the 1850 simulation is to compare it to the authentic 1850 climate. Those data do not exist. So, the errors in the 1850 base climate cannot be known. I.e., modelers cannot have tested their supposition of constant error. It’s strictly based on a theoretical formalism that’s accepted as true.
I’m not a climate scientist but my experience working on large-group reports in various fields tells me there is 0% chance a group such as this would ever make a significant reversal of position or recognize/admit its prior conclusions had been wrong. It is simply not in the nature of human social dynamics for consensus to be overturned via a large working group, no matter what the evidence may say.
Kermit,
As a follow-on to your comment – when models are found to be wrong, the modelers simply blame it on someone/something else. They then refuse to provide the original data.
I peer-review building energy models, and anytime a modeler refuses to give me the input data I know it is toilet paper. Plain and simple, no other option exists.
In the private arena, refusing to provide all the data gets you fired. (Professional Engineers found guilty of fraud can get their license to practice revoked.)
In fact, here is a section from the latest EPA’s Energy Star Certification Guidelines:
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/evaluate_performance/pm_lp_guide.pdf
The Licensed Professional’s Guide:
Understanding the Roles and Requirements for Verifying Commercial Building Applications for ENERGY STAR Certification
Page 4: “Should a LP be found to have falsified information on a building’s application for ENERGY STAR Certification, EPA reserves the right to pursue recourse through the engineering and architectural professional licensing authorities granting that individual’s license, and under Federal law. Title 18 USC Section 1001, Crimes and Criminal Procedure, Fraud and False Statements, holds that:
Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully – (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years … or both.1”
(1- Full text of Title 18 USC Sec 1001 is available at: http://uscode.house.gov)
So, why is this not the case in the climate-change industry??? Change just that one aspect, and the industry would most likely crumble in on itself in a matter of months.
revealing talk called
Coffee Hour: Being a social scientist on the IPCC: Reflections from the conceptual frontline
by Petra Tschakert
http://www.geog.psu.edu/news/events/coffee-hour-being-social-scientist-ipcc-reflections-conceptual-frontline
click on ‘coffee hour to go’ to see the presentation that describes the hoops the unpaid researchers have to go thro and the constraints imposed from on high that guide the direction. A revealing shift is that the vulnerability definition in AR5 is totally decoupled from anything to do with climate. So really the IPCC should be the IPVP [vulnerability and poverty ]
The Stanford group is mentioned and a certain MM is in the audience.
Bruce Cobb: It may be better-smelling, and a bit tidier garbage, but I still wouldn’t want it on my lawn.
Your lawn is your lawn. I would not argue with that.
WGII process was “behind closed doors”.
But we can see the report issued by the process, so no problem?
That despite the Richard Tol criticism of the process?
No, the behind closed doors of the WG process is unacceptable. Audit needed.
John
Responding to:
Pat Frank @ April 1, 2o14 at 10:54 AM
I do emphasize with your frustration in dealing with the Climatology modeling establishment. But in general, at least outside of Climatology, I don’t agree with your statement that “They (i.e., modelers) don’t think at all like scientists.”
Instead, I believe that scientists, more typically, use existing data to hypothesize governing physical mechanisms, which they then attempt to describe mathematically (and in code) in the form of a model. If the model has fidelity only within the bounds of the pre-existing data, it an engineering model. On the other hand, if the model can be extrapolated and predict previously unknown effects, it’s a scientific model — at least until it’s superseded by a better model.
I have a great affinity for the power of data; but I also believe that describing that same data with physically-based models is also powerful in the sense of confirmation and also future application opportunities.
But too often here at WUWT, I hear a much different refrain with many commenters deriding modeling. . . it’s all about data they say. I suggest that we not abandon physically-based models just because the GCM crowd are seemingly inept and untethered to generally accepted modeling verification and validation techniques. Remember, everything “sticky” we learned in physics, chemistry etc. etc. was expressed in the form of models. Corollary: without models, we’d all be swimming, lost in a sea of data. [NB: yes, I recognize that non mathematical models can organize such data. . . but not as effectively or efficiently IMHO]
Dan
Dan Met’al, you’re right. I should have qualified the comment about modelers with, ‘climate modelers of my experience.’
Totally agree with your distinction between engineering and scientific models, and the great value physical models have when used in conjunction with data. Science proceeds only by the strong interplay between models and data. Physical models falsifiably predict, data provide the yay or nay.
The problem with climate modeling, is that the models are parametrized data-bounded engineering models but are being represented as predictive scientific models.
Truthseeker says:
March 31, 2014 at 4:29 pm
The best laugh I’ve had all day. Dead horses provide point sources of greenhouse gases, by the way.
Responding to:
Pat Frank @ April 1, 2014 at 12:28 PM
Thanks for your response. . . and I do agree with your follow-up comments. . . spot on! But I’d like feedback from you and others on “why the WUWT community seems passive”? Yes, there’s a lot of sound and fury on this site, and yes Anthony and many other commenters have made impact on key climate issues.
But what can the WUWT community do to more aggressively push for honest data analysis and more transparent data and uncertainty quantification for GCM results? Imposition of modeling standards, standard on data acquistion, storage, and subsequent manipulation. . . . Yes, pretty feeble ideas. . . BUT please what your ideas.
Dan
Dan,
Simple, enforce the law against filing fraudulent documents. I am sure Holder and his army would be thrilled to.. Oh wait, never mind. They are too busy covering up and shutting down investigations INTO scandals like this.
Sigh….such a sad state of the Union.
==============================================================
A dead horse has a better chance of winning the Kentucky Derby than the climate science community being correct based on actual facts and observations. But to act on the climate science community’s opinions would be catastrophic for future generations. Including my and my wife’s additions to future generations.
(What’s with the “older white American males” crack? I bet you have a “Coexist” bumper sticker on your car.)
I got three paragraphs in started to feel nauseous so stopped reading … seriously, not joking, really felt like I was gonna hurl …
So the behind closed doors approach we’ve come to expect from this bunch continues. Presumably that means we’ll have to wait for Climategate III before we find out what “tricks” WG II got up to in the production of the latest episode of The Goldilocks Chronicles.
”The challenge is also to communicate things clearly,” he added. “For example, it doesn’t help much to say, ‘Things are uncertain.’ It’s better to say something like, ‘If we knew A, we would know B, but we don’t really know A”
But that won’t stop us coming up with C(rap)
Matthew R. Marler, Steve isn’t criticizing my AGU poster. He’s upset about my papers on the global air temperature record, first one here (869.8 kb pdf), follow-up here (1 mb pdf).
They show that systematic temperature sensor measurement error has been ignored in the published record. Including that error produces a lower-limit uncertainty of (+/-)0.5 C. The climate has warmed, sure, but the rate and magnitude are lost in the measurement error and are unknowable.
So, Steve has a bee in his bonnet about the papers, because the uncertainty bars show the BEST project he’s involved in is an empty exercise. For that matter, so is GISS Temp and CRU Temp.
The situation in the global air temperature record exemplifies the pervasive neglect of error in AGW consensus climate science.
Dan Met’al, I guess we all do what we can. The WUWT contributors are part of a larger community of skeptics that has actually been pretty active.
The problem is that the AGW narrative has garnered a huge social momentum. It’s supported, not just by activist data-mangling journal-bullying integrity-betraying scientists, but by every single environmental NGO, their paid and partisan PR groups, all kept on-message through the Climate Action Network, with millions of $ in grants provided annually by governments, foundations, and rich donors.
Their contributions to political candidates means they get the ears that you and I do not. It’s a bitter irony that government grants are used by NGOs to lobby politicians so as to obtain government grants. The institutional inertia is huge, and we see partisan NGOs now invited to the table where governments decide policy. It’s totally undemocratic, which suits them fine.
That ship won’t turn easily. It’s going to take time and effort.
So, what do do? What we can. Write letters. Tell your congress person you’ll withhold your vote if they support subsidies for green stupidity. If you can, do some critical analysis and publish it. Maybe organize a local group to do a little counter-demonstration, or hold teach-ins about green venality and factual dishonesty. We all have differing abilities. I’m not an organizer. But I can do critical analysis, and am trying to publish right now. Maybe we need a Reasoned Action Network to organize skeptical groups internationally. Imagine lobbying politicians for reasoned laws. What a concept! 🙂
the ipcc gave out advice to the researchers how to deal with the media and what words to avoid including
Bias, Risk, Ozone, Regime, Species, Positive, Negative, Theory, Uncertainty, Manipulation, Model, Error, Ecology
full list here
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B88iFXWgVKt-NDc2N2FiM2QtYzQzYS00MWMxLWE4MGEtZjUwZDlmNzc3MTcz/edit?hl=en
some said this exposed a bunker mentality
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/climate-panel-struggles-with-media-plan/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
“We are an intergovernmental body and we do what the governments of the world want us to do,” Pachauri told the London paper. “If the governments decide we should do things differently and come up with a vastly different set of products we would be at their beck and call.”
http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/u-n-climate-chief-admitted-political-agenda-of-science-report/#JrW8VbbylrRwCu2X.99
so looking thro 12,000 report for facts is just a tick box exercise?
don’t people feel used? or are people hoping for a nobel?
Pretentious Mosher strikes again…………
“Teddi says:
April 2, 2014 at 2:23 am”
http://dotsub.com/view/326dcd74-446d-4790-b6e1-9d727d4b9725
Reply to Brad on April 1 at 11:15 am
Accountability solves most every problem, doesn’t it? There is simply no accountability when it comes to climate modeling. Thanks.
Reply to DanMet’al on April 1 at 12:10 pm
“I suggest that we not abandon physically-based models just because the GCM crowd are seemingly inept and untethered to generally accepted modeling verification and validation techniques.”
You are absolutely right. I use them all the time. The key is to know what their limitations are, or, more to the point, admit to what their limitations are (especially, in my case, to myself).
Reply to Pat Frank on April 1 at 12:28 pm
“but are being represented as predictive scientific models.”
Would you say that this is intentional, or is it simply that they don’t know any better?
Reply to DanMet’al on April 1 at 1:51 pm
“But what can the WUWT community do to more aggressively push for honest data analysis and more transparent data and uncertainty quantification for GCM results?”
This is my frustration too. This site is extremely important, but this central question is pretty much being ignored – even here on this site. My feeling is that so very few people have even the most rudimentary knowledge of computer modeling that they cannot begin to understand why the climate models are so useless.
I have a suggestion for Anthony. Do a survey of how much people right here on this site who are very interested in this subject really understand about what is at the center of this debate. How many people can answer the very simple question – what do climate scientists say is the actual science behind the claim that man made CO2 is a significant cause of any current warming? No technical details are needed – just a very simple general explanation of the science behind the claim. I’ll bet that not one in fifty, even here on this site, can answer this question. I’ll bet that, even with Google Search, no one can find a general explanation for this question. If I’m right, and this is indeed the case, doesn’t it make a person wonder why? Doesn’t it make a person suspect that climate scientists do not want a simple answer to this question easily available on the net? Doesn’t it make a person suspect that they do not want a discussion on this?
Pat Frank: Matthew R. Marler, Steve isn’t criticizing my AGU poster. He’s upset about my papers on the global air temperature record, first one here (869.8 kb pdf), follow-up here (1 mb pdf).
OK, but up thread you posted the link to the poster, and he responded after you posted that link.
Here is his whole comment:
“I presented a poster at the 2014 Fall AGU Meeting in San Francisco last December on the same work. The download is here (2.9 mb). Zero predictive value; it’s all there for critical examination.”
Pat your work was torn to shreds by JeffId (skeptic), Lucia (lukewarmer) and every person who looked at your nonsense. When asked tough questions you avoided them and changed the subject.
The models are wrong as all models are. But your stuff isnt even wrong
The quote is from your preceding post. It looked to me like he was criticizing the poster.
Kermit, from my own experience I’d say it is intentional and that they don’t know any better, both.
My impression after talking with climate modelers is that either they were not trained as physical scientists or else that they’ve forgotten how to think as a scientist. The model is all for them. Measurement data are either confirmatory or an annoyance.
Your time line is correct, Matthew, and there’s nothing wrong with your surmise from the evidence.
But this dispute with Steve Mosher has history. The debate he was referring to occurred at Jeff Id’s the Air Vent blog and concerned the first of those papers. He’s made those accusations several times and has never backed them up. He can’t back them up because they’re factually unfounded. And it remains true that Steve has been critical of my work without ever displaying any evidence of understanding it.
In his post here, he may have been extending that record to my poster on climate model error propagation.
Pat Frank says:
April 2, 2014 at 9:42 am
Kermit, from my own experience I’d say it is intentional and that they don’t know any better, both.
My impression after talking with climate modelers is that either they were not trained as physical scientists or else that they’ve forgotten how to think as a scientist. The model is all for them. Measurement data are either confirmatory or an annoyance.
Pat and Kermit,
It is not limited to just climate modelers…
Often it is a lack of understanding of the issue “WHOLISTICALLY”. They either don’t understand, or look, at the whole picture, having blinders on. They tend to only focus on what effects their paycheck. I get building energy models where they take their best shot at defining the envelope and HVAC system. When that does not match actual energy use they start to “tune” the model by adjusting “fuzzy” parameters like rate of infiltration, etc. Had one that “tuned” hours of operation from the truth at 3,120hrs/yr to 4,812hrs/yr to match annual usage. Monthly energy numbers were off by 200% but they didn’t identify that, kept it hidden. Also used nameplate motor amps instead of taking actual readings, off as much as 50%. Took me weeks to get the input data from them.
FIGURES DON’T LIE BUT LIARS CAN FIGURE?
Then there is always the famous disclaimer on these reports, something like “This is our best SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess) so you can’t hold us responsible if we are wrong. “
I suppose the moral of the story is to think carefully before you decide which branch of science you want to make a career of. I recently saw the movie Particle Fever which tells the story of the building of the Large Hadron Collider and the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson. The many scientist featured in the movie were from around the world, worked for government and universities, and looked and sounded like the ones in the subject article on the IPCC report. We in the U.S. had begun our own bigger and better particle collider back in the 90s but politics killed it. We are fortunate the Europeans could make it happen. The Higgs Boson was found with the LHC using only half it’s power, imagine what they will discover when they get it up to full power next year.