Guest essay by Eric Worrall
People who believe they are on a mission to save the world frequently behave as if their great mission excuses their personal failings.
FIXING SEXISM AT THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE
A sexist remark at a recent meeting prompted some soul-searching among the world’s top climate scientists. How can they prevent women’s expertise from being excluded?
SOPHIE YEO
At the recent meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the science body of the United Nations, there was an unusual announcement halfway through the week: a reminder to the scientists present that this was a meeting of experts, and that everyone’s expertise must be respected.
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In one instance, Friederike Otto, an associate professor at Oxford University specializing in extreme weather events, was being introduced to a group of men. She’d said her name and where she was from—she was wearing her lead author badge—when one of her interlocutors asked who her supervisor was, implying that she must still be a graduate student. In fact, she’s deputy director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
As a young female scientist, Otto says she’s familiar with these kinds of insinuations, but this particular incident left her speechless. “I was just particularly annoyed by it, because it was at the IPCC meeting, at a lead author meeting, where clearly the setting is we’re all equal,” she says. “I should have asked him who his supervisor is.” In a subsequent email exchange between the two, Otto says, the male scientist was reluctant to acknowledge any wrongdoing.
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Read more: https://psmag.com/environment/fixing-sexism-at-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change
In 2015, former head of the IPCC Rajenda Pachauri was forced to resign over allegations of serious sexual harassment.
Pachauri’s alleged misbehaviour obviously went well beyond the odd sexist comment. But the decision by people close to Pachauri not to speak up over the extended period of Pachauri’s alleged abuses should be a serious concern. Maybe people close to Pachauri didn’t value their female colleagues enough to put their own careers at risk, by publicly demanding Pachauri cease his alleged deviant behaviour.
I agree with the author that sexism exacerbates the risk of disregarding the contribution of colleagues who are the target of that sexism. But the alleged rampant sexism problem has deeper implications for the scientific integrity of the IPCC and other climate groups.
Sexism is effectively a nasty form of bullying. The kind of people who think it is funny to bully women for being female likely also have no qualms about bullying their colleagues over scientific issues – especially colleagues who hold unpopular scientific views. But then we knew that already from Climategate.
” Equal “? As if, wouldn’t that undermine the entire structure of the IPCC.
Just answer the question matter-of-factly and move on. Not all behavior in the world needs to be explained by sexism, just like not all weather/climate needs to be explained by CO2.
scientific integrity of the IPCC , an oxamoron?
The real problem with our deluxe lifestyle is the plastic stuff; IMHO the IPCC should quit bashing the good photosynthesising gas CO2 (different to one of its sooty parents Carbon) & tackle this ‘elephant in the room’: PLASTIC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-44914919/wave-of-plastic-hits-dominican-republic
Since we do not know the details of the dispute between Otto and the other guy we can only guess what happened.
One possibility would be that the researcher who asked her about her her manager did it because he was a sexist.
To me that does not seem very likely. Why would he do it infront of so many people for so little gain? Abd still keep his position after it got public.
Looking on what this lady is doing offers other alternatives. She is doing attribution science. E. g. she determines the exact percentage of a disaster like Irma or Harvey, which can be attributed to mankind. Link unfortunately only in German.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/friederike-otto-deutsche-physikerin-in-oxford-entschluesselt-den-klimawandel-a-1168623.html
This is exactly the kind of work which can drive somebody with a last bit of realism crazy. So maybe she was just bul***iting in that meeting and the guy said „Enough of that!“ without any sexist background. Or do you want to say bul***it is exclusively male?
Reading her crazy claims in the article I bet on the second alternative.
Perhaps Otto just needed to remind the insensitive gentleman of her invaluable contributions to her field of science.
The UN, and all its subsidiary organizations, is dominated by third world and Muslim countries who haven’t received the memo that women deserve and can be trusted with positions of power.
I feel partially vindicated in my theory that the chief Climateers are white males serving white male neomarxbrother billionaire global gov multiumvirates. After climategate, young women inexplicably began to swell the rolls (and roles, I guess) belatedly. I note in most protest photos, the participants are largely white female activists. Maybe the new fem climateer footsoldiers arose from the activist ranks. Judith Curry stands as an outlier, but look what the clime syndicate did to her.
With all this “Diversity” consciousness, this malarkey is also white progressive, neocolonial in its creation and constitution. They love to talk about 200 countries supporting climatosis, but the truth is, they have offered to buy the Third World out and these “supporters” are ever more stridently demanding their cash that doesn’t seem forthcoming at all.
The whole UN Climate Fiasco has been bullying from the start. Just read the UNFCC charter. It assumes that any kind of human activity causes vague damages for many identity groups, particularly in poorer, less developed countries. Then it applies top->down political solutions financed by government funds.