IPCC: Corruption in the Consensus on Climate?

[mhaze]

[No message]

 

[a_unique_person]

There are more authors and reivewers, they have just listed the lead ones by the looks of it.

 

[Gurdur]

Ah. mhaze alleges corruption, but he hasn't the slightest shred of evidence to back his allegation up.

Colour me dreadfully unsurprised. Anyone else find it mildly entertaining how much time mhaze devotes to starting anti-science anti-GW threads, and how little time he devotes to providing evidence? All that emote-kid stuff, nothing concrete.

 

[Diamond]

Ah. mhaze alleges corruption, but he hasn't the slightest shred of evidence to back his allegation up.

Colour me dreadfully unsurprised. Anyone else find it mildly entertaining how much time mhaze devotes to starting anti-science anti-GW threads, and how little time he devotes to providing evidence? All that emote-kid stuff, nothing concrete.

Actually he's pointing out that the "2,500 scientists" claim which is repeatedly used to bludgeon debate by invoking an idea of overwhelming scientific consensus, cannot be justified by reference to the IPCC's own lists or the responses from reviewers.

So which part of that was anti-science? The only antiscience claim is that scientific consensuses determine scientific facts. They haven't before and they still don't with global warming.

 

[mhaze]

There are more authors and reivewers, they have just listed the lead ones by the looks of it.

If someone wanted me to be in a consensus they need to at least put my name in a list of those I stand with, and make that available publicly.

Don't they?

 

[Schneibster]

Looks like it's time for the list again. I'll repeat varwoche's challenge: provide one peer reviewed study that opposes global warming to counter each one on the list. When you've done that, you can claim that global warming denial is a skeptical position. Until then, which is basically never, global warming denial is a conspiracy theory.

 

[mhaze]

Looks like it's time for the list again. I'll repeat varwoche's challenge: provide one peer reviewed study that opposes global warming to counter each one on the list. When you've done that, you can claim that global warming denial is a skeptical position. Until then, which is basically never, global warming denial is a conspiracy theory.

According to the IPCC there are “2,500+ scientific expert reviewers”. See the public relations flyer.



Their list shows 170. They claim consensus. Why are you changing the issue? Because you can't show 2500 reviewers, obviously.



It is entirely possible that AGW could exist and the IPCC be a politically driven, corrupt organization.

 

[Schneibster]

I'm not changing the subject. You're a climate woo, until you can produce an anti-global-warming paper, peer reviewed, to respond to every one on that list.

 

[mhaze]

I'm not changing the subject. You're a climate woo, until you can produce an anti-global-warming paper, peer reviewed, to respond to every one on that list.

Naw, sorry. Back to basics. IPCC. Why would you defend IPCC with a list of organizations who seem quite reputable to me? Are you defending IPCC?

It took a FOI to get the review comments. Here they are. Period. What do they show? Let's dig a bit and see, shall we? Let's just dig a bit into the facts and see about that consensus, and possible corruption.

Here are the review comments.

 

[dakotajudo]

There are more authors and reivewers, they have just listed the lead ones by the looks of it.

According to http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/the-ipcc.html , that's exactly right - lead authors only, not contributing authors and consulted experts.

This page also cites the "2500" value - as the number of expert reviewers in the first round of peer review.

Here are the review comments. These were put online only as the result of 2 year delay following a Freedom of Information process.

Have you read these comments? I pulled up just one (and one of the smaller files); it was 134 pages. I would't be surprised that a good part of the 2 year delay was simply collating all the comments. I'm actually kinda impressed that they've made that much review material available publicly.

If you're really concerned about that exact 2500 number, you could count the number of reviewers listed in each of those documents. Or do you expect someone else to have done that for you? For myself, it doesn't seem worth the effort.

I guess I don't understand your specific concern. The review process is very transparent, but you seem to be quibbling over the number of participants? Why not debate the review comments and content themselves? Certainly you could better back-up these assertions by such a review.

The whole point of consensus science is that they represent the view of the majority. Here are the rules of consensus science. No cherry-picking of favorite papers, no complaints about contradictions or ignored issues. Anyone who doesn't like what the majority says is a dangerous sceptic who should not be given any airtime.

If you bothered to read the review comments, you'll see reasons why specific suggestions or changes were accepted or rejected for inclusion into the final draft. As stated in the reviews:

Please note that under IPCC procedures authors are required to take account of all substantive review comments in both review rounds.
Thus responses to individual comments may be influenced by comments from other reviewers.

If you really want to find examples of cherry-picking or complaints about contradictions or ignored issues, that's the place to start. Have you found any specific examples?

Here is the list of 170 authors and reviewers for the IPCC.

Read again - it's a list of lead authors and review editors. If you're going to quibble about numbers, make sure you get the participant's roles correct as well.

I'll repeat, that's "170 lead authors and review editors", not "170 authors and reviewers".

 

[mhaze]

I'm not changing the subject. You're a climate woo, until you can produce an anti-global-warming paper, peer reviewed, to respond to every one on that list.

Here is an example of the thinking of your IPCC friends. Details are here -
This concerns the IPCC truncating a data series from 1960 to the current because it did not fit their desired results. You do your science, make your graph, and they take what part of it.....they like?

June 26, 2007. IPCC and the Briffa Deletions.

Reviewer comment -

Show the Briffa et al reconstruction through to its end; don’t stop in 1960. Then comment and deal with the “divergence problem” if you need to. Don’t cover up the divergence by truncating this graphic. This was done in IPCC TAR; this was misleading. (Reviewer’s comment ID #: 309-18)]
​

In response, IPCC section authors said:

Rejected – though note ‘divergence’ issue will be discussed, still considered inappropriate to show recent section of Briffa et al. series.
​

 

[Harpoon]

Corruption at IPCC? A published professor once told me he doesn't dread what fellow scientists will do to his data during peer review. It's what gets done with his data afterward that troubled him.

I saw a couple of headlines yesterday about an IPCC scientist refuting the accuracy of computer climate models.

Here's what he actually said on the Nature blog. Don't cherry-pick his quotes. Read his whole entry.


"I have often seen references to predictions of future climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presumably through the IPCC assessments (the various chapters in the recently completed Working Group I Fourth Assessment report can be accessed through this listing). In fact, since the last report it is also often stated that the science is settled or done and now is the time for action.
"In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been."

Here's his full blog entry:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/06/predictions_of_climate.html

Here's his homepage, last updated in 2003:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenberth.html

 

[mhaze]

Corruption at IPCC? A published professor once told me he doesn't dread what fellow scientists will do to his data during peer review. It's what gets done with his data afterward that troubled him.

I saw a couple of headlines yesterday about an IPCC scientist refuting the accuracy of computer climate models.

Here's what he actually said on the Nature blog. Don't cherry-pick his quotes. Read his whole entry.


"I have often seen references to predictions of future climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presumably through the IPCC assessments (the various chapters in the recently completed Working Group I Fourth Assessment report can be accessed through this listing). In fact, since the last report it is also often stated that the science is settled or done and now is the time for action.
"In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been."

Here's his full blog entry:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/06/predictions_of_climate.html

Here's his homepage, last updated in 2003:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/trenberth.html

will read in entirety, got to work now.

Meanwhile I'll contribute this rather fascinating article about why not to believe "forecasts by scientists", that not being the same as forecasts by science.

 

[varwoche]

[No message]

 

[my_wan]

mhaze,
It is no secret that I am sympathetic to many of the issues you have pointed out about GW material in general. Some like Schneibster wants to marginalize your post on the ground that you are a "climate woo" or CTer. I have been very reserved in defending you because you do seem to present some of these characteristics albeit not always directly. For this reason, and not knowing your precise position, I have not responded even when I felt that some of the challenges directed at you had major flaws. So I would like to ask some clarifying questions on your view on GW in general. Not about the science, politics, etc. I will only discuss that with you when I know unequivocally what you want to make a case for. At the very least I could then respond to your post with full knowledge of where specifically I might disagree.

You can answer NA whenever a previous answer negates the question. Some may already be answered by you previously but I'll ask anyway.
(1) GW is not happening at all. True/false/Maybe
(2) GW is is a purely natural phenomenon. True/false/Maybe/NA
(3) GW is a human driven phenomenon. True/false/Maybe/NA
(4) People might be contributing some to GW. True/false/NA

You can explain your position (especially the maybes) but I want your opinion not evidence first. When you give that we can talk evidence all you want.

 

[mhaze]

mhaze,

You can answer NA whenever a previous answer negates the question. Some may already be answered by you previously but I'll ask anyway.
(1) GW is not happening at all. True/false/Maybe
(2) GW is is a purely natural phenomenon. True/false/Maybe/NA
(3) GW is a human driven phenomenon. True/false/Maybe/NA
(4) People might be contributing some to GW. True/false/NA

You can explain your position (especially the maybes) but I want your opinion not evidence first. When you give that we can talk evidence all you want.

Sure. Here you go. You do well to note explicitly the differences between science and politics, and between opinion and references or support for opinion.

1. Gw is not happening at all. False.
2. GW is a purely natural phenomenon. False.
3. GW is a human driven phenomenon. False.
4. People might be contributing some to GW. True.

 

[mhaze]

What's more fascinating is how AGW pseudo-skeptics cite associate economics professors (McKitrick) oil industry businessmen (McIntyre) and marketing professors (Armstrong) rather than peer-reviewed studies by expert scientists, and on a skeptical forum no less.

1. McIntyre is a former IPCC reviewer.
2. Briffa is peer-reviewed study by expert scientist.
3. Armstrong's paper impressed me. Suit yourself.
4. I haven't quoted or mentioned McKitrick.

 

[my_wan]

Sure. Here you go. You do well to note explicitly the differences between science and politics, and between opinion and references or support for opinion.

1. Gw is not happening at all. False.
2. GW is a purely natural phenomenon. False.
3. GW is a human driven phenomenon. False.
4. People might be contributing some to GW. True.

Well perhaps my misgivings about your perspective was unfounded and arrived at more by proxy than actual claims as I suspected. My blood does boil when idiots think they can help the scientific process along by squashing dissent. I don't see any CTs in this just people and organization trying to deal with a chaotic situation, sometimes in idiotic ways on all sides.

 

[my_wan]

I'm not changing the subject. You're a climate woo, until you can produce an anti-global-warming paper, peer reviewed, to respond to every one on that list.

You ask for something that people are are ignored or losing careers, funding, etc. for just for trying to provide a balanced science on this debate. This is the core of the problem.

In a reference I have provided before;
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220

At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift.
/snip
Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited."

The issue of correctness of the above mentioned paper becomes secondary to the nonscientific standards applied to the debate. The idea that these tactics are needed to rush a scientific consensus to save us from ourselves doesn't wash.

You continually call mhaze a climate woo. It seems you are making blanket assumptions that although not totally unfounded it is without verification or substance. You ask him for an item by item counter examples to "the list". When I called your "obvious physical fact" here silly you failed to respond. Your "obvious physical fact" is primarily of the same ilk as "the list" and the same rebuttal applies. I can go through "the list" line by line if you wish. So unless you just have a bone to pick with mhaze state exactly what your criticism is, and quit pretending my criticism of your statements don't exist. Calling an opponent a "woo" is not a valid debate.

 

[CapelDodger]

will read in entirety, got to work now.

Ah yes, work, the curse of the drinking classes.

Meanwhile I'll contribute this rather fascinating article about why not to believe "forecasts by scientists", that not being the same as forecasts by science.

It is indeed interesting. Prediction per se is clearly a subject that needs careful analysis; I've seen, in my career, some egregiously bad examples of "prediction", usually by consultants, aka "experts".

"[The nickel-iron battery will put] the gasoline buggies…out of existence in no time." ​

Thomas Alva Edison 1910

"There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear] energy will ever be obtainable."

Albert Einstein 1932 ​

"I think there is a world market for about five computers."
Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943 ​

"A few decades hence, energy may be free."
John von Neumann, Fermi Award-winning scientist, 1956 ​

Examples of faulty expert climate forecasts are easy to find, but are perhaps less humorous:
"If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."
Kenneth Watt, UC Davis ecologist, Earth Day,
April 22, 1970 Swarthmore College speech ​

Edison was a notoriously suspect commentator - Alternating Current will kill us all because his system used DC.

Einstein was, as I recall, quite right - there was, at the time, no indication that nuclear energy would be obtainable.

Thomas J Watson was probably right about the world market for computers in '43; apart from Bletchley Park and Los Alamos, where was the call for them? When the call was sounded, IBM stepped-up big time.

Von Neumann (may his tribe increase) did at least say "may be free". A sound policy, IMO. Almost every statement should contain a degree of equivocation.

Kenneth Watt apllied that principle as well : "If present trends continue ...". They didn't, but there was his get-out.

When Lindzen said the world will enter a cooling phase "within the next ten years" (I don't know when he first said that) he seems to have made the basic error of not leaving himself with an easy exit. But I digress .
​