Yesterday the IPCC announced they’d found a new leader to replace the oversexed Rajendra Pachauri, who is currently embroiled in a sexual harassment case in India.
The new guy is a Korean economist named Hoesung Lee. I will say this, I like his stance on adaptation. From the IPCC press release (bold mine):
“The IPCC remains deeply committed to providing policymakers with the highest quality scientific assessment of climate change, but we can do more.” “The next phase of our work will see us increase our understanding of regional impacts, especially in developing countries, and improve the way we communicate our findings to the public. Above all, we need to provide more information about the options that exist for preventing and adapting to climate change. I look forward to working with my IPCC colleagues to reach these goals and I thank them for their support.”
His background is rather mundane, except for this small detail in his curriculum vitae:
So, he worked for Exxon and wants to push adaptation rather than shutting down whole economies to prevent any further CO2 emissions? I’m sure the usual suspects will be calling for his removal any minute now with impassioned scream of the “d-word” and “fossil fuel shill” and all the other hoary labels applied to climate skeptics (or as the AP call us, doubters) who might at one time gotten a job, research grant, or a free car wash at their local Exxon station.
Meanwhile, my “big oil check” that I’m supposedly getting is still long overdue.
Meanwhile, in a recent interview he gave to the Carbon Brief, (h/t to Bishop Hill) I spotted this little nugget quote from Lee that is worth noting:
On the “hiatus”: “I think that trying to read too much from 10-year temperature changes is more or less like trying to extract too much information from, should I say, daily fluctuations of stock prices.”
Gosh, if only somebody had said this to Dr. James Hansen in 1988, perhaps he and Senator Wirth wouldn’t have had to fiddle with the air-conditioning balance in the hearing room. Readers might recall that in the mid to late 70’s, scientists were talking about global cooling due to the drops in temperature during that decade. A decade later, Hansen is citing temperature increases before the Senate.
This transcript excerpt is from PBS series Frontline which aired a special in April 2007:
TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.
DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day?
TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.[Shot of witnesses at hearing]
When a Warmenista says “adaptation”, he really just means the shakedown of Developed countries via the “Green Climate Fund”.
As anyone with half a brain knows, the best way for mankind to adapt to whatever happens with climate (especially cooling) is by having vibrant, healthy economies, which are made possible by relatively cheap, reliable energy, something which the Warmenista oppose. So when they say “adapt”, what they mean is actually the opposite.
I’ve always been weary over when energy corporations join the IPCC scam.
Hello Ayn Rand.
“Readers might recall that in the mid to late 70’s, scientists were talking about global cooling due to the drops in temperature during that decade.”
James Hansen was one of them. Then he switched to global warming. Never let a good weather event go to waste.
Holy cow! I didn’t even hear a camera click! No chairs shuffling, no jackets rustling, no feet shifting, nothing. You don’t suppose this turned out to be one of those empty chamber talks you see on TV when some elected official is talking animatedly through a carefully prepared speech to a Washington DC, entirely empty room? I love it when they look sweepingly left and right, apparently in an effort to make it look like the room is filled with attentive, on the edge of their chairs, listeners. Do you suppose the chairs themselves were spellbound? I wonder how much CO2 was spewed into the air to get to this extravagant, air-filled press conference all the way from China.
Don’t expect significant change under Lee. I know first hand that the Korean people as a whole bought into the climate Kool-Aid and are inclined to go with what they are told. This has to do with things buried deep deep into the Korean psyche that also result in a “work ’til you die” survival mentality. And being oppressed and conquered under Chinese and Japanese rule. Sacrifice for the people blah blah blah. Lee’s background is academic…. he worked in Exxon’s econ department for a couple of years, that’s all. He has been immersed in IPCC for many years and they wouldn’t appoint him if he was going to shift gears away from the precautionary consensus mindset.