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Ed The latest on climate science/Climate Conspiracy Theories

Abdul Alhazred

Philosopher
Joined
Sep 4, 2003
Messages
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Top climate expert's sensational claim of government meddling in crucial UN report
Daily Mail

A top US academic has dramatically revealed how government officials forced him to change a hugely influential scientific report on climate change to suit their own interests.

Harvard professor Robert Stavins electrified the worldwide debate on climate change on Friday by sensationally publishing a letter online in which he spelled out the astonishing interference.

He said the officials, representing ‘all the main countries and regions of the world’ insisted on the changes in a late-night meeting at a Berlin conference centre two weeks ago.

Three quarters of the original version of the document ended up being deleted.

...
 
Did you even read what Stavins claimed was changed in the IPCC report and why?
I have not read beyond the report cited. It looks from that as if the changes had to do with recommendations on government actions, which many nations found threatening to their bargaining power. There is no mention, at least in that report, of changes in the actual science of climate change. Governments hate being told what to do. If there's more to this, it's not in what I saw.
 
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I love that it takes 6 paragraphs to mention that the guy who is complaining is a professor of business and government and 7 to begin to mention what was interfered with (the ways that governments can begin to address the problem.)
 
Let's go straight to the source Robert N Stavins blog where he tells the story.

http://www.robertstavinsblog.org/

"My focus in this letter is exclusively on one section of the SPM, namely SPM.5.2, International Cooperation. I am not representing nor referring to any other parts of the SPM."



"In fact, several (perhaps the majority) of the country representatives in the SPM.5.2 contact group identified themselves as negotiators in the UNFCCC negotiations. To ask these experienced UNFCCC negotiators to approve text that critically assessed the scholarly literature on which they themselves are the interested parties, created an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Thus, the country representatives were placed in an awkward and problematic position by the nature of the process.

Over the course of the two hours of the contact group deliberations, it became clear that the only way the assembled government representatives would approve text for SPM.5.2 was essentially to remove all “controversial” text (that is, text that was uncomfortable for any one individual government), which meant deleting almost 75% of the text, including nearly all explications and examples under the bolded headings. In more than one instance, specific examples or sentences were removed at the will of only one or two countries, because under IPCC rules, the dissent of one country is sufficient to grind the entire approval process to a halt unless and until that country can be appeased.

I understand that country representatives were only doing their job, so I do not implicate them personally; however, the process the IPCC followed resulted in a process that built political credibility by sacrificing scientific integrity."
 
I love that it takes 6 paragraphs to mention that the guy who is complaining is a professor of business and government and 7 to begin to mention what was interfered with (the ways that governments can begin to address the problem.)

Deliberately misleading. They know the impression that such a treatment of the story would give.

And by looks of your choice of thread title, OP, you didn't read that far. What have you got to say for yourself?
 
Quote from the blog (bolding added):
Before returning to the topic of today’s blog entry — the SPM process and outcome — I want to emphasize that the IPCC’s Working Group III “Technical Summary” and the underlying Working Group III report of 15 chapters were completely untouched by the government approval process of the Summary for Policymakers. So, the crucial IPCC products – the Technical Summary and the 15 chapters of WG 3 – retain their full scientific integrity, and they merit serious public attention.

Pretty much the opposite of what the news article implies.
 
Thank you Robert Stavins!

Now hopefully the review process can be improved upon so more of the scientific findings can be included in future reports.
 
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I love that it takes 6 paragraphs to mention that the guy who is complaining is a professor of business and government and 7 to begin to mention what was interfered with (the ways that governments can begin to address the problem.)

Which proves he's lying about being ordered to falsify the report?

Maybe he's a homophobe too? We'd better investigate.
 
Because it's all about me, and not about several governments colluding to spread false information.

Of course this story does not ipso facto mean that there is no man made climate change, only that governments are trying to exploit it in a particular way.
 
Of course this story does not ipso facto mean that there is no man made climate change, only that governments are trying to exploit it in a particular way.
No. That you would jump to that conclusion reveals much about your bias but nothing that anyone here wouldn't know.
 
That's one way to cling to your conviction. The thing that makes me laugh is the way climate-change groupies behave just like YECs.

Well to be fair, if the daily fail was saying the sky is blue, I would suspiciously check outside and other news source. They are very well known to misrepresent research in some domain they dislike. They are the paper equivalent of faux news.

Sometiems like a broken clock is correct twice a day, they fall onto something and are right, but I would not count on it, without multiple checks on other sources...
 
Because it's all about me, and not about several governments colluding to spread false information.

Of course this story does not ipso facto mean that there is no man made climate change, only that governments are trying to exploit it in a particular way.

The way it was presented was misleading , intentionally or not, as if government had removed critical science. That's not the case. Governments *always* try to exploit international policy in a way they see advantageous to their own country. It is a bit sad and lead to the tragedy of the common, but as long as they do not manipulate the science, I would say it is business as usual.

Now if the science was manipulated one way or another that would be something else.

As such, it is a non story. Not surprising from the daily fail as how it was presentend, it is their MO.

As to the way you formulate your OP, I leave that to a community thread if somebody want to open it, but that should not be part of the discussion in this thread.
 
Sorry , Abdul Alhazred, but that is a quite ignorant title for the OP which you should have known from the content of the Daily Mail blog entry.
Professor Robert Stavins is not a climate scientist (Harvard’s Professor of Business and Government should be a hint :eek:).
The IPCC document he was working on was not about climate science. SPM.5.2, International Cooperation is about ... international cooperation!
The meeting was nothing to do with climate science. It was a meeting between a couple of scientists and a lot of politicians. And Robert Stavins is surprised that politicians act like politicians :D.

Is the IPCC Government Approval Process Broken?
ETA: I agree with him. Any statement which can be modified by one government's representative vetoing an example or sentence is flawed. It should be a majority decision.
 
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