by Judith Curry
I’ve finished reading Donna Laframboise’s book “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert: An Expose of the IPCC.”
Reviews are pouring in at amazon.com: 38 out of 46 reviewers give it 5 stars. Peter Gleick gives it 1 star, stating “This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change. ” It is difficult to believe that Gleick has read the book from the statements in his reviews; the book is not about the science of climate change. Rather, it is about the IPCC as an institution: the use of graduate students, WWF and Greenpeace sympathizers as IPCC authors; the use of gray environmentalist literature in IPCC (especially WG2); lack of conflict of interest oversight; the review process and the process producing the executive summaries; etc.
The book is well written with ample documentation (numerous hyperlinks in the kindle version). The target audience is the broader public, and the “spoiled child” metaphor provides a readable narrative for her arguments about the IPCC. Most (not all) of this material I’ve seen before, but Laframboise’s narrative makes a clear and compelling case regarding problems with the IPCC. Notably, she covers distinctly different ground from Montford’s book “The Hockey Stick Illusion.” Her final chapter is entitled “Disband the IPCC.” She makes a good case for this.
As a student of the IPCC since December 2009 (yes I was defending the IPCC until that point), I’ve looked at many of these issues myself. I’ve made some of the same points raised in this book. Here are some comments on passages from the text that struck me in some way, and provide a flavor of the parts of the book that I think are most significant:
“In the grown-up world, whenever important decisions and large amounts of money are involved conflict-of-interest mechanisms are firmly in place. . . well into the 21st century [the IPCC] saw no need to even discuss conflict-of-interest.
A quote from Mark Twain: ” . . . people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
“We all made the mistake of believing the IPCC was a gem of an organization simply because it is connected to protecting the environment.”
“How can a young man without even a Masters degree become an IPCC lead author? Good question. . . Rather than recruiting real experts like Reiter the IPCC enlisted young, inexperienced, non-experts instead.”
A quote from an IPCC lead author: “There are far too many politically correct appointments, so that developing country scientists are appointed who have insufficient competence to do anything useful.”
A quote from a team member from a developing country: “The team members from the developing countires (including myself) were made to feel welcome and accepted as part of the team. In reality we were out of our intellectual depth as meaningful contributors to the process.”
Laframboise attributes these appointments to UN diversity goals. I suspect that the UN’s objective is to obtain “buy in” from the developing countries for the UNFCCC policies.
“Rather than keeping its distance from those whose careers have been associated with activism, the scientific establishment now honors, celebrates and promotes such people.”
“The research bodies that fund climate modeling teams don’t appear to have taken any precautions against groupthink. Nor has the IPCC subjected climate models to rigorous evaluation by neutral disinterested parties. “
“It turns out that few people understand how the IPCC makes some of its most important decisions.”
A quote from an IPCC participant: “After being [either a lead author or a coordinating lead author] several times, I still have no idea how I was selected. This is unacceptable.”
‘[The IPCC] feels no need to look under the hood- and discourages its expert reviewers from doing so.”
A quote from an IPCC insider: “As far as I can tell, there is no data quality assurance associated with what the IPCC is doing.”
Statement from Pachauri: “everything that we look at and take into acount in our assessments has to carry the credibility of peer-reveiwed publications, we don’t settle for anything less than that.”
From Laframboise’s Citizen Audit: “Of the 18531 references in the 2007 Climate Bible we found 5,587 – a full 30% – to be non peer-reviewed.”
“It would appear that the relationship the IPCC has with its expert reviewers borders on the abusive. FIrst it asks these people to volunteer their time in good faith. Then it gives its authors the right to dismiss their input with nothing more than a single word: “rejected.” While expert reviewers are expected to comply with the IPCC’s deadlines, this organization feels no need to respect such deadlines itself. Instead, it nonchalantly adds in, after the fact, arguments and source materials these reviewers had no opportunity to asses.”
“People who know people at the IPCC have their yet-to-be-published work taken into account, but researchers without these sorts of connections are out of luck.”
“But a problem surely arises when journals are run by IPCC insiders themselves.”
“This is a circular, incestuous process. Scientists make decisions as journal editors about what qualifies as peer-reviewed literature. They then cite the same papers they themselves played midwife to while serving as IPCC authors.”
“What’s happened here is that the cart was put before the horse. The UN didn’t wait around for climate science to mature. They’d already decided that human-generated emissions were dangerous. Back in 1992, 154 nations endorsed this premature conclusion when they became signatories to the UNFCCC. . . The fourth edition of the Climate Bible, which contains the strongest yet still speculative and qualified language, appeared 15 years later.”
“One day the IPCC may come to be seen as a textbook case of how badly things can go wrong when political amateurs are recruited and manipulated by UN-grade political operatives.”
“Honestly. The IPCC was established by politicians, its experts are selected by politicians, and its conclusions are negotiated by politicians. A predetermined political agenda has been part of the landscape for the past 20 years. For [anyone] to whine that people who disagree with the IPCC are motivated by politics is the equivalent of someone who has lived by the sword complaining that they might die by it.”
How individuals, communities, and nations should respond is up for debate:
- Should we place our faith in new technologies, trusting that human ingenuity will find a way to neutralize excess carbon dioxide before global warming becomes acute?
- Should we focus the bulk of our attention on shoring up seawalls – and on ensuring that adequate water supplies are available to those most at risk of drought?
- Should we triple-check the world’s temperature records, just to make sure that the few tenths of a degree change that has everyone in a tizzy aren’t, in fact, the result of errors?
- Should we trust that future generations will be smart, well-equipped human beings capable of taking care of themselves?
- Or should we declare that the one and only acceptable solution is drastic worldwide emissions reductions starting now?
[The] IPCC doesn’t write scientific reports for their own sake. Those scientists are there for a purpose. That purpose is to produce material useful to the UNFCCC.
A whole chapter of Pachauri gems, here is one: “I am not going to rest easy until I have articulated in every possible form the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development. That’s the real issue. Climate change is just a part of it.”
“A grotesque aspect of the malaria issue is that anyone who truly cares about this disease need not concern themselves with global warming. A world that can’t rouse itself to do more about today’s malaria victims surely has no business using theoretical, sometime-in-the-future victims as ammunition in the climate debate.”
“The claim that 20-30% of the Earth’s species are at risk of extinction has been a hallmark of Pachauri’s speeches . . . [That chapter] depends almost entirely on a single, highly questionable piece of research. . . five out of 10 of this chapter’s most senior personnel have a formal documented link to the World Wildlife Fund. There is no way to know which sections of this IPCC chapter represent the opinions of scientists who’ve jumped into bed with the WWF and which sections are . . . scientifically sound.”
Regarding the WWF infiltration of the IPCC:
- 28 out of 44 chapters (two-thirds) included at least one individual affiliated with the WWF
- 100% of the WG2 chapters included at least 1 WWF affiliated scientist
- 15 out of 44 chapters (one-third) were led (coordinating lead authors) by WWF-affiliated scientists
Re the hockey stick: “The essential point here is that the IPCC aggressively promoted a graph that had been produced by a young scientist who’d just been awarded his Ph.D. Even though that graph overturned decades of scholarship, even though it negated a widespread consensus about what the temperature record of the past 1,000 years looked like, the IPCC didn’t bother to verify its accuracy.”
“What goes on at the IPCC is not peer review as that term is normally understood . . . To sum up, the IPCC is inordinately proud of its review process. It expects us to be impressed by how many people are involved and by how many comments it receives and addresses. But this process is fatally flawed. It is not independent. It is easily short-circuited and circumvented. Nothing about it measures up to academic peer review.”
Regarding the impact of the IAC review of the IPCC: “Pachauri lingers, the flagging rule [of non peer reviewed papers] has vanished, and real action on conflict-of-interest has been pushed well into the future. [While the IPCC has established the new Executive Committee] there’s just one problem. While the IAC report said it should contain three independent voices, including people from outside the climate community, the IPCC thumbed its nose at that advice . . . instead gave four of its fulltime staff members seats at the table.”
“Their overarching message has been that this doesn’t touch the science, that the basic premise that human beings are altering the climate in dangerous ways remains unchallenged. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear this argument. What it conveniently ignores is that we’ve been told for years that the reason we should believe in human-caused climate change is because an elaborate and reliable IPCC process had examined matters and pronounced it a genuine and pressing problem. . . We’ve been urged to believe in the end result because the IPCC’s process is itself trustworthy.”
“What does all this tell us? It says the IPCC process is broken. It says the verdict that humans are responsible for causing dangerous climate change cannot stand. A new trial must be held.”
“The real moral of this story is that scientists are merely human. They can be as short-sighted and as political and as dishonorable as the rest of us.”
JC summary:
Overall, this is a very good book on an exceedingly important topic. I give it 4.5 stars rather than 5 stars, since the writing was a bit uneven. The unruly teenager metaphor too often leads to explicit scolding, which to me sometimes goes too far in leading the reader. Some of the points, while broadly valid, didn’t quite hit the nail on the head, IMO. A few examples:
- Much text is given the Landsea-Trenberth kerfuffle regarding hurricanes and the AR4. Laframboise doesn’t quite capture the complexity of this issue, and she mistakenly states “If not a single hurricane expert thinks there’s a link between hurricanes and global warming, how can it possible be OK for an IPCC senior author who is not a hurricane expert to make statements to the contrary at a press conference?” The press conference in question occurred in Spring 2005 when Emanuel was working on his paper (and the press conference motivated Webster to start working on this topic). By the time of the 2007 IPCC report, the IPCC did draw reasonabley responsible conclusions with a substantial degree of uncertainty.
- Chapter 3 The Top Scientists and Best Experts? makes a very valid point, but cites William Gray as an example of an expert that should have been included in the IPCC (Gray is far from the top of my list of people whose input I would value on the IPCC.)
- A digression into the Y2K bug opens up an unncessary can of worms.
“A natural question arises, why the climate change practitioners do not command respect… I believe the main reason is that real science is marked by an unquenchable thirst for objective scientific truth, regardless of consequences. Many scientists suffered for their beliefs, Galileo comes to mind as a striking example. There was no material gain for Copernicus or Einstein for their epoch making discoveries. In contrast, the public now sees many scientists engaging in political debate in pursuit of huge research grants.” ~Rudolf Vyborny
The Pall of Malthus
Laid mournfully over all.
Parbati’s beast chirps.
===============
Thanks, kim, for so quickly and accurately reminding us that AGW is only the latest version of the Malthusian Movement!
Started by Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus because the “perils of overpopulation were bound to stymie prospects of ‘any very great future improvement of society’.” [page 57: “Malthus, medicine & morality: Malthusianism after 1798” by Brian Dolan]
http://books.google.com/books?id=F5MMS7D7a3wC&pg=PA72&lpg=PA72&dq=Pall+of+Malthus&source=bl&ots=7jG8di2Lck&sig=OKMYotVZ2qOEfMKBmNAQLBj302E&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Pall%20of%20Malthus&f=false
It took me forty years to figure out that this movement was apparently revived about the time Henry Kissinger secretly traveled to China in 1971 to initiate agreements that would unite nations and save the world from the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation [1].
1. “Deep roots of the global climate scandal (1971-2011)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/20110722_Climategate_Roots.pdf
I regret that I was so slow in deciphering the reason why the government ignored or hid data and observations on Earth’s heat source after 1971.
Oliver K. Manuel
“Video summary of my research career (1961-2011)”
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Summary_of_Career.pdf
Just a quick note on Galileo. He was not the innocent persecuted man we are led to believe. I’m no Catholic, by any means, but I was curious about the Catholic perspective several years ago, and so I looked up their perspective. It seems that Galileo was a contentious person who was rather opinionated. At the time, his theory was still not proven, but he acted as if it was. He had agreed to hold his peace on his theory, but broke his agreement. Several times. While history shows us that he turned out to be correct, his methodology (including demonizing those who disagreed with him) left somewhat to be desired.
Which then leads into a discussion of what kind of process and organization should replace it. That’s a whole series of threads by itself.
What is wrong with eliminating all quaisi-government and NGOs from the field of sponsoring, compiling and publishing scientific research. Corrupting conflicts of interest and politicization are too easily accomplished. The IPCC is exhibit 1. Reform has to come from scientists themselves. If the houses aren’t fumigated regularly, there is little hope for a return to an ethical environment.
As I said, that’s a series of threads by itself. There are layers and layers of issues, and that’s one of them. Another is defining and enforcing quality. It’s hard to imagine how one can engineer an institution that won’t eventually become captive to interests. The UN fans trivialize this critical difficulty.
What is wrong with eliminating all quaisi-government and NGOs from the field of sponsoring, compiling and publishing scientific research.
Freedom of speech and of the press. Property rights (subject to ethics, any organization can sponsor what research and compiling it wants.)
We’re talking about membership in a UN body. Freedom of speech and of the press don’t apply there. And that’s part of the problem.
We’re talking about membership in a UN body
Not so. You wrote: eliminating all quaisi-government and NGOs from the field
You can’t do that.
That wasn’t me. But since you brought it up, you certainly can separate what amounts to lobbying from what is supposed to be fact finding. Do we let lobbyists hang around juries, and “help” them with fact finding? Courts do accept amicus briefs, but those are limited to matters of law, not matters of fact.
Certainly you can keep them out in principle. I have my doubts about whether you can in practice.
Now there’s an idea.
Let’s put all sponsoring, compiling, and publishing of scientific research in the hands of the private sector.
In the “real world,” that will eliminate any influence of conflict of interest.
Absolutely hilarious.
Even more hilarious would be leaving it in the hands of governments, which are pretty much pure special interest groups taking turns at being in power.
Let’s turn it over to BP.
Lot of good that did us, willard…
They seem to enjoy nice dinners, Makes you wonder though, just who washes their dishes after they have finished their meal?
2.4 Annual lecture and subsequent publication on climate change
Key Partner: BP and Generation Investment Management
This year’s Annual Lecture was delivered by Vice President Al Gore on climate change. The event was
attended by 300 people with backgrounds ranging from business and government to the media and
NGOs, and a number of those who attended have already described changes in policy and behaviour
stimulated by the lecture.
Below are two quotes taken from feedback we received following the event:
“Congratulations on your exceptionally successful Tomorrow’s Company annual lecture. Al Gore made a
truly compelling presentation and offered a strong challenge to his listeners.
Thank you for the invitation to this event. It was a unique opportunity to engage with one of the most
pressing problems of the age, and to hear one of the most eloquent advocates of environmental action.
Well done!”
“I wanted to write and thank you for hosting myself and my colleagues. Al Gore was an inspiration and,
as we continue to work on our commitment to becoming Carbon Neutral this year, this has given us all
significant food for thought.”
We took the opportunity to discuss the issues raised by Al Gore with the early members of the
Tomorrow’s Global Company inquiry at a dinner immediately following the lecture.
The second inquiry publication – on ‘Climate change – the role of global companies’ – was published in
May 2006.
Let’s all try to see beyond the pretty ‘green’ vale together,
Or as WWF puts it: (on page 57)
“Voluntary corporate commitments can be valuable in demonstrating
innovative technologies and the business case for climate solutions.
But no matter how valuable they may be, a set of voluntary measures
cannot replace the environmental protection and business certainty
provided by government-led mandatory caps on CO2 emissions.”156
Step right up & read your own copy.
http://www.growthinternational.com/resources/Climate+change+-+the+role+of+global+companies.pdf
Get an eye-full, free-for-nothin…
& why do they always save the bad stuff, for the end of the report?
It’s science, silly.
When 20 climate models simultaneously fail to predict what is going on with the earth, then we have a problem with the science as well.
Which climate models predict that the earth should be cooling, or that Arctic summer sea ice should be growing, or that the Greenland ice sheet should be gaining mass, or that glaciers should be advancing, or that record high temperatures should be decreasing relative to record lows, or that sea level should be falling…….
none but then you don’t need models to see what is actually happening e.g. sea level falling as per recent satellite readings, temps not rising over the last decade as per HADCRUT and many glaciers advancing
There is nothing in the models that suggests that a trend in climate change eliminates all variation in the opposite direction.
To imagine that qualified, trained professional scientists could propose something as nonsensical as what you have just described says more about the “sceptic” than it says about the science.
As for “many glaciers advancing” – where do you get that one from? David Bellamy?
The IPCC does not need a replacement. The WWF and its fellows can carry on quite well all by themselves.
That for me says it all. And it doesn’t have to have any snark attached. The WWF should be free to do whatever it wishes, within the law and a free society. The IPCC on the other hand should be disbanded. And I for one intend to read more about Michael Polanyi’s ideas of the relationship between a free society and healthy science.
I don’t see how either a free society or healthy science benefit if people react to unpalatable facts by shooting the messenger.
If anybody disagrees with what ends up in the IPCC WG1 – just publish your own research results and you will be included in the next IPCC report. It’s that simple.
Of course, if you can’t produce anything factual to support your snark, you *will* be excluded. Nothing to do with free speech.
Vince,
No one’s talking about “shooting the messenger” (IPCC). Just cutting off IPCC’s access to the taxpayer tit. No more annual, blow-out, carbon-piggy party-conferences on the taxpayer dime and all.
That sort of thing.
And, oh by the way, Vince, do you happen to have any comments on the actual topic of this thread–you know, LaFramboise’s new book?
You speak to the IPCC’s functioning, Vince, with what appears to be an authoritative personal knowledge. So your take on “The Delinquent Teenager” is likely to become a classic–just possibly the last word, even. Personally, I’m looking forward to your review, Vince.
mike,
According to your reading, no one is “shooting the messenger”, but about cutting public funds, and “that sort of thing”. I’m not sure that sort of thing includes the discontinuation of the IPCC after the AR5 report, or the disbanding of the IPCC. What do you think?
Besides, you seem to say that the topic of this thread is the book. But you have to admit that Judith just made a review of this book. Suppose I want to discuss the review by Judith. Would I be off topic?
I am not sure what the topic of the thread is. But since there are more than 500 hits so far for the term “IPCC” in the thread, I believe we should include that term in the topic. We might very well include words like “disbanding” and “discontinuation”. That sort of thing.
Many thanks!
Hey Willard!
Long time since we had a chit-chat. Got your cup of coffee?
The IPCC? Could care less about that lash-up organization and the useless-eater parasites affixed to it, as long as they draw their blood meals from other than the taxpayer and keep their mitts off my monster-truck.
Of course, Vince’s review of LaFramboise’s book, which I eagerly await, might con-Vince (get it?) me otherwise.
Alternatively, a generous slice of the greenshirt piggy-pie just might induce me to shut-up and go away. Talk to your friends. Make me an offer. But part of the deal has to be that I’m spared any life-style sacrifices on behalf of Gaia, just as if I were one of the big-cheese greenshirts.
mike,
It might be better for now to explain away your colorfoul language as mere intemperance. If you prefer, we could simply acknowledge another serie of zingers and declare: we’re dying here! If you prefer the auditing way, we could also inquire into the reasons motivating your fiscal alarmism. Take your pick.
Whatever you fancy, it might be worthwhile to note that you have not shown how Vince’s comment is off topic. To judge what’s on topic and what’s not, you should have a good idea what the topic is. So what’s the topic of the thread, mike?
And when you’ve told us that, would you be so kind as to ask Vince to bring us a cup of coffee, after he’s finished with what you’re burdening him?
Many thanks!
Willard,
This is getting to be like old times. But do I understand you correctly to say that Vince is working up a response to LaFramboise’s book? If so, that’s great! I’m truly delighted.
You know, Willard, when I first got interested in the global warming business (as it was once called) my initial visits to climate blogs were entirely with the humble goal of educating myself, mostly by lurking, through the comments of my betters. But you know what I found instead? A bunch of know-it-all snarky greenshirts putting on smarty-pants airs. So I’ve kinda fallen into the “colorful” language routine, at first defensively, and, more lately, for just the malicious good fun of it.
But I’ve had dealings with Vince, before, and he’s one smart cookie when he puts his mind to it. So I’m sure he’ll provide “The Delinquent Teenager” a thorough scrutiny. I hope I haven’t misunderstood you, Willard, ‘cuz my hopes are up for Vince’s review.
Dear Mark,
Brilliant defense. The Green Menace Is Making You Do It. Anyways, I’ll take a cup of coffee from Vince over his book review, if you insist. But you must insist: I do not believe Vince owes you any review.
To see that, take this paragraph:
> My personal reaction as a scientist is to be very thankful that I am not involved in the IPCC. I already feel duped by the IPCC (I’ve written about this previously), I am glad that I was not personally used by the IPCC.
Is that paragraph a part of the book you want reviewed? I do hope your innate detector tells you not. But this is in the post above. Does that mean this paragraph is off-topic? Be honest here.
As far as I can tell, you’re burdening Vince with responsibilities he does not have. This is not an uncommon trick. See here for an explanation:
http://scientistscitizens.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/debate-in-the-blogosphere-a-small-case-study/
Look under *Managing Argumentative Responsibilities*.
* * *
Nevertheless, I do admit enjoying your color-foul (get it?) language. I find it quite spirited and inspiring. I do also like your formula:
– IPCC
– DEATH AND TAXES!
– NEXT ELECTIONS!
You’re framing this both with effectivity and with creativity. Professionals should take note of your work ethics. You surely should be a role model, Mark.
Oh, in case I forget: for which party you will vote during the next elections? Just curious.
Many thanks!
Willard,
What’s the deal, guy? We hittin’ the fire-water a little too freely tonight? I mean your last comment manages to be both incoherent and stupid–I mean, really STOOPID! I was embarrassed for you just reading it.
I see you’ve picked up on Robert’s calling me “Mark”. He apparently finds that name substitution to be cleverness on par with his “mathturbate” creation. Moi? I don’t get it. Some sort of ribald, greenshirt insider-joke that attaches itself to the name “Mark”, perhaps? But let me not guess, I’ll just wait for you to clue me in on the joke, Willard. Assuming, of course, that the explanation is not too highly classified.
Again, Willard, I know it’s tough this being Saturday night and, as usual, you ain’t got a date and all that. But it’s time for you to take a break from the beverage, ol’ buddy. And, please, do yourself a favor and lay off the blog-comments until you’ve temporarily regained your sobriety and sanity.
Regardless, always enjoy your meltdown moments, Williard. You’re the best.
mike,
I apologize for calling you Mark. I thought funny complimenting you under another nickname. I should have known better. From now on, I’ll leave humor to ones who has the wits. People like you.
Look how, feigning joyful glee, you found a way to insert “greenshirt”.
A thing of beauty, mike.
Critics might point out you have not insinuated anything about the IPCC. Nor have you mentioned taxes. And what about next elections?
What pitiful critics might see as a lapse of technique have not seen that your level of art goes beyond technique. No, you discarded anything and followed your inspiration. You then proceeded to adroitly deploy the most beautiful of all ways of Being Right, the ultimate one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right
Your dedicated your last post to this 38th and last way, the most devastating there is, as it can take you out of any situation, the most desperate one. Not that you were in a that kind of trouble, mind you. When can one be trouble when not is not responding to anything?
Not at all. You displayed this ultimate way of your own free will, in such an overpowering magnificience that delighted our audience, but surely not as much as it delighted me.
You are a true master, mike. I must bow to you.
I do hope HBGary is paying attention.
Not risking of being more incoherent that I am right now, I took the liberty to fix the most gruelsome typos:
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/11801160876
A true master deserves grammatical respect.
O. K. Willard, you’ve made whole bunches of really good points. You win. I loose. And now to celebrate, I can’t think of anything better than for you to crawl into the rack and sleep it off. Right, Williard? Doesn’t that sound like a good idea, Williard? That’s it, guy. Probably best if you kick your shoes off. There you go, Willard. Lights off! See yah tomorrow. Nighty-nite.
Judy, please consider posting a synopsis of your review on Amazon with a link to the above.
Thank you again for your efforts.
RG
Do we really need to wait for AR5?
Good riddance.
Judy, I’m afraid your Mark Twain quote badly needs spell-checking.
thx, fixed
Not fixed enough! “second-and”? Quite a few typos and miskeys elsewhere too.. “20-305” rather than “20-30%” etc. It’s readable, but it’d be worth re-checking when you have a spare 5 mins. :)
Heh. I put a list of 15 or so below, but wasn’t sure (Duh!) what the “305” was all about, so omitted it.
{Blush}
Hear! Hear!
Btw, for those who are not into Kindl-ing, the PDF version (at the same price) contains all the hyperlinks as well!
Hilary, thank you for your part in this!
My pleasure :-)
Btw … Helpful Hint from Hilary on bringing stuff from KIndle to WordPress [without typos!]… try using the Kindle for PC (it’s a freebie, and will display all books etc that are on your Kindle) to select and copy the excerpts you want. I find it works really well! But if you are among the MacAfflicted, I can’t vouch for the success of this method;-)
mac affliction in the EXTREME :)
Oh, my … it’s much worse than I thought ;-) You’re doomed, I’m afraid!
Hillary –
I see you’re quoting Ross McKitrick.
Do you happen to catch his comment about Wagner?
Judith thinks that was just an “intemperate” comment on a blog. As someone else that sees fit to quote McKitrick – what do you think?
RM is right on. His resignation and subsequent suck-up to Travesty Trenbirth were pathetic.
Brian –
So, in contrast to Judith – you think that his comment was a sound assessment of the situation, and not as Judith described, merely an “intemperate” comment on a blog.
Interesting.
What do you think, Judith? Hillary doesn’t seem to want to answer the question about her belief – but what do you think about a “denizen” believing differently than you do about McKitrick’s comment?
This is off-topic because it has nothing to do with the book. Start a thread on your own blog if you think that it is worth persuing.
Ray –
It has to do with a subject related to the subject of the book – the regrettable actions of prominent “skeptics,” and their enablers.
First of all, Joshua, I would suggest that if you are going to address me – or anyone else for that matter – by name, that you have the courtesy verify the correct spelling before you do so.
Second of all, I did not mention Ross McKitrick here, so I can only conclude that you must have read my own post on Donna’s excellent exposé of the IPCC – or my review on Amazon. Both of which provide ample opportunity for you to pose any questions you might have.
So there is absolutely no need for you to litter the threads of others with your diversions. That being said, the answer to your question is that I think that Prof. McKitrick was right on the mark – as I’ve found he always is.
Third of all, since you seem so interested in what I think … I long ago came to the conclusion that your comments are those of a third-rate single-trick pony, whose bandwidth wasting litter makes me long for the days of Usenet, where one could easily consign such diversions to their rightful place in the ether, i.e. the good old-fashioned killfile.
If you want to discuss the topic of this thread – and are prepared to do so in a grown-up manner, rather than that of, well, a delinquent teenager – I’ll be glad to engage. Otherwise just run along, Joshua, because I have much better things to do with my time.
Hilary:
I greatly appreciate the thoroughness with which you dealt with Joshua’s rather weak efforts to hijack yet another thread.
Thank you, Bernie. But I see that he’s evidently made the choice to continue his preferred role of delinquent teenager … and third-rate single-trick pony.
Oh, well … I tried ;-)
Hilary –
First, let me thank you for reading and responding to my post.
Yet again.
I guess you lied when you said you had “better things to do,” eh?
Second, I think that I should warn you. Continuing to respond to my posts, and engage in discussions with others about me, will be considered as “distracting” by some.
You see, making such comments will take Judith’s “denizens” away from their important work of making disparaging comments about the IPCC on an Internet blog.
I mean, it’s not like any of these folks have ever done that before, and it’s not like any of them have read negative comments about the IPCC before either.
How would the world survive without another blog thread filled with negative comments about the IPCC from “skeptics?” Please, I implore you, stop distracting Judith’s “denizens.”
Too funny.
Hilary (sorry for misspelling your name, btw) –
Thanks also for answering my question. So, apparently you also disagree with Judith – and instead feel that it was not simply an “intemperate” remark on a blog. Instead, you see fit to defend McKitrick’s insults of someone that he presumably never met, attacking Wagner of being a “coward” even though he had no real information about the character or motivations of Wagner besides pure speculation.
So – a scientist considers speculation sufficient to draw conclusions about someone, and to smear Wagner’s character in the process – and you consider his smear to be “right on the mark” like “he always is.”
I am continuously shocked to find people who feel it is well within their rights to make pronouncements about the quality of others’ science, and at the same time make it abundantly evident that they are perfectly willing to draw conclusions without a valid process of gathering evidence on which to base their conclusions.
I’m further continuously shocked that people choose to defend that type behavior from participants in the climate debate.
Oh, and HIlary – thanks for reading.
Haha that’s my Hilary. I felt the pain of that smack down all the way in Australia.
Hey, Baa … great to see you, again! And don’t you think this is shaping up to be a wonderful week in the webosphere?! Thanks to Donna – and Judith’s very public and positive view of her work – as the old song goes, this could be the start of something big ;-)
I certainly hope so H
Joshua
More to the point, what do you think about the book-which is the subject of this thread.
tonyb
tony –
Actually, my comments were perfectly on point.
My point is that I find it highly hypocritical when Judith decries the work of the “climate community” as a product of tribalism, yet deflects tribalism (as “intemperate comments”) when it is abundantly evident from prominent “skeptics.”
My point is also that when to promote a book, someone like Hilary quotes a prominent “skeptic” who smears a scientist based on pure speculation about his character and motivations, she marks herself as someone who doesn’t hold people on both sides of the climate debate to reasonable standards.
My point is further that while Judith may seek to minimize McKitrick’s comment as mere an “intemperate” comment on a blog, other “skeptics,” whose opinions apparently she respects, in fact think that McKitrick’s comment was perfectly justified.
Those were my points.
Uh Jos, U do know that Dr. McKitrick is a scientist also? Right?
So, in fact, you have not read Donna’s book, have no intention to, and would rather talk about something else. Thus your comments were directly on your point and troll bait to anyone interested in Donna’s work. Couldn’t you have simply said so?
Why not ask one of Ross’ friends? Me. You know damn well why you dont dare ask me the question. You know I disagree with Judith. You know I criticized my friend ( Ross) for writing this. But you seemto forget that every time you bring it up.
What do you think of Mann writing to other scientists and journalists and calling McIntyre a fraud?
Ross at least had the guts to say what he thought in public. Stupid though those comments were.
“This is a circular, incestuous process…”
“We found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of this relatively narrow field of paleoclimate studies are closely related. Dr. Mann has an unusually large reach in terms of influence and in particular (to) Drs. Jones, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Rutherford and Osborn. Because of these connections, independent studies may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.” ~ Wegman Report
The malaria example is telling.. Non-experts focussing minds on risks in 50 years.. vs Paul Reiter..
when we have the capability of eradicating it now and saving millions of childrens lifes. ie malaria is now a decease of poverty.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/22/manns-1-8-million-malaria-grant-who-do-we-ask-for-a-refund/
Dr Gething told BBC News.
“A lot of the studies proposing there would be a dramatic increase in a warmer world have been met with guarded criticism, and often what’s been said about them surpasses what the actual science indicates.
“So this redresses the balance a bit.”
“Climate change is, in our view, an unwelcome distraction from the main issues.”
————————-
Then again, I’m just a sceptic/lukewarmer/etc.
Donna’s book comprehensively put together the miriad of issues around the IPCC, I hope it gets a wide audience, not least by journalists as a reference point for them to start doing some journalism, rather tan the eco-churnalism many seem to practice..
As Donna gives my blog (and many others thanks, Inc Mark Lynas) perhaps it will just be dismmissed as sceptics ‘smearing’ the IPCC. So it realy depends on journalists and scientists to read it and to stand up and be counted, with respect to continued support of the IPCC
The IPCC is an ignominious albatross hanging around the collective necks of the CAGW crowd. I hope they can continue to wear it proudly. Long live the IPCC!
good review: the reaction to Donna’s book will indeed be telling. Are we in a new era of transparaency, dialogue and real science? or are we still in the climate, science and political equivalent of the trenches of WW1?
Hopefully other reviews on Amazon will come from people who have read the book — what damage has Gleick done to his own reputation with his gratuitous and inaccurate comments?
Soon we can add “doing a Gleick” to our lexcion of popular catch phrases.
Gratuitous? Inaccurate? You mean Curry’s claim (false and now removed) that I didn’t read the book?
Peter,
I would say your statements in support of the Hockey Stick were both false and gratuitous. McIntyre and McKitrick were corroborated by Von Storch and Zorita and the National Academy (while polite to Mann) supported M&M on every major point of science they examined (1000 years claim was not supported by the evidence and strip bark trees should be avoided, etc.). The National Academy did not examine the issue of the Artificial Hockey Stick (hockey stick from trendless red noise) but Von Storch and Zorita looked at that and agreed with M&M.
Perhaps you were referencing other studies said to support the Hockey Stick using other methods, but based on your comments the casual reader will think Mann was confirmed. This is a completely false claim.
The Hockey Stick is indefensible. Anyone who seeks to defend the indefensible does not deserve to be read.
Peter Gleick,
If you had indeed read the book at the time you wrote the review, there is absolutely no evidence of it in that review. If you are going to write a review which has no connection to the actual subject it is allegedly reviewing, is it not reasonable for others to assume that either you have not read the book (common practice amongst the CAGW cheers squad when writing one star “reviews” of sceptical books at Amazon), or alternatively that you lack the ability to comprehend what you just read, and so just write what you would like to be the case, rather than anything based on fact. I find the latter hard to believe, as you have managed to obtain a PhD, but it is not impossible. What is your explanation for the obvious and total disconnect between your review and the actual subject matter?
Your ‘review’ of Donna’s book is a very fine example of foot-shooting!
Thank you.
actually I was giving you the same benefit of the doubt others on Amazon had done after reading both your review and the book.
You have indeed clarified matters for the denizens here in a manner that renders such benevolence unnecessary.
What is the quote: better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and confirm it?
I read your review Gleick and it was a disgrace.
The other reviewers who responded to you saw right through you as if you were made of glass.
A disgrace.
You accuse someone of writing a book full of lies and misrepresentations. My perspective is the onus is on you to support your claims. I would have little respect for someone that told me I misrepresented something and couldn’t even identify what it was I misrepresented. Have you compiled supporting material for your accusations and if so where may they be found? Perhaps you are in the process of making an apology instead?
lol!
What world do you, and Laframboise, live in, Judith?
Unfortunately corruption, abuse, conflict of interest, bias and superstition in science are not new. There is no accountability either.
The question is whether characteristics such as conflict of interest are any more salient WRT the IPCC than other organizations where “important decisions and large amounts of money are involved.” Have you ever looked at the influence of lobbying on the U.S. government? On the Department of Defense?
That’s not to defend a lack of established of controls against conflict of interest for the IPCC (which, I would assume, would also have to control for interests that Judith and Donna just happen to sometimes forget to think about) – but to note that some people have a problem with selective interests in problems created by conflict of interest – based on motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, tribalism, etc.
Of course there is conflict of interest in Congress–that is the problem with pork and hidden favors to certain interests like labor or a certain industry. BUT everyone know this problem exists and people struggle to counteract it. The IPCC has wrapped itself in the virtuous mantle of objectivity (“we are scientists”) when it is in fact full of activists. Now activists have a right to their activism, but let’s not pretend they are objective. As someone pointed out, imagine if 30% of IPCC authors worked for Exxon or right-wing/libertarian think tanks–who would allow that for even a heartbeat?
No one could ignore any longer that AGW theory was a lot more than bad science, a hoax and a scam. When the EPA declared CO2 was a pollutant and determined that its job was to protect the Earth’s climate—that was the day we learned America was dead.
Wagathon
Maybe not “dead” – but certainly “dead brained”
Max
But the last chapter on the EPA ruling has not yet been written…
Joshua,
They live in the world where real people live.
How is yours, little prince?
Yeah –
The “real world,” where “whenever important decisions and large amounts of money are involved conflict-of-interest mechanisms are firmly in place. ”
You fellas (and Judith and Donna) are hilarious.
Let’s see: academics publishing on medical devices/meds need to put in their paper their potential conflicts of interest, as do business profs, and lobbyists need to register, and politicians need to report donations, and insider trading is prohibited, and bosses can’t date their secretaries without risking legal trouble, and defense dept employees can’t take gifts from those they give contracts to, –so no, you are right, in the real world no one has to have a conflict of interest policy or worry about such things.
Craig –
Do you believe that in “the real world” “whenever important decisions and large amounts of money are involved conflict-of-interest mechanism are firmly in place?”
Of course “conflict-of-interest mechanism are firmly in place“. And in some venues, people routinely walk around them until they get caught and go to prison.
There is on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate fraud in this country on a yearly basis – and that’s just what we know about. And that doesn’t include the “legal” process of lobbying that results (probably hundreds of billions each year?) in “corporate welfare.”
S&L bailouts?. TARP? Wasteful spending (and fraud) in the Pentagon’s spending?
I would never diminish the importance of mechanisms to protect against conflict of interest. I think it is entirely appropriate to adopt and strengthen mechanisms to protect against conflicts of interest in the IPCC.
What I find curious is the selective interest in the negative impact of conflict of interest – depending on the partisan orientation of the “outraged.”
Joshua you provide excellent comic relief.
I aim to please. Thanks for reading.
From 2006:
From 2011:
Joshua bounces the table resoundingly.
With his head.
==========
And spoons.
Remember the spoons!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iggysparkses/780970202/
Oops…
Here is the great believer battlecry made immortal:
Note the weather station on the wall.
“Note the weather station on the wall”
[Right next to the AC exhaust.]
And I can see mothman looking at the weater staion on the wall and running away crying i fear……
Say, kim –
Are you still worried about “Muslim sympathies?”
So many dots, so many dots. We don’t need to connect all the dots. But there are just so many dots.
Oh, my sides.
2008? How many hours did it take to find that? Can you do me too? Check 1999 and 2003, I said lots of vaguely ambiguous stuff unrelated to climate science or this post that was taken out of context back then. You’ll be rolling in laughter.
He’s got search bots, K. He’s no longer linking that whole thread as he once did as it’s too politically dangerous. Arthur Smith’s seach bots have found me pronouncing the globe cooling four years ago. I’m hoping they can go further.
Each time Joshua quotes that old comment I ask him for a discussion about allegiance. Strange silence results.
=====================
By the way, Joshua, what’s up with Rezko? How ’bout that California tape? Won’t you show us the Wright Way?
================
kim –
What’s a “search bot?” – some kind of automated search macro?
And I’m more than happy to provide the link to the thread where you speculate about Obama’s “Muslim sympathies.”
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2008/06/michell-obama-.html
Seriously, kim, a birther?
Too funny.
Thanks for the thread link to a discussion of a prominent woman interfering in an ethical vaccine trial.
Now do you want to discuss allegiance and spirituality in Presidential candidates?
===========
Sure – let’s discuss Obama’s “Muslim sympathies.” I’m sure it will be hilarious.
kim, seriously, you’re a birther?
As a child, Obama was listed as a Muslim. When did that change and to what?
As a child, and possibly as an adult, Obama used an Indonesian passport. When did he stop using that and what country’s passport does he now use.
=================
As for your loose use, Joshua, of the putative pejorative ‘birther’, let me say this.
I believe Obama is a native born American citizen, though the proof he has submitted so far would not pass document examination in a court of law.
I do not believe Obama is a natural born American citizen; the British citizenship of his father prevents that. Being ‘natural born’ is a specific requirement for the Presidency, laid down by the Founders who were concerned about just the sort of questions of divided allegiance that the candidacy, and Presidency, of Obama have raised.
================
Thanks for the clarification, kim.
So you’re not a birther, but you do think that his election is in violation of the founding father’s intent, by virtue of his citizenship status, and because of the potential of “divided allegiance” from someone who has “Mulsim sympathies.”
This gets better and better.
And kim – what’s a “search bot?”
Kim,
Article II of the Constitution does require that a citizen be a natural born citizen to be qualified to serve as president. But that term is not defined in the Constitution. Most of the arguments that Obama might not be a “natural born citizen” are based on federal statutes that have defined that term, which definitions have changed over the years.
Those statutes do not answer the question of what the term means in as used in Article II. Most conservative/originalist legal scholars do not agree that Obama would not qualify under a traditionalist reading of the term. Nor does anyone believe that the any Supreme Court would construe the term in a way so as to invalidate the election of a sitting president.
The narrowest interpretation of the term is a citizen born of twu U/.S. citizen parents on U.S. soil. (John McCain and others would have been disqualified under this narrowest interpretation.) The most liberal readings would be of someone born to at least one U.S. citizen parent anywhere, or to two foreign parents, but on U.S. soil.
It is an interesting legal argument in the abstract, but irrelevant as to the worst president this country has ever elected.
Gary M, thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree that the term ‘natural born citizen’ is not rigorously defined legally. Distinguishing between ‘native born’ and ‘natural born, and there certainly is a difference, is an excellent basis for discussions of allegiance, and that is the problem, here.
==============
To what entity, Joshua, would you guess that Obama gives his allegiance?
===========
Wow!
I really have to express my gratitude to this blog for having built bridges between me and people like Kim.
I’m so proud to having been bridged with somebody who insistently questions whether their democratically-elected president is the wrong religion. Or the wrong something, anyway.
Vince, allegiance is a very important criteria for selecting a President, spirituality much less so. Besides, we know Obama is filled with the Wright stuff.
===========
Kim, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, US citizens were forbidden from flying in US airspace.
However, George W. Bush permitted non-citizens from Saudi Arabia to fly in US airspace.
Did you question George W. Bush’s allegiance, and what sort of answers did you get?
Also, please remind me, precisely which action(s) by Obama leads you to ask the question about where his allegiance lies? Has he ever arbitrarily curtailed the freedoms of US citizens in favour of allowing freedoms to foreign non-citizens?
Heh, Vince, Gary M, and other curious ones: Google JustiaGate.
==================
kim =
What’s a search bot?
Use yours to discover the historical legal travesty perpetrated at Justia.com about the meaning of ‘natural born citizen’ in Minor v. Happerstat, and others. Put antifreeze in your bot, because it’s headed for chilling territory.
===========
Heh, your’s is named ‘Wrong Kim Arc’.
=============
Dr. Curry;
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
When it comes to getting to the truth and exposing nefarious practices in the CAGW debate, there are several women (our host probably first and foremost) that are showing us guys how it is done! Thanks to the likes of Judith, Donna, Lucia, Jo, Hillary, and several others, many warmists are showing shall we say, some war wounds from which they will not recover.
Look what the science establishment did to Galileo, Socrates, Einstein … It is easier for IPCC-approved science authoritarians to go quietly insane than admit they were wrong about global warming and face up to the fact that they have been a party to the merciless pushing of an anti-humanist agenda. Dr. Gray is a Holocaust denier because he deigned to challenge the superstition and ignorance of the cult of global warming alarmism.
Actually, Einstein was accepted as a visionary pretty much overnight, because his theories explained anomalous experiments already performed. He’s a bad example of what you’re trying to argue, but a good example of how science is supposed to work. He was well-established as a preeminent scientist when the Nazis started their Deutsche Physik thing, which wasn’t taken seriously outside of Germany, and was largely considered a joke inside.
Oh sure. Are you nuts?
The Einstein-Schroedinger axis and their nearly-come-to-blows resistance to Heisenberg-Bohr is no example of ‘how science is supposed to work.’ That they finally managed to lock themselves in a room for a Texas death match with each other wherein they agreed in the end that they were both right (hooray!) was fortunate, I suppose.
Look what the science establishment did to Galileo, Socrates, Einstein
could you elaborate?
Galileo had great influence on the science establishment, though he also had to face scientific traditionalists and skeptics. If the science establishment affected Socrates, there is no account of it. The science establishment published Einstein’s work about as fast as he could write it up and submit it; as soon as WWI was over, Eddington undertook his famous expedition inspired by General Relativity, and everyone since then has lionized Einstein as one of the greatest of scientific geniuses. As he aged, he fell behind, but his views were considered important enough at least to try to refute.
I think the establishment’s reaction is known by past actions:
1. Ignore it, hope it goes away
2. Attack the author
3. Attack the author’s supporters
4. The author is a denier
5. This changes nothing in the basic science of climate change
6. Feel sorry for themselves with this unwarranted attack on climate science
…
999. Discuss the content of the report in a meaningful way.
You forgot the most noxious:
“They are anti-science!”
And the gratuitous “creationist” red herring.
“Climate Racism.”
Andrew
And the claim that in some way their linked to the tobacco lobby
You omitted to mention funding by ‘Big Oil’.
BTW where is my cheque?
you forgot – attack the cover picture – as per Joshua below
Look at the politics of personal destruction that has been used to stifle truth. Are scientists interested in truth for its own sake or lies for the sake of America’s enemies?
The fall of global warming alarmism really began with the attempted marginalization of William Gray and the use of the rhetoric of `Holocaust denier’ to compare skeptical scientists to Nazis.
The Medium is the Message: from the denigration of Wm Gray to the present, whenever you heard of a ‘consensus’ you were being treated to collectivists’ version of ‘truth finding’ and ‘truth making’ and ultimately, of course, the enforcement and control of ‘truth.’
That is what liberal fascism is all about. It’s Kafkaesque! Global warming only nominally was ever about the science. In reality, it has been an international conspiracy against America with some of its deepest roots in America and in academia itself. And along the way, the global warming movement was taken over by the liberal wing of the Democrat Party in America with its collectivist creed and dogmatic belief in the existence of a Marxist Utopia.
It’s a minor point, but I don’t like the title. It strikes me as an odd, somewhat strained metaphor, though of course I understand why the author chose it. The IPCC is a political entity, and that’s the point I’d want underscored in the title.
I’m also not surprised that the Amazon reviews are generally positive. Alarmists are not going to be reading this book for the most part, so the the mostly skeptical readership is by its nature going to like the book.
Take a look at the cover picture.
But be sure to have your security banky next to you when you do. It is a very scary picture of that “delinquent teenager.”
I’m still shaking.
Trust Joshua to judge a book by it’s cover.
I am sure he doesn’t like the fonts either.
Does your mom know what you are doing?
Yes, the cover sells books. It is the antithesis of our beloved “Nature” cover. You know the one. With the faked photo-shopped polar bear on the last bit of sea ice… still brings a tear to my eye.
Pokerguy, you are absolutely correct. Unfortunately the true believers will manage to ignore Donna’s book just as they ignored the IAC Review of IPCC’s processes and procedures and claimed that the documented deficiencies did not impact on the science.
PG,
I think the title is excellent. Yes, the IPCC is rubbish because and is now beset by politics, but this title suggests much about how it got into its present state. Ironically, until 2009, it suffered from a LACK of political constraint. Its protagonists were accorded, and came to expect as their due, the SUSPENSION of normal political processes, which would ordinarily have subjected its effluvia to proper critical review. Instead they were treated like golden children whose every finger-painting was due uncritical praise and respect. Unsurprisingly, they have continued to produce the scientific equivalent of finger-painting, and were unprepared, like a spoilt child on his first day in school, for the unprecedented critical appraisal to which, in the post-Climategate world, it is subjected. Climategate began, not the REMOVAL of politics from Climate “science”, but the restoration (far from complete) of normal political life to a field from which it had been banished for two decades. The Climate “scientists” have responded to criticism, not by lifting their scientific game, but by attacking their critics with petulant invective. The spoilt child metaphor is spot on.
Gleick not reading the book doesn’t surprise me. After all who like’s reading their own rap sheet? He’s part of that family. Nothing embarrasses these guys any more.
Of course, it is a lie that Gleick didn’t read the book, promulgated by climate skeptics and deniers who don’t like my Amazon review. Too bad Judith didn’t bother to ask me. I’ve asked for Judith to remove this false statement. We’ll see what happens.
If you did read the book, it’s most unfortunate that your so-called “review” gave no indication whatsoever that you had done so with even a modicum of reading comprehension.
Choosing – as you did – to provide no examples from the text to substantiate what appeared to be nothing more than a knee-jerk recitation of (by now) an all too familiar litany, is not the way I would have gone about critiquing that with which I disagreed.
But then, I had the benefit of a pre-post-modernist education – and I’m not a “climate scientist” either (nor have I ever pretended to play one). So what do I know, eh?!
I like that. I’ve always just said “real education”, but that’s much more evocative.
Hear Hear!
Maybe Peter was just confused: “This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.”
Since the book was about the politicized IPCC process and not the fundamental science of climate change his review does seem… misinformed.
I have to ask, Peter. Did you read the book BEFORE you wrote the review?
Simple solution to proving that: Dr. Gleick can provide his dated sales receipt from Amazon.com for the Kindle (or from the company that offers the PDF) version.
He can redact the address, CC#, and address, and post a PDF of the sales receipt for us to see. I’ll be happy to withdraw my claim that he has not read the book before commenting on it if he can offer the receipt.
He can post the pr0of in the guest post I offered him (downthread here) on WUWT
Anthony —
I see you want proof that you made a false accusation.
That’s interesting, given that you made a false accusation against me, and then you didn’t allow my defense to go through.
I’d be happy to put up some money on a bet regarding your false accusation. How about $10,000? I’ll even give you 5-1 odds. We can find an independent party to verify.
What do you say? I mean only a “coward” would make a false charge, delete the defense, and then turn down an opportunity to prove his accusation.
Right?
Joshua,
Instead of playing silly games, how about you just provide the proof and be done with it?
Because, presuming that Anthony isn’t a “coward” (which is the word he used to characterize me, btw), or is willing to show some accountability for his facile reasoning, I’d rather either: (1) just have him apologize for making a specious accusation without any valid evidence or, (2) make a lot of money off of his specious accusation if he’s foolish enough to take the bet.
Of course, if he is a “coward” and lacks a sense of accountability, then he’ll just run away from having made a false accusation and not allowing my defense to post on his blog.
It is what he has done in the past – but there’s always hope that he might grow a set – or at least show some accountability.
Let’s all hold our breath, shall we?
You first. I’ll get back to you in a few days to see how your doing.
Jesus, Joshua, you are a predictable, ignorant boor.
Anthony, first, incredible work on the USHCN station bias. Still no material counter/rebuttal to your excellent work. I would love to participate if you are in need of volunteers for stations in North Georgia.
Second, your proposed solution to the question of whether Gleick actually read the book doesn’t work. All your solution would show is that he bought it, not that he read it.
Gleick is irrelevant anyway. When the history of this issue is written many years hence, I’m confident we will be on the right side of the issue, and Watermelon Gleick will be the equivalent of the Catholic Church in the Copernicus/Galileo dustup circa 1630. And we all know how that worked out, don’t we?!?!?
Keep up the good work, Anthony. I’d love to get involved!
In light of that, are you going to modify your review of the book to or do you actually believe it is a fair and accurate assessment of the book?
Peter, Judith didn’t say you didn’t read the book, she said that since what you said about the book had so little to do with the book’s actual content, it is difficult to believe you read the book. This is what she actually said:
“Peter Gleick gives it 1 star, stating “This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change. ” It is difficult to believe that Gleick has read the book from the statements in his reviews; the book is not about the science of climate change. Rather, it is about the IPCC as an institution: the use of graduate students, WWF and Greenpeace sympathizers as IPCC authors; the use of gray environmentalist literature in IPCC (especially WG2); lack of conflict of interest oversight; the review process and the process producing the executive summaries; etc.
“
@John…
The statement in question has been removed, probably before you saw it.
The funny thing is that the statement John quotes is probably more damning than the original one.
Previously it was assumed that Peter Gleick had not read the book, and that the trashy review was based upon mistaken assumptions of what the book was about.
Now we are left with only the possibilities that
1: He is telling lies about having read the book.
2: He has read the book and understood it but is writing deliberately misleading (if not downright untruthful) things in his review.
3: He genuinely believes what he has written (which begs questions about his reading comprehension).
No wonder Judith still has trouble believing that he has read the book, it is the kindest of the three interpretations.
Am I the only one that finds Peter Gleick’s outrage and demands for corrections from Judith just a little ironic (if not down right hypocritical) given the questions about the accuracy of the review in question?
Somebody said “cannon fodder”.
John,
You can’t expect someone as important as Dr Gleick to waste valuable time reading what Judith Curry actually wrote, do you?
Hahahahah!
Love the ambiguity of the English language. That statement can be read as a damning condemnation of Climate Change science.
Gleick, you are exquisitely exemplifying Laframboise’s “spoilt-child” metaphor – was this your intention? Please do carry on though, I’m sure she welcomes the boost your pre-teen petulance is giving to sales of her book.
“it is a lie that Gleick didn’t read the book”
Since when do honest people refer to themselves in the third person?
If you read the book, then I have to wonder what other things you have read and completely misrepresented later?
Or perhaps you suffer from an undiagnosed reading disorder that leads to such non-fact based claims in other areas, or does it only happen when you read things you don’t like?
The interesting thing about your review is not that you did or did not read the book but that it looks to the casual observer and expert alike that you did not read the book. So in the final analysis it matters not if you read the book or not, your review and your review alone suggests you either did not read it or did not comprehend it. It is impossible to know which out here in Blogville. Either way you have no winning position. Yours was an error of character or an error of substance (as in you have none) and it doesn’t matter which. FAIL, Mr. Gleick, major FAIL.
looking at the words Peter does not constitute READING.
your comments are not even close to being accurate. That means one of two things
1. you looked at the words, didnt comprehend them and wrote a review
2. you didnt look at the words and wrote a review.
Neither of those constitutes reading.
Perfect coming from a high priest of CAGW, your review leaves readers to wonder did you actually read the book.
Actually, Gleick does not seem to have played an active role in the IPCC.
True.
So you are uninformed as to the claims of the book you claim to have read?
Right – other than being a leading cheerleader (you know, the type that hangs around with the football team) no part of the IPCC.
Or perhaps he is an IPCC groupie?
IPCC fluffer.
JC states- “As a student of the IPCC since December 2009 (yes I was defending the IPCC until that point), I’ve looked at many of these issues myself…..”
And a big thank you for starting your blog to share your learning with the rest of us! For without your and Anthony’s looking into the processes I would still be in the dark. I have only recently, less then a year, been looking at the uncertainties in the Science and policies inherent in Climate Studies. This post alleviates a fear of mine that there was no corrective feedbacks in the processes (as originally- to me anyway- stated by Garrett Hardin: “The great challenge facing us now is to invent the corrective feedbacks that are needed to keep the custodians honest.”)
Amazon : Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
http://www.amazon.com/Gang-That-Couldnt-Shoot-Straight/dp/0316111740/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319048753&sr=1-1
Very similar storyline.
Is “shoot” the word they use to describe driving a hockey puck?
Joshua,
That’s a Bible name, ain’t it?
Sure is, Don. Do you think that’s significant somehow?
Judy – You may be right that the IPCC will have outlived its usefulness after AR5, but if it is to be discontinued, I think it would be unfortunate for it not to be replaced by some other mechanism for synthesizing the output of climate data sources into a document useful to the international community beyond the scientists themselves. I certainly agree with you that whatever emerges should not be an unchanged IPCC, but how much change is required and where is an important question. You state:
“Does the problems with the IPCC mean that WG1 science is incorrect? Not necessarily, but I agree that a “new trial” is needed. WG2 and WG3 reports pretty much belong in the dustbin, as far as I can tell.”
I see that as an exaggerated response. From my own knowledge of climate change garnered independently from IPCC reports, I would say that WG1 has been an extraordinarily valuable scientific resource. Its assessments, in my view, have generally been highly accurate, a few areas are questionable because of disagreements about judgment (e.g., the shape of pdfs as priors in climate sensitivity evaluation), only a very small number at most can be deemed clearly inaccurate, and those are peripheral to principal conclusions about climate change. It would be a shame to lose that resource.
Like you, I see WG2 and WG3 as more problematic, but “dustbin” may be unfair. WG2 certainly should be fixable by excluding some of non-scientific advocacy inputs, and it’s important for us to continue to have a resource available that addresses climate impacts. WG3 would seem to me the least salvageable of the three in its present form. Even so, it would be worthwhile for some mechanism to exist we can turn to learn what is being proposed for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
As to the book by Laframboise specifically, It would be a good idea for me to withhold judgment, because I haven’t read it.
Judy – You may be right that the IPCC will have outlived its usefulness after AR5, but if it is to be discontinued, I think it would be unfortunate for it not to be replaced by some other mechanism for synthesizing the output of climate data sources into a document useful to the international community beyond the scientists themselves.
I’ve thought about this. I’m thinking the best solution is, if you are going to have an organization like this, it shouldn’t be under the UN umbrella. Too many of the organizations set up within that body devolve into a bad joke with no oversight…. Oil for Food… Peacekeeper Sex Scandals…. And how does Iran and Libya end up on the UN Human Rights Commission?
I’m not anti UN, but I do think they have expanded way way beyond the scope of which the organization was intended, and many of the branches and subcommittees established, even with the best of intentions, end up doing more harm than good.
Gorsh, how do other sciences get by without some official body synthesizing research into a document useful to the international community? I can see it now: Intergovernmental Panels of Physics, Astronomy, Ecology, Psychology, Chemistry, Meteorology, Biochemistry, Medicine, Biology, etc. Many of those with numerous sub-Panels, of course. What a glorious vision of the Triumphs of Consensuses!
Brian – Sciences whose conclusions affect society at large often have their own official international bodies. An example is the IARC, an organization encompassing aspects of medicine, biology, biochemistry, and biology, and whose evaluation of which substances are carcinogenic and which are not is given considerable weight in policy making circles. This is just one of many examples of IARC influence. You mention meteorology, but isn’t the IPCC in part a product of the WMO? Organizations in general tend to arise and persist because someone want their input. The issue in my view is how to ensure adequate input.
“accurate input” rather than “adequate input”
Here is IPCC’s statement five years ago:
Since IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global average temperature increases between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to 2005. This can now be compared with observed values of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confidence in near-term projections.
Here is what the observation shows now:
http://bit.ly/p5976o
In the most crucial area of predictions, the IPCC has got it very wrong.
Disband the IPCC!
Fred Moolten
You suggest that IPCC may have “outlived its usefulness after AR5”.
I would agree that it has already “outlived its usefulness” and has, in fact, become irrelevant.
An AR5 report would be equally irrelevant, so there is really no need to waste the time and effort to put it together.
(See comment by John Whitman below for a better idea.)
Max
Fred,
The problem seems to be that should the IPCC be ‘disbanded’ one is faced with the immediate problem of needing something/somebody to provide a good summary of current knowledge.
Judith, you write “Does the problems with the IPCC mean that WG1 science is incorrect? Not necessarily, but I agree that a “new trial” is needed”
You are 100% correct, but how is this to be accomplished? I would suggest that just about the only trigger that would precipitate such a course of action would be for some very notable supporter of CAGW to come out publicly and ostentatiously to shout that this needs to be done. My candidate for doing this is either the American Chemical Society, or the Institute of Physics. Will either of these august bodies, or some other, have the courage to burn their bridges and take this step?
“the only trigger that would precipitate such a course of action would be for some very notable supporter of CAGW to come out publicly and ostentatiously to shout that this needs to be done”
Judith was the CAGW poster child, until she spoke out. There is one and only one solution that will work. CUT THE FUNDING.
I bought the Kindle version and started to read it. My reaction based on the first few chapters is really disappointed. She is using the views of a few people as evidence in a way that I consider to be of practically no value.
There’s certainly essential things to criticize in IPCC, and I have proposed myself that major changes should be made. I have also been very critical on WG2 and WG3, but presenting “evidence” as the book does is really terrible. When that sets the tone, I cannot take anything else seriously.
I am gonna have to call you on that. What people and what evidence in the book are you referring to?
Reading the first few pages of this book, I find:
As far as I can see, this statement taken out of context says just the same thing it does in context. (I’m reading the Amazon sample.)
I don’t know what to think: Technically this statement may be correct: screwing something up may not constitute “human control“. But the impression it’s going to give will be unfortunate: “scrap the IPCC and forget about climate.”
“scrap the IPCC and forget about climate” pretty well sums up my position. By some weird process of collective hysteria, a smallish group of the anglospheric elite has seized on the notion that the climate is something we should worry about and spend vast sums of money researching and trying to control. They have managed to obtain a worryingly large degree of consent from the broader community, although much of that consent has in the last 2 years been withdrawn, either expressly, or, to a greater extent, tacitly. I see no evidence to support the claims of the elite, and hence can see nothing but good coming from “scrapping the IPCC and forgetting about climate.”
AK,
So should we maintain a provably corrupt organization that claims to address an issue?
Nope, I make a distinction between the IPCC and climate science. I’m with Prof. Curry that the best thing would be to scrap the IPCC and find some other way of synthesizing the science for the sake of policymakers. However…
That’s probably not going to happen. My best guess, based on what I’ve seen and read of the history of such organizations, is that it will be impossible to shut it down, and the best we could get out of the situation is that it somehow gets reformed.
Next best would be that the effort to reform it ends up stalled, and nobody pays attention to it.
Only after that would I place the option of everybody forgetting about climate concerns, while I’m still very sure the IPCC would be there in the background making trouble.
If it doesn’t get successfully reformed, I suspect that in another decade it won’t really count for much, because nobody will regard its products as useful science. And governments won’t listen to it unless it’s saying something they already want to hear, and they’ll have their own resources to synthesize the science, unless the scientific community puts together something on their/its own.
Easy to find out, but I left the names off by purpose.
Pekka, if you were writing such a book – with a target audience being the general public (as opposed to the scientific elite) – how many examples would you provide in order to substantiate a point you were making?
Incidentally, did you follow the links to the footnotes? My recollection is that for each substantive point Donna made, there was always a footnote leading to several additional examples – and, of course, throughout the book, links to the sources of her evidence are readily available.
I have now continued reading the book. The problem is that it’s so strongly tilted towards standard skeptics’ arguments that nobody on the other side of fence will give it practically any weight. I’m not interested in reading selectively picked lists of potential problems and references to strongest critiques whose opinions are already known and predictable. If a book proceeds along those lines too far, the rest will not be read by anybody disagreeing.
I don’t think this book has any influence.
One reason that I find much written in the early chapters of little value is that I’m already rather cynical on many points discussed. I know about many common problems on UN organizations, but I know also, how these are circumvented in practice. Thus writing that just lists the problems, but doesn’t even hint, what the reality behind the curtains is, doesn’t provide useful information in my view.
One obvious example is the number of listed authors of the IPCC reports, who have contributed very little. Their number means that the rest must have worked much more. Some of the rest may have had too much say in the outcome, but these issues are a problem of an totally different nature than the almost zero contribution of some of the others.
I have had similar problems with every chapter that I have read or looked at more superficially. To improve IPCC something very different from this book is needed.
Personally, I don’t believe the book was written to improve the IPCC. Just look at the timing relative to the US elections.
The question is even that case, whether a book applauded by those, who already thought so and dismissed by the others has any influence.
Um, yes. Lots of people will “love” it or “hate” it based on 2nd or 3rd hand recommendations. When their politics changes, so will the recommendations. And there’s going to be a large majority of people who’ve never heard of it till the campaigns get into high gear. How it’s sold and anti-sold will (partly) determine the proportions of people who pay attention, but IMO this is going to be a big piece of ammunition in the Republican arsenal.
USA elections are ever four years , the next one is at least a year away , how many years before or after an election would this book have to be published before your allegation could not be made ?
They’re already holding straw polls for the Republican Primary. Most of the candidates have been dismissive of “Global Warming”. It’s a little earlier than I expected, and I’m guessing that there’ll be a couple more books from extreme-conservative hacks over the next few months, but the timing is right.
Well, AK, your first sentence is quite correct! The IPCC was given a chance to improve with the lifeline handed to it by the IAC’s report. As subsequent actions (or more to the point non-actions!) and events have shown (many of which are documented in Donna’s book), the IPCC failed to grasp the lifeline handed to it on a platter. [In much the same way, it strikes me, that Gleick has failed to grasp the many lifelines handed to him on Amazon and here!]
But, your second point, I’m afraid is way off the mark! The timing of the publication of The Delinquent Teenager … had absolutely nothing to do with the US elections. Yes, the book took two years to write; but it was definitely not a “two-year plan”!
In the Acknowledgments, you’ll find the following:
“Elsewhere” is linked to a July 14, 2011 blogpost in which Donna describes the “evolution”, growing pains – and reasons for delay – of her book.
Pekka
Don’t you think the book was intended for those with a far lower understanding of the relavant issues than you have?
That’s what I’m afraid, because my feeling is that they would be seriously misled by it – except that the tone is so obvious that my above comment is likely to apply.
Pekka, I think you’re not understanding where this fits in in the big picture. Donna Laframboise is a journalist by trade, and she’s quite good at that. She’s not a scientist, and she isn’t pretending to be one. She’s roughly the skeptical counterpart to George Monbiot. You won’t expect a science book out of Monbiot, and you wouldn’t expect him to walk the center on the political issue, either. Keeping that in mind, it is a bit of investigative journalism. That’s what it is, and that’s all it is. Should the IPCC not be scrutinized by investigative journalists?
Pekka, this book is not about the “arguments” of either side. Yes, some issues are touched on for context; and in each instance the reader is directed to additional sources if s/he wishes to explore further – and decide for her/himself which “side” has the better “argument”.
It is about the abysmal failure of the IPCC to measure up to even the minimal standards it claims to have. It is also about the abysmal failure of journalists – who should know better – to even ask the basic questions, before parroting the IPCC party-line.
IMHO, no one with an open and enquiring mind could possibly read this book without concluding that the IPCC is far from deserving the “gold standard”, “authoritative”, “transparent” etc. etc. labels on which the myth of its infallibility has been built.
All that is presented as an argument of one side.
P.E. is referring to the book as investigative journalism. Perhaps, but is it really investigative or declarative?
I would qualify it as investigative, with a strong judgmental element.
Judgmental, yes. Like NGO and environmental associations are just as bad as corporate. I tend to agree, but the book doesn’t make enough of a point about it up front, IMO.
Fair point, but all investigative journalism is adversarial. That’s the nature of it. There’s not much substance to a friendly investigation. I’ve seen those in the media, too.
There are two approaches also in investigative journalism. One is trying to understand the whole issue and report on that more or less objectively. The other one that I don’t like is choosing strongly one side and cherry picking the evidence to support that.
@Pekka Pirilä…
I’m not sure how things are elsewhere, but when I see a book with “IPPC Expose” on the cover, I already know it’s going to be a one-sided attack against the IPCC by somebody who thinks they’ve found evidence it’s done something wrong. AFAIK that’s true for most US’ers, and, as I’ve pointed out, this book was almost certainly pointed at the upcoming election.
Laframboise is Canadian
Point taken. Of course, many American liberals claim a connection between US and Canadian conservative politics, but I’ve never looked into it. Therefor:
…this book may well be pointed at the upcoming election, and will almost certainly be a big player.
But Prof. Curry, why wouldn’t a Canadian be just as interested in an election-year sales boost as a US’er?
AK, I’d say your stretching on this one. There is a Pres election in the US every 4 years and some other one every 2 years in-between. They are on nearly perpetual election watch there.
@Kermit…
You’re entitled to your opinion. Like anybody else, I have a limited perspective on the wider effects of any publication on the elections. However, right now is the key time when the Republican Party is wrestling with itself trying to choose a candidate. This book will have a specific value to very right-wing people trying to pursue an agenda with the more moderate right and the center, WRT the candidate and party stance. The press is highly biased, and this book, although biased itself in the opposite direction, will serve as a powerful counterweight WRT global warming, and in the more general sphere, given solyndra.
That’s my opinion, with reasons. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. But I would advise the author to prepare for interview requests from Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck, and the like.
“But Prof. Curry, why wouldn’t a Canadian be just as interested in an election-year sales boost as a US’er?”
Do you mean that this Canadian is aware that conservative buy and read more books than progress democrats?
So, it’s strictly about making money?
Or that the Canadian is for Perry or Cain and against Romney- or traditional Republicans- Bush, McCain, RINOs, etc type side of Republicans [The Republican establishment are believers in the importance of UN as political body].
Though if you want real trash talk of the UN, pick up a Lefty book on the topic.
@gbaikie …
One of the key right-wing ideals is making money while doing good things: things one believes are for the general good. It shows a pretty strong left-wing bias to assume that anybody pointing out somebody’s profit opportunities is bashing them.
“@gbaikie …
One of the key right-wing ideals is making money while doing good things: things one believes are for the general good. It shows a pretty strong left-wing bias to assume that anybody pointing out somebody’s profit opportunities is bashing them.”
I didn’t think you were bashing.
I was trying to figure out what you meant.
I would agree that the Left generally is largely motivated by envy- or
envy is tool used a lot.
I would say the ideal of left-wing is equality.
For right-wing the ideal is liberty.
Or the American right ideal is expressed in American Revolution,
and the Left ideal is expressed in French Revolution.
One lead to greatest nation the world has seen, the other lead to greatest bloodbaths the world has ever seen.
One of greatest Lefties was Jefferson, who said:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Less worthy lefties have been more eager for the bloody.
@gbaikie…
In past election cycles, I’ve personally seen the book stores stock up on political books, and sell plenty of them. People will buy books on political subjects that they clearly won’t during other parts of the cycle. I’d guess December 2011 through perhaps March 2012 would be the best time to release a book intended to be a hot election seller, although the way the fiddle with primary dates makes it very uncertain.
A book like this one may actually get more play during the primaries than the finale.
@AK
I can tell you categorically that the timing of this book had absolutely NOTHING to do with the US elections.
The timing had more to do with Donnas schedule and a few months she had free whilst house sitting for a friend.
Hilary may be able to confirm.
Pekka:
“One is trying to understand the whole issue and report on that more or less objectively.”
Who does that Pekka?
Pekka: “Perhaps, but is it really investigative or declarative?”
Donna did a lot of investigation to come up with the information that she presents about the IPCC. Are you saying that the information is wrong? If so, what parts? Does she make declarations backed by those investigations. Yes. And?
Pekka Pirilä:
Usually by leaving them out, in my experience and laughing at their blunders combined with their pomposity. (I wish this was an exaggeration.)
Maybe your experience is different? If so, if it doesn’t breach confidentiality, I’d be interested in an example.
By the way, I don’t plan on reading the book, because I feared exactly what you encountered (too much of a slant towards failed skeptical arguments). The idea of the book is a good one, it sounds like the execution was lacking in places, not surprising (editors have a role to play in improving even manuscripts like this one, pushing it towards a more neutral POV where it could have had more of an impact).
I didnt like the teenager metaphor. Kinda ruined it for me.
I think a bimbo metaphor is probably better
The first few chapters are not the best ones, i found the best ones to be in the middle.
So 5 stars in the middle, that makes 4-5 stars for the whole book?
Great review, thanks Judith.
Edit note, typoz:
getten at second-and
authorites who have not themselves eamed the questions
members from the developing countires
lead author] seeral times,
nothing more than a singleword:
opportunity to asses.
what qualifies as peer-reviewed leiterature
the strongest 9yet still speculative
place our fait in new
human ingenuitywill find
has no bisness using theoretical
this process is fatelly flawed.
WHile the IAC report said
Yikes, this is the last time i try to actually compose something in wordpress
Most browsers have spellcheck either optional or built-in, so that you can at least get that in WordPress. I think IE is the only one that doesn’t? Or was that Safari?
I use safari
Firefox has a great spellchecker and its free.
I’m pretty sure you can get Firefox, Chrome, or Opera for Mac. All of them have spellcheck (Firefox has the best, Chrome’s is horrible).
Dr Curry,
If you are using a Mac, right click and select the option to check the grammar now. Obviously, in won’t flag “rain” as incorrect if you type “pain”.
I apologise if my assumptions are incorrect.
Thanks for the review.
In Safari under edit or right click then check off spell check while typing, there is also a grammar check while typing which you can tell, I don’t use.
Perhaps Siri will even type for you.
I thought that you were working some Old English into your composing, or that you had imbibed a 40 oz Olde English 800 Malt Liquor.
We actually should be amazed at how much faster a hoax gets debunked these days compared to days of yore. Measured by time of its dramatic rise and eventual plummet to earth, we’re looking at more like 10 years to defeat the global warming hoax instead of about 50 years for the Piltdown Man Hoax to be understood (even then, it took another 50 years to piece together who all was in on that hoax).
Well Joshua, you are always delving into the religious beliefs of skeptical commenters and insinuating that the religious must necessarily be mentally deficient, or at least anti-science. I was wondering if self-loathing had anything to do with your prejudices. I am not too familiar with the Good Book. Is Joshua Old Testament, or the newer one? (Let’s see if this genius has any sense of humor.)
Actually, Don although you keep making such accusations, they are completely unfounded. I don’t think that religious people, as a rule, are any more likely to be mentally deficient than the next person. The anti-science question is a bit trickier – as some people who are religious believe in theories that are not scientific in nature, and confuse them with scientific theories. But that certainly isn’t true for all religious people, so being religious in and of itself is not the controlling variable there.
I’m not entirely sure why you are asking me whether Joshua is from the Old Testament or the New Testament. Would it have something to do with different faiths, and which faiths rely on which testament for religious doctine? And what’s up with the discussion of “self-loathing?” Why would you suppose that I’m “self-loathing?” I respect very many religious people. Why would my name being biblical suggest to you something about my nature being “self-loathing?” I can speculate about where you’re going with that – something to do with the New and Old Testament perhaps – but maybe you would spell it out for me in some detail? Do you have the fortitude to do that, Don?
Joshua,
Pomposity is your greatest and most abundant asset. You really don’t have a clue.
Don –
Please note that once again, I’ve corrected your false accusations.
Any time you’d like to get around to answering my questions, I’d be happy to read your response.
Why did you ask me about which Testament the name Joshua comes from?
What’s up with the “self-loathing” question?
The name “Yehoshuah” often shortened to “Yeshua” is a name in Hebrew/Aramaic that was
translatedtransliterated “Joshua” in the English Old Testament, and “Jesus” in the new. Jesus was named after Joshua.AK –
Just a guess – but I think that Don knows which Testament the name comes from. My guess is also that there’s something behind his “self-loathing” comment that doesn’t immediately meet the eye.
And one more, “Does the problems with the IPCC mean”. Needs a match-up of singular/plural, somehow. Maybe “Does the existence of the problems”, or “Do the problems …”.
Thanks Brian H, that puts a whole new slant on things.
The IPCC will not go away after AR5. No serious concerns were raised at the latest IPCC plenary. Government documents continue to refer to AR4.
As a climate researcher, you have two choices. Either you can step up to the IPCC plate, or someone else will in your stead.
It may well that the IPCC becomes academically irrelevant. For instance, I refer regularly to AR2, less often to AR3, and rarely to AR4. (I am not aware of any research that check this systematically.) However, the IPCC still serves a policy need.
The choice is not between IPCC or not. The choice is between a bad IPCC and a good IPCC.
What policy need does the IPCC serve? What has been accomplished as a result of IPCC policy recommendations? Can we expect anything more from the IPCC, other than a succession of reports that say the same thing: “It’s worse than we thought”. Who needs that crap?
The IPCC is the reference for many if not all climate policy documents. Without the IPCC, civil servants would have to agonize who to cite.
Climate policy is framed as a scientific necessity. Without a regular re-assertion of that necessity, climate policy would collapse — to the dismay of hordes of civil servants, do-gooders, lobbyists, corporate subsidy junkies.
25 years ago, all of climate research and policy fit into a single room. (They did it twice, once at Villach and once at Bellagio.) Now, climate is big business, big science, and big policy. The IPCC has been instrumental in that transformation.
Thank you Richard. You have very well enumerated those who do need that crap. The rest of us are getting tired of the expense.
Don, I agree with Richard. It may be the IPCC is heavily corrupted and poorly structured for purpose, but that purpose is not unreasonable. A decent IPCC or something like it ought to exist. And as to expense, I think a lot of the problem with our lack of confidence in climate science is that the IPCC is too cheap! Proper rigorous engineering level review of all the data, science and assumptions for something as serious and as complex as climate change, should be done disinterested contractors and ought to be a lot more expensive. You get what you pay for. At the moment it’s the equivalent of building a moon rocket out of some donated fireworks, an old pipe someone dug up, and a snorkelling mask.
We live in the most industrialised and populated period in human history. It’s reasonable to keep tabs on our effect on the environment. It’s not reasonable to presume everything we do is deleterious.
The politics of this issue in the U.S. may turn out to be different than those in Europe.
With revelations like this, coupled with their debt crisis, I wonder if that will continue to be the case.
I agree with what you have written about the IPCC, but believe the EPA is the now agency that matters in the US.
EPA documents on climate lean heavily on the IPCC.
And the EPA in trouble with the new Republican majority in the House (and soon to be Senate), for relying on that crap. It is very likely that in a little over a year from now, the EPA will no longer be another arm of the IPCC/WWF/EDF/Greenpeace cabal.
How much do you want to wager on that, Don?
I agree that the EPA relied upon papers/analysis that was written under the auspices of the IPCC. These papers/analysis were (seemingly in the best case) based on looking at the outputs of the GCMs that were available at the time the reports were written. Today I believe we better understand the limitations of these models for implementation of governmental policy decisions.
I am not stating that all of these papers are wrong, but that a high percentage seem extremely biased and predominately point to potential harms and minimize the ability for humanity to adapt through construction of appropriate infrastructure and other means. I simply do not understand how a reasonable person can accept them as anything else.
The latest example is a silly paper stating that animals are getting smaller due to AGW, and there are people out there that accept it as a proven consequence. From my perspective a high percentage of the conclusions supported by the IPCC are equally “science based”, and why ultimately, (after litigation) the IPCC will be meaningless in the US.
The EPA is a lost cause, it is as compromised and politicized as the IPCC. The proper place for deciding political issues like CAGW is with the political branch…the congress. The only way to stop the EPA leviathan is by cutting off its hear (its funding) and fixing by statute the damage the EPA is doing by regulation.
In evidence to the EPA OIG, EPA took the position that their Endangerment FInding was not a “highly influential scientific assessment” (as their post hoc justification for not following prescribed peer review procedures), as it simply restated findings by IPCC and CCSP. A highly questionable way of discharging their legal obligations – one that is now raising interesting issues in the Reconsideration litigation.
One major difference is that U.S. has much more own resources than even the largest European states. Thus an international organization is least important for U.S.
The UN and cooperation therewith is a political hot-button in the US.
The UN is viewed by the US right as america-hating, so anything said by the UN or a UN sponsored body will be viewed as crap by 50% of americans by definition.
We have the EU. This at the moment is coping with the consequences of its hubris, the Euro.
Even in this unparalleled intergovernmental structure, there appears to be some doubt as to whether the low carbon agenda is affordable. Once this becomes clear, the science may change…..
You are correct; the NGO-connected mechanism of going through the back door (i.e. activist infiltration) approach re EPA’s CO2 endangerment finding is under scrutiny and in some quarters under fire. Here in the US the way policy was instituted (or attempted) as a congressional bypass via the EPA bureacracy is being questioned. This will (and should) lead to serious oversight investigations and hopefully a throttling back of the EPA. Nobody wants a return to the days of wanton pollution and unfishable rivers, but then again nobody wants US policy to be controlled via greenpeace usurpation of the EPA. A sane solution would not involve extremes so hopefully these things will be addressed.
The IPCC seems to suffer much of the same problem although in this case it appears the rather than unbidden NGO input the IPCC seems to have gone out of its way to simply hand much of the policy suggestions over to them. Laframboise is highlighting a serious problem and one that MUST be addressed before real damage takes place.
It’s sad that perfectly good science is tainted and/or corrupted with the likes of polar bear activism. It was a colossally stupid idea to allow NGOs anywhere near the process, and it’s high time to bitchslap those who let that happen.
As such if it was possible to remove all NGO influence the IPCC could and ought to be salvaged. IPCC without NGO influence yields more trustworthy information; IPCC as presently operated is untrustworthy, corrupted junk science. Clearly the problem is and always has been the NGOs.
IMO it is very very different. From my perspective, the debate has been hijacked as an issue to further polarize right and left wing in US politics. While the case for CAGW implies government intervention and thus antithetical to the right of politics (and therefore taken up by the right in the US), relationship with government is different in Europe. There is no politics driven skepticism that I can see here, it’s only on the science. I am personally very left leaning in my politics and so I get really annoyed at the debate being characterised as left versus right by our US friends.
Sorry I should have referred to what I was responding to:
curryja: “The politics of this issue in the U.S. may turn out to be different than those in Europe.”
In the run up to Rio 20…. Do you think their will be a call for IPCC climate scientists to Influence Rio, statements to be signed that sort of thing
More of the same… look at the statement by the medical profession on climate change.. and just look at the list of who signed it.
http://climatechange.bmj.com/statement/view
Someone needs to tell them that using their medical authority, to make political, economic and technological demands is TOTALLY inappropiate.
Statement
Climate change poses an immediate, growing and grave threat to the health and security of people in both developed and developing countries around the globe.
Climate change leads to more frequent and extreme weather events and to conditions that favour the spread of infectious diseases. Rising sea levels, floods and droughts cause loss of habitat, water and food shortages, and threats to livelihood. These trigger conflict within and between countries. Humanitarian crises will further burden military resources through the need for rescue missions and aid. Mass migration will also increase, triggered by both environmental stress and conflict, thus leading to serious further security issues. It will often not be possible to adapt meaningfully to these changes, and the economic cost will be enormous. As in medicine, prevention is the best solution.
Action to tackle climate change not only reduces the risks to our environment and global stability but also offers significant health co-benefits.[i] Changes in power generation improve air quality. Modest life style changes – such as increasing physical activity through walking and cycling – will cut rates of heart disease and stroke, obesity, diabetes, breast cancer, dementia and depressive illness. Climate change mitigation policies would thus significantly cut rates of preventable death and disability for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
The health co-benefits of lower carbon use save money: reducing EU greenhouse gas emissions by 30% by 2020 (compared to 1990 levels) would save over €80 billion a year in healthcare costs and through increased productivity of a healthier workforce[ii].
We therefore call upon governments around the world to prioritise efforts to address the causes and impacts of climate change. Specifically we urge:
The European Union to unconditionally agree a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions domestically by 30% by 2020, and to prepare further targets towards 2050 which would incentivise the decarbonisation of the economy.
Developed countries to adopt more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, to increase their support for low carbon development and to invest in further research into the impact of climate change on health and security.
Developing countries to actively identify the key ways in which climate change threatens health and democratic governance, as well as undertaking mitigation and adaptation activities, including through supported and unsupported NAMAs.
All governments to enact legislative and regulatory change to stop the building of new unabated coal-fired power stations and phase out the continuing operation of existing plants prioritising lignite generation as most harmful to health.
All parties at the climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, to strive to adopt an ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction agreement consistent with the target of restricting the global temperature rise to 2°C as agreed in Copenhagen and Cancun, and in line with the pending UNFCCC review towards a 1.5°C limit above preindustrial levels. A mechanism ensuring that all people can share equitably the benefits of a safe atmosphere without penalising those with the least historical responsibility for climate change must be established.
All governments to incorporate the UN Security Council Presidential statement from 20 July 2011 on the potential consequences of climate change on security into their short and long term security planning[iii].
All governments to strive to adopt climate change mitigation targets and policies that are more ambitious than their international commitments.
Barry Woods
Maybe some big-hearted philanthropist could arrange that every participant at Rio20 gets a copy of the book before the meeting?
Max
This book is a major disaster for the IPCC even if alarmists manage to poke holes in it or slime the author. Simply because it focuses on the process it puts the IPCC in an untenable position. The policy proposals are so draconian that the voting public is going to expect/demand that the quality of the science meet the glowing descriptions of it that have been made over the years. The IPCC clearly falls far short of meeting that expectation of quality.
This isn’t all the IPCC’s fault. As poor as its quality control process is, the IPCC is still limited to the quality of the underlying science. And that is an even bigger scandal. The more the voting public learns about the lack of transparency, the lack of interest in and active frustration of audit and replication, and the exceedingly poor quality of the statistics and software, the more they will feel they have been sold a bill of goods. That may do more to sink the IPCC than all of the organization’s own shortcomings.
This is not hard the bottom line is , no AGW no need for IPCC or any of its work and no influence over any policy . Now given that what do you think the motivation is for the IPCC to produce any work that does not support AGW?
Even peer-reviewed papers on climate change effects suffer from a very casual approach to assessing how changing climate will affect ecosystems or agriculture or endangered species. I critque the general approach here:
Loehle, C. 2011. Criteria for Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Ecosystems. Ecology and Evolution doi: 10.1002/ece3.7
The statement that I have not read the book is, simply, a lie. Please remove it.
I will change my statement to “It is difficult to believe that Gleick has read the book from the statements in his review.” I would be interested in your reactions to the substance of this book, such as the highlights that I excerpted.
give and take, Peter, give and take
you wrote a very negative and badly informed review
you should therefore have the grace to accept criticism in return
Crap, Richard. I’m happy to take criticism of my review. I take offense when someone tells lies. Judith in her post (now corrected) said I didn’t read the book. She didn’t say that she disagreed with my review, or that it sounded like I read a different book… she said I didn’t read it. You liked the book? Fine. That’s a difference of opinion. But stick to the facts.
I believe that Watts is the source of that claim. Perhaps you should go there and challenge him to defend his claim.
I can’t. Watts censors posters, including me.
Given Watts response to your claim, was your prior statement a lie, simply a mistake on your part, or a change in his position? Can you provide an example of something you wanted posted that was not shown?
In retrospect were your comments “troll like” or reasonable to the articles?
Note that Watts has now offered Peter Gleick a guest post. I’m sure we would all enjoy his extended explanation there of his description of the book as “a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.”
peter that is a lie.
Go ahead and make a comment on WUWT. If it gets deleted, I will be able to see that.
Go ahead. make the comment or retract your lie.
> petergleick | October 19, 2011 at 5:10 pm |
> I can’t [comment at WUWT]. Watts censors posters, including me.
> steven mosher | October 20, 2011 at 3:36 am |
> peter [Gleick] that is a lie.
Steven Mosher,
From the following comment by Anthony Watts, it appears that Peter Gleick’s complaint about being censored at WUWT is correct.
> Anthony Watts | October 19, 2011 at 5:30 pm |
> … Dr. Gleick, you aren’t banned from WUWT, just in what we call the “troll bin” for bad behavior, your comments may be approved if they meet policy.
Now that we’re on the subject, you accuse Laframboise of telling lies. Can you quote chapter and verse?
Please note that I have a stake here. I reviewed two drafts of the book. I did not find any falsehoods (let alone lies, which imply intention). I would like to know where I went wrong in my duty as a reviewer.
Gleick is a Mimophant. Here is Koestler’s definition:
“A mimophant is a hybrid species: a cross between a mimosa and an elephant. A member of this species is sensitive like a mimosa where his own feelings are concerned and thick-skinned like an elephant trampling over the feelings of others.”
Donna was kind (or crazy) enough to ask me to review it twice as well. My question is the same as Dr. Tol’s. Can you point to where there are ‘lies’ or even the normal human inaccuracies?
Because I know she declined to pursue some areas of contention about the IPCC because she couldn’t nail down the story. So I’m a bit curious.
@Tom Fuller
I had the same experience. Donna left out some of the worst scandals because of lack of proof.
Well, “Of the 18531 references in the 2007 Climate Bible we found 5,587 – a full 30% – to be non peer-reviewed.” is wrong, for a start. Plenty of book chapters get as much peer review as peer reviewed journal articles, and those were all marked “non-peer-reviewed” by the “citizen auditors”. And I’d argue that the FAR, SAR, and TAR should not be classified as “non-peer-reviewed” for the purposes of the exercise – mainly because they were reviewed more heavily than most journal articles (even if some think they could have been reviewed better) but also because that’s kind of like assuming what you are trying to prove. National Academy reports should get similar deference. Do that, and you probably whittle the 30% down quite a bit – these examples certainly make up the vast majority of the “gray” references in the couple of WGI chapter audits I examined, though they’d probably be a lower percent in WGII and WGIII. That should be a minimum fix for a process which Donna claimed was taking a “conservative” approach.
Ideally, the remaining non-peer-reviewed references would be binned into “appropriate use” -eg, datasets, basic background references, etc, and “inappropriate use” – eg, the Himalayan glacier reference, but that obviously would be a large increase in effort as well as, in some cases, being more of a judgment call…
OMG! Watts is censoring posts again! Go to realclimate. They will help you get the word out. Did you really read the book?
Or another question that might be asked–does anyone believe this Peter Gleick character really read the book before he wrote his Amazon review? Anyone? C’mon, Pete, stop playing the victim and show some class. It’s obvious you didn’t read the book, guy. Maybe still haven’t.
I don’t believe Gleick hae read the book at the point he wrote the review. I believe given the flak he’s take he may have purchased and hen-pecked a few pages by now, but I’ve not seen anything from him showing any particular familiarity with the book that would lead me to believe he’s done a thorough reading at this point.
I can’t blame him for choosing not to read the book, I can fault him for posting a review of it without having given it a full read first, and I can fault him for what I believe are false insinuations about the degree to which he had read the book at the time he wrote his review.
My suggestion to Peter is to write a more informative review. I found Pekka Pirilä’s much more helpful, though I’m more likely to read the book having seen his negative comments, oddly.
By the way,Dr.Gleick, among other things you seem to have reading comprehension with is the use of the word, “lie”.
A lie is a deliberate statement of something that is known to be false.
Dr. Curry was repeating something which based on what other reasonable people have written due to your non-reality based review of the book in question.
Calling her a liar only underscores the apparent reading comprehension issue you need to deal with, and makes you even less (!) credible to the informed person.
Peter, you have to admit your review was unhelpful to readers and reveals nothing about the actual content. Could you write a more informative review?
I had no intention of reading this book before now
phooey. I wasn’t criticized for writing an unhelpful review. I was falsely accused of writing a review without reading the book. Pardon me for taking offense.
I thought the same thing as J but even if you hadn’t its no big deal to me. I read your review and I saw the others comments and it seemed correct to think you had not read it. It was just an assumption and you did not say “I have read this book” in your review. Just because someone writes a review does not necessarily mean they read the book.
Now, you have corrected it and I take you at your word. Of course, if you have time to write a review regarding the specific contents then there will be no doubt by anyone.
Dr. Curry was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, right. It’s better to be accused of not reading a book that you’ve reviewed than to have your opinion challenged? BS. Dr. Curry was repeating (unchecked) a lie posted on Amazon by others and on Watt’s website, where censorship is standard (I, for example, am not allowed to post comments because he doesn’t like my positions). Ironic, given that Laframboise spends considerable time claiming she’s a defender of free speech and a victim of censorship. Oh, yes, that’s in another part of her book I supposedly didn’t read.
Peter
You seem to have blocked me from your Twitter account. Did I say something wrong?
Laframboise has no association with WUWT.
That’s true, she does not. And Dr. Gleick, you aren’t banned from WUWT, just in what we call the “troll bin” for bad behavior, your comments may be approved if they meet policy. Like Dr. Curry, I try to maintain decorum.
You are welcome to submit a comment on WUWT, in fact, I’ll take it one stpe further. I will give you a guest post slot where you can point by point explain your reasoning about why Ms. Laframboise’s book is “full of lies”.
Please let me know when you’d like to guest post. You can use the contact form at http://wattsupwiththat.com/about-wuwt/contact-2/
Thanks for your consideration.
Thank you for the information
I would be interested in Watts perspective regarding your claim of being bared from that site because he disagrees with your opinions. I doubt the truth of your claim unti it is validated. If it is true, it would be as inappropriate as the actions done at Skeptical Science on a daily basis.
One of the best things at this site is the exchange of perspectives very quickly with virtually no censorship.
As mentioned above, Dr. Gleick is simply in the “troll bin”, his comments get flagged for extra moderation attention, that’s all. If they meet policy, they’ll be allowed like any others.
I regularly disagree with Watts and never had a comment rejected or removed.
I presume that you will have no objection is I quote your entire review:
I’ll let that speak for itself.
I’ll wager that Glick does not return to defend that review.
I am sure that Antony would give you a guest posting where you could give full vent to your SCIENTIFIC criticisms of the book in question. I am sure many people would be interested how you could arrive at you conclusions, as outlined in your review, as to this
stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change
about book which describes the functioning of an organization.
Dr. Gleick,
The first rule to follow when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.
I was wondering whether Peter Gleick signed up to be a reviewer at Amazon just to pan this book, but evidently he didn’t. The page of his reviews at Amazon shows he’s actually reviewed a total of one previous book there: Why Energy Conservation Fails by Herbert Inhaber in 2001. He panned that one too.
Indeed. I’m rarely moved to spend the time to write a review on Amazon unless the book is so egregiously bad that readers need to be warned.
I don’t think your warning is having the desired effect, since you seem to have missed the main points of the book, which is obvious from your review. “D” for reading comprehension.
Judith, you have the /nerve/ to grade me for reading comprehension because we disagree about a polemical book? What about “facts” in your blog? Do you get an “F” for spreading that lie about me? You seriously need to step back and rethink what service you’re actually providing here. And seriously, decency would dictate a formal apology to me, not simply changing your blog text.
Judith, I’m sorry but I must respectfully disagree. You are being too kind. As I wrote a few minutes ago upthread:
In my books, this warrants an “F” for reading comprehension!
Ruffled a few feathers of this here peacock Judith :)
Mr. Gleick. Your response seems overly sanctimonious.
As for demanding apologies.
If it is demonstrated that you have made any statements in your review that can be demonstrated as being either inaccurate or false, can we expect a full retraction and apology from you?
You can ask for an apology when you provide proof of buying the book with a receipt.
Don’t you think that is fair?
From my experience, AGW advocates never buy or read skeptics books. They would not even read them if they are offered for free!
Dr. Gleick,
You are acting like the spoiled teenager the book title is baed on.
Your persistence in accusing Dr. Curry of lying regarding your having read or not read the book raises the point: What evidence, beyond your assertion, can you offer that you actually read the bok?
Most reviews offer that evidence. Your review does not.
Additionally, as has been pointed out before, ‘lying’ is not simply being wrong. “Lying” is deliberately and knowingly spreading falsehoods.
Since all we had, when you wrote your review, was the review, it was a reasonable conclusion that you had not, in fact, read the book. Your review was so wildly uninformed and off base as make that the conclusion of more than a few people.
As you stated, this is a polemical book, but it is carefully documented.
Perhaps you could support specifics in your review by pointing to specific parts of the book that support your claims.
That would go far to remove the unfortunate impression that you either did not read the book or had such a poor comprehension of the book as to render your opinion worthless.
Peter –
You obviously don’t understand.
Judith is “building bridges.”
For example, dismissing McKitrick calling Wagner a “grovelling, terrified coward” as merely an “intemperate” comment on a blog is a well-known bridge-building technique.
Just ask her.
petergleick @ October 19, 2011 at 5:13 pm
It is only a lie if she knew it was false. At the time of the writing, you had not provided any proof of the purchase of the book or of receiving a gratis copy. You throw pejoratives around with ease and frequency, a crime you are also quick to accuse others of. Perhaps the truth hurts?
Too bad you weren’t moved enough to provide a factual basis for your claims. The one fact that you mention in your review — “Seven independent scientific commissions and studies have separately verified [the hockey stick]” is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. I hope you don’t expect knowledgeable people to take you seriously when you write things like that.
Could you point out one or 2 specific example..
And describe why.. ie whether facts are correct or not…
And or your differences in the interpretation of these facts..
Just saying it is a bad book.. will not really work with this audience.
Please be very specific.. pick what you think is the worst 2 chapters and explain why? Pls
I’m glad that Gleick is rarely inclined to write reviews on Amazon, given that his level of reading compreshension is so low.
Somebody said you weren’t associated with the IPCC and you agreed. But how much money does your Pacific Institute get from the Open Society Institute? And I wonder how much the various NGO’s associated with the IPCC get? And I wonder whether your Pacific Institute also has had nothing to do with the IPCC?
AK,
If Gleik is just another Soros parasite, that is very disturbing.
Your bringing up the less than wholseome role of the NGO’s in the corruption of the IPCC and the exremism of the AGW movement is very insightful.
I’m not sure I’d call him a Soros parasite, but he’s certainly part of that crowd. Hard to say at this point whether somebody asked him to jump in because he looked unconnected, or what? I don’t have time (or skills/knowledge), but it sure would be nice if somebody went through and checked whether anybody on that Pacific Institute payroll (and Board of Directors) was connected to the IPCC, and how. Also go through the list of donors to see how they cross-ref against donors to “red-flagged” 501(c)(3)’s
Of course, there’s no knowing (that I know how to find out) whether the Open Society contribution is $50.00 or $500,000.00. Their 2009 financial info is available, but no other years. No idea why.
Public perceptions polluted with paid performers. One wonders how he thought he’d get his money’s worth.
==================
Parasite is a bit inflammatory, I guess.
If I did not have a day job, I guess I would be able to check out these things more efficiently.
According to the last page of the 2009 Independent Auditor’s Report found on your link, the Open Society Inst. contributed $104,530 in 2009 and $78,272 in 2008.
There are no details for Pacific Institute’s prior years, but data on PI’s revenues go from $288,127 (2006), to $3,532,404 (2007), to $6,847,541 (2008), found here: http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/financial_information/financial_info.html
oops wrong link. Pacific Institute’s Revenue data is here: http://think-tanks.findthedata.org/l/114/Pacific-Institute
@more ideas…
Thanks. It looks like the Open Society Institute is one of the biggies but not the biggest. Now if I just knew how to read financial statements… (It looks as though there’s a multi-year grant, but what do I know?)
Now if some investigator with the knowhow and resources (e.g. Donna Laframboise) decided to investigate this “rapid response” book review by a “non-affiliated” writer, she might be supplied with a wonderful follow-on for the second addition, or a blog post capable of going “viral” or both.
i’m so glad you are around to take care of us…
In the old days they burned the books they didn’t want people to read.
Jimmy,
And they burned more than a few authors, as well.
Since you have studiously ignored any and all requests to substantiate your “authoritative” opinions, you leave the reader little choice but to conclude that you are an ardent devoteé of the Because! I! Said! So! (aka BISS) school of ‘critical thinking and scholarship’ – if not a graduate cum laude of such a noble institution.
Hilary I’m starting to think Gleick is employed by Donna to raise interest in the book.
If I hadn’t read the book already, I’d rush to download it after reading Gelicks review and numerous comments here.
Is he employed by Don? If he is not, Don should send him a percentage anyway for doing a sterling job. lol :)
Peter Gleick should decide whether he wants to be a somewhat respected writer on science and technology or cannon fodder for the consensus rapid response team. His ill knee jerk review of Laframboise’s book interpreted was widely interpreted as he having not read the book simply because it read exactly as one would expect from someone spouting off without a proper reading of the book. As a journalist and communicator, the communication lase is doubly damning. Gleick has only himself to blame for any soiling of his reputation over this matter.
Peter, I’ve read much of Laframboise’s book, and I don’t think it is bad, I think it is very much what we need from investigative reporters. She was once such a reporter, and now is one again.
If you think the book is “so egregiously bad,” does that mean you support having advocates from Greenpeace and WWF be lead and coordinating authors of what is supposed to be a disinterested summation of science?
Do you support having 30% of the references in the latest IPCC publication being from the grey literature, such as WWF publications, when the IPCC has itself vowed to cite only peer reviewed science?
Do you agree with the IPCC’s apparent policy of citing papers that have been submitted but not accepted in the peer reviewed literature?
You seem to think that this excellent, short, readable investigative work is at attack on the IPCC science. That science included the idea that all Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, and that North African grain production would drop by 50% by 2020. These “scientific” conclusions are obviously very wrong, and very propagandistic – do you support them? Please note that the reason they made it into the IPCC report was precisely because the IPCC did NOT adhere to their so called principles: these conclusions are from the grey literature. If scientists and not advocates had been in charge, these insults to science and to objectivity would never have occurred.
One small question your statement that “Seven independent scientific commissions and studies have separately verified [the hockey stick]” Seems to be in conflict with the fact that the reviews covered virtual no science being mostly about conduct and procedures, with at least two reports making it clear in their contain ‘we did not cover the science ‘
Clearly is not possible for them to undermines the hockey stick if they did not consider it , but it would also seem impossible for them to verify something they did not consider either. Unless you can explain how it is possible?
@KnR…
Those “independent” studies are addressed in this paper: Scientific Misconduct: A Response to Davies and Fielding by George H. Avery.
A guest access is needed that you don’t have to pay for.
But you claimed that she wrote a bunch of lies in the book.
Quoting YOU:
“This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.”
Sure,and you specified what lies,misrepresentations,and falsehoods by chapter and verse.
Strike one!
You go on to write indicating that you did not read the book before you made the terrible non review review.
“It compiles the old arguments, long refuted, about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which summarizes the state of science on climate change. The IPCC reports — the most comprehensive summary of climate science in the world — are so influential and important, that they must be challenged by climate change deniers, who have no other science to stand on. LaFramboise recycles these critiques in a form bound to find favor with those who hate science, fear science, or are afraid that if climate change is real and caused by humans then governments will have to act (and they hate government).”
Bla,bla,bla is all you ponied up.You who has a doctorate degree can not make a decent attack on a book you allegedly read.Just unspecified verbal barrage.
You claimed it was a compilation of lies.But then you fail to specify a single example from the book.
Strike two!
You also stated:
“Are you already convinced that climate change is false? Then you don’t need this book, since there is nothing new in it for you.”
You really wrote this?
Really did you?
It is a loaded question and followed by YOUR loaded answer.
If you really read the book..You would have learned It was about how the IPCC does its business in making their science reports.
Do you even know what a valid book review consist of? Really I ask you because the body of your scribblings was not written in the style of a rational reviewer.You made nasty claims.Name calling and sweeping statements.
A good reviewer would not written the way you did.He would have pointed out specific errors.Comment on the format of the book.And her style of writing and that sort of thing.Not just a loudmouthed rant that YOU wrote.
Not once did you back up your sweeping statement with excerpts from the book.How can you when you did not read it at the time.Sweeping statements are commonly written by people who does not have specific examples to pinpoint.That is why I do not believe you read the book before hand.
At the amazon website.You did not state that you bought the book or read it.You make a reference to the hockey stick at the bottom of your awful review.But that could have been given to you second hand.
Strike three!
Ooops.
Judging from the comments in reaction to your review rant.You have made a fool of yourself with a hostile unsupported rant.
Your review failed utterly.Next time read on how to write a proper review.
So Peter, have you yet provided a sales receipt for the book prior to the date of your review?
It is easy to say after the fact that you have read the book. Judith along with most everybody here is saying that from your comments if appears you did not read the book before you wrote the review. Or if you didn’t then you did not comprehend what you were reading, because you seem to be completely off base as to the subject matter of the book.
From what I read your review paints the picture that the book is about climate Science. However, it is not. The books is about about IPCC policy and procedures. Nothing to do with the underlying science. Thus the conclusion that it is hard to believe you have read the book.
Here is a reading test Peter:
“The first fun part: Gleick apparently never read the book before posting a negative review, because if he had, he wouldn’t be intellectually slaughtered by some commenters who challenge his claims by pointing out page and paragraph in the book showing exactly how Gleick is the one posting false claims.”
Does this paragraph accuse you of not reading the book?
Heck I taught freshman English. I’ll grade your exposition of this paragraph. Come on Petey. what do those words mean?
Sorry, Steven, but Google Cache has Judy’s original wording (and I’ve got a saved copy on my hard drive now), where she wrote:
“Reviews are pouring in at amazon.com: 38 out of 46 reviewers give it 5 stars. Peter Gleick gives it 1 star, stating ‘This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.’ Gleick hasn’t read the book; the book is not about the science of climate change. Rather, it is about the IPCC as an institution: the use of graduate students, WWF and Greenpeace sympathizers as IPCC authors; the use of gray environmentalist literature in IPCC (especially WG2); lack of conflict of interest oversight; the review process and the process producing the executive summaries; etc. (emphasis added)”
Last I checked it was a breach of journalistic ethics to make changes to thing without acknowledging the change. Folks pounded on SkS over at Bishop Hill for doing so and refused to give an inch when John Cook showed up and explained what was going on. What say you now that Judy has done it?
BTW, feel free to verify my Google Cache claim from the source – it should last for a few more days before it gets overwritten by a new cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=EEu&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&biw=1064&bih=672&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjudithcurry.com%2F2011%2F10%2F19%2Flaframboise-on-the-ipcc%2F&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjudithcurry.com%2F2011%2F10%2F19%2Flaframboise-on-the-ipcc%2F&aq=f&aqi=g4&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=3192l5931l0l6699l9l3l0l0l0l0l268l745l2-3l3l0
I acknowledged the change in the comments. I routinely fix any errors in my main posts that are identified by readers (including a bunch of typos in this particular post). I am not a professional journalist. In any event the change was acknowledged in the thread comments.
Steven,
I think Dr. Gleik has become exactly why Donna titled her book.
I, too, noticed his evasive defense and bluster in lieu of substance
I will be pleasantly surprised if Gleik returns to these pages.
Expect a nice round of bloviation from Romm and RC shortly about how the denialist scum dare to attack a worth. Perhaps Perry can write to us about the immaculate coneption of science and how its practitioners are error free.
Judith –
Perhaps, Judith, you should consider further re-writing the post itself to acknowledge that you first made a conclusion that he hadn’t read the book, and then had to edit your post to reflect that you drew a conclusion without having sufficient evidence to support your conclusion?
It might make your re-write be a clearer attempt to be accountable for your error?
I don’t acknowledge any error in my original post, I changed it at Gleick’s request.
Maybe, steven, you should do a modicum of research before making incorrect judgements about others?
Funny.
Heh, we’re talking about two books, here. The one Peter Gleick read, and the one Donna Laframboise wrote. Don’t get confused.
=============
You might not be a professional journalist, Judy, and I grant you that acknowledging that you’d updated the text in the comments is better than nothing. But blogging is journalism as well, albeit not necessarily for the traditional media, and so all bloggers should aspire to the same journalistic ideal – state the facts, and when you make a mistake, admit it up front and correct it.
According to that ideal, you should have acknowledged that you’d changed that portion in the original post, not in a comment thread hundreds of comments long. A simple “Dr. Gleick felt that my original statement was unfair. I’ve corrected it as follows” would be enough. Heck, simply a strikeout and replace (which, as a user of WP myself, I know to be very simple to accomplish) would have been enough. Steven certainly wouldn’t have posted such a denigrating comment directed at Gleick, at a minimum.
As it is, however, the fact remains that Cook was attacked by many people who comment here, and anyone who attacked Cook (who, by your own criteria, is also not a professional journalist and thus gets the same exemption you’re presently claiming for yourself) and doesn’t criticize you for your failure to admit your error up-front and in the post is a hypocrite.
and
and
and
Whew!
If you’ll simply reread Judy’s original sentence, the meaning is clear: Peter Gleick didn’t read the book that Donna Laframboise wrote.
An excellent and clear statement. I would have stood by it.
==================
Brian Angliss,
I don’t think you are in any position to be accusing others of hypocrisy. Judith’s original comment seems quite consistent with the evidence. Do you honestly believe given the content of Peter Gleick’s review, his apparent fundamental misunderstanding of what the book is about and his clear errors of fact, that he actually read the book? Answer honestly. Judith would have have been perfectly justified to leave the original wording as is but changed it as an accommodation to Gleick. This is hardly unethical conduct and to compare it to Cook’s actions is a comment only on your own credibility and your apparent desire to find fault with Judith,
Now, lets look at at Gleick. He wrote: ““This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.” These are very strong charges. Gleick has been challenged numerous times to substantiate these serious allegations. Every time he has refused. And not a peep from Brian Angliss about Gleick’s irresponsible behavior here. Why not?
Kau, hypocrisy essentially means “doing one thing while saying another.” If I’d criticized Curry or anyone else for their review of the book but not Gleick for his, then you might have a case that I was being a hypocrite. But I haven’t, nor have I made any claim that Gleick’s review is good, bad, or indifferent. I haven’t read his review or the book in question, so I have no way of knowing whether he did or did not make errors in fact. Any discussion about Gleick’s review or the book, as it relates to MY comments, is a red herring.
My accusation of hypocrisy has been very narrow – if you criticized Cook for editing his site without acknowledging he was doing so, then you were a hypocrite if you didn’t similarly criticize Judy for doing the same. Nothing more, nothing less. Given you appear unwilling to criticize Judy and have criticized Cook, you are a hypocrite. Nothing more, nothing less.
Oh, how simple-headed Brian. Let’s compare motives for John Cook’s changes and motives for Judith Curry’s changes.
There is something worse than hypocrisy going on here on your part.
============
Brian Angliss,
That is quite an evasion on your part. You do not need to read the book or Gleick’s review to comment on this aspect of his poor behavior. As has been pointed out multiple times on this thread, Glelik made sweeping claims that “this book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.” However, he refuses to substantiate these claims or retract them. That is reckless and irresponsible and your refusal to acknowledge this while accusing Judith of a far lesser offense is pure hypocrisy.
As regards your comparison of Judith to Cook, that is poor logic. As you well know, Cook was criticized not just for editing posts without acknowledgement but doing it selectively in a way that made the comments afterwards by certain skeptics look foolish. His edits were done years after the fact and he made no acknowledgements in the comments section of having done so. If you think this is the same as Judith’s actions, then it is again only your own credibility that is impacted.
Kau, you claimed I was being a hypocrite – I merely pointed out that as I’d made no statement about Gleick whatsoever, it was by definition not possible for me to be a hypocrite. I was simply correcting an error in your accusation. Words matter, Kau – please use them correctly.
As for Cooks motives, clearly you don’t believe the explanations he provided at Bishop Hill. Whether you do or not, however, he has acknowledged that he made a mistake and is moving forward with a plan to change his approach. He should be applauded for doing so. Curry, by her own comment above, admits no error in the original post.
Now, if you feel that it’s OK for a blogger to acknowledge a change to the original post ONLY in the comments, then that’s fine. I have higher standards for bloggers, especially high profile bloggers like Cook and Judy – changes to the OP must be identified in the OP, not in a nested comment thread now 651 comments long where it’s easy to miss.
I appreciate that you don’t like being called a hypocrite, Kau – no one does. Perhaps instead of lashing out at the person who pointed it out, you should demand the same level of integrity from Judy that you demand from Cook.
Brian Angliss,
Once again your evasion is noticed. I will repeat my earlier comment: Glecik’s refusal to substantiate or retract claims “is reckless and irresponsible and your refusal to acknowledge this while accusing Judith of a far lesser offense is pure hypocrisy.”
When you jump to find (invented) ethical failings in one party but ignore far more serous breeches by the opposing party, that is hypocrisy in anyone’s language.
Let’s give you one more chance: is Gleick’s behavior copacetic?
It’s sort of sad to see sophistry so unsophistick.
====================================
Kau, again, you might have a point if I’d said word one about Gleick’s alleged unethical behavior or taken a position on whether or not Judy point was accurate or not. I have not called her a hypocrite, I’ve simply called for her to indicate updates in the original post instead of/along with any acknowledgment of the change in comments. Perhaps an example would help clarify this point for you.
Let’s presume for a moment that I’d accused Judy of failing to read Laframboise’s book in her glowing review. If I’d called for her to prove she did read it but failed to call for Gleick to do the same, THEN I’d be a hypocrite. Since I haven’t done that, or anything like that, I cannot be a hypocrite about it.
Hypocrisy isn’t a broad brush thing, Kau. It applies to specific things in a specific context. I’ve simply stayed focused on that the specific context here, namely that you and others like you who criticized Cook are being hypocrites if you don’t criticize Judy. Simple, really.
Brian Angliss,
Once again I note your evasions. Why won’t you comment on Peter Gleick’s refusal to substantiate or retract? Please don’t evade again.
Your attempt to narrowly define hypocrisy remains very unpersuasive.
On a second point, you have more than once accused me personally of hypocrisy. I reject your poorly argued equivalence between Cook’s and Judith’s actions, but even if I were to concede this point, please point out where I criticized Cook? Words matter.
Kau, you wrote “As you well know, Cook was criticized not just for editing posts without acknowledgement but doing it selectively in a way that made the comments afterwards by certain skeptics look foolish. His edits were done years after the fact and he made no acknowledgements in the comments section of having done so.”
That is a criticism of Cook. You refused to apply the editing standard for Cook to Judy. That’s hypocrisy. If you didn’t mean the criticism you repeated, you should have indicated so and I wouldn’t have called you a hypocrite.
Let’s put the whole problem into a slightly different perspective for anyone who has trouble applying journalistic standards to Judy’s behavior because “Judy’s not a journalist.” Judy is a scientist, and what she did is like editing a peer-reviewed paper after it was published but only acknowledging the edit in the supplemental material. Would that be considered appropriate behavior for a scientist? I personally doubt it, but as I’m not a scientist myself, I could be wrong.
Brian Angliss,
Before I respond to your latest strained argument, will you comment on Peter Gleick’s refusal to substantiate or retract?
Brian Angliss,
Your evasion now just shows intellectual dishonesty. Notwithstanding that, I will address your false accusations below. Your claims fail on three grounds:
1) I never claimed the criticism was mine. My wording was intentionally precise as I have not investigated all the competing claims around the Cook affair in any depth. Words matter. You claim that I have an affirmative obligation to disavow. On what authority?
2) Even if we accept your strained point that by not overtly disavowing the criticism I accept it, it still does show not hypocrisy. The whole point was to differentiate Cook’s behavior from Judith. Cook was criticized for making the edits years later in a way that seemed designed to make subsequent skeptic comments foolish (I understand he denies this). He left no indications anywhere he had made these edits. Judith did none of this. This is really quite obvious stuff.
3) You called me a hypocrite BEFORE the passage you quote.
Gleick refuse to substantiate or retract. What about you?
Kau, I’ll address point 3 first – I interpreted the following as a criticism of Cook you were unwilling to apply to Judy: “[Judy’s changing of the OP without acknowledging it in the OP] is hardly unethical conduct and to compare it to Cook’s actions is a comment only on your own credibility and your apparent desire to find fault with Judith.” I think that my interpretation of this as hypocrisy on your part is reasonable, especially given the reinforcement you provided in your subsequent responses. However, you are correct that I called you a hypocrite before the passage I quoted in my last response. At this point, if you are willing to call for Judy to identify changes to the OP in the OP, then I’ll gladly apologize and retract my description of you as a hypocrite.
You’re correct that this is pretty obvious stuff. I’m not defending Cook here, I’m pointing out that inappropriate behavior is inappropriate whoever does it. I could be wrong in this specific case, but in my experience bloggers who make unidentified changes to the OP don’t announce those changes in the comments without being challenged to do so – they’d prefer that people not know they’d made an error or misspoke or levied an accusation they couldn’t substantiate. This is a perfectly natural response, the goal of avoiding embarrassment. But it’s questionable when you’re a journalist blogger like Judy and I. And the more well-read your blog is, the more critical it becomes to do things “by the book,” as it were. Cook didn’t, and he was correctly criticized for it. Neither did Judy, yet you and others are defending her for it.
I admit that you never claimed that the accusations you were quoting were your own. Furthermore, I claim no particular authority beyond the conventions of the proper use of the English language, logic, and the need for clarity. In this case, repetition (especially multiple examples of repetition) of a claim without explicit disavowal implies agreement with the claim being repeated. As an example, suppose person A says that the sky was green yesterday. Person B repeats that claim several times in the format you used, namely “Person A was saying that the sky was green yesterday.” Exclusive of a statement that you disagree with Person A’s claim (either volunteered or requested), eventually people will conclude that you agree that the sky was green yesterday. In addition, if someone is not clear about what they mean, it’s usually because he or she failed to communicate their intentions properly, not because the person he or she was talking to failed to understand them correctly. In this case, if you were not in agreement with the comments about Cook, simple clarity you were the one responsible for saying so.
However, as I accepted the implied agreement instead of requesting explicit agreement, allow me to remedy that minor oversight. Do you personally feel that Cook’s editing behavior was inappropriate? Do you personally feel that Judy’s editing behavior was inappropriate?
Brian,
Gleick’s claim he has read the book is no less credible than the observation by many people that he had not read the book.
Beyond his assertion that he has read the book(which is not clear as to whether he reaad it prior to or after his review), there is no evidence, either in his review or in his subsequent claims that he has read the book.
If he read the book, did he read it prior to the post?
If he did in fact read it prior to the post, then why did his review not reflect that?
Brian Angliss,
Let’s cut through your obfuscation. I will withdraw my claim of you being a hypocrite if you’ll comment on Gleick’s refusal to substantiate or retract.
And, seriously, did you make the argument that “what she did is like editing a peer-reviewed paper after it was published but only acknowledging the edit in the supplemental material. Would that be considered appropriate behavior for a scientist? I personally doubt it, but as I’m not a scientist myself, I could be wrong.” You are going down dangerous territory here. You ever heard of Mann et. al. 2008?
You want to be careful, Dr Gleick. ” Hell hath no fury ….”
Ugh. Bad application of that adage. It refers to women scorned sexually. I doubt very much that’s what’s going on here!
Readers need to be warned about you.
Is there any evidence making it believable that Gleick did read Inhaber’s book before writing the review?
The null hypothesis has been inverted. The null hypothesis is now that he didn’t read the book, and he has to prove that he did.
This is somehow fitting.
P. E.
“The null hypothesis has been inverted”
Not quite so easy as that. It is obvious on the face of it that Gleick didn’t read Laframboise’s book before he wrote his Amazon review (though it is possible he read the book afterwards). And his insistence that he did too read the book is about as credible as the claims one finds in those Nigerian e-mail scams (perhaps you’ve fallen for such hustles, P. E.–most of us have not).
So forget the “null hypothesis” business P. E. Just sit back and enjoy Gleick’s ham-handed, comically doofoid antics as he attempts to brazen his way out of his little “predicament” and play the aggrieved victim.
P. E.
Sorry, I was a little slow to catch the humor and irony in your post. I get it now–better late than never. My apologies for the inappropriate “snark” in my comment immediately above.
“The statement that I have not read the book is, simply, a lie. Please remove it.”
It would appear from the above statement that you did not read the book before you offered your review. Otherwise you would have written:
“The statement that I have not read the book BEFORE IT WROTE THE REVIEW is, simply, a lie. Please remove it.”
Touché.
(Perhaps he read someone else’s copy of the book beforehand? If so, he must have only skimmed it.)
perhaps he read part of the book
Maybe he has a more advanced definition of “read”
http://read.urbanup.com/1184596
Good catch!
JC
Thank you.
Here is what an insider said about the IPCC
First let me say that in general, as my own opinion, I feel rather unconfortable about using not only unpublished but also un reviewed material as the backbone of our conclusions (or any conclusions). I realize that chapter 9 is including SRES stuff, and thus we can and need to do that too, but the fact is that in doing so the rules of IPCC have been softened to the point that in this way the IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science (which is its proclaimed goal) but production of results. The softened condition that the models themself have to be published does not even apply because the Japanese model for example is very different from the published one which gave results not even close to the actual outlier version (in the old dataset the CCC model was the outlier). Essentially, I feel that at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes. I think this will set a dangerous precedent which might mine the IPCC credibility, and I am a bit uncomfortable that now nearly everybody seems to think that it is just ok to do this. Anyways, this is only my opinion for what it is worth.
http://bit.ly/qE6UUb
Yes, disband the IPCC!
“Rather than keeping its distance from those whose careers have been associated with activism, the scientific establishment now honors, celebrates and promotes such people.”
…e.g., the IPCC and Al Gore sharing the Nobel Peace Prize for helping dead and dying Old Europe drive a few more wooden stakes into the heart of enlightenment, much to the satisfaction of every dictator, despot and tin pot dictator in the UN.
With deep regret, Wagathon, I agree. If climate skeptics saw “Big Brother’s” toe, the right of people to self-government is at stake.
Thomas Jefferson warned, in the last paragraph of his letter to John Holmes in 1820, that US citizens might not sufficiently value the sacrifices made in 1776 to establish the constitutional right to self-government.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=461
For that reason, I wish climate skeptics were wrong. If skeptics are right, we need to study the personality of Big Brother (BB):
a.) BB dislikes George Orwell’s book, “1984.”
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
b.) BB is secretive and seeks total control.
Witch-hunt of Wekileaks’ Julian Assange.
c.) BB uses drugs to limit personal liberty.
http://www.szasz.com/legacy.pdf
d.) BB provides distractions for every group.
_i. Video games for children,
_ii. Soap operas for adult females,
_iii. Gladiator sports for adult males,
_iv. Sex, violence and drugs for teen-agers,
_v. “Reality” shows for all to escape reality, and
_v. Consensus models for pseudo-scientists to “study”
e.) BB dislikes any power greater than BB
_a. Religions and Gods
_b. Discoveries that show BB is not in control, e.g.,
1. P. D. Jose, “Sun’s motion and sunspots”, Astron J 70, 193-200 (1965)
2. P. Toth, “Is the Sun a pulsar?” Nature 270, 159-160 (1977)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v270/n5633/abs/270159a0.html
3. C. A. Rouse, “Evidence for a small, high-Z, iron-like solar core,
Astron and Astrophy 149, 65-72 (1985)
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1985A%26A…149…65R
“Honestly. The IPCC was established by politicians, its experts are selected by politicians, and its conclusions are negotiated by politicians.”
Cue the peasants, hand out the pitchforks and torches…someone gave Frankenstein a bad brain.
Judith,
You say that Donna Laframboise is mistaken when she writes:
“If not a single hurricane expert thinks there’s a link between hurricanes and global warming………………>
But you don’t explain exactly how she is mistaken.
What is your opinion on the link?
I wrote an extensive post on this a year ago
http://judithcurry.com/2010/09/13/hurricanes-and-global-warming-5-years-post-katrina/
I’d forgotten that was the first post after “Welcome to Climate Etc.” Appropriately it was about hurricanes. It’s been fascinating looking back on Climate Audit to your involvement there five years ago on the same subject. Which brings me to:
I agree with you that the more important chapters of The Delinquent Teenager are later on but I think Donna needs to lay a foundation and she’s doing her best here, as a non-scientist. Problem being: you’re a hurricane expert. You’re not I think such an expert in sea levels and even less so in diseases communicated through mosquitos. While Donna shares with me the distinction of being a non-expert in all three.
These are the three areas chosen to try to substantiate the claim that, while the IPCC has been happy to select a number of young people to help write chapters, with precious little experience, it has either ignored completely (Gray) or, by its editorial decisions, driven away (Reiter) experts of many years standing (at least as Laframbiose sees it).
Each of the three men chosen is a quite different case – even I knew that. The key passage on Gray is:
Now I believe that last paragraph and I believe Donna’s right to suggest it was a flaw in the IPCC, if you consider the first report was produced in 1990. Whatever the faults and limitations of Gray.
But the bigger issue is the ignorance of all experts, in all but very narrow fields. In a very short space I though Laframboise did extremely well on that (helped by two admirable quotes on the Title Page, from Freeman Dyson and Danny Hillis – the best thing in the whole book on the Millennium bug).
Hence my rating of 4.75, rounded to 5 stars.
But of course you have a point, especially about the Landsea details later. Or at least I trust you do.
Thank you for saying that you’d prefer the IPCC to disappear after AR5. What damage is it going to set in motion before that? And how do we mitigate for that? That would be worth a separate thread.
“So, how will this book be received by the climate establishment? First, I suspect that they will attempt to smear Laframboise as a denier.”
Disappointed? No smearing here in the comments up to now.
So, how will criticism of the book be received by the skeptical establishment? Oh, I’ve learnt a lot here in the comments reading about Peter Gleick.
PS: Did I read the book? (Note: nice people ask before asserting):
No ;-)
I can’t predict the precise impact of this book without having read it, but I have some general sense of what to expect based on history. As a scientist, my personal perspective on climate change probably began about 7-8 years ago when I first became interested in climate change from reading the literature. What has impressed me since is that almost every year, a new revelation emerged reputed in the blogs and media to represent the final death blow to the anthropogenic global warming concept. I can no longer recall them all, but they included the hockey stick errors, cosmic rays, Miskolczi, Lindzen/Choi, and a variety of others. It strikes me that none of this has come to pass, and while the IPCC and climate science should not be conflated, I see the scientific conclusions as having been strengthened by the evidence accrued during that interval. Public opinion has changed little (according to the Gallup poll cited in a recent thread), although public eagerness to take prompt action has waned.
I attribute the latter mainly to the multinational recession, although ClimateGate revelations have probably contributed to some extent through their effect on the reputation of the IPCC and thus indirectly on climate science itself – a distinction not easily made by members of the public unfamiliar with the science.
In this regard, has there been any book, any expose’ to borrow from the Laframboise title, that has had much impact other than to earn plaudits or condemnations by committed partisans? I tend to doubt it, with the exception of “ClimateGate” itself by Steven Mosher and Tom Fuller. I think the reason the latter work has stood out resides in the extraordinary documentation it offers, but beyond that, the impression that it is the work of individuals who were credible because they weren’t determined to reach a preconceived conclusion.
Will this new book accomplish the same? My basis for judgment at this point is only a visit to Donna Laframboise’s website (my first). There, I found such extraordinary commitment to a one-sided view of the IPCC that I have to guess the book itself will be imbued with the same bias. This is not to say that the author has no basis for her criticisms, but rather that the imbalance is too apparent not to notice. I therefore doubt this book will be another “ClimateGate”. It will probably be used as partisan ammunition, but I speculate that the final effect will be minimal. I’m prepared to be wrong, so we will see.
Like a blistering cold wind on a delicate hot house flower, the specter of “global” warming alarmism is now seen as Hot World Syndrome primarily afflicting Left-leaning liberal Westerners.
Tax paying citizens want to be sure their money is being spent wisely.
Donna’ book tells us no -not by a long-shot. Everything else is just noise.
Fred,
Please read the book, so that you can predict the precise impact for us. We would be willing to chip in on the cost. And we are all waiting for you to predict the precise impact of all those IPCC-WWF-EDF-Greenpeace assessments. What number are we on now? Any reduction in the emission of man-made CO2 in the foreseeable future (give or take a few gigatonnes)?
Hey Don – Thanks. No need to chip in, just send me a copy.
Hell Fred, you don’t even need to read it. Just pretend you did, and do your worst. Scientists can get away with that kind of stuff. If somebody calls you on it, just indignantly puff yourself up, get tears in your eyes, and whine about them lying on you.
Seriously Fred, I am sure your readers would be interested to know your precise scientist’s assessment of past accomplishments and a prediction, on the precise future impact of all those expansive and expensive assessment reports churned out by the climate scare industry. So far, in my very humble opinion, the impact has been about the same as what you predict for Donna L’s book-“minimal”. Of course, we are not counting the damage that has been done. We are just talking about desired results. Any, yet? We await your pronouncement, Fred.
Have a look at this graph. It is the first derivative of temperature, which gives you the rate of climate (temperature) change over the past 160 years. Clearly, the rate of climate change is DECREASING.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:2011/derivative
.
Perhaps it just shows that the noise in the data is decreasing.
sheesh, Fred: I can’t predict the precise impact of this book without having read it, but I have some general sense of what to expect based on history.
You wrote 4 paragraphs after that? Why?
I often read Freds posts and respect his polite opinions (though I disagree with most of them)
In the above comment, Fred demonstrates his naivette about politics.
ergo…
As Donnas book ably demonstrates, this is all about politics Fred.
And in politics, one can offer as many fool proof “death blows” as one likes. Politicians will just deflect it. They’re made of teflon.
Most people aren’t interested in the science. They just accept it because they’re told the science is from the IPCC and the IPCC is Gold Standard.
This book will change many opinions about that. It’s just a matter of will enough people get to read it.
“almost every year, a new revelation emerged reputed in the blogs and media to represent the final death blow to the anthropogenic global warming concept. …. It strikes me that none of this has come to pass, ….”
I think there’s an invisible cumulative impact, and that eventually a tipping point will be reached. The analogy I’ve used several times on WUWT, in reply to claims that “this is last nail in the coffin,” is that “It takes a lot of arrows to kill an elephant. Keep ’em coming.”
So far (to switch metaphors) the man behind the curtain has managed to brazen and bluster it out, but after this book it will be hard for him to avoid being put on the defensive and forced to make concessions.
I think the book will have a strong impact on environmental journalism, at least indirectly, because the executives at MSM organizations will wonder why they’d never heard these facts, and why their reporters were so soft on the IPCC.
It certainly gives skeptical politicians talking points during debates and campaigns and awkward questions to ask during hearings.
And it gives additional ammo to online commenters in all sorts of venues on the Internet. I suspect many skeptics will challenge believers to read it–and supply a link to its Amazon page.
It also could serve as the basis for a multi-episode TV special. Perhaps John Stossl would be tempted to hire DL as a consultant.
I suspect it will have an impact on judges, if it is admitted into evidence. And maybe even if it isn’t, if it causes a sea-change in public opinion.
Roger, MattStat, Baa Humbug, Don –
Well, that will teach me to try the predictions game, tentative as mine were! I should instead follow Paul Gascoigne’s precept – “I never make predictions, and I never will.”
My larger point is that history has taught us that “death blows to AGW” have been overstated, and the creature has grown stronger scientifically over the years, even though the reputation of the IPCC has diminished. I think the claim that the Laframboise book will have a political impact is probably correct, but if that’s only because it is used as ammunition by partisans, the effect won’t be long lasting. Most of the public is preoccupied by the economic recession, important societal action on climate change (at least in the U.S.) is not a likely prospect in the near future for this and other reasons, and so my guess is that the general public won’t feel they need to pay much attention to IPCC transgressions. Roger’s point about an impact on the judiciary is a good one, though, and we’ll have to see how that affects challenges to EPA findings – my own thought is that the EPA would probably be directed to go back and take another look anyway.
When the economic climate changes, so will the political climate, and I expect at that point for the science to dominate rather than concerns about IPCC behavior that will then be quite a few years old. But maybe I’m underestimating the power of this book. We’ll have to wait and see.
“When the economic climate changes, so will the political climate, and I expect at that point for the science to dominate rather than concerns about IPCC behavior that will then be quite a few years old.”
The only thing that will change the economic climate is the success of conservative US politicians in 2012. If that happens, then the funding of the IPCC, EPA and other soldiers leading the CAGW march to the cliff’s edge will dry up. The funny thing about runaway freight trains is that, while it takes a long time to stop them, once you do, it takes a long time to get them going again too.
No one knows where the climate will be, or the “science” for that matter, by the time enough election cycles and political cycles will have passed to allow the CAGW train to get up to speed again. Imagine the impact on the science if the true believers lose control of the funding mechanism…funding shifted from Schmidt to Curry, Mann to McIntyre..the possibilities are endless….
(Oh, and the concerns about the IPCC behavior ARE concerns about the science. Last I checked, science was a method, not a dogma.)
@ Fred Moolten
“My larger point is that history has taught us that “death blows to AGW” have been overstated, and the creature has grown stronger scientifically over the years, even though the reputation of the IPCC has diminished.”
Have a look at this doco from 1991.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Btd6L31ZYg
As far as I can see, the science hasn’t changed an iota since then. The same scientists are still debating the same points.
sHx
Thanks for the laughs. Ah, the 1990’s. A simpler time. The way people wore their hair. The things they believed. How young they look.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1930/to:1990/mean:60/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/offset:-328/scale:0.01/plot/gistemp/from:1930/mean:204
What was with Pat Michaels setting up his audiences — who knew 1988 was a really hot summer globally — with a trick question about the obscure temperature record of Oklahoma? Did people fall for that back then?
The same fallacies are being repeated 21 years later, yes.
The same points?
Well, the red curve on my graph is what Hilary Lawson’s conspiracy theorists were using for temperature, and the other two lines are what we know two decades later, with improvements from signal:noise analysis telling us the 5 year means were inadequate and we need 17 years or more for smoothing, BEST telling us GIS was more reliable than HADCRUT, the ability to read a graph telling us Lindzen’s “if you start fifty years ago we’re cooling” argument was bogus even then both on facts and on method, and two decades of warming with an extraordinary correlation to CO2 increase pretty much stomping the “no warming”complaint.
So, what we know is that every conspiracy theorist argument of 1990 has fallen flat, and the conspiracy theorists have adapted the same arguments that didn’t fit the data by applying them to more recent data the arguments don’t fit.
Who defined insanity as repeating the same action and expecting a different result?
“I think the book will have a strong impact on environmental journalism, at least indirectly, because the executives at MSM organizations will wonder why they’d never heard these facts, and why their reporters were so soft on the IPCC.”
First, this assumes that executives at MSM organizations will read the book. Why would they start reading anything that contradicts their world view now? Their publications spend enormous time and resources demonizing anything that deviates from progressive dogma. Second, the comment confuses cause and effect. The MSM isn’t dominated by progressive group think despite these executives, but because of them.
“First, this assumes that executives at MSM organizations will read the book. Why would they …”
Because “people are talking about it.”
“… start reading anything that contradicts their world view now? Their publications spend enormous time and resources demonizing anything that deviates from progressive dogma. Second, the comment confuses cause and effect. The MSM isn’t dominated by progressive group think despite these executives, but because of them.”
The executives are not nearly as partisan as their troops, especially their environmental reporters. The executives have taken their word for it.
AK: Donna is Canadian, the timing has nothing to do with US elections. I was one of her volunteers who sorted citations into peer-reviewed and (what amounts to) grey literature. That was last year. As with many other Canadian journalists, getting non-consensus articles published has been a major challenge for her. Sorry, no big oil, no big and evil corporations, just someone who is alert and angry enough to start looking for facts, and she certainly found some. Next up, I hope, Vivian Krause and some illumination of US “charitable” foundations screwing around with Canadian sovereignty. also on her own dime.
@Mark F…
I’m by no means imputing any ill motives to her. IMO the book is going to be a fairly big seller (at least) in the US. I’m assuming she’s interested in sales, since it’s her dime. Timing it with the US elections is just good business for a writer.
I”m all for the IPCC being exposed, and this, IMO, is exactly the right time for it. I’ve already made some private predictions that all the evidence was going to be dug up and used in the campaign, and whether it’s a happy accident, or she planned it that way (which I would have in her shoes), or she was encouraged to do it is irrelevant.
I’m also angry about the IPCC, and would have liked to write such an expose, if I’d had the resources and skills. I’ve been angry since 1998 when Marxbots infested the internet (in support of ratifying Kyoto) insisting that “thousands of top IPCC scientists all agree…” when a quick look at their website showed most were administrators and other bureaucrats and most of the scientists were out of specialty.
Timing it with the elections! , will you better tell us the inside information you have on when the election is going to be , or do you have as little idea of that as Laframboise does ? I would suggest you do a little work on finding out Donna Laframboise actual background before you start down the route of claiming she is ‘right wing’ as a way of attacking the book.
Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 2012. It’s set by law.
I would of thought that it was the last thing that you read which has the most influence on your decisions.
Your elections next year may be the most important thing happening in the world for you guys, but there is a climate summit next month that is due to discuss the extention of Kyoto which may bear some significance to the rest of the worlds media.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-china-carbon-eu-idUSTRE79H35Q20111018
Forgive my ignorance…only being a Brit and all that, but if she wanted to ‘time it for the elections’ which will be in 2012…wouldn’t she be better off leaving it until, say, August 2012, not October 2011, which seems to be nearly a year too early?
@JudithC
I’ve commented before that the Gaia cult has been white-anting the credibility of science for decades. It is quite analagous to an unchecked cancer
Your posts here have convinced me that you now understand this. In my view, your initial naivety has finally given way
You have earned my respect
So if he did read the book and wrote the terrible review, has he not just shown himself to be a dumbass?
Bet he cannot do what Watts offers him.
I think he has shown that he’s been drinking his own koolaid too long. Alarmists have convinced themselves that deniers are stupid and evil. He didn’t feel the need to bring his A game.
In the US we see the same thing with Democrats convincing themselves that their opponents are stupid, evil, “bitter clingers”, racist, mean-spirited, hate-filled, sexist, homophobes, etc. This is all about politics. It should never be a surprise that people respond as they do politically.
I agree with Richard Tol that IPCC is probably here to stay, but I also agree with him, Judith and others that in AR4 the WG2 report in particular had problems. (I was a lead author in WG1 – I’m claiming that was perfect, but overall I was generally happy with it).
So my response has been to step forward to volunteer to be an author in WG2 in AR5, and hopefully make some sort of contribution to improvements from the inside. There are others who feel the same (I believe Richard T does?).
A lot of the focus still seems to be on using the WG2 volume as evidence to inform mitigation policy, but that’s only half the story (or maybe even less than half). A lot of people (IPCC lead authors included) seem to forget that the title of the WG2 volume is “Impacts, ADAPTATION and VULNERABILITY”). Focus on those last 2 points needs to increase, not only in the context of AGW but also other anthropogenic drivers of climate change (eg: land use) and also of course natural climate variability. Indeed most decision-makers who need to act on adaptation actually need to consider near-term timescales when natural variability is dominant anyway.
So I think the IPCC should (and will) remain, but ensure that it provides advice which is genuinely useful to adaptation policy.
I’m going to read Donna’s book when the paperback comes out (in a few days?) – partly because I’ve not got round to getting a Kindle yet, but mainly because I’ve got some writing to finish and don’t want to distract myself – if it’s anything like the Hockey Stick Illusion or CRUtape Letters, I won’t be able to put it down once I start it!
If the IPCC is here to stay, there need to be some changes in how decisions are made, as well as massive transparency. AFAIK there’s no need for secrecy WRT how people are chosen for specific functions, who makes the choice, and so on.
Most importantly, as has been mentioned repeatedly, the whole consensus-building thing needs to be fully removed. Perhaps all the meetings and discussions could be video-taped and made available on the internet?
You’re never going to get transparency from the IPCC until you get transparency from the UN. Which means when Antarctica melts.
Don’t want to distract you again Richard (I sent him crutape letters. – free copy, author blessing . Richard did ask for it/recommendations!!)
But you can get a PDF version, for £3.25 as a download, which can be read on any PC! And of course this has all the links in as well.
WG 1 was pretty good, my concern was the interpretation, in the Summary for policymakers, TAR and AR4. and the media, political, and lobby group ‘spin’ made of it.
Richard Betts:
Can I quote you on that? In fact, I already did :)
Oops, sorry, missed out a very important “not” there…. sorry! It’s late, I’d better go to bed….!
Don’t worry – headlines like “Mad Scientist at Met Claims Perfection for IPCC” will be waiting for you when you get up!
And here it is!! http://twitter.com/#!/omnologos/status/126819791448182784
Good one MM
Thanks guys……!
I’ve had worse – Google my name and Melanie Philips :-)
I assumed it was said tongue in cheek ….
…. which made the comment better in my opinion.
The IPCC is corrupt to the bone. If you don’t believe me, read Donna’s book. The rules that define the IPCC enable the corruption. The management of the IPCC is defiantly corrupt. Pachauri’s arrogance knows the same bounds as his regard for his sexual prowess. Reforming the IPCC to gain even something small, such as transparency, would necessarily destroy it. The IPCC must be disbanded.
I agree with Richard B that the best way forward is to improve the IPCC from within. That is indeed why I volunteered for WG2.
Richard(s), are you happy with the way the IPCC has responded to the IAC recommendations? I am not, which does not make me optimistic that the IPCC can change from within. I certainly appreciate and applaud your efforts, tho.
Judith
Thanks for bringing our attention to this book and for your review.
It’ll be on my Kindle.
Max
@AK
I agree with the need for transparency of process – I think there is a need to break the habit of secrecy by default, as it simply gives the impression of having something to hide. To be fair, the IPCC is getting better as this (a lot of the relevant information is on the IPCC website now) but they could probably do more.
Not sure if I’d want the meetings videoed though – scientific discussions should be uninhibited, but if I was worrying whether what I said was going to be shown out of context or possibly used against me then I’d probably keep quiet – especially if I made a point which criticised another lead author, or asked a “dumb” question which risked revealing my ignorance (but which equally could be the killer question that nobody has thought of!) Both criticism of each other and asking dumb questions needs to happen freely without fear of unexpected consequences!
Richard, is this then a load of nonsense:-
“BREAKING: An IPCC backchannel ‘cloud’ was apparently established to hide IPCC deliberations from FOIA.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/17/breaking-an-ipcc-backchannel-cloud-was-apparently-established-to-hide-ipcc-deliberations-from-foia/
Is it happening? If so why? If it is not happening should there not be action taken against those making such claims?
Hi Green Sand
I was already asked me about that on Bishop Hill (see Unthreaded there). I don’t know about any “backchannel cloud to hide from FOIA”! I just assume that all my work as a UK Civil Servant is subject to FOI (or actually, in the case of climate change work, the Environmental Information Regulations). We are using online document-sharing systems but that’s just because it’s more practical than emailing large numbers of large documents being worked on by multiple authors – so it’s more efficient for change-control and eases the burden on email traffic. Maybe that is what is being referred to?
Thanks Richard, must have missed it at BH will take a look.
Richard Betts said – “[ . . . ] We are using online document-sharing systems but that’s just because it’s more practical than emailing large numbers of large documents being worked on by multiple authors – so it’s more efficient for change-control and eases the burden on email traffic. Maybe that is what is being referred to?”
—————-
Richard Betts,
Does the ‘online document-sharing systems’ you use as an IPCC member contain also the aspects of an online forum in that it has capability of posting and comments like this Climate Etc blog does? And is it username and password protected? And is it outside of the official IPCC IT system? Is it a new system since AR4? If it is new since AR4 then what was the justification for using it instead of emails?
John
You know what? That curious involvement of Peter Gleick with Ursus Bogus…finally, it’s all very clear.
Either the guy doesn’t know how to substantiate his claims, or doesn’t know how to make substantiated claims. And after the exchanges above, I guess the Pacific Institute is in the process of relocating to the ocean’s floor.
@Richard Betts…
OK, I see your point. But that doesn’t change the fact that, from my perspective (and I suspect many others), The IPCC’s purpose has been subverted by methods of political subversion of a distinctly ideological provenance. (That’s code for “they seem to have used methods pioneered by Lenin”.) Nobody knows how people were chosen for roles, nor who did it. The outcome sees Science badly perverted for ideological purposes. (Well, badly is a matter of opinion, and I suppose opinions will differ.)
IMO the entire current political leadership needs to go (from leadership if maybe not from scientific participation), and be replaced by outsiders with a neutral track record of scientific management. There needs to be total transparency WRT NGO and Environmental connections just as much as corporate. There needs to be outside scrutiny of every scientific recommendation WRT the roles played by people with outside interests.
As for “the killer question that nobody has thought of!“, far be it from me to ask for anything that might interfere with inspiration. I wonder though, isn’t the real purpose of these sessions to write a report of the existing science? I have to admit I can’t visualize the actual processes involved, is there some other way we can be sure that inappropriate “consensus building” doesn’t go on? For that matter, where would you draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate consensus building?
Disclaimer: I’ve read the free preview on Amazon, but have no intention of investing any time or money on any more of this stuff.
It’s not so much that it contains outright lies; just that it portrays itself as a piece of ‘investigative journalism’, yet seems only to consider a fraction of the available evidence – that fraction that suits the narrative.
Take Chapter Three. The assertion is that IPCC claims that it consults the best experts are ‘bogus’. In support she gives just three examples : Nils-Axel Morner on Sea Level, William Gray on hurricanes and Paul Reiter on mosquitos.
Do we have to detain ourselves long with Morner? A decade or so ago he was a genuine authority, but now has been disowned:-
“Dear Dr. Osipov:
It has come to my attention that Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner gave presentations at the seminar on climate change organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences at the request of President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. Dr. Mörner attacked the science of climate change, while claiming that he is President of the Commission on Sea Level Change of INQUA.
I am writing to inform you that Dr. Mörner has misrepresented his position with INQUA. Dr. Mörner was President of the Commission on Sea Level Change until July 2003, but the commission was terminated at that time during a reorganization of the commission structure of INQUA. Dr. Mörner currently has no formal position in INQUA, and I am distressed that he continues to represent himself in his former capacity. Further, INQUA, which is an umbrella organization for hundreds of researchers knowledgeable about past climate, does not subscribe to Mörner’s position on climate change. Nearly all of these researchers agree that humans are modifying Earth’s climate, a position diametrically opposed to Dr. Mörner’s point of view.
Sincerely,
John J. Clague
President, INQUA ”
One might have expected an ‘investigative journalist’ to be aware of this fact, no? Maybe she did, in which case her assertion that “there is a disparity between what genuine sea level specialists think and what those who write IPCC reports believe.” is actually a lie, or else she did not in which case the idea that the book is a work of thorough journalism can be dismissed.
You might want also to examine Morner’s HoL submission, which Donna must have read because she cites it. Out of step with every other expert on recent sea level trends, Morner devised a novel and ingenious solution – he TILTED THE GRAPH ON THE PAGE, rendering the trend flat and enabling him to label it ‘No long term trend’. See Fig 5.
One can only imagine Donna’s reaction if this kind of ‘science’ and this kind of scientist HAD been part of the IPCC process, yet she believes him a ‘world-renowned’ expert who ‘belongs at the heart of an organisation of world-class scientists’. Hmmmm.
Gray’s HoL testimony, quoted by Laframboise, dates from 2005, in the following year, our hostess wrote, at Climate Audit… I am not going to critique Gray’s paper, it is beyond rational critcism, i will
save technical comments for such an unlikely event as any of this actually ever gets published. Bill Gray is not a player in the scientific debate, his ideas reflected in the paper referred to at RC are so flawed that they are unpublishable’
Again, on Gray Donna wants it both ways, she lambasts the IPCC reports because although the conclusions are based on peer-reviewed science, not every reference in the reports is to a peer-reviewed document (I leave the reader to spot the logical fallacy), yet she champions Gray who has not had anything relevant published for over a decade, and whose recent work has been judged wanting.
I don’t know enough about the Paul Reiter episode to make an informed comment, however her comments relate to the 1995 AR, which she then conflates with later reports, the better to sell the narrative. But let’s assume she has a point, or half a point. The intial accusation of ‘bogus’ IPCC claims require more than a single disputed example to convince.
Phil,
Your critique is not very convincing. You claim that the book examines only a fraction of the available evidence. I’m not sure what percentage of ‘available evidence’ the book uses but did anyone assume it was all of it? Is it even possible for anyone to know how much ‘available evidence’ exists? Of the available evidence not included, how much of it was equally damning to the IPCC? I don’t think the book asserts that the IPCC never got anything remotely correct.
This is like a court case in which the defendant is guilty of murder, however that doesn’t mean that he never told the truth, helped an old lady across the street or was nice to a dog. That’s not the prosecution’s job. It’s not even the defense’s job during the trial. The trial determines guilt. Good deeds need only be considered when it comes time to sentence the guilty.
I think Donna does a fine job as prosecutor. Not every single charge the prosecutor brings has to be proven beyond any argument for the defendant to be judged guilty. Even if a couple of charges could be debated, what about the ones that can’t? Did the IPCC say they don’t use ‘gray literature’ and then proceed to cite 30% gray literature? There is no possible defense for that and it absolutely demolishes the IPCC’s credibility. The number of IPCC insiders who are political activists? I haven’t seen anyone dispute that inconvenient truth. Did the IPCC use unpublished (therefore non-existent) papers and then refuse to provide underlying data to one of their own expert reviewers to examine the claims made? Any one of those charges being true closes the case on the IPCC. The IPCC doesn’t even claim that these were accidents. It was all done with intent and by design. It was pre-meditated.
The fact that attempted defenses of the IPCC against the charges in the book all focus on tangential quibbles about the debatable reputation of some controversial scientist is telling. Is that the best the defense can do? Quibble over the weakest charge on a huge, long rap sheet of far more serious charges?
Using the courtroom analogy, if that’s all the defense has then I’ll give you the jaywalking and speeding but still convict the IPCC on fraud, grand theft, misrepresentation, reckless endangerment, embezzlement, etc.
The IPCC’s key problem is that it is actually guilty. Instead of redoubling your defense, I suggest you get a new client.
Did the IPCC say they don’t use ‘gray literature’ and then proceed to cite 30% gray literature?
No, the IPCC principles specifically allow the use of “gray literature” – see Annex 2 of the following –
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
The problem, Andrew, is not that the IPCC uses gray literature, but that:
a) the “all peer reviewed” myth has become very widespread [suggest you take a look at Chapters 10 and 11 in The Delinquent Teenager…]
b) the IPCC did not follow its own “rules” regarding the flagging of non-peer reviewed material; and
c) when the IAC recommended:
Rather than “strengthening” the rules by “ensuring that unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature is appropriately flagged in the report”, the IPCC decided to drop the rule, evidently because it was deemed to be “too impractical”.
Peter Gleick, sometimes we have a knee jerk reaction and go to a place where we shouldn’t have gone. We paint ourselves into a corner. If you “man up” and acknowlege your mistake, we will just know you are human like the rest of us and your cause will not be diminished. If you remain silent, it will add to the suspicion many feel when listening to your voice.
As a scientist and a lawyer I see this as very similar to a corporate collapse caused by fraud (eg Enron). Ever wilder claims in defence of the status quo until the metaphorical dam bursts. Subsequent enquiries will reveal the most egregious failures were just stupidity (many will claim that as a defence as we do not punish stupidity), but the punishable crimes come late as the collapse starts and are relatively small in the scheme of things. While many of the worst offenders try to leave, others remain trying to stop the metaphical ship (sorry for the mixed metaphors, but they make the point well) sinking. This is when the real crimes are committed and it gets most unpleasant – now. They move from enjoying the results of their actions to active fraud and potential criminal liability. Actively silencing dissent and whistle blowers, trying to mislead or corrupt influential institutions or regulators (what happened to formelry impartial scientific institutions and peer review and the open forums they provided?), recklessly or knowingly making false claims, changing temperature records to support their position, changing the goal posts (global warming to climate change to climate disruption to … an ice age???), making wilder and wilder claims, claiming the present condition is just a temporary phase and will pass etc. Sound familiar? The irony is that the punishable crimes have a relatively small impact and will be seen with the benefit of hindsight as something that any rational individual would never have done; but in the heat of the moment … So we too often see the people we would most like to see punished walk away.
Whilst both the scientist and lawyer in me are both very angry, there is a real risk that chasing the crooks and inventing more crimainal offences to protect the future (a 20-50 year cycle in corporate law, in reality how long it takes for the mistakes of one generation to be forgotten and repeated) will blind us to repairing, reforming and strengthening the institutions that should have prevented this in the first place or at least not aided and abetted it. This is an era when specialisation has made us too accepting of the claims from other narrow areas of specialisation and too timid to question what appears to be very wrong. The Royal Society motto is Nullius in Verba was created hundreds of years ago for good reason but it is a warning shamefully ignored today.
That sounds like a description of Solyndra. They still have supposedly laid off workers running around the blogosphere attempting damage control. IPCC isn’t that far down the road yet.
I also don’t think that the IPCC will ever really face any consequences similar to a bankruptcy, because they’re under the UN. The UN is untouchable, and so is the IPCC. Even if the US withheld all UN funding over this, they’d still flip the finger and call names. That’s what they’ve always done in the past, and in the end, they’ve always won.
P.E., I just heard that after something has been thrown against the wall 15 times.. they are cominig up tails.
Peter:
Methinks thou dost protest too much. You are far too quick to assert that others lie. Judith made a reasonable inference based upon the lack of content in your review. Your review starts with the claim that Donna Laframboise’s book is “a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.” The rest of your review makes no effort to substantiate these assertions with regards to both the facts referenced and the focus of the book which is the integrity of the IPCC as an institution and the review processes it purports to execute. Moreover, the nature of your assertions demands that you provide some modicum of support for them. Moreover, as others have pointed out both here and at Amazon, you either have egregiously misread the material or simply skimmed the text and saw what you wanted to. In any event your review of the book needs to be amended or removed, if for no other reason than to protect your own reputation.
P.S. I was one of the early commenters on your review as Observer. You are still pounding the table!
An Open Letter to Climate Change Deniers and Skeptics: The Final [Chocolate] Straw
To the few of you left,
OK, you have fought hard to deny or challenge the realities of climate change, perhaps because you are afraid of the policies that might have to be put in place; or are afraid of the possibilities of increased government intervention; or you don’t think it will be that bad; or you think it will be too expensive to do anything about; or you don’t understand the science; or you don’t trust scientists, including, by the way, every national academy of sciences and every professional scientific organization in the geosciences (see the list attached to this Congressional testimony); or whatever.
You may not think the expected consequences of climate change are bad enough to do anything, despite what researchers have been telling us for years about higher temperatures, worsening frequency and intensity of storms and droughts, rising sea levels, altered water quality and availability, growing health risks from pests and heat, and much more.
Fine. But you are dragging the rest of us, who still believe in science and think that things can and should be done quickly, down into what increasingly seems like a future hell. You need to get on board. Why? Here is the final straw.
It now appears that on top of all of the other potentially catastrophic, costly, damaging, or dangerous impacts of human-caused climate change, there is a very serious risk that it will threaten the production of chocolate.
Yes, chocolate. A new scientific study from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, a research center of the world-renowned Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has just published a new analysis that says the world will suffer a massive loss of area suitable for growing cocoa as temperatures continue to rise and rainfall patterns shift.
Figure 1, below, shows the drastic potential decrease in the viable chocolate-growing areas of Ghana and the Ivory Coast by 2050 due to climate change. These two countries produce 60 percent of global cocoa, but by 2050 cocoa production by these two leading global producers will be crippled. The authors note that smart farmers will certainly try hard to adapt and modify where and how they grow cocoa and that there may be opportunities to avoid the worst damages if farmers shift to other crops, like cashews.
I’m sorry, but cashews are no substitute for chocolate. It should now be clear, even to the few remaining climate change deniers, that the risks of accelerating climate change are just too high. Our policymakers must act immediately.
Sincerely,
All who truly love chocolate.
P.S. To those climate deniers and skeptics who don’t like chocolate and hence don’t care: please stop imposing your distorted sensibilities on the rest of us.
Peter Gelick
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2011/10/04/an-open-letter-to-climate-change-deniers-and-skeptics-the-final-chocolate-straw/
Does that mean the 50% increase in chocolate production over last 20 years, mean there hasn’t been “climate change”?
http://unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/cocoa/market.htm
Dr. Peter Gleick. As your review of Donna Laframboise’s book appeared on Amazon.com 19 October 2011, the following paragraph is a direct quote.
“If you respect science, then you ALSO don’t need this book, since there’s no science in it, and lots of pseudo-science and misrepresentations of science. See, especially, the section trying to discredit the “hockey stick” — long a bugaboo of the anti-climate change crowd. Seven independent scientific commissions and studies have separately verified it, but you won’t find out about that in this book. [emphasis mine]
The following is a direct quote from the Kindle version (locations 2102-2109) of Donna’s book.
“Depending on whether you’re talking to a climate skeptic or a climate activist (people in the second camp control the Wikipedia pages on this and may other topics related to global warming), the hockey stick graph has either been totally discredited or remains a sound piece of science whose findings have been confirmed by several independent studies. [footnote 32-2]“ [emphasis mine]
Now, if as you say you read Donna’s book, then your reading comprehension must be zero. In your review of Donna’s book, you use the word “seven”; Donna uses the word “several”. Other than that trivial difference, Donna did mention “independent studies that verified the hockey stick. If I assume you did read the book and if I assume your reading comprehension can be measured, then I have to conclude that your statement: “…but you won’t find out about that in this book.” is, shall we say, a fib.
I think Dr. Peter Gleick has not read the book, as it is extremely unlikely for an AGW advocate to spend even 5 cents to buy a skeptic book. In my opinion, he is just doing the work of a gatekeeper.
I read the sample available and the only science there was the trace gas argument and then she used the word “groupthink” so I think I’ll pass.
You stand on the shoulders of giants.
Yes, that’s all I got out of the free sample, a hopelessly flawed argument and an accusation that all proponents of AGW can’t think for themselves.
And all you have is a Hogan’s Heroes skit, which you try to turn into an insult.
“You’ll have to do better than that”
JC summary:
“Overall, this is a very good book on an exceedingly important topic.”
=====
How would you compare it to other books written on the subject ?
I haven’t seen any other books on the subject of the IPCC. I give Montford’s book The Hockey Stick Illusion a full 5 stars. Montford’s book will stand the test of time in terms of a history of science book about this episode, and it is being cited in scholarly papers (check google scholar). It remains to be seen whether Laframboise’s book will achieve the same stature. That said, Laframboise’s book may be more influential politically in the short term.
What about the “Climategate The Crutape Letters?”
http://www.amazon.com/Climategate-Crutape-Letters-Steven-Mosher/dp/1450512437
That is the only serious review of the actual e-mail leak.
The bizarre choice of media to deliberately ignore the leaks is one of the most interesting aspects of the AGW social movement.
This book remains as the only serious attempt to let the e-mails speak for themselves.Basically everything written in defense of climategate has been of the general quality of Glieck’s review of Donna’s book.
Thank you, Saint Judith, for your enlightening essay on Donna Laframboise’s book and on the IPCC. I support wholeheartedly your conclusion that the IPCC should be disbanded. Nothing should replace it. There are many substantial organizations, such as the WWF, that can carry on the work of the IPCC quite well.
In her excellent and welcome review, Judith wrote:
I don’t think so, Judith. I believe that the “press conference” to which Donna was referring was that which ultimately precipitated his (Jan. 15, 2005) open letter, in which Landsea announced his decision to withdraw from participation in AR4. That “press conference” – in which Trenberth represented himself as an IPCC Lead Author – took place Oct. 21, 2004.
Of course, one never knows what goes on behind closed screens; but my own reading of the correspondence in question (which I had blogged about earlier this year, on the heels of Trenberth’s “revisionism”, as related by Tobis et al) was that Landsea’s concern was twofold:
a) That the Oct. 21/04 “news conference would stray from the realm of science into the realm of hyperbole” – which, in fact it appears to have done; and [more importantly, IMHO, from the perspective of Donna’s argument]
b) The IPCC’s “response” (such as it was) to Landsea’s concerns regarding the perception of a lack of objectivity on Trenberth’s part (in light of his pronouncements on Oct. 21) – as expressed in Landsea’s Nov. 4/04 E-mail to Pachauri, Solomon et al.
As Donna had noted, in the paragraph immediately preceding that which you cited above, Kerry Emanuel was quoted (in the Jan. 2005 issue of Science) as saying that:
I know that the ‘hurricane war’ is/was(?!) a matter close to your heart, Judith ;-) And perhaps Science got it wrong – or perhaps in Emanuel-speak “not a single person in my field thinks you can see the signal’ means something completely different than a lay person would infer from such a phrase.
But in either case, I’m not sure that it’s reasonable to fault Donna for “not quite capturing the complexity of the issue” as it certainly appeared to stand in Jan. 2005 (based on whatever might have transpired at a press conference that had not at that point taken place!) Particularly since her emphasis was on the behaviours of the IPCC in 2004 – rather than the complexity of any underlying scientific debate (by “Spring 2005”)
Hilary, there were papers going back to the 1980’s discussing a possible increase of hurricane intensity with warming. I think it was in 1998 that the WMO group published a review paper of the issue (Bill Gray was a coauthor) that assessed this issue and expected a an increase in intensity of a few percent per degree increase. The paper is referenced and the history of this issue is discussed in my 2006 paper “mixing politics.” The issue exploded in 2005 (after the press conference.) So IMO Donna didn’t really have the historical context on this one.
Reviewers rating update
Three 1-Star Reviewers
1) Naive illogical and puerile
Mr. N. Bowles “Nick Bowles”
2) Good if you like lies
CVShorey
3) Lies, misrepresentations, and a bible for climate change deniers
Peter Gleick “PGleick”
Forty-Six 5-Stars
Four 4-Stars
One 3-Stars
Maybe this brought in a few five-stars.
Nice try Nick, but maybe it because at amazon.com it shows currently as
“Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #387 Paid in Kindle Store”
Saint Judith, I think you are rapidly becoming the major figure in rational debate of climate science and the politics of climate science. Your essay on Donna Laframboise’s book shows that you are willing to be a leader and an “agenda setter” in these debates. I thank you, once again, for your wonderful blog. My hat is off to you.
On further reflection, if I were a person who for whatever reasons believed AGW to be true, detrimental and requiring immediate action, I’d be upset with both the AGW scientific community and all non-scientific AGW organizations responsible for communicating the issue to the public. I’d be upset with the AGW scientific community because instead of eagerly providing to the scientific community at large all source data, software code, and methodologies, many AGW scientists seem to either lose critical data and/or fight tooth-and-nail to prevent their data, software, and methodologies from being distributed throughout the scientific community. I’d be upset with the non-scientific AGW organizations responsible for communicating the seriousness of the problem to the public because to convince the public, those organizations must at least give the perception that they haven’t “stacked the deck” in favor of their point of view. As Donna Laframboise shows in her book, the IPCC clearly has stacked the deck in favor of the AGW perspective. As such, if I were an AGW believer, I’d be pissed off at the IPCC. I’d be clamoring for heads to roll and an independent audit, not singing the praises of the IPCC. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what Judith Curry is doing. Way to go, Dr. Curry.
It strikes me that we now can speak of having to make a “Peter’s Choice” (a la “Sophie’s Choice”) i.e. we must make a choice to admit that either we were stupid enough to write a review before reading the book or that we read the book but were too stupid to write an intelligent review.
Peter’s Choice: Jackass or Dumbass?
Peter Gleick,
Despite your protestations I believe that you did not purchase and read the book before you wrote your ‘review’. Unfortunately, this is not possible for me to conclusively prove. However, you can easily disprove it by accepting Anthony’s kind offer to let you prove the world’s largest climate-related blog wrong, right on the pages of that very blog. That seems like an irresistible offer. In fact, I don’t know how you are resisting doing just that this very moment.
Perhaps it has something to do with the reasonable request to see a purchase receipt dated prior to your review? Hmmm, why would that be a problem for you? If you’ve misplaced the receipt, Amazon (or the PDF store) will gladly email you another. Anthony has said you may obscure any private information, so that can’t be the issue. I just can’t think of any other reason you would NOT take this simple step to prove to everyone you are not a deceitful, manipulative liar and zealot for a cause you believe in so blindly that you would sacrifice your own integrity on its altar. Don’t worry though, you are not alone. Many others have gradually slipped down the same slope. There’s even a term for it, “noble cause corruption”.
Just in case you need more motivation to clear your name, I’ll sweeten the pot to include $100, donated in your newly cleared name to the environmental non-profit of your choice. Please, disregard any pangs of conscience about taking my $100 since, as you’ve always suspected, it’s a tiny fraction of my monthly stipend from ‘big oil’.
However, because I’m quite confident in my belief that you are a liar, I’m not as trusting as Anthony. Those that so glibly lie with words might also lie with Photoshop, so you’ll need to provide a neutral party the login to the relevant account (don’t worry you can change to a temporary password before handing it over and reset to whatever you want immediately after). Then there will be not only a receipt proving your high integrity (and by association, the high integrity of all alarmists) but also direct verification by a neutral third party!
That’s right. You have the power prove a leading skeptic is a liar and prove the leading skeptic blog factually wrong in front of a global audience of hundreds of thousands of skeptics, all while clearing your name and putting $100 toward saving the world. In fact, I think you’d also gain a lot of media attention, which would give you an even larger public platform from which to ring your bell of alarm. Why, oh why WOULDN’T a caring person like you act to use the great power for good now in your hands? If not for yourself, then think of future unborn generations who will benefit from your noble sacrifice of taking just a few brief minutes to prove you aren’t a liar.
Mark, you are asking for authentication of a statement from a climate scientists. Such behavior is completely antithetical to the whole field, he may present you will a model that shows he bought the book though.
And then, of course, secretly-funded research paid for by oil companies and Jewish millionaires would have to be produced to show that although he may be capable of purchasing and even reading the book, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief to think he did either when he obviously has ignored for years ever single fact that would contradict the beliefs of AGW True Believers.
Or unconscious incompetent smartass…
Without doubt some of these young nuts have fallen not far from the tree. I trust the metaphor is clear.
Clearly — fruiting trees are valuable therefore monkeys are territorial.
@Baa Humbug | October 19, 2011 at 11:40 pm
And I did … but waaay upthread! Link
For the record, here’s a link to the current (second) WUWT thread on DL’s book:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/16/donna-laframboises-new-book-causing-reviews-in-absentia-amongst-some-agw-advocates/
And here’s my comment on P Gleick’s review, included at the top of that WUWT thread in Anthony’s article and posted prior to that on Amazon, on p. 1 of this thread:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3DB7LHRMJ14G5/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005UEVB8Q&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful
———–
P Gleick writes: “See, especially, the section trying to discredit the “hockey stick” — long a bugaboo of the anti-climate change crowd. Seven independent scientific commissions and studies have separately verified it, but you won’t find out about that in this book.”
Oh yes you WILL find out about it in the book, at Kindle location 2099 in Ch. 32. Here’s what it says:
“Depending on whether you’re talking to a climate skeptic or a climate activist (people in the second camp control the Wikipedia page on this and many other topics related to global warming), the hockey stick graph has either been totally discredited or remains a sound piece of science whose findings have been confirmed by several independent studies. (footnote 32-2). As Montford’s book explains, such claims of independent corroboration are suspect, since these studies were conducted by many of the same small clique of researchers, use similarly flawed statistical techniques, and/or rely on the same dubious sources of data.”
———
PGleick: “This book is a stunning compilation of lies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods about the fundamental science of climate change.”
I notice that PG isn’t listed as having purchased the book. This gives him an “out” for his misleading statement above. The book isn’t primarily about “the science.” It’s about the IPCC’s claim, trumpeted by its Chairman, to be an impartial collection of the best experts on the topic, to rely on peer-reviewed science only, to have rules in place to ensure that proper procedures are followed, to intensively peer-review its draft documents, to be above the fray as far as policy prescriptions are concerned, etc., etc. This focus on the misbehavior of the IPCC (not its scientific claims) is apparent in the next paragraph from the book (after the one just quoted above):
“For the purposes of this discussion THE IMPORTANT POINT IS THAT THE IPCC PERFORMED NO DUE DILIGENCE before according the hockey stick graph such prominence.
……………… [27 paragraphs on the topic follow, and then this summing-up:]
“The essential point here is that the IPCC aggressively promoted a graph that had been produced by a young scientist who’d just been awarded his PhD. Even though the graph overturned decades of scholarship, even though it negated a widespread consensus about what the temperature record of the past 1000 years looked like, the IPCC didn’t bother to verify its [statistical] accuracy. What has been described as ‘one of the most rigorous scientific review bodies in existence’ felt no need to ensure that its case wasn’t being built on quicksand.”
———
PGleick writes: “It compiles the old arguments, long refuted, about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ….”
And:
“Are you already convinced that climate change is false? Then you don’t need this book, since there is nothing new in it for you.”
Wrong again. The book stresses (in Chs. 33 & 34, primarily) the report of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), presented in August 2010, which is recent (and unrefuted). And this book contains important NEW material from its inquiry into the IPCC. Here, starting at Location 2557 in the Acknowledgments, are the relevant passages:
“Hilary [Ostrov] single-handedly shook loose 678 pages [footnote link] of material on which this book relies. During its 2010 investigation of the IPCC, the IAC committee posted an online questionnaire. We were told the responses would be made public, but months after the report was released that still hadn’t occurred. Hilary tirelessly pursued the matter until some (but not all) of these responses were divulged.
“From a journalist’s perspective, they are solid gold–being the equivalent of interviews with dozens of people about their IPCC experience. Until I read that material the IPCC was still a remote and confusing organization.”
Another controversial thread and much courage shown yet again by our host. IMO the IPCC is not likely to regain public trust and will probably have its funding withdrawn at the behest of the US.
“scap the IPCC and forget about climate” was a comment further back in this thread. The way I see it at the moment is just simply “forget about climate”, period.
Don’t try to predict it except for very short time periods and just monitor everything closely so that we humans can at least attempt to mitigate the effects of historical extremes and to ensure that appropriate building codes, water conservation measures, etc., are implemented.
This step alone will release the massive funding for climate science projects and the resultant saving can be put to good use in mitigation policies and assisting 3rd World countries to improve their standard of living.
“Even if a couple of charges could be debated, what about the ones that can’t? Did the IPCC say they don’t use ‘gray literature’ and then proceed to cite 30% gray literature? There is no possible defense for that and it absolutely demolishes the IPCC’s credibility. The number of IPCC insiders who are political activists? I haven’t seen anyone dispute that inconvenient truth.”
No. The IPCC rules do not forbid the use of non-peer reviewed material. For that charge to stick the ‘prosecution’ would have to demonstrate (a) the IPCC’s own rules were broken (b) a conclusion of the report was not backed up by refereed science (c) that conclusion was wrong. None of this has happened, so under the coutroom analogy, the defendent is innocent. The second point based on yet another logical fallacy, that is is not possible to be an active member of Greenpeace or WWF (or CEI) and also be a good scientist.
In a court of law, a prosecutor who makes things up or gets key evidence wrong (Morner is a world renowned sea level expert) is unlikely to convince.
Another logical fallacy would be that it is impossible to be in your twenties and a good scientist. Albert Einstein had his ‘annus mirabulis’ in 1904, in a single year he published ‘four articles that contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, and matter’ (Wiki)
Einstein turned 25 that year.
No, Phil, the IPCC didn’t say it uses only peer-review literature, it is the line used in every press release and interview and attack on skeptics. Furthermore, many key forecasts of “impacts” like the Africa crop decline and Himalayan glacier loss etc are based on grey literature (and in fact on WWF reports or even one person’s opinion in a climbing magazine about swiss glaciers).
Phil,
I didn’t realize that we were playing hyper-literal word chess or I would have spelled out the detail that I thought everyone here already knew. The IPCC’s own rules required, if non-peer-reviewed sources were cited, that they were flagged as such so readers could discount them. Are you saying that the IPCC did not treat non-peer-reviewed sources the same as peer-reviewed sources in direct and near universal violation of this policy? So under the courtroom analogy, the IPCC broke it’s own published rules about identification of gray sources repeatedly and deliberately.
There is no need to prove “a conclusion of the report was not backed up by refereed science” or to that a “conclusion was wrong” (although both are true). You are trying to introduce extraneous issues. Simply not following their own rules or not conducting themselves in a consistent, transparent, scientifically sound manner is enough, because the charge is not that the science is wrong (although it is). The charge is that the process is not credible. Even the independent IAC condemned the IPCC for not following these rules and the IPCC responded by throwing out the rules – even further reducing their credibility going forward.
Your sophistry doesn’t hide the fundamental issues with the IPCC. The IPCC is supposed to provide an unbiased, credible report. That’s what its director claims. No one ever said that a WWF member (although the charge is actually current or former employee) can’t do science. The charge is that the very large, very statistically unlikely by random chance, number of former or current employees or consultants of lobbying organizations with a primary goal of influencing the very policy that the IPCC is supposed to providing unbiased, gold-standard scientific judgments on, undermines the credibility of those judgments. It doesn’t matter if it is within the realm of possibility that these current or former paid partisans might not actually be partisan on any given day. Any sane person would suspect that these people applied for jobs at these activist, lobbying organizations and were chosen for employment by these organizations because of their agreement with the agendas and worldview of the organizations.
The charge against the IPCC isn’t the act of bias itself (although its guilty of that), the charge is allowing the pervasive, repeated appearance of bias because that destroys credibility. Certainly a court judge might be able to judge a trial in which his brother was the defendant and do so in a completely unbiased way. However, this is never permitted because it introduces the appearance of bias which undermines the entire judicial system. In the company I work for our conflict of interest policy forbids not just conflict (vendor gave me a boat so I gave the contract to them), it expressly forbids the appearance of conflict (vendor gave me a boat and I didn’t give them the contract). Both are equal offenses under all rational COI and bias policies. If I ever previously worked for a vendor (or anyone in my family did), I must remove myself from anything our company does related to that vendor’s goals. Policy aside, it’s just obviously the right thing to do (unless you’re the IPCC).
It’s interesting that you mentioned CEI, because if the exact percentages of known activists for enviro organizations at the IPCC were replaced with former and current CEI and Heartland activists and lobbyists would you be here saying “Just because they work for CEI doesn’t mean they can’t do good science” in the same exact way? No, you would be pointing out that they were at those institutes because of their perspective and that perspective may color the judgments of the groups, particularly if so many of them permeate the IPCC groups. BTW, I would have no problem if there were roughly equal numbers of current and former activists from WWF and CEI at the IPCC. In fact I would prefer it because then instead of pretending to be neutral, the IPCC would be an adversarial system more like a court and that would be far better than the hopelessly corrupt sham the IPCC is today.
As for “scientists in their 20s”, don’t you ever get tired of constructing straw men and knocking them down? You haven’t even read the whole book. Donna doesn’t claim that it’s impossible to be a good scientist and be in the twenties. She points out that these people are supposed to be experienced, leading experts. The IPCC doesn’t do science at all. It is supposed to be surveying and synthesizing existing science and making wise judgments on how to represent a composite “truth” within various degrees of uncertainty. Sane humans might think that scientists with decades of perspective and experience in assessing scientific ideas, some of which turned out to be right and some of which were wrong, would be the kind of people guiding such a crucial set of judgments. Most people prefer a little bit of gray hair on their judges, doctors and pilots. Donna shows that, sadly, the IPCC does not deliver this.
Regarding the “methodology of the survey that led to the 30% grey figure”, I don’t feel like playing guessing games. If you have some data you’d like to share, please do. Or are unanswered, unsupported questions all you have left? I will say that it doesn’t matter a bit if a murderer has killed 30 people or 10 people, the sentence is the same. So to be relevant your data would need to show that all or substantially all non-peer-reviewed sources were flagged according to the IPCC’s policy. WHY they were not peer-reviewed is simply more misdirection. All that matters is whether they WERE or WERE NOT peer-reviewed and appropriately flagged per published policy.
“to be relevant your data would need to show that all or substantially all non-peer-reviewed sources were flagged according to the IPCC’s policy. WHY they were not peer-reviewed is simply more misdirection. All that matters is whether they WERE or WERE NOT peer-reviewed and appropriately flagged per published policy.”
WOW, it must get tiring moving those goalposts all the time…..
I decline your attempt to reframe the question, thanks. Firstly crudely counting references and classifying them according to the binary ‘reviewed’ and ‘non-reviewed’ is no more than a massive Straw Man. If you reference a document it is good practice to document it, whether or not it is relevant to your conclusions. Here’s an example of what went into the non-reviewed box:
Newton, I., 1675: Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675. In: Andrews, R., 1993: The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations.
Was this key to the IPCC conclusions? D’Ya think? Still it counts towards that 30% so in it goes …..
But let’s check out one of the ‘worst’ scoring chapters, http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/2007/WG3chapter1-A.html Just 12/50 peer-reviewed references.
But check out item 16. Yes, it is a book chapter. But as anyone who took the trouble to read it would discover, it is an exact reprint of this journal article that has been cited over 150 times!
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Modelling+uncertainty+of+induced+technological+change&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001&as_sdtp=on
I found that in a quick ‘audit’. How many more crass errors are there? As a percentage this is WAY WORSE than ‘Himalayagate’. Secondly another 12 references are from other chapters of IPCC reports which are assessment reports based on the literature and are amongst the most reviewed documents on the planet! Did the ‘auditors’ check whether the reference being cited was in turn based on peer-reviewed science? Course not – they just chucked it in the ‘non-peer-reviewed’ bin to get the numbers up. Other references are to literature reviews and reports from respected bodies such as the IEA. The report is much improved by having them in, but still they count to Donna’s purile numbers game.
The actual total of properly unreviewed references is less than half the total stated here. Even using this dubious methodology, the chapters from WG1 – The Physical Science – score a minimum of 80%, and mainly >90%.
I’m absolutely certain that you and the rest of those in the current slagfest will find even more than your two examples of presumably “acceptable” cited refs having been classified as non-reviewed. Having participated in the exercise, I was also aware of some “presumably legit” refs that came from ENGO publications, but left them in anyway. Hey, if you’re after nits to pick, how ’bout Gore’s outright falsifcations? Give it a break and accept that the IPCC is rotten to the bad-apple core.
So by your own ‘best-case, benefit of all doubts’ reckoning the world’s best gold-standard, authoritative scientific summary of evidence was only 20% wrong in disclosing important reliability information about supporting sources.
Once again, the attempt to shift focus from the lack of disclosure of non-peer reviewed supporting sources (violating IPCC policy) to how many sources were peer-reviewed, fails. A handful of violations could be clerical error, hundreds or thousands is systematic and intentional violation of policy.
The prosecution rests.
Really? That’s it? The reports listed all their references but failed to mark those that were not peer-reviewed?
So what, someone unable to distinguish between an academic journal and a book or NGO report might have been misled?
The defence pleads guilty to a minor misdemeanor.
“(a) the IPCC’s own rules were broken:”
“Non-peer-reviewed sources will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports. These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources.1 These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.ch/guidancepaper/AR5GuidanceNotes_Literature.pdf
“(b) a conclusion of the report was not backed up by refereed science”
“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).”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-6-2.html
“(c) that conclusion was wrong”
“It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment2 refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf
Example 2:
“Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation (Rowell and Moore, 2000).”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-4.html#13-4-1
Example 3:
“In other countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-2020 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003).”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch9s9-4-4.html
So thanks for highlighting that the IPCC only got it wrong once. An astonishing achievement.
I’m not sure I’d remind people of AmazonGate, though. The referencing was sloppy but there was plenty of support for the IPCC position in the literature, as became clear when the newspaper concerned issued an embarassing retraction and apology.
http://www.realclimate.org/docs/ST_Correction_img007%5B1%5D.jpg
Oh, and you might like to check the methodology of the survey that led to the ‘30%’ grey literature figure. Does that include material that dates from before peer-review was even invented ;-)?
Could have been. Perhaps all those old chaps writing about how the MWP was a good thing with bounteous harvests and warmer winters weren’t peer reviewed. Apart from by their contemporaries who would have read their work.
But since
‘The first recorded editorial prepublication peer-review process was at The Royal Society in 1665 by the founding editor of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg’
it seems likely that nearly everything actually referenced was written since the system was invented.
Now I have gone through the book. I didn’t read carefully all chapters, actually I couldn’t do that, because the style is totally unbearable to me. I hate that kind of narrative that’s supposed to be evidence on wrongdoings of named persons, but which is based in total and uncritically on the evidence of one side in the controversy. I know that some people enjoy such writing, I hate it. I hate it as much, when I’m on the same said on the main issue as I do when I disagree on that as well.
Based on the fragmentary reading and skimming through, the book picks up several issues, where things have really not gone right. I don’t know any specific case, where the book would discuss a point that’s not worth discussing. That’s the positive side of my impression, and that’s where it ends.
The best way of contrasting the picture painted by the book and the reality is reading the IPCC report. Digging in details of the report, it’s totally clear that the WG1 report is mostly pretty good in, what it is supposed to be and what it can be. There are some issues, where the report makes questionable statements, and others, where understanding it’s message correctly is far too difficult. The uncertainties are not handled well, etc. There are numerous problems, but a very high percentage of the text is as good as it can realistically be given the schedule and resource limitations.
Taking the book of Laframboise it appears totally impossible that the IPCC report could be anything it really is. The WG2 and WG3 reports are really very much more problematic, but that is not the message of the book, but it spends most of the pages in condemning the WG1 report.
I think, all the issues included in the book are well known in the blogosphere, where also counterarguments can be found. Not so in the book, which is totally one-sided and ready to accept most dubious evidence, when it makes the points more dramatic. The book is a stylistically extreme collection of issues brought up by certain part of the skeptical community presented in a way that makes it worthless to anybody, who wants to understand, what’s really behind these issues.
Pekka,
I wonder, do you have less of a problem reading books that some would deem totally skewed towards the opposite viewpoint? But at least you have opened the book and looked at it, for which I give you all credit due.
One impression I got from the book is that DL wasn’t harsh on most of the scientists – that she thought they often tried their best to be reasonably measured, but it was the IPCC that was responsible for controlling the message, especially in the report for policy makers. They seed chapter reviewers from green groups and see to it that favourable literature gets referenced in the reports even after the deadline for submission has been passed. No such privilege is accorded literature they don’t like.
Honestly, Pekka, ordinary folk like me can spot shenanigans when we see it. Supposing that there actually is something to CAGW, the IPPC is effectively doing its damnedest to create the scepticism it prefers didn’t exist. It has only itself to blame.
Two people involved directly in the IPCC work, but also critical on it, i.e. Richard Betts and Richard Tol have presented the view that the right approach is to improve the IPCC. They are both from Europe and so am I. I have some connections to the IPCC activities, but not at nearly the same level. My conclusions are along similar lines, but I would like to see much of the WG2 and WG3 activities transferred to an organization (or several organizations) that would work in a very different way, because the model copied from WG1 works so badly with part of WG2 work and most of WG3 work. WG1 could also make large changes like switch to a continuous online model of work, but the basic idea of assessment of published science is valid for WG1, some part of WG2 and perhaps some small pieces of WG3.
Looking from Europe it’s clear that the IPCC was created, because the governments considered it necessary. IPCC didn’t create the worry about climate change, the worry created IPCC and this situation remains. U.S. has so strong own activities that it could do all it’s own analysis with own resources, other countries cannot.
IPCC is not a scientific body. It’s not a political body either, but it’s a body created to be a bridge between science and politics with essential participation from both sides. As every international organization with wide participation, it has severe problems. It has been one of the most efficient such bodies thanks to the participation of many competent individuals.
IPCC needs a lot of development. That requires solid analysis on, what works, what can be made to work ans what needs something very different. I hoped that the book of Laframboise would provide at least something useful for that approach. I don’t think that it does.
Good grief Pekka, I respect you as a moderate commenter, but how on earth can you believe the IPCC isn’t a political body? Political is as political does.
IPCC has it’s political part. The panel itself is political. The actual work is done by scientists. Their selection process is not without its faults, but thinking that it’s totally political is far from truth. My most direct knowledge is on the Finnish contribution, but I have some rather direct information also from other countries. All that tells that scientific merits are much more essential in that than politics. I can imagine that a few people can be excluded due to their public appearance, but almost all main contributors have really been selected for science based reasons.
I’m confident that it’s a serious mischaracterization to describe most groups that do the writing and editing of the working group reports as political. They are not totally insensitive to politics, but they are far from being political. There may be some cases, where the politics plays a bigger role than it does for most chapters.
Well, Pekka, as I indicated, DL might agree with you that some of the scientists aren’t as political as others.
But you know, it’s like a funnel. You pour liquid in, and whoever controls a valve on the spout can determine how much comes out, and maybe mess about with its constitution. If the controllers are political, it doesn’t matter much whether some of the contributors aren’t.
Take a look at the responses to the IAC’s IPCC questionnaire here:
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/Comments.pdf
DL refers to this in ch. 21 and 22. In Ch. 21, she quotes some examples, with references. These make it clear that even scientists themselves are aware of the politicking. Here’s one pertinent quote:
“In my experience, the summary for policy makers tends to be more of a political process than one of scientific precis.”
And here’s another:
“One could imagine a scientist-controlled Panel… but that is not going to happen. The great advantage of the current government-controlled IPCC is that the governments cannot easily reject the IPCC findings after the fact… The price paid for this government buy-in can be steep, but that is just a fact of life.” (ellipsis in DL’s original text, bold emphasis mine).
As DL notes, what’s this about buy-in (a frequently-mentioned term at the IPCC)? And why does a scientist think it an advantage? It appears that integrity doesn’t matter. The message, however skewed, justifies the politicking.
The IPCC is parasitic on AGW , this idea dies they die it has no choice but to keep AGW alive if it wants itself to keep running. As for what it about I think its own leadership have made it clear its politics and influencing policy not the representing science which has become its priority. Just as well becasue its standards are at times what you not accept from a science undergraduate wrting an essay and far from the best scientific knowledge in the area as it likes to claim.
The problem I have with improving the IPCC is that their response to the IAC recommendations demonstrates that this organization will not follow the recommendations. There seems to be fundamental structural problems with the organization.
Hear, hear!
Judith Curry
Yes. I would agree that there appears to be a fundamental structural problem at IPCC that prevents it from changing.
But I would suggest that there is also a fundamental problem with the “process” that has been installed by IPCC.
As you and others have remarked here and elsewhere, this “consensus process” has introduced bias into the “science”. This, in turn, has introduced bias into the “future projections” supporting the notion that AGW is a serious potential problem.
I would submit (as Laframboise does) that is is an agenda driven process, which introduces bias to arrive at a consensus, in order to support a preconceived agenda.
Unfortunately, this bias has become endemic in several serious scientific journals and once-revered scientific bodies such as RS and NAS.
Making a basic “process” change is very difficult, as has been seen in the experience of many businesses. It involves basically changing the way things are done, and old, ingrained habits are not easy to change. Most often, the need for change is not even recognized by the people running the process. (This appears to be the case at IPCC.)
Changing out the management structure may be required, but often this alone will not accomplish the required change unless the “process” itself is replaced by one that is open to “non-consensus” data and viewpoints and discourages, rather than encourages, bias.
Given all the political and economic interests involved, this would be a monumental task, invoking the question raised by TonyB on the earlier thread: would it be simpler to eliminate IPCC altogether and replace it with something new?
Max
Judith,
I wish that the structal flaw was the greatest weakness of the IPCC. But IMHO it is not. The whole idea of the IPCC is conceptually flawed. The idea that there should be a single organisation that authoritatively summarizes climate science is flawed becaues it then becomes argument from authority. Which it has.
If we want summaries of climate science then groups of climate scientists will publish meta-studies. Then we would now be seeing competing pro and skeptical CAGW competing and as evidence improved the answer would emerge. Just as it always has done in science.
The policy makers would hate this but tough. This is the real world
/ikh
From the book:
….
Apart for the climate scientists that willingly go down to the Antarctic and drill long cores into the ice in bone-chilling weather so that their modeling colleagues can do what they are good at. Experiment/observation and theory/model has long been the dual backbone of science, Donna should look up the concept.
The great thing about these knock-off books, ever since Essex and McKitrick started it off, is that they also work as comedy gold.
Pekka:
I also found Donna’s style disconcerting, especially the machine-gun like, 2 to 4 sentence paragraphs – hence my 4 stars on Amazon. I also agree that the unrelenting criticism is problematic, if for no other reason than Pachauri fans and NGO activists can side-track discussions (e.g. Phil Clarke and Prof Gray and Prof Morner) and avoid dealing with with her main points.
On the other hand, and to be fair to Donna, she is trying to off-set the astro-turfed and politically driven belief that the IPCC is a pristine, objective assessment of carefully peer reviewed literature. After all, it is an indictment and the prosecution does not have to say that the wayward teenager is kind to animals and recycles!
Pekka, I think I know how you felt reading the book!
Probably the same way that I do when I read the folks who defend the IPCC’s infallible “peer reviewed” work in having “settled the science.”
We both squirm, but for different reasons!
Pekka:
Give me the name of a climate book that you think treats the subject in a balanced way. Give me the name of a book about the IPCC that you think treats it in a balanced way. My view is that these things are a dialogue. I don’t expect to get the full picture from one source. And I try to read from both sources.
Pekka: “Digging in details of the report, it’s totally clear that the WG1 report is mostly pretty good in, what it is supposed to be and what it can be.”
Can you be a little clearer about the “digging in details”. Maybe with a couple of examples of what kind of digging you did? I assume that it was digging where you looked at the arguments by the skeptics as well as those of the IPCC. Right?
Phil Clarke | October 20, 2011 at 3:02 am | Reply
Another logical fallacy would be that it is impossible to be in your twenties and a good scientist. Albert Einstein had his ‘annus mirabulis’ in 1904, in a single year he published ‘four articles that contributed substantially to the foundation of modern physics and changed views on space, time, and matter’ (Wiki)
Einstein turned 25 that year.
The quaint idea that 24 year old Greenpeace PhD students might all be budding Einsteins was a definite coffee/keyboard interface moment for me Phil.
Got any other good ones?
The issue is not whether youngsters can usefully contribute to the IPCC. Of course they can. In fact, literature review is a core task of the IPCC. The footwork is best done by people who can devote the required time — as long as there is someone senior to oversee the effort.
The issue is the spin of the IPCC leadership, who repeatedly claim that all IPCC authors are world leading authorities in their fields. That is nonsense.
I would change the spin rather than the composition of the author teams.
Hi Richard
I;m not usre your argument is very convincing.
Seems to me that this is the old ‘Lions Led by Donkeys’ argument. That all the footsoliders are jolly good chaps and pure in heart, interested in only establishing the objective truth. But that the evil leaders corrupt their work and mispreresent their findings without their knowledge and/or depsite their vehement protests.
I could just maybe buy that once. At a push, assumig great naivety among the troops, twice.
But five times? They are on the fifth go around this stuff, and there seems to be no shortage of volunteers willing to be cannon fodder. And after that amount of time and experience (20+ years), the grunts start to look more like willing collabarators rather than innocent dupes. Maybe I;m wrong, but the evidence seems to show it.
PS can anyone recommend a good UK English spellchecker for Firefox?
The IPCC spin machine is a recent development. Bert Bolin told things as they were. Bob Watson colored things in a certain light, but never told an untruth (afaik). Rajendra Pachauri says things about the IPCC that are just not true.
Vertical distance is large in the IPCC. The “troops” hardly interact with the working group chairs, let alone with the Bureau.
I agree that Bert Bolin had the right idea and told things as they were. But John Houghton during that same period was pushing for a consensus approach, then promoting the hockey stick, etc. So the problem hasn’t just been in the Pachauri era.
‘The “troops” hardly interact with the working group chairs, let alone with the Bureau’
Why not? You all have (supposedly)above average intelligence. You are all volunteers. Nobody is forcing you to write your stuff at the point of a gun. And some of you at least are not shy of expressing your opinions in other matters.
So how come you all sit there like stooges dumbly agreeing with everything Pacahauri or Mann or Hansesn says about your work? What is it that keeps you all silent when you are misrepresented?
Bob Watson turned up to a very high profle meeting (run by the arch-warmist Guardian newspaper) as a panel member to discuss Climategate that I attended. In his opening statement he prouldy said that he had not read the contents of the notorious e-mails and didn’t intend to do so. Perhaps he just relied there on his ability to colour in the big picture to lecture us all on how we had misjudged all the climatologists etc. He certainly had no direct knowledge of the subject.
I came away with the impression that he was big on pictures, lousy on detail and unfit for anthing much beyond making the tea.
Now you try to persuade me that he was one of the better incumbents.! Heaven save us from these fools! It seems that their band of malleable supporters are little more than Useful Idiots either.
The IPCC is a group effort. People are rebellious by nature are rare in an organization like that.
Watson was indeed a good chair. The previous US administration shared my opinion, and replaced him with Pachauri.
Clever devil, that Dubya, eh?
================
@Richard Tol
‘The IPCC is a group effort. People are rebellious by nature are rare in an organization like that’
Y’all ever hear of the phenomenon called GroupThink?
@Kim
It was slightly lower in the administration.
@Sterling
Like most organizations, the IPCC is vulnerable to group think. It does not have safeguards for that.
Ooh, Richard, how verree, verree, clever. But, since you seem to have some idea, whom do we have to thank in the Bush Administration for the picking of Pachauri? Inquiring minds want to know.
===================
Let me guess before he answers! Mr. Crony Capitalism himself: Cheney!
Stirling English,
I know of a significant science journalist who talked himself into believing that climategate should not beinvestigated and that the words of those exposed in climategate was sufficient to explain it completely.
I asked him why woodward and Bernstein could have covered Watergate better if they had taken taht approach, and he did not answer the question.
The few days after climategate leaked, when even Schmidt allowed a free exchange of ideas and then chose to go into hyper defensive mode and pretend it was nothing is a fascinating period of time. It is known that the UEA hired some PR specialists to work the media. The AGW movement is bought into so strongly that jouranlists apparently en masse self loaded the program, so to speak, to collectively ignore what by any reasonable standard would have been a great story. Instead it was studiously ignored. It will be interesting to see how that sort of anti-professional opinion is arrived at by people whose careers are allegedly involved with investigating significant issues. I look forward to hearing from any who might have bought into the idea of ignoring a great story and now possibly regret the poor decision.
Richard Tol states that the IPCC does not have safeguards aginst Groupthink. I’m sure he is right.
But neither does it seem to have any safeguards against many otherr forms of institutional corruption and/or malpractice. It is not as if such things have been suddenly invented and the world stands in bemusement about what to do to prevent them. They have been with us since institutions were invented many thousands of years ago.
The US Constitution – as a famous example – recognises that corruption or malpractice may occur and designs a political system to limit the damage. Commerical institutions are rerequired to have audits to prevent the Directors misleading the public and shareholders. (It was the complete failure of the audit system that contributed greatly to the Enron debacle). Politicians and others in public office are required or declare conflicts of interest. In software developement we have one team writing the code and another trying to break it. The list of methods used to combat it is long
Checks and balances are not a new idea. But when we come to climatology and the IPCC we see very weak or non-existent implementation.. And those few that do exist (peer review for instance) are easily hijacked as we have seen. Even the simplest ideas of replication and reprodcution of results are frowned upon. Phil Jones said that in over 200 papers he had published, nobody ever asked to see his data. I doubt they’d have been given much luck if they had!
It may be that – by some fluke- in the 25 years of the IPCC’s eoxstence all the participants have been people of the utmost integrity and character. It may be that no institutional malpractice has ever taken place. It may also be that little girls are universally made of sugar and spice and all things nice…with a dose of puppy dog’s tails thrown in.
But – in the absence of any serious mechanism to guard against wrongdoing, I just don’t believe it.
I’m looking forward to reading Donna’s book. The review from Gleicl tells me that it must be good stuff. Only of it is full of juicy morsels would he be so frigthened as to write such a panicked response.
The reason why the Einstein comparison is facile is that Einstein was such an outlier in so many ways. It’s true that theoretical physicists and mathematicians tend to be in their prime in their 20’s, but climate science isn’t theoretical physics.
THE SHIELD AND THE SWORD
… peer review has become both a shield (behind which the IPCC hides) and a sword (with which it skewers dissenting voices). Anyone who attempts to challenge IPCC findings is told to go read the peer-reviewed literature. Moreover, unless a criticism has been published in a peer-reviewed journal IPCC-affiliated scientists consider it beneath their notice
The Delinquent Teenager
http://bit.ly/rf68Cb
Climategate email supporting the above statement:
…the rules of IPCC have been softened to the point that in this way the IPCC is not any more an assessment of published science (which is its proclaimed goal) but production of results.
…at this point there are very little rules and almost anything goes. I think this will set a dangerous precedent which might mine the IPCC credibility
http://bit.ly/qE6UUb
“unless a criticism has been published in a peer-reviewed journal IPCC-affiliated scientists consider it beneath their notice”
Andy Lacis provided a good example of this. Peter Gleick just demonstrated why it’s a sensible strategy.
We should have an IPEP (EP = Einstein Physics), so that it could detemine for us if the measurements of CERN about the speed of neutrinos are correct? Chair(wo)man could be Mrs Mugabe, the grandson of Kim Jong-il would do the scientific work, and the text would be agreed on by the 50000 twins of the Einstein conference in Honolulu, which took place in December of last year.
There is no money left for rubbish like the IPCC. The House Republicans signaled the future last February when they specifically cut IPCC funding out of the budget…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/21/republicans-funding-climate-ipcc
This will be the reality after the inevitable Republican takeover of Congress and the Presidency next year. Instead of the usual hair-splitting and beating of dead horses, this crowd might turn an eye to what should replace the IPCC.
Hi Judy – I have posted the text below on my weblog with respect to tyour comment on the 2007 IPCC WG1 report.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/comment-on-the-quality-of-the-2007-ipcc-wg1-report-in-response-to-a-post-on-climate-etc/
“Laframboise on the IPCC
she wrote
“Does the problems with the IPCC mean that WG1 science is incorrect? Not necessarily, but I agree that a “new trial” is needed. WG2 and WG3 reports pretty much belong in the dustbin, as far as I can tell.”
WG1 is incorrect because it suffers from “sins of omission”. I documented this in the Appendix to my Public Comment
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy. Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp.
The 2007 IPCC WG1 report ignored peer-reviewed papers which conflicts with their narrow focus on the radiative forcing of CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases.
In our paper
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union
we wrote
“….the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of…other human climate forcings in altering regional and global climate and their effects on predictability at the regional scale. It also placed too much emphasis on average global forcing from a limited set of human climate forcings. Futher, it devised a mitigation strategy based on global model predictions. ……policy makers must be made aware of the inability of the current generation of models to accurately forecast regional climate risks to resources on multidecadal time scales.”
To this list, based on new knowledge, including what is presented on Judy’s weblog, the role of natural climate variability, even in terms of global averages, needs to be elevated in importance.
The 2007 IPCC WG1, in my view, was a failure in the assessment of the understanding of the human role in the climate system, as well as the extent to which the natural forcings and feedbacks influence the climate.”
Given a chance, what would you replace the IPCC with, Dr. Pielke?
How about replacing the IPCC with the country of Greece?
I think we’d be in safe hands if we replaced the IPCC with Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr, PhD.
================
Wait a minute… isn’t he the guy who believes in the scientific method?
How would you tell the difference?
Dr Pielke,
You say on your link “WG1 is incorrect because it suffers from “sins of omission”.
Do you feel those omissions include natural forceings as well as human?
Guys,
Short of an admission from anyone, how can we be *absolutely sure* that they have/have not read something?
An author at skepticalscience reviewed ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’ and then admitted that he hadn’t read the book. He then deleted his own review.
Gleick has not done something similar.
He probably did not read the book when he wrote the review, but we can never be categorical about it.
Shub,
If he did read the book it raises questions about his analytical abilities, and if his influence on other, more complex issues is based on sound reasoning.
Which is why I wrote that she was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Watching him self-destruct is like reading a letter to the editor by Michael Mann. Or reading an explanation from a resigning editor at Remote Sensing.
They can pound that tar baby senseless, but they just get stuck deeper and deeper.
There were negative reviews of our book on Climategate posted before the book was published.
Tom,
Those reviews were designed to bury the book, so reading it was not an issue, just like with Gleik’s faux review.
If he read the book (not surprisingly he does not state if he read it prior to writing his ‘review’) it clearly did not inform his review.
He desperately wants to shift the discussion from his ‘review’ and to his unproven assertion he ‘read the book’.
Afterall, if he discusses the merits he will not prevail. His actions are consistent with someone who knows they are caught out and simply wants to get away ASAP.
IOW, Gleik is pulling a “Sir Robin”.
That seems to be a common tactic. In a completely different arena, a certain blog that I’m aware of was organizing and encouraging negative reviews of a book that hadn’t been yet published. Out in broad daylight. I don’t know why Amazon even allows that.
One thing about reviews of books not yet published is that they don’t have much to work with. The reviews read like Gleick’s: lots of smoke and invective, and no specific references to anything in the book. If you know what to look for, an astroturfed review is pretty easy to spot.
There were three 1 star Amazon reviews – the first three reviews. Climate “science” rapid response in action. Why should they bother reading the book? What is important is getting their version out their first, so it can be quoted in all the sycophantic media reports and blogs.
They just read faster. ‘Cause they’re smarter.
A friend once turned in his test paper after ten minutes with the remark, “It don’t take long to flunk a test.” If someone already knows what they plan to say about a book, it probably doesn’t take long to turn the pages.
@GaryM…
I think you got a list sorted in the wrong order. There’s a page and a half of good reviews before the first 1-star, by Gleick.
AK,
I didn’t request any sorting of the list. I merely went to the Amazon link in the main post, clicked on the link, clicked on the customer reviews link and paged through, The last three reviews, I assumed being first in time, were the three I mentioned on page six of six. “On further review,” I checked and the default setting on the reviews link is “most helpful reviews.” Clicking on the “newest” sort link, I see you are correct, there were ten positive reviews before the drones got their licks in.
I also note that the first review was posted October 14, two days before the first 1 star review.
So in the words of the immortal Emily Litella…Never mind.
The important point isn’t whether he actually read the book, but the quality of his review. No specifics, just a sneering dismissal of what he sees as a pack of lies that have been “long refuted.”
No examples, no background, nothing. Maybe he read the book. I have no idea. But there’s nothing in that review to lead one to conclude he had.
If my 12 year old grandson had submitted this to his 6th grade teacher as a book report, he’d have gotten an F. And deservedly so.
I make one suggestion to everyone. Once you have read Donna Laframboise’s amazing book about the IPCC, it’s worthwhile revisiting that lovely documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647
Mike Mangan – Please read my suggested assessment approach in my Public comment [see the Executive Summary]
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nr-143.pdf
There is nothing better for Donna’s book sales than clueless criticism by CAGW zealots.
Remember Ian Plimer’s “Heaven & Earth”? Every new critical review caused a sharp uptick in book sales. Donna must be hoping that other learned fools emulate Peter Gleick by attempting to shred her book.
It may be true that critical reviews boosted Plimer’s sales, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t garbage.
Quite true. However, in the conspicuous absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is equally (if not more likely) true that such “critical reviews” in no way “mean” that Plimer’s book was “garbage”
But you knew that, Andrew … didn’t you?!
Or is it the case that you are so enamoured and blinded by the claims of “climate science”** that you have been rendered incapable of formulating a pre-post-modernist logical argument?
**The thought occurs to me that perhaps “climate science” might be more appropriately named “claimit science” (in the honourable tradition of which Mann’s opus springs immediately to mind – as do the more recent BEST efforts of Muller et al).
Ahem. I used ‘claimatology’ yesterday. See
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/23/imagining-a-post-ipcc-world/#comment-126651
Sorry, I must have missed that, Latimer … otherwise I would have given you at h/t! Not sure if this now demonstrates that great minds think alike or whether we now have ‘multiple lines of evidence’ ;-)
At the very least, perhaps this confluence of thought will merit an article in The Economist – whose powers that be seem quite partial to neologisms (viz. their enthusiastic endorsement of The Anthropocene not too many moons ago!)
Maybe a dead p0lar bear will wash up on a beach in New Zealand and that will breathe new life into the AGW True Believer movement. Until then, perhaps CAGW zealots in dead and dying Old Europe perhaps should think about arranging book burning parties to stay warm this winter.
Most psychologists would diagnose you suffering with ostrich syndrome. Truth hurts doesn’t it? Having the same feeling reading RealClimate?
The more likely diagonisis is the Hot World Syndorme that effects some Westerners.
AK,
This book is not at all well timed for the US election cycle.
Good timing would be to run it out early summer 2012 with massive publicity and hype, so that the opposition cannot easily get a rebuttal out in time.
The real danger of this book, from the pov of the AGW community is that it finishes killing the meme of pre-Climategate that the IPCC was some sort of gold standard of climate science. Now people who actually used to rely on that claim deny they ever used. Since the AGW community is in fact a social movment that relies on cliams of scientific infallibility for its social power, this is actually pretty damaging.
I disliked the title of the book at first. Now, from the behavior of the faithful from Gleik to our own little Joshua, I see it as spot on.
The AGW faithful were able to dodge climategate by the journalists making a less-than-professional decision to simply ignore it. This book may be less easily ignored. And if it increses interst in the climategate leak, this may reach, to borrow a phrase, a tipping point.
Wikipedia describes Ms Laframboise as a “Canadian feminist, writer, and photographer.” Not someone I’d ever suspect as a propagandist for U.S. Republican party candidates.
I decided to read all of Joshua’s comments just for fun. And believe me, they were fun. The problem is that not a single one had anything to do with the book being discussed, other than in tangential ways meant to completely misdirect the conversation away from the relative merits of the book and into subjects which have, essentially, nothing to do with anything as far as the book is concerned.
So far, he has used ad hominem (or accusing others of it regarding issues which have nothing to do with the book or a review of it), straw man, and several other techniques all from the world of logical fallacy. In one post, he seems to indicate that ALL politics and even some of “science” is full of conflicts of interest (so I assume he is trying to say that it is somehow OK for the IPCC to be riddled with conflicts of interest) but what he fails to realize is that the IPCC itself CLAIMS to be “independent” which I would interpret to mean “free of conflicts of interest”. I am sure that in response Joshua will find other organizations which claim to be “independent” which have also had conflict of interest problems. The problem is, he would only be reinforcing my point rather than refuting it.
I have yet to see any post by him stating whether he actually agrees with Judith’s review of the book, and why or why not. Instead he seems to be on some sort of fishing expedition with no bait and no idea what he is actually fishing for.
At any rate, I appreciate Judith’s review of Donna’s book. The review points out the strong points as well as the weak points of the book, and gives a good summary of the pertinent information, WITHOUT indulging in ad hominem, straw man, or misdirection. I look forward to reading the book myself.
Peter –
Once again, I mis-nested.
For your reading pleasure:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/19/laframboise-on-the-ipcc/#comment-124796
PeterB,
I rarely read Joshua’s contents at all, unless another commenter says something that piques my interest in one of the many interminable exchanges he starts. After several months of reading “there is no asymetry” and “skeptics are tribal too,” and my favorites, the plaintive cries of “Judith are you reading this,” I just gave up.
Joshua fancies himself a polemicist, fighting the good fight for progressivism with his one note symphony, attempting to divert almost every thread into semantic debates wholly unrelated to the topic at hand. So I do sometimes, when I am REALLY bored, count the number of comments with which he litters the blog.
Sometimes I think Joshua just has too much time on his hands…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNYKxiRJ2LA
Must work for the government.
That should be “comments” in the first sentence, as his comments rarely have any content.
If the book showed only 2 things, as it does, that 30% of refs are gray lit (especially in impacts sections where sometimes the only support for alarm is from gray lit) and the heavy weighting with activists (and no anti-alarmists) then it has achieved a magnificent goal. I don’t care much about readability on this issue. It isn’t supposed to be good literature. And not much interested in why someone gave it a 4 either.
As usual your short post nails the salient issue at hand.
There is a curious recent development in politics where there what appears to be deliberate obfuscation reigns. The Bush white house was accused of many things where it concerned inviting oil execs to energy policy discussion, and to all too many the assumption is that NGO influence is equivalent. What nonsense. Energy policy discussion was had with those with “boots on the ground” experience; NGO’s aren’t about expertise at all but activism and feelings. Conflation of these things must be deliberate because clearly these are not equivalent. If you aren’t paying attention (i.e. the public at large) then they could appear to be the same thing — i.e. “special interests” — but for anyone who *is* paying attention there’s a wide gulf between working expertise and what amounts to conjecture.
Moreover, I have yet to see the day when an NGO was correct about *any* claim, which makes the NGO infiltration even more outrageous and ridiculous than it appears. NGO claims are akin to folk-remedy nonsense whereupon you are told to wave spinach in the air to avoid warts. No warts? Must be working.
If an oil company misrepresents anything, even by mistake, it gets sued. NGOs are never accountable to anyone. In fact, their lies are often encouraged.
A local food bank has aired ads saying that one in five children in our area go to bed hungry at night. Total BS. Yet, no one would ever think of stopping them. They’re a food bank, the good guys, their lies are for a good cause.
Just like climate science. If the cause is just, the fraud is morally acceptable.
The problem, as people are gradually becoming aware, is that the cause is not just, the nobility of it is in the minds of the true believers. CO2 is a boon, not a bane; a warmer world is clearly a world better for all life forms. Furthermore, artificially raising the price of fossil fuels is directly a war on the poor, and the casualties mount daily.
When will it ever end? When will it ehhh-a-verrrr end?
================
Boots solidly on the floor under the boardroom table. I’ve seen how it works in large companies, and senior management isn’t going to allow people with hands-on experience into a spot where they might say something that impacts the bottom line. Don’t get me wrong, I’m agin activist infiltration, but I’m not really sure corporate (senior management) is any better. As for NGO’s, it depends on the NGO. Most of the ones in existence today are activist, and should be excluded for that reason. But I can imagine (nothing more, AFAIK) and NGO dedicated to pure non-political science. Or perhaps an NGO dedicated to auditing?
AK,
Based on what NGO’s are doing to destroy public education I came to the same conclusion some time ago: Activist NGO’s should be forced to register as political entities and lose their tax fee status.
501-C3’s should be shut down if they are engaged in pushing policy, as opposed to charitable work or donating things like libraries or musical instruments.
randomengineer,
With respect to the Bush admin consultation with energy companies, I think you’re only seeing one side. I suspect that there was both boots-on-the-ground knowledge sharing and attempted corporate self-dealing going on in those consultations. Just as I suspect that with the various IPCC working group confabs, there was both scientists-on-the-ground knowledge sharing and attempted NGO self-dealing going on. The important aspect of both of these processes is that there be sufficient transparency of the processes such that the nation | world can be assured that the self-dealing is kept in check.
I suspect that there was both boots-on-the-ground knowledge sharing and attempted corporate self-dealing going on in those consultations.
Obviously the energy companies would push for policy favourable to themselves. I had thought this aspect was well understood enough to be unsurprising and expected.
On the other hand if the general thinking is that what’s good for energy companies also happens to be good for all (i.e. it’s not completely one sided) then this isn’t sinister. e.g. if the consensus is that refinery capacity needs to increase and this helps drive down fuel prices then “insider access” be damned, the result is the result.
Where it concerns NGOs there is no upside other than some sort of vague and nebulous assurance that an absurd variant of pascal’s wager may or may not help in some unspecified timeframe. e.g. claims of species decimation from some third rate hack using a fourth rate computer model based on idiotic and non-scientific assumptions supplemented with non-contextual pictures of hungry polar bears (pick a species, any species) that can only be put to right by changing the chemical formulation of hair sprays to some idiotically expensive and ineffective replacement that is yet to exist and will take according to said model only 138 years to see reliable results… in other words, wild ass unsupportable claims buttressed only by fudged statistics, and even then normal people have to squint to see anything at all.
The difference here is what’s obvious and accessible (i.e. can be known or determined quickly enough by non-experts) vs that which can only be termed as “wild ass guess.” Will an energy company profit by putting in a refinery? One certainly hopes so; why else would they spend time etc going to DC to make the case for such?