Brandon Shollenberger writes: I thought you might be interested to hear the final version of the IPCC AR5 WGII report has been published, and a number of changes were made between it and the Final Draft people have been using for the last seven months or so. The only way anyone can find them is by comparing the text in the two versions as the IPCC apparently does not disclose these changes.I wrote about some I found in a section of Chapter 10:
Consider, for instance, Figure 10-1. Here is the previous version (left) and the new version (right):
That it was redrawn to look better is fine. The problem is the data represented in the two figures are not the same. The diamond (representing an estimate published in the last five years) between 2 and 2.5 degrees has shifted almost to 3 degrees. Two points previously at 2.5 degrees have shifted left to 2.2 degrees. A new diamond was added at 3 degrees. A circle at three degrees and about 5%, which previously stood out, has vanished. The diamond at the far right side has shifted even farther right, going from just under five to just to under 5.5 while also dropping quite a bit. The diamond at the bottom has fallen as well, being lower by nearly one full point.
Not a single one of these changes was disclosed. We can verify them, however, by examining the tables provided for both figures. I’ve previously displayed the table for the first figure:
Here is the new version of the table (found in the IPCC Supplementary Material):
Every difference I highlighted in the figures can be confirmed in these tables. More differences can be found as well. For instance, we can see the estimate from Nordhaus 1994a was changed from -4.8 (-30.0 to 0.0) to -1.9 (median), -3.6 (mean) [-21 to 0.0]. This change is neither disclosed nor explained. Also unexplained is why only both the median and mean values are shown yet only the median value is displayed in the graph.
More here: http://hiizuru.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/undisclosed-changes-in-the-ipcc-ar5-report/
But I imagine there may be others. It’s interesting because the section the changes I discuss are in was actually added after the last round of reviews (while the section immediately after it was rewritten). That means the material never underwent external review before being released in the “Final Draft,” and then it was secretly changed again before the official version.
If the IPCC will allow this to happen in one spot, who knows what else they might have allowed?
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Procedurally, this is what happened.
The material on the economic impact of climate change was originally part of Chapter 19. After 3 drafts, the text was still a mess, and the authors had their hands full with the rest of the chapter. Therefore, this part was moved to Chapter 10, rewritten in response to the review comments, and send out for extra review.
After the final draft is accepted, there are three legal ways to change an IPCC chapter.
First, there is “trickle-down”. For instance, the Summary for Policy Makers shows an average of the estimates in the chapter. The chapter, however, originally did not show that average. It was added later.
Second, there are errata. (The first is already up. More to follow.)
Third, if you spot an error as the report is being readied for production (a process that took 6 months in this case), you correct that error and document the changes. After all, it is a bit silly to print a report with known errors and immediately issue errata.
As I argue above, the changes are really minor. Scrutiny is good, of course, but there are really bigger fish to catch (chapter 7, 13, 19).
If it’s only a matter of correcting typos, fine.
But if the errors are data or statements inconvenient to the desired conclusion, not fine.
I do hope that all the changes and the reasons for them have been documented along with the names of those who approved the changes.
No typos. Data were copied incorrectly from the source to the database. As simple and stupid as that. There is why for errors like that.
Richard Tol’s claim here:
Is BS insofar as the IPCC report is concerned. The data was perfectly copied from his published papers. Those papers just had a number of errors (for whatever reason). The IPCC has made changes to the data because of those errors, even though a number of those errors were never corrected in the published literature.
Moreover, a number of the changes made were to results of aggregation calculations Tol himself performed. The calculations the IPCC published do not match the results Tol has previously published. Despite this, the IPCC cites Tol’s publication for these results. It’s a clear example of a false citation. The IPCC has somehow come up with a new set of calculations not present in any published literature while lying and saying the results of those calculations were published in Tol 2013.
Put simply, the IPCC has modified its data set without any oversight, without any external review and without any published literature upon which to draw its changes (though it falsely claims to be using the results of Tol 2013).
These changes do seem to have been made with “good faith,” as near as I can tell. Thanks for that.
However, After all, it is a bit silly to print a report with known errors and immediately issue errata.
Is this really correct? It’s a way to track/catalogue errors in the final draft, for one, and that has utility. For two, consider the author’s complaint:
If the changes are few and insignificant, the errata too will be small, and much easier to see than having to do a human diff of the two versions.
Ed Barbar, I’m not sure what “good faith” would lead the IPCC to remove the footnote for the Mendelsohn 2000 entries which said those results were aggregated by Tol 2013. Doing so falsely portrays the entries as being taken directly from two Mendelsohn 2000 papers (though only one such paper was actually cited) when they were not.
This deception allowed the IPCC/Richard Tol not to show the aggregation calculations which led to the values they published for the Mendelsohn papers as every paper with that footnote had such calculations published. Other undisclosed changes seem strangely convenient, and to serve no legitimate purpose, as well.
On the issue of errata, the IPCC published an errata document along with the report. No mention of any change I highlighted was included. In fact, my post discusses three different documents which can explain changes made after the Final Draft specifically to show none of those documents document these changes.
So, after 30+ years of continuous IPCC “climate alarm-bell-clanking” and dozens of international meetings, your IPCC cannot even write a single report once every 2 years summarizing what you “think” will be the economic impact of
(1) “Business as usual” (Get the UN’s corrupt bureaucrats out of the world’s energy taxation life.)
(2) Regulate and tax carbon to raise money for more bureaucrat jobs by destroying the world’s economies needlessly.
(3) Destroy the poor world and kill billions due to energy starvation, poor health, bad water, no sewer systems, no lights, no refrigeration, no roads, ditches, bridges, culverts, pipes, emergency and house power, and no modern (safe, sanitized, effective and efficient) food production and storage.
The “cost” of a 0-1 degree rise in temperature is “zero”; there are only benefits.
The chances of a -2 to +1 degree rise in global average temperatures by year 2100 is 45%
The “cost” of a 1-2 degree rise in temperature is “zero”; there are only benefits.
The chances of a +1 to +2 degree rise in global average temperatures by year 2100 is 35%
The “cost” of a 2-3 degree rise in temperature is “zero”; there are only benefits.
The chances of a +2 to +3 degree rise in global average temperatures by year 2100 is 10%
The “cost” of a +3 to +4 degree rise in temperature is “negligible”; there are many billion benefiting, but a few thousand people may experience inconveniences, or may have to move.
The chances of a +3 to +4 degree rise in global average temperatures by year 2100 is 8%
The “cost” of a +4 or higher degree rise in temperature is “minor”; there are many billion benefiting, but a few hundred thousand people may experience inconveniences, or may have to move.
The chances of a +4 or more degree rise in global average temperatures by year 2100 is 2%
Now, there is your economic analysis.
So, just what are those mythical 17 out of 20 “costs” you think will occur if CO2 rises.
Oh, and by the way, CO2 has risen steadily the past 18 years while you’ve been spending writing reports – well, sort of trying to write reports – and global average temperatures have …not gone up at all.
“Those who don’t remember the past won’t notice when it’s been changed.” (Or something like that.)
Brandon, Thanks for noticing.
+10
Good work, Brandon Shollenberger, praise be yours.
What is Figure 10-1? Does it have a title? What is it about? The y axis label is not readable in the picture. The last word looks like it is “percent”. Most people who visit this page already understand the power and money scam aspect of global warming, your faithful climate gurus who are familiar with the IPCC report might understand this article but you are not going to help anyone else understand the scam with articles written with this much presumed understanding.
It appears Richard Tol may have answered one of my questions above. He said:
I took the average of the nine estimates at 2.5C in his original graph. The result was 1.1. The SD was .9. That would give a 1SD range of 0.2 – 2.0, exactly what Chapter 10 and the SPM report for 2C of warming. The 2.5C has magically switched to 2C. Now, Tol might claim this is because the 2C of warming is from modern times while 2.5C of warming is from pre-industrial times, but the papers which give the estimates that go into this calculation disagree.
That would seem to indicate the IPCC didn’t pull numbers out of thin air. It did a calculation for 2.5C of warming then simply lied and claimed it was for 2C of warming. Additionally, the IPCC chose to ignore the fact the numbers which went into that estimation changed. The undisclosed changes I highlighted mean there are seven data estimates for 2.5C of warming:
The average of those is ~1.4, with a SD of ~.8. If we perform the calculations the way Tol says they were performed on the data set actually published in the IPCC report, the range changes to 0.7 – 2.2 percent loss for 2.5C of warming.
I guess Tol might say the difference between 0.2 – 2.0 percent economic loss for 2C of warming and 0.7-2.2 percent economic loss for 2.5C of warming doesn’t matter. I’d disagree. Even if the overall impression doesn’t change, the fact the IPCC report can’t give a straight answer definitely matters.
And really, why would we only average some of the data points on a graph? If you have 20 data points, how do you choose to average just nine of them?
Very good Question Brandon sometime’s they think we a stupid and it burns them ;>)
1SD? This will only represent 68 % of the values. 2SD would represent 95% and 3SD 99% can we see these values for the data?
I should mention that 9 data point is probably not an ideal sample. Is the full data available and the methods for obtaining the data?
I actually gave enough information in my post to figure out about what the ranges would be. For the original range, take an average of 1.1 and add/subtract ~.9 for each SD you want to consider. For the new range, use 1.4 and ~.8.
But it’s a mostly useless exercise. There are 20 data points (you can find tables listing the original data set for the IPCC and the new version after changes in my post). Ignoring more than half of them is strange.
Beyond that, these data points are aligned by how large a temperature change their estimates were for. That doesn’t mean those estimates are comparable though. If one paper modeled a temperature change of 2.5C by 2100 while another modeled a temperature change of 2.5C by 2050, their damage estimates would not be comparable. The rate of temperature change is a huge factor in any damages that may happen. One cannot sensibly compare data points whose absolute temperature changes are the same but achieved at different times. There is no way to know what sort of uncertainties or biases would be introduced by comparing estimates for different scenarios.
Yes. Now if chp 10 has used 1SD it is the only range where lower and upper limits are positive which ‘suits’ the narrative wheras 2SD gives -0.6 to 2.8 deg which would not. Assuming of course that they used the same data sets.
Those figures 68, 95, 99 % for 1, 2 and 3 SD only applies for normally distributed data. It seems highly dubious that estimates for the economic effect of temperature changes would be normally distributed. For one thing the estimates are very unlikely to be independent. And 6 data points is far too few to verify the distribution empirically.
But of course IPCC habitually uses SD in cases where it isn’t applicable.
tty, that’s a good point. Some additional text in that paragraph even says the uncertainties are not normally distributed. That’s actually part of why I thought the range must come from some other calculation. I didn’t seriously consider the idea they’d take a simple average +/- SD for their range while saying the assumptions used when calculating that range are wrong.
Yes tty, access to the full data would be really useful if it is published and then if time can be found to analyse it statistically dependent on the volume of data.
Man Bearpig, the data they used, as they used it, is available in the tables I discuss. If you’re willing to dig through references, you can find a lot of the values in various papers, though the values in the papers don’t always match the values given in the tables. There’s also the problem of some of them being aggregated by Richard Tol. He’s provided calculations for these aggregations because of the IPCC requiring him do so (he refused for years before this), but those calculations give different results than his previously published results. No explanation is given for the discrepancy.
Also, no explanation is given for why he now claims the two Mendelsohn 2000 values were not calculated by him when he had claimed they were for the last five years. The paper cited by the IPCC does not even consider the scenario claimed in the table as it cited the wrong paper (and falsely claimed to take estimates from two different papers). If you do manage to track down the correct paper, you’ll find it doesn’t have the values given, meaning they had to have been aggregated by Tol like he had originally said. The calculations for those results are not available anywhere.
I believe I’ve done all the work to show this in my post. I’m not sure how much it will help though. Even if you can get all the “right” values, you’re still stuck with an insurmountable problem. Each paper listed in those tables used a different temperature baseline for its estimates. One paper might estimate damages for 1.92C of warming since pre-industrial times (Bosello 2012) while another estimates damages for 3C of warming since ~1990 (Nordhaus 1994). Another might estimate damages since ~2010. You can’t just take these values and throw them into a table and say they’re comparable, though that’s exactly what Tol did.
And even if the temperature baselines could somehow be aligned, each paper used a different economic growth scenario. Each used a different rate of warming scenario. Practically nothing about their scenarios are the same. That makes it impossible to make meaningful, quantified comparisons between them.
But if someone wanted to anyway, it’s pretty easy to get the right values for 13 of the 20. If there are any that can’t be found via my post, I can provide them. I have no idea on the other seven though. They all depend upon aggregation calculations, and there’s no “right” way to do those. We can tell that by the fact the guy doing them (Richard Tol) gives different results at different times when doing them.
sorry are not a we need edit do your hear that wordpress
Pamela Gray is most correct. Vote. The climate problem is 97% politics. The climate if fine. It is the government that has a problem. Vote out all that support destroying the US economy. End the needless funding of global warming. Put in check, trim and downsize every federal department. Sell all unused government buildings. ( Some say this is difficult. Then find one person that can). Cheap and abundant energy is what made this country what it is. The EU will have to come here to manufacture as their electric rates rise. My son graduated form Penn State 17 months ago with a degree in Petroleum Engineering. (Yes, next door to Micky, also an ant-fracker). He works for an energy service company and must be very good as after 9 months they are kicking him upstairs 2 or 3 notches at the end of this year. He must take after my father, a brilliant PE that was a lead engineer for “Project Elf”. Amazing what a man without a college degree can do. This project was protested and sabotaged by the greenies of their day. A few worms may have had a problem, but the trees loved it. Government employees should not bring any political agenda to their jobs. Hear me EPA and Homeland Security and IRS? You love to make rules. Start in your own department. Perhaps the UN should find a new home in a country that fits their philosophy. I suggest France. Yes VOTE. Next on the soap box, I’m tired. Ric
Was there any attempt at a basic sense check for the data included in this plot? The two ‘self-reported happiness’ data points stretch credibility beyond breaking point, so why include them? If the standard for inclusion is so low, why should we have any confidence in any of the other data points?
If it has been mentioned previously, I apologize. I noticed in the new version a study by Maddison & Rendanz (2011) on “Self-reported happiness” had the GDP impact raised from -11.5% to -12.4%. Since fewer people seem to be buying the doom and gloom predictions, would not happiness in general have gone up and GDP impact reduced? Roson and van der Mensbrugghe (2012) had the GDP impact for their study (a CGE study) raised to a range of -2.1% to -6.1%. Headlines are bound to appear soon: “It’s worse than we thought.”
Windsong, no problem, but I did report those changes in my post. An excerpt for one paper:
Both the 11.5 and 12.4% figures are attributed to Tol 2013 even though Tol 2013 lists the value as 11.5%. For the other paper, I quoted the paper:
Then pointed out:
Then quoted another paper to prove my contention. After which, I said, “It appears the undisclosed changes to the percent values for this paper were made to fix a problem which didn’t actually exist.”
It’s very strange.
So, if I claim that “CAGW-fear and CAGE-propagandized political actions” COST the world’s economies 8% every year, that increased CO2 has led to a 22% INCREASE in all plant growth worldwide increasing food, fuel, fodder, feast and lowering famine, am I more correct than these political UN hacks who somehow have assumed that – what? increased “heat”? – will somehow the world’s GDP and productivity by 1.8%?
This observation seems to be related to this recent rather public criticism from Bob Ward.
Yup. I had started writing my post before his article was published, but I uploaded it a few hours after his went live. Interestingly, I found his article when I went to contact him to notify him of what I had found. I blame him beating me to the punch on the fact my piece had a lot more detail and research 😀
By the by, Bob Ward’s communication with the IPCC is the likely cause of (many of?) these changes. Richard Tol claims otherwise, but Ward contacted the IPCC about a number of specific issues which were then addressed* by changes in the IPCC report. I’d give him the credit for triggering these changes.
*Not necessarily in a correct or sensible manner.
“but I uploaded it a few hours after his went live”
Bob’s article is dated May 9th. Are you saying it only appeared in recent days?
Oh, no. I misread which link you provided. I had thought you posted this link, where Bob Ward talks about some of the same stuff this post discusses. In it, he points out the IPCC made changes in response to criticisms like those in the link you provided.
Sorry about that!
So now that we’re read through almost 100 comments from parties with various degrees & professional experience, I have a question for the graduate-level science teachers in the audience:
What grade would you give to one of your masters/PhD students who published work of similar quality to the IPCC article under discussion?
Do you want the grade before or after the politically-corrupt (er, politically-correct) secretive additional editing done on the fly without supervision, review, comment, or correction?
I strongly suspect either way the grade is a fail.
In any event, the 25 year-old CAGW fraud has to have been one hell of an emotional ride, especially for the original participants:
(1) Highly speculative AGW stuff you know is crap gets accepted as gospel by the world’s politicians, a bunch of the most ethically vacuous beings on the planet.
(2) Mother Nature (and data manipulation) keep the scam (and copious “research” funding) rolling in during the early years as politicians whip up public support for their proposed taxes and economic control to “fix” CAGW.
(3) Oooops – Mother Nature’s chaotic performance no longer plays ball and we have “Climategate”and “the Pause”…
(4) Even the aforementioned politicians begin to realize the scam is falling apart before they can complete their massive proposed tax grabs…
(5) CAGW acolytes are now realizing said politicians will throw them under the bus the very nano-second public opinion turns against this fraud.
They’ll have no problem throwing Richard Tol under the bus if that’s what everyone wants.
Richard Tol @RichardTol · Oct 17
Targets for renewables are unattainable, futile – and will cost us trillions of pounds
Just a note on the graphs themselves: Future economic impact against temperature change. Based on what? Parameters like “Natural Catastrophes” and “Self-reported Happiness.” Even if the temperature did increase dramatically, did any of these researchers consider the human race’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances? This is just crystal ball gazing, someone’s wild-ass guess about the future. But if you can plot points on a graph, it must be science.
The IPCC process seems to me to be the present day embodiment of the Ministry of Truth. Rhetorical tools as memory hole, historical revisionism, and doublethink seem to be common in how the IPCC operates. The starkest example, and the most devious, of course, is the change from “global warming” to “climate change” terminology. IPCC proponents push a changing climate agenda as “Climate Change”, to allow simultaneous operation of 3 quite different operational definitions in the reader audience. Further, through the years the story subtlety changes, a small minor revision here, an unsupported correction there. Essentially, the IPCC employs memory creep tectonics — small incremental creep to keep the lie alive, all due to an inconvenient fact that the Earth’s real climate system isn’t cooperating. Over time, large displacements and an implied Thermageddon Boogeyman are always just beyond a time horizon, which is now conveniently at 2050.
I have read the post, gone to the link mentioned, and read the comments to here.
The main thing I get out of all this is that a bunch of ignorant people tried to predict the economic impact of warmer temperatures and no one has any reason to believe they know what they are talking about. Then the UN secretly changed the wild assed guesses? Hmmmmm.
Suppose the earth were to warm on average 3 degrees. So what? Most of the warming would come in places like Canada and then those dirty @ur momisugly#$@ur momisugly#$ would grow more wheat or other grains and make our US farm corporations have to compete more. But what is the overall net effect of that warming? Poor people might find food a little cheaper and their heating bills a little less. Is this a bad thing?
But my main comment is that predicting the outcome of 3 degrees of warming is G.D. impossible. They can’t even tell you what Apple’s stock price will be in 18 months and they claim to be able to predict the GDP impact of CO2 on a global scale? Oh my. Oh my, my.
Note: I am [not] saying I believe that there will be any warming at all. There will be a continued slide colder with some ups and downs along the way. Just has it has been for about 20,000 years. (buy stock in coat making companies)
Note to self: try proof reading before hitting post comment. “I am note saying” should be “I am not saying”. The trouble the “e” causes me all the time!
I did try:
pdftotext -nopgbrk -raw WGIIAR5-Chap10_FGDall.pdf 1.txt
pdftotext -nopgbrk -raw WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf 2.txt
followed by:
diff -y -i -w -B -d -t -E -Z 1.txt 2.txt|more
on Ubuntu box.
Although there is a lot of similarity between the two files, there are major changes between both.
It seems as though the best approach will be to print both out and do a manual line by line comparison!!!!
Any big changes to TS.6, Key Uncertainties? All the important stuff they admit they don’t know!
The IPCC functions under the UN, which is a political body, not a scientific one. Why they proclaimed themselves the global overlords of one field of science is another one of those great unexplained mysteries of the universe. Especially since in that role, they have demonstrated incompetence, lack of integrity, a bias that clearly shows they are nothing more than advocates to a political agenda (which any political body does but until climate science, science refrained from). So they are not “allowing” anything, they are purposely manipulating the report.
Tol claims the changes are insignificant and so do not require review, if insignificant why bother to make the changes? In fact in that case do not make changes, period. BTW who decides what are significant vs. insignificant changes? The lack of integrity the IPCC demonstrates, even with their checkered history never ceases to amaze.
Seeing that 0.1% is negligible according to Dr. Toll, can you please send me the negligible 0.1% of the worlds GDP spending on climate change ( or what ever the name you are using)? Hey Richard and the IPCC, I’ll be easy on you guys I’ll give you a break, so 0.01% of the worlds GDP spent on climate change will do just fine as well, it’s even more negligible right? Not to me though, and something as important to the human race as the climate really is, it is disturbing that people in your shoes can be as glib as you are. OPM I guess.
Whole chapter in IPCC Report is a joke. They estimate for Economic Sectors that say ski tourism would take a hit at an economic cost, but would they consider agriculture where it would be a big plus? More CO2 enhances green and photosynthesis and a longer growing season. If CO2 levels fell instead of rising the exact same ppm last century and less green and maybe a billion+ would be dead due to starvation. They conveniently omit the positive economic effects of CO2 on the agricultural sector, but for all important energy sector of course have political negative effects a clean renewable energy forced upon by government raising electricity prices doing harm. The science and objectivity of IPCC is a joke.
Global cooling would cause so much more economic damage than global warming, and despite IPCC forecasts looks like nature is running to cooling trend with low sunspot cycle 24 after after century high on cycle 22, Dalton or Maunder minimum could be at hand, plus magnetic field of earth falling, more cosmic rays seeding more clouds blocking out a weaker sun as poles reverse, potential for a much colder 30 years out there. My forecast is political reverse and direct purposeful anthropomorphic climate change by governments to prevent cooling catastrophe within two decades, this could morph.
Joe: Agriculture is in Chapter 7.
Wow, Brandon, you seem to have gone to great lengths to figure this out including sleeping with the enemy. How was it, being Bob Ward’s puppy?
Congratulations on writing the dumbest comment I’ve ever seen Shub Niggurath. This shows exactly why nobody should bother talking to you.
ok, a joke misfire, and you are not Bob Ward’s or anyone’s puppy but clearly some kinship there as you and Ward both worked through the evening, yours had more detail but he went public first and ‘beat you to the punch’. It sounded dizzying.
Given what you’ve said to me in the past Shub Niggurath, I don’t believe that was “a joke misfire.” You’ve made too many similar remarks while being completely serious. I don’t really care though. There is no “kinship” here. There is no “sleeping with the enemy.” Bob Ward and I likely don’t agree on much.
The only thing we’ve agree on is what many skeptics refused to agree on six months ago – that secret changes to the IPCC report made absent any sort of review or oversight are wrong. I tried to draw people on the skeptical side’s attention to it six months ago, and I was routinely shut down. Now, six months down the road, a similar thing happens again (with the exact same section of the IPCC report no less), and people on the skeptical side care.
I’ve got no explanation for that. All I know is Bob Ward and I both recognized it was wrong in the first case, both continue to agree it is wrong in the second case, and now skeptics seem to be joining in. At this point, it seems everyone can agree secret changes made to the IPCC report absent review or oversight are wrong.
And I think that’s a great thing. I can’t think of a single time in the past I’ve ever seen Dana Nuccitelli and Anthony Watts promote the same article. I think that shows this problem can be recognized by everyone.
Of course, it was a joke. You want to take it seriously so you can avoid dealing with skeptics being jealous of your proximity to Bob Ward. 😉
Between Dana, Ward and you I can’t think who is more interested in the integrity of the IPCC process. I
Not listing detailed changes made to such a globally important document is another sign of intellectual dishonesty and policy driven operations.
Recording any document change along with approval and justification/ purpose of the change is quality assurance fundamentals. The IPCC does not contain the desire for fundamental QA. Why?
Such document changes in our digital age are trivial to do with all the document software you can buy right off the self and which requires almost no training. Why is this so hard for the IPCC? It is like they purposely do not want stringent QA. Why?
John
Brandon: Advice regarding R. Toll. Deleterious to play “catch as catch can” with porcine resembling Tolls. (Rhyming puns not accidental.)
Max Hugoson, I’m not sure if I understood your meaning correctly, but if so, I agree and disagree. On the one hand, Richard Tol’s style of response is unhelpful, rude, dishonest and just terrible overall. On the other hand, his responses do sometimes give up a useful bit of information. I suspect that’s unintentional on his part.
And other times, they’re just funny. According to Richard Tol’s latest response to me, Chapter 10 and the SPM both give estimates of damage for temperature change relative to 1986-2005 and define “pre-industrial” as the 1850-1900 period.
So when the IPCC says:
Tol claims that means an increase of ~2C from ~1995 will cause 0.2 and 2.0% in damage. Because apparently when they say “additional temperature,” they mean temperature additional to what there was 20 years ago.
Brandon once again does a great job here but considering the lack of temperature increase, the failure of models, the papers left out of the IPCC, this is just so many angels dancing on pinheads!! The IPCC is not a science body and has no interest in understanding how the world’s natural systems work.
This exercise is like a poor shopkeeper phoning city hall that the mafioso has improperly parked their limo during their extorsion visit. The IPCC reports are being used to destroy wealth and retard scientific inquiry and people are arguing over the documentation history of a document that is such a wholesale sideswipe of the scientific method? Am I the only one who is shaking my head in disbelief over this state of affairs?
Not a slight against Brandon, just total frustration over how things got this way.
Why does anyone pay any attention to the IPCC reports?
The iPCC does not give proper consideration to the science of natural climate variability. Consequently, it is impossible for the IPCC to produce a fair assessment of the climate science in order to derive a fair assessment of Earth’s climate. It’s really that simple. The IPCC looks at the science of anthropogenic global warming.
If we were to equate the wealth of peer-reviewed scientific literature on climate to a car, then the work of the IPCC is tantamount to looking at a nut on the left rear wheel of the car (carbon dioxide). Forget about the car engine (the sun) and forget about the transmission (oceans; clouds; etc). That’s how bad the IPCC is!