Climate Corruption

[Kilbourne]

"Isn’t also true, Dr. P, that Dr. Mann failed to disclose all his methods and relevant detail in his paper? * Transcripts of congressional testimony are then introduced which showed that Mann did not disclose he used “step-wise regression” in his analysis. This only came out later when McIntyre pointed out that, given gaps in the data, standard principal components analysis wouldn’t work.

“So isn’t it true to say that Dr. Mann was less than forthcoming when his study finally was subject to scrutiny?” [well, Dr. Mann was busy man, he didn’t have time to be pestered like that] But Dr. P, all he had to do was release his data and make full disclosure of his methods. Is that too hard for scientist to do? [silence]

"So we have climate scientist, whose fatally flawed paper was not properly peer reviewed and who later impeded efforts to reproduce his results, getting published in a major journal. that same scientist was then appointed a lead IPCC author who then, despite the presence of an enormous conflict of interest, passed on his own fatally flawed work and got it published in the Assessment Report? [no response]*

 

[Kilbourne]

So much for the vaunted scientific rigor of the IPCC review process

 

[stevegravy]

So much for the vaunted scientific rigor of the IPCC review process

You may be interested in this. It is off topic somewhat, but the gist of the report is the lack of rigorous standards in university studies, in this case biology. But. If this is happening in laboratories where conditions are easily controlled how much more reliable are any statistically driven results about planet wide systems like weather?
news.yahoo.com/cancer-science-many-discoveries-dont-hold-174216262.html

Other scientists worry that something less innocuous explains the lack of reproducibility.
Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies.
“We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure,” said Begley. “I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they’d done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It’s very disillusioning.”

 

[Calliso]

This is silly. And putting Global Warming on trial in a one user thread is dumb. What is your point with all this. Barely anyone but yourself has posted here!

Exactly and it is meaningless because he can basically make up whatever he wants certain people to say. Like the head of the IPCC for instance. He is basically protraying him as some scheming fool. But somehow I am guessing if this situation was real his respones would be far different then what the OP has him say. But the whole the IPCC is corrupt argument isnt new really. I found a couple interesting links. skepticalscience.com/The-Phony-War-Lies-Damn-Lies-and-the-IPCC.html

skepticalscience.com/IPCC-Reports-Science-or-Spin.html

If anything if you want to criticize the IPCC a better criticism would probably be pointing out that it is TOO cautious.

 

[Kilbourne]

Hi SteveGravy,

Very interesting. I guess scientists of all stripes are human beings and in need of scientific discipline (and salvation, just like the rest of us).

 

[Kilbourne]

Hi Calliso,

Of course, my cross-x of Rajendra Pachauri is imaginative and fictional, but it is based on truth. For example, he did once state that the IPCC only studies peer-reviewed literature. But an audit of the references conducted by journalist Donna Laframboise (whose book is my primary source for my little exercise), showed that 30% were not peer-reviewed sources.

 

[Kilbourne]

Let’s recapitulate:

1. The IPCC’s own charter predisposes it to find evidence of CO2’s guilt and not explore alternate hypotheses.
2. The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Governments have a hand in picking who gets to participate and be lead authors and such. Governments even have (name removed by moderator)ut into how the reports and summaries are written. The end-product is tainted by politics.
3. The head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, is an environmental activist. No objectivity there.
4. There are no procedural safeguards against conflict of interest.
5. The expertise of lead authors is lacking, and real experts are excluded from participating.
   …

 

[Kilbourne]

Here is another anecdote from Steven McIntyre. After Mcintyre and McKittrick published their first paper exposing the flaws in Mann’s study, McIntyre was invited to be an expert reviewer for the IPCC. This was a very positive development and he was encouraged. But after he tried to do his job, he soon discovered that expert reviewer aren’t expected to really do any reviewing. He tried to do some auditing of two studies that were slated to be included in the IPCC but hadn’t even been published yet. (go figger, but business as usual for the IPCC). Steven contacted the authors for access to their data and methods, but they told him to go jump in the lake. He then contacted the journal editors where the papers were going to published, and they told him the same. Then he contact Susan Solomon, a honcho with IPCC, and she rip-royally chewed him out for even inquiring. She accused him of trying to violate IPCC confidentiality rules and told him to cease and desist or be fired as a reviewer. Folks, I am not making this stuff up.

 

[Kilbourne]

Exactly and it is meaningless because he can basically make up whatever he wants certain people to say. Like the head of the IPCC for instance. He is basically protraying him as some scheming fool. But somehow I am guessing if this situation was real his respones would be far different then what the OP has him say. But the whole the IPCC is corrupt argument isnt new really. I found a couple interesting links. skepticalscience.com/The-Phony-War-Lies-Damn-Lies-and-the-IPCC.html

skepticalscience.com/IPCC-Reports-Science-or-Spin.html

If anything if you want to criticize the IPCC a better criticism would probably be pointing out that it is TOO cautious.

Hi Calliso,

I checked out the first of your links to skepticalscience.

The same argument also has a broader scope, demonstrated by the claim that within the IPCC, there is a politically motivated elite who filter and screen all science to ensure it is consistent with some hidden agenda. This position turns the structure of the IPCC into an argument, by claiming that the small number of lead reviewers dictate what goes into the IPCC reports.

Regarding hidden agendas, the IPCC is very open about its mission, which is to find evidence to prove CO2’s guilt (CO2 already being presumed guilty). Now CO2 being found guilty serves many agendas, such as population control, world governance, environmentalism, the climate industrial complex, communism and maybe some I can’t think of, and I think it would be unusual if these interests didn’t try to influence the IPCC’s end product. And it is instructive to disclose the extent these other agendas operate within the IPCC.

 

[Kilbourne]

Take, for example, the chapter in the last report which claimed that 20-30% of the earth’s species are at risk from extinction because of GW. Donna Laframboise reports [p.146] that “a number of that chapter’s authors are overtly political actors, suffer from conflict of interest, have personal connections to one of its leaders, and don’t come close to being world-class experts. But wait, there’s a cherry on top: five out of 10 of this chapter’s most senior personnel also have a formal, documented link to the World Wildlife Fund.”

She goes on to show how the WWF has penetrated the IPCC in multiple areas.

So, these agendas really aren’t all that hidden, if one is willing to look.

 

[Kilbourne]

Calliso’s linked reference at SkepticalScience continue:

Before considering this argument in full, it is prudent to observe that the IPCC does no primary science or research at all. Its job is purely to collate research findings from thousands of climate scientists (and others working in disciplines that bear on climate science indirectly, such as geology or chemistry). From this, the IPCC produces ‘synthesis reports’ – rather like an executive summary – in which they review and sum up all the available material. It is necessary therefore to have an organisational structure capable of dealing efficiently with so much information, and the hierarchical nature of the IPCC structure is a reflection of this requirement.

How does the process work? The IPCC primarily concerns itself with science that has been published in peer-reviewed journals, although, as it makes clear in the IPCC’s published operational appendices, it does also use so called ‘grey’ material where there is insufficient or non-existent peer-reviewed material available at the time the reports are prepared. See IPCC principles, Annex 2: Procedure for using non-published/non-peer-reviewed sources in IPCC reports. Many people are involved in this complex process:

“More than 450 Lead Authors and more than 800 Contributing Authors (CAs) have contributed to the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)".
Source: The role of the IPCC and key elements of the IPCC assessment process, February 2010

To suggest the IPCC can misrepresent the science belies the fact that such misrepresentations would be fiercely criticised by those it misrepresented.** Considering how many lead authors and contributors are involved, any egregious misrepresentation would hardly remain unremarked for very long**.

Re the use “grey” material, it is refreshing that folks in the GW camp acknowledge this, but someone should tell Dr. P to stop claiming the IPCC doesn’t use any grey material. It damages his credibility and that of the IPCC. However, to say that such non-peer reviewed material is only resorted to insufficient or not available at the time of publication is obviously not true, as shown by the scandal over the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. What later study ever backed up that claim?

Re IPCC misrepresentations of the science, one should talk to the scientists themselves. Dr. Chris Landsea, a bona fide hurricane expert, worked with the IPCC and then quit in disgust over an incident of this type. When he heard that Dr. Kevin Trenbearth, an IPCC colleague and certainly no hurricane expert, was going to make a public statement linking GW to increased hurricane activity and intensity, Landsea warned him that literature did not support such claims. Trenbearth, speaking as an IPCC official, made his statement anyway. Landsea complained to the IPCC and ultimately to Dr. P himself. Dr. P blew him off.

Dr. Vincent Grey is another disgusted ex-IPCC contributor. He got very tired of his review comments being summarily rejected. His story appears in Lawrence Solomon’s book The Deniers.

One could write forever on this aspect of the IPCC’s corruption. They misrepresent the science all the time. People complain but to no avail.

 

[Kilbourne]

Regarding misrepresenting the science, I recall the late Michael Crichton’s comments on the Charlie Rose show. He said he does read the IPCC’s assessment reports, but not the executive summaries and summaries for policy makers. The latter were not even faithful summaries off IPCC’s own work, let alone the state of climate science generally.

 

[Kilbourne]

So, with the prosecution’s key witness so thoroughly discredited, is it now time to vote for CO2’s acquittal?

 

[Prieldedi]

Kilbourne, thank you for giving us the other side of the coin on the GW issue. I for one would not trust what comes out of some of the entities of the UN, like the UN IPCC, the UN Women Agency, the UN Population Fund among others. We must not forget that these entities of the UN have the opposite moral values than those of the Catholic Church.

Back to the GW issue, this is an excerpt from a report by Climate Depot:

“The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers and the ice is expanding, the Arctic has rebounded in recent years since the low point in 2007, polar bears are thriving, sea level is not showing acceleration and is actually dropping, Cholera and Malaria are failing to follow global warming predictions, Mount Kilimanjaro melt fears are being made a mockery by gains in snow cover, global temperatures have been holding steady for a decade or more and many scientists are predicting global cooling is ahead, deaths due to extreme weather are radically declining, global tropical cyclone activity is near historic lows, the frequency of major U.S. hurricanes has declined, the oceans are missing their predicted heat content, big tornados have dramatically declined since the 1970s, droughts are not historically unusual nor caused by mankind, there is no evidence we are currently having unusual weather, scandals continue to rock the climate fear movement, the UN IPCC has been exposed as being a hotbed of environmental activists, former Vice President Al Gore is now under siege by his fellow global warming activists for attempting to link every bad weather event to man-made global warming and scientists from around the world continue to dissent from man-made climate fears at a rapid pace.”

Special Report: A-Z Climate Reality Check
Sub-Prime Science Exposé: “The claims of the promoters of man-made climate fears are failing”
Presented to United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa on December 7, 2011

The complete report in a pdf file can be found here.

 

[Kilbourne]

Hi Priel,

Thanks for the link. I found this reference therein:

nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/10/04/wwf-influence-at-the-highest-levels-of-the-ipcc/

which is very informative about the successful infiltration of environmental activists into the IPCC process.

The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is 3,000 pages long. Since most people will never wade through a document of that length, the IPCC has prepared a handy summary-of-summaries called the Synthesis Report.
The final, specific wording of that document was hammered out via a political negotiation involving bureaucrats, politicians, and diplomats. But the draft document from which those people based their discussions was authored by a select group of 40 IPCC personnel known as the “core writing team.”
The IPCC says there were 450 lead authors, plus 800 contributing authors for its 2007 report (which is often referred to as AR4 – for Assessment Report #4). This makes a grand total of 1,250 participants. Of those a mere 40 individuals were elevated to core writing team status.
In other words, for every person who landed a spot on that team an additional 30 IPCC participants were not selected.

One would therefore expect that these chosen few would be of the highest calibre: Top-notch, reputable scientists. Highly experienced professionals. Individuals known for their impeccable judgment. Those whose objectivity is beyond dispute.
Alas, that would be in some parallel universe in which the IPCC thinks that public perception matters. In our world, the 40 crème de la crème individuals break down as follows:
6 of them were IPCC employees at the time – Peter Bosch, Renate Christ, Jian Liu, Martin Manning, Jean Palutikof and Andy Reisinger
1 was an American lawyer (Lenny Bernstein) and another was a medical doctor with a thin publication record who is employed by the World Health Organization (Bettina Menne)
That leaves us with 32 people who might be considered world-class scientists. But among those are:
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri – who is thoroughly tainted by the fact that he writes forewords for Greenpeace publications
Bill Hare – a longtime Greenpeace employee who is considered a legend in that organization
and – who’d have guessed it? – 9 other people with documented links to the World Wildlife Fund. These nine individuals belong to the Climate Witness Scientific Advisory Panel about which I have been reporting recently. Their names are Osvaldo Canziani, Saleemul Huq, David Karoly, Zbigniew Kundzewicz, Monirul Mirza, Leonard Nurse, Nijavalli Ravindranath, the late Stephen Schneider, and Gary Yohe.
So of the 32 members of the IPCC’s core writing team that we might have expected to be world-class scientists, 11 of them (34%) are publicly affiliated with environmental NGOs.
And we’re really supposed to believe that the IPCC is a scientific organization writing purely scientific reports.

 

[Calliso]

You know I think the IPCC is far from a perfect organizations. I am sure if you talked to many people they would tell you that there are many things the IPCC could do better. However much none of what is being said on this thread really hurts the actual science. And like I have said before the IPCC report is several years old. There is more science out there then just the IPCC. But I think the problem is many “skeptics” donlt look at the big picture and seem to think that the theory of AGW is like a 3 legged stool where if you take out one leg the whole thing falls over. Also I should mention that while yes Manns original paper in 1998 was flawed there has been papers since then authored by him not to mention multiple other reconstructions done by other scientists so you could throw out Manns reconstructions if you wanted. This is an interesting link on that whole hockey stick thing ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/the-hockey-stick
But perhaps it is best to look at the evidence to support the idea of manmade co2 driven warming.

For instance we have many indicators of warming. skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=146&&n=290 with a link to the full report

But of course a warming world doesn;t mean its us so we need evidence that humans are the cause or a major cause at least. skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html
and more detail here. skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm

Anyway thats all for right now is super late for me heeh.

 

[Kilbourne]

The Lord is risen!

Hey Calliso,

These are some of the things that would improve the IPCC:

1. Revise its charter. Make climate generally the focus of study, not just the evidence supporting CO2’s guilt.
2. Fire Dr. P. If you want people to believe your organization is fair and objective, get rid of this highly partisan hack.
3. Change the procedures governing the selection of reviewers, authors and other contributors. Should be based on scientific expertise, experience, etc., not politics or political correctness.
4. Purge the staff of all activists of any stripe.
5. The executive summaries and summaries for policy makers should be written scientists, not politicians and activists.
6. Review comments and the give and take between lead authors and reviewers should be archived and made public. If a minority point of view is not being treated fairly, a minority report should be allowed.
7. Require authors to archive their data and fully disclose their methods before using their studies. Encourage replication studies and stricter auditing of critical studies, given how lax normal peer-review works. In other words, don’t rely on the journals to do their jobs.
8. Demand greater transparency and accountability from the keepers of the temperature data. These people need to disclose their methods and data. When they make adjustments, they need to make proper disclosure for the rationale. Hansen, Jones et al need to be brought up short.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Happy Easter everyone!

 

[Kilbourne]

Calliso,

Given that the IPCC and its cheerleaders have positioned the organization as the preeminent authority on all matter climate and the leading proponent of CAGW, the blows to its credibility the IPCC has sustained during my “cross-examination” should leave its reputation in tatters and the case for CAGW in ruins (in a rational world, that is).

To say that the case for CAGW isn’t damaged by the destruction of its greatest witness isn’t reasonable.

To be sure, the AR’s necessarily have to have a cut-off date and some of the newest studies don’t make it in that year’s report–that is, unless the IPCC chooses to disregard its own rules, which it often does when it is convenient to the cause. But the greater concern is the plethora of studies out there which are exculpatory of CO2 and which don’t make it into the reports. Given the evident bias of the IPCC and its shoddy procedures, we can have no confidence that it offers the best summary of the science.

 

[lynnvinc]

The real takeaway story from glaciergate: We people in rich countries don’t give a bleep about the lives of Asians – they are the written off people (along with Africans).

First some background re how I came to that conclusion:

I think the IPCC is the gold-standard of climate science, despite a couple of exceedingly minor errors. Afterall, if we continue on this above-BAU path the glaciers will eventually melt – partly from the our GHG emissions of today. That is the important point from a Christian point of view, the gross harm we are causing today and refuse to reduce…even if such reductions can save us money. It doesn’t really matter in spiritual terms if the people we kill are people living today or those who will be living in the future. Killing is killing, and the sin is NOW.

Months before the mistake on p. 493 Ch. 10 Asia, of the WGII part (on impacts) was discovered, I was considering whether I should include reference to that 2035 in a paper writing – from Ch. 10 - Asia:

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).

I noticed it was from: WWF (WorldWildlife Fund), 2005: An overview of glaciers, glacier retreat, and subsequent impacts in Nepal, India and China. WorldWildlife Fund, Nepal Programme. This wasn’t an acceptable source for my peer-reviewed paper, so I got the WWF report to find its source – these types of reports from environmentalist and humanitarian orgs are themselves usually pretty good, based on peer-reviewed scholarship plus their own experiences out in the field.

Well, the WWF cited this from The New Scientist, 1999. “Flooded Out: Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities”, 5th June, 1999, p. 18.

I don’t consider the New Scientist, interesting and advant garde tho it be, to be an acceptable peer-reviewed journal. So I didn’t include that tidbit about 2035 & glaciers, but did include more solid research that did show Himalayan glaciers melting at alarming rates (the tiny portion that had been studied), with projected dire consequences for Asians (over 1 billion of whom depend on those glaciers for irrigation and drinking water) in the future, if we do nothing to mitigate AGW.

So absolutely no harm done – I did NOT include that in my paper, and a few months later the mistake was caught by a glaciologist, not Rush Limbaugh or his ilk. It should be mentioned that IPCC’s Working Group I - The Science - is held to higher standards & is based only on peer-reivewed studies, while WGII - the Impacts - does use some “grey” lit, I think bec a lot of the impacts are projections and have not been well studied. However, the policy-making community needs to know something about them, tentative and in the future tho they be. Sort of like people buy insurance for their cars and homes, thinking there might be some problems later. For such decision-making for actions now, one does not have to have absolute proof the Himalayan glaciers will all melt by 2354, only that they will be melting on into the future and that is bad for over 1 billion people. Which says nothing about the other millions of people who are projected to be harmed by other glacier and snowpack melt around the world, or all those who will be harmed by all the various climate change negative impacts.

Note that AGW mitigation measures are not just for those Himalayan glaciers, but for all the various impacts, so it is an absoluted ridiculous argument that we should not mitigate because the Himalayan glaciers are not all going to melt by 2035.

So let me rephrase that takeaway message: People don’t care a bleep about Asians or anyone in the future, including their own progeny.

(But we sort of already knew that…the way people have abortions right and left and abuse their kids.)

 

[Kilbourne]

Hi Lynn,

Why zactly do you think the IPCC is the gold standard?