IPCC in transition

by Judith Curry

Will Pachauri’s karma run over IPCC’s dogma? – Peter Foster

Pachauri resignation 

The short version of the story is this.  Rachendra Pachauri, IPCC Chair since 2002, has resigned from his position as Chair of the IPCC.  His resignation was triggered by charges of molestation, stalking and sexual harassment. Pachauri’s defense is that his email accounts, mobile phone, and messages have been hacked. His arrest in India has been delayed owing to Pachauri’s hospitalization for a heart condition and UTI.

The text of Pachauri’s resignation letter is found [here]. An overview of Pachauri’s tenure as IPCC Chair is described by the DailyClimate. Resignation from IPCC is just the tip of the iceberg for Pachauri – the Indian Court has barred Pachauri from the premises of TERI, and there are calls for his resignation as President of TERI.  He is also rapidly resigning from his other positions, including India Climate Council.

If you liked Pachauri’s romance novel ‘Return to Almora‘, you’ll enjoy reading the text of Pachauri’s (alleged) romantic emails; for a summary see the Quadrant.  ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ and all that, but it seems pretty plausible that these emails were written by Pachauri, and no one seems to be defending his claim that he was hacked.

Will Pachauri’s karma run over IPCC dogma?

So, what does all this mean for the IPCC?  Are the peccadilloes and trials of an individual – Pachauri – capable of adversely impacting the reputation of the IPCC and the forthcoming policy negotiations in Paris?

Inside Climate News argues that the credibility of the IPCC and negotiations in Paris will not suffer. On the other hand, the Telegraph writes: He may now finally have gone, but the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable.

Donna LaFramboise highlights what I regard as the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation.From Pachauri’s resignation letter:

For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma. 

Yes, the IPCC – which we’re told to take seriously because it is a scientific body producing scientific reports – has, in fact, been led by an environmentalist on a mission. By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling. Even here, at the end, Pachauri fails to grasp that science and religion don’t belong in the same sentence; that those on a political mission are unlikely to be upholders of rigorous scientific practice.

From an article in The Blaze: Climate change skeptics aren’t entirely jubilant about his exit, said Myron Ebell, director of the center for energy and environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank. “On the skeptics side, he had zero credibility from day one,” Ebell told TheBlaze. “But, his kooky behavior helped to undermine the credibility of the institution. 

The bottom line is this.  It is very difficult to ‘enforce’ or even defend the IPCC consensus when the leader of IPCC for more than a decade  is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior, regards climate change as his religion, has massive conflicts of interest, and has used his position as a platform for personal advocacy.  All of this reinforces criticisms that the IPCC is about politics, money and dogma, rather than science.

This situation is terribly unfair to the scientists who have worked very hard for the IPCC, at least some of whom are not dogmatists.   It is very disappointing to see no apology from Pachauri to these scientists.  Will the top tier of scientists want to sign up for the AR6 after all this?

Whither the IPCC?

There are two issues here:

  1. Can the IPCC clean up its act?
  2. How should the IPCC proceed with regards to future assessment reports?

The 2010 InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC made two recommendations of relevance, which have not yet taken effect:

  • The term of the IPCC Chair should be limited to the time frame of one assessment.
  • The IPCC should develop and adopt a rigorous conflict-of-interest policy that applies to all individuals directly involved in the preparation of IPCC reports, including senior IPCC leadership.

Regarding the length of Pachauri’s term, Andy Revkin states:

But the real shame is that he stayed in his position so long — and my reasoning has nothing to do with sexual misconduct. In his resignation letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pachauri said he’d planned to step down on Nov. 2 last year after the release of the final portion of the panel’s fifth climate report, but “close friends and colleagues advised me against that action and to continue with outreach efforts worldwide.” Pachauri also had colleagues on the panel who had, privately, been eager for new leadership for years. One reason was his habit of mixing personal advocacy with the authority granted by his position.

Pachauri’s ‘power base’ for continuing in the position so long was apparently a desire to appease developing countries and so to obtain their ‘buy in’.  Their ‘buy in’ for exactly what is more about politics than about science.  It was a colossal mistake for the IPCC not to have forced Pachauri to step down earlier.

So, what next for the IPCC in terms of its future assessment reports? Sophie Yeo writes: The panel, set up in 1988, will be tackling the questions of a typical midlife crisis: what’s my purpose? Am I going about it in the right way? Does anyone really care about me?

The DailyClimate has a good article IPCC future hinges on greater relevance, amid tricky politics.  The IPCC has issued a press release from its recent meeting in Nairobi to discuss the future of the IPCC.  Richard Tol sums it up with this tweet:  The IPCC continues on its merry old way.

Apart from the details of IPCC procedures, the GWPF highlights the overarching concern: IPCC has lost its scientific objectivity.

Selecting the next Chair of the IPCC

The IPCC has announced that Ismail El Gizouli, current vice-chair, will serve as acting Chair until a new Chair is elected.

Information about the IPCC’s election procedures can be found here.  The most relevant point at present is that nominations for Chair must be submitted by national governments.

So far, three individuals have been nominated:

Other names of likely nominees  mentioned by the Guardian include:

Several of these names are unfamiliar to me, and I don’t know any of the candidates personally.  But a brief google search on each of these individuals suggests that any of them would be an improvement over Pachauri. I briefly comment on two of the names that strike me favorably:

  • Nebjosa Nakicenovic:  I used a quote of his in my paper Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty:  “there is a danger that the IPCC consensus position might lead to a dismissal of uncertainty in favor of spuriously constructed expert opinion.”
  • Chris Field:  As co-Chair of the AR5 WG2 report, about which I wroteThe AR5 WG2 SPM has some startling differences and substantial additions relative to the AR4 version, and is in many ways a much better report. 

The actual election of a new Chair is conducted by the member nations, specifically under the auspices of the IPCC Bureau.  I suspect that raw politics will be more important than individual credentials or platforms.

While I’m not sure why any scientist/academic would want this (unpaid) position that requires you to travel all over the world and deal with some nasty politics, it seems that there is a strong list of candidates, none of whom would appear to have anything approaching Pachauri’s conflicts of interest.

JC reflections

With the Paris summit looming in December, the credibility of the IPCC would seem to be important, although the UNFCCC seems to be about raw politics and I’m not sure how relevant the IPCC is any more.

In my 2013 post IPCC diagnosis – permanent paradigm paralysis, I wrote:

Diagnosis: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.

Perhaps the Pachauri scandal will be jolt the knocks the IPCC out of its paralysis.  Hopefully a new Chair can provide the impetus for torquing the IPCC in a better direction.  I am not optimistic, but there is a window of opportunity here.

The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity.  WG1 needs to begin addressing natural variability in a more serious and comprehensive manner.  If the model projections and observations of surface temperature continue to diverge,  continued high confidence in attribution and future projections will become ludicrous.  As recommended in my paper No Consensus on Consensus, the IPCC should abandon its consensus seeking approach and do a more serious job of assessing uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance.

The issue of conflict of interest is a critical one – not just financial and political conflicts, but conflicts associated with lead authors assessing their own research.  A serious effort at identifying conflicts and managing them would go a long way towards rebuilding the credibility.

The New American writes of the potential political implications:

The IPCC’s media promoters are afraid that many more erstwhile global-warming believers may jump ship at the very time that the warming alarmnists are trying mightily to win popular support for the UN’s upcoming climate summit in Paris, which they hope will birth a new planetary climate regime to control all human activity. They are afraid that many more scientists (and common taxpayers) will adopt the position of Professor Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

!!!

521 responses to “IPCC in transition

  1. daveandrews723

    Expecting any arm of the United Nations to maintain “scientific objectivity” is asking too much. It is a worthless organization.

  2. Richard S.J. Tol

    Naki is a Serb, and I doubt he’s an economist.

    Pachauri’s tenure saw three things:
    – The disintegration of the IPCC into its three working groups. Whereas Bolin and Watson were in charge, Pachauri was a figurehead.
    – The loss of respect for the IPCC. Whereas Bolin and Watson were respected as academics, good communicators, and free of scandal, Pachauri (pere) was intellectually weak, gaffe-prone, and scandal-ridden. (Pachauri fille is a lot smarter.)
    – Mission creep. The original IPCC did one thing only: assessment. The current IPCC is involved in standard setting and training too.

    Can the new chair turn this around?

    Van Ypersele and Lee are the front-runners. They aren’t much of an improvement, although they keep their pants on afaik.

    In their latest meeting, the IPCC Plenary made two decisions. The IPCC should stay the course, but the Bureau should include be expanded to include more people from Africa and Asia. Unfortunately, these countries do not send their most eminent scholars to the IPCC.

    • Worth remembering that certain people wanted Watson gone, probably for the qualities Richard notes.

    • About Naki, from his bio:

      “{He} is … Professor of Energy Economics at the Vienna University of Technology. … Professor Nakicenovic holds bachelors and masters degrees in economics and computer science from Princeton University, New Jersey, USA and the University of Vienna, where he also completed his Ph.D.”

      • I’m sure Richard knows Naki well and can judge how much he is an economist. I have also met him a couple of times. He has worked long at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, located near Vienna) before (and also during) his present tenure and is a highly innovative systems analyst. Technological change is one of his main specialties.

      • Pekka,

        “I’m sure Richard knows Naki well and can judge how much he is an economist.”

        If I had Naki’s bio, I’d be annoyed if someone said “I doubt he’s an economist.” It’s a brutal statement, given with no support or explanation — no matter how well “Richard knows Naki.”

      • Pekka, EFM
        I’ve known Naki for 20 years, and he never struck me as an economist. Scopus returns 70 papers, only 3 of which are in nominally economics journals (but the papers are not economics papers).

        I quite like Naki’s work, and he is great company. He is probably the best of the field of candidates.

      • Quick, lets you and I vote :)

      • Prof Tol,

        “Scopus returns 70 papers, only 3 of which are in nominally economics journals.”

        I don’t want to beat this to death. But as an economist yourself, you know that a large fraction of “economists” (by any commonplace definition) publish little or nothing in peer-reviewed literature (e.g., appearing in Scopus).

        On a separate note, I would be interested in your analysis of how an economist could help the IPCC boost its credibility. Rather than someone with a background in the physical sciences (the area of greatest dispute), or an administrator (with a strong science background) with experience at managing large international multi-disciplinary public policy projects.

      • EFM
        Most economists don’t publish much, true. Naki publishes loads, just little economics.

        I don’t think that economists are better or worse at leading an organization like the IPCC – although we have the slight advantage of being prepared for such a role from our undergrad days onwards. Economists and lawyers are overrepresented in public policy.

        At the moment, the IPCC needs someone who can reform the organization while keeping the old guard happy and calming the discontents.

      • I nominate Richard Tol. Do I hear a shecond from Shollenberger?
        ============

      • Rob Starkey

        Richard writes

        “while keeping the old guard happy and calming the discontents.”

        Why in your opinion should keeping the old guard happy be a priority? Is this a scientific principle I missed?

      • Heh, Rob, to avoid Caesar’s fate.
        ==============

      • Editor of…. wrote, “…a background in the physical sciences (the area of greatest dispute)”

        Personally, I don’t think the physical science part is the area of greatest dispute. The area of greatest dispute is what do (or can) we do about CO2 emissions. And the options range from do nothing to destroy the world economy. Of course deciding what to do partially depends on knowing how bad the problem is, the area of greatest uncertainty. But at the end of the day, the how bad is the problem part becomes moot when you consider, what can we do about it from an economic point of view.

      • Dick,

        “I don’t think the physical science part is the area of greatest dispute.”

        The data from public polls clearly shows that a majority of the American public does not believe that global warming (or climate change) is among the most serious problems we face (i.e., it ranks very low vs other needs). Therefore how to address the problem is a secondary question until that fact changes.

      • EFM,
        How a person ranks GW in seriousness vs. other issues may very well be based on economics. Also, the majority of people are not capable of understanding or making judgments on the physical science. I think more are capable of understanding the economics.

    • Re van Ypersele, he has a track record as a warmest hysteric, see
      http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/tony-thomas/2014/11/climate-hustles-hot-brussels/

  3. ” It is very difficult to ‘enforce’ or even defend the IPCC consensus when the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior…” – JC

    Thank god Judith remains focussed on the real scientific issues and hasn’t been distracted by trivia such as Willie Soon and $$$$ for keptic ‘deliverables’.

    Who said Judith Curry and ‘vacuous blather’? – know they now better!

    • Oh, and Judith notes, with due concern, conflict of interest.

      Without, apparently, blinking.

      Where’s Joshua!!

      • Georgia Tech has a very stringent COI policy. The IPCC never thought about the issue until the IAC report, and then after paying lip service to the issue, they thought it unfair to ask AR5 authors etc to fill out COI forms.

      • Judith:
        AR5 authors did fill out COI forms. Forms were not checked, there were no consequences for those who declared a COI, and the forms are well hidden.

      • Hi Richard, thanks for the clarification.

      • “Where’s Joshua?”
        Out to lunch, as always.

      • > … after paying lip service to the issue, they thought it unfair to ask AR5 authors etc to fill out COI forms (curryja)

        Yes, I’ll never forgive Pachauri for that bottomless pit of cynical hypocrisy

    • Delivereables that were kept?

    • The deliverables were established by the Smithsonian not Soon and have zero to do with skeptics. All you have to do is read the Smithsonian contract, which Soon never signed, and you would have known that instead of embarrassing yourself with false accusations. “Deliverables” is clearly defined in the Smithsonian contract as progress updates which is common to most research funding agreements.

      Your lack of knowledge is exceeded only by your juvenile anger/tantrum directed towards Judith.

      • Cut Michael some slack. One can’t expect donkeys to exhibit a sense of embarrassment. Even talking ones. It isn’t in their makeup.

      • Sun,

        Don’t forget Soon failed to declare what he should have declared.

        And we know how very very concerned ‘skeptics’ are about scientific INTEGRITY.

        Think of the INTEGRITY Sun.

    • Rob Starkey

      Michael

      Does it trouble you at all that the head of this supposedly scientific body states something other than getting to the truth of what the science can tell us regarding the impacts of human released CO2?

      Is an individual with a religious like view on sustainability and survival of all species the appropriate person to evaluate the science? Doesn’t it seem highly biased?

      • Danny Thomas

        Rob,

        I’m still not clear on how anything “Intergovermental” is supposed to be a scientific body. When I first started out in a quest for more information there was an expectation of a scientific disagreement. Now, perception is a political disagreement with (some) contrary scientific evidence exists and money is playing each team. I cannot get away from my personal “belief” that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

      • Rob,

        Do you really think that he was the evaluating the science??

        I know you’re not that dumb.

    • “the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior…”

      So has the former President of the USA, the most honorable William Jefferson Clinton. Happens to the best of people!

  4. “All of this reinforces criticisms that the IPCC is about politics, money and dogma, rather than science” – Curry

    Spectacularly vapid nonsense Judtih.

    The chair doesn’t assess the science or write the reports.

  5. How do we go about nominating Dr Curry? I’m serious.

    • No chance – playing Monday-morning quarterback is way more fun.

    • talk to the U.S. secretary of state. Hard to imagine a worse job (and I hate traveling all over the place). Re the IPCC, my preferred position is armchair pundit

      • “Hard to imagine a worse job (and I hate traveling all over the place). ”

        Well, how about nominating the US sec state? A good defender of the dogma, and he likes traveling all over the place. He’ll be available in a couple of years.

      • Judith,

        Re the IPCC, my preferred position is armchair pundit

        Better tell Tom!
        ;) I think you’d be an outstanding Chair!

      • Honored Chairmarm.
        ================

  6. As recommended in my paper No Consensus on Consensus, the IPCC should abandon its consensus seeking approach and do a more serious job of assessing uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance.

    Is there any reason to resort to consensus except when the underlying science does not speak for itself? So it would seem that abandonment of the consensus route is unlikely until then.

    • “Working Group II … considers the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems.” (ipcc.ch)
      E.g., scareware.

    • Pooh, Dixie

      There is much use of the word “Consensus”. Liberally used, so to speak. The IPCC does not have consensus.

      So what is “Consensus”?
      “a conflict-resolution process used mainly to settle complex, multiparty disputes.” “Consensus building offers a way for individual citizens and organizations to collaborate on solving complex problems in ways that are acceptable to all.” I my experience, all participants should agree that the process was fair (mutually acceptable).

      Characteristics:
      “Problems that may be effectively addressed with a consensus-building approach tend to share some general characteristics. Some of these characteristics are:
      – The problems are ill defined, or there is disagreement about how they should be defined.
      – Several stakeholders have a vested interest in the problems and are interdependent.
      – These stakeholders are not necessarily identified as a cohesive group or organization.
      – There may be a disparity of power and/or resources for dealing with the problems among the stakeholders. Stakeholders may have different levels of expertise and different access to information about the problems.
      – The problems are often characterized by technical complexity and scientific uncertainty.
      – Differing perspectives on the problems often lead to adversarial relationships among the stakeholders.
      – Incremental or unilateral efforts to deal with the problems typically produce less than satisfactory solutions.
      – Existing processes for addressing the problems have proved insufficient and may even exacerbate them.”

      Essential ingredient: Fair process
      — a decision-making approach that addresses our basic human need to be valued and respected. When people feel a decision affecting them was made fairly, they trust and cooperate ….”

      Burgess, Heidi, and Brad Spangler. “Consensus Building.” Management. Beyond Intractability, September 2003. http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/consensus-building.

      Kim, W., and Renée Mauborgne. “Fair Process.” Harvard Business Review, 1997, 65–75.
      http://www.unmc.edu/media/gpphli/interregional/fair_process__managing_the_knowledge_economy.pdf

      • I have taken part in Groups that did use consensus to make decisions.

        Consensus means that the decision group agrees to accept the decision.
        Usually, this is because the boss told the group that they would accept the decision. Often, it is the decision that the boss wanted all along or it was about a matter that the boss did not care about.

        Consensus does not mean that all in a group agrees that it is the best decision.

      • Then it would not be “fair”, would it?

  7. > regards climate change as his religion

    I thought Patchy was referring to “the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems,” Judy.

    If you focus on our specie, you get humanism, which is an old tack:

    Human-centered philosophy that rejected the supernatural can be found also circa 1500 BCE in the Lokayata system of Indian philosophy. Nasadiya Sukta, a passage in the Rig Veda, contains one of the first recorded assertion of agnosticism. In the 6th-century BCE, Gautama Buddha expressed, in Pali literature, a skeptical attitude toward the supernatural:

    Since neither soul, nor aught belonging to soul, can really and truly exist, the view which holds that this I who am ‘world’, who am ‘soul’, shall hereafter live permanent, persisting, unchanging, yea abide eternally: is not this utterly and entirely a foolish doctrine?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

    Misreading might not be the best way to bash religiosity.

    • Fiddlesticks Willard – why should we try to understand differing world-views when we can instead engage in a crude and trivial food-fight??

    • The whole quote is:
      “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma. ”

      What do climate campaigners claim they are doing? Protect Planet Earth? Check. Help the survival of species? Check. Sustainability? Check.

      Willard and Michael are reduced to arguing that the man was indeed on a mission, but he abandoned it for the last decade to work on climate change. Good luck with that.
      My personal take is that you’re almost right. He and many others thought AGW was a way to force the sustainability agenda rather that a search for functional alternatives to fossil fuels. He and many others are discovering they were wrong.

      • “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

        Plus a lil’ tail on the side.

        Andrew

      • Well, it is part of the UN, which has hosted sex scandals in Burundi, Haiti, Congo, Liberia, Bosnia…. etc etc ad infinitum

      • its also been rather good for his pocket too , remember the TERI funding feed to it while Pachauri has head of both organisations. Of course that was proved OK by an audit, only the firm that did the investigation made clear it had not done an audit and it lacked information from Pachauri to do a good job.
        Like St Gore and others on ‘the Team’ it has been a rather nice ride on this gravy train , not by any means just a question of a mission.

      • 1000-

        Good job. Gish Gallop of the highest order. Please nitric that you didn’t actually answer any of the questions.

    • If you focus on our specie, you get humanism…

      Humanism is not the only alternate religion, and the point is that we ought not to be conducting this according to religious principles and motivations in the first place.

      • > Humanism is not the only alternate religion, and the point is that we ought not to be conducting this according to religious principles and motivations in the first place.

        That humanism is not the only alternate religion is false and irrelevant, and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.

        Principles stand or fall on their own merit, not because one can dismiss them as religious.

      • That humanism is not the only alternate religion is false and irrelevant, and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.

        Uhmmm…..

      • …and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.

        But as you know, it has been observed by some that the attitude of many people toward climate change takes on elements that we normally associate with religion. For example, when people say that they “believe in” climate change this can be an example of faith, which does not always lose strength in the absence of corroborating facts. Whether or not you think that humanism or some other philosophy is a religion, the idea is that the motivations spurring climate change “believers” should not be those that we association with religion, such as faith, sin, absolution, infidels, prophesy, salvation, sacrifice, evangelism.

      • > when people say that they “believe in” climate change this can be an example of faith

        Unless you can show that belief reduces to faith, this is incorrect.

        Like Stephen Colbert once said, I believe in America, I believe it exists.

        INTEGRITY ™ – It’s a gut thing.

      • Unless you can show that belief reduces to faith, this is incorrect.

        No, I am certainly not saying that belief reduces to faith. I am saying, however, that there are many people whose belief in the truth of global warming is more akin to a religious faith than it is to a rational belief founded upon evidence. In the first place, how many people are there who have an education sufficient to allow them to evaluate the evidence? So what are they basing it on? Many people conceive of it as all part of a grand program to oppose the evil influences in life. Oil companies play the same role in their thinking as demonic forces did in the middle ages. “Sceptics” are scorned as infidels who have sold their souls to the devil for a few pieces of silver. In addition, if they were to change their mind on global warming they would lose one of the most important things they have in common with all their friends. Michael Crichton talked about environmentalism as a religion, http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/ID/2818/Crichton-Environmentalism-is-a-religion.aspx, and a similar thing could be said about climate change. The more peoples’ attitudes are controlled by influences characteristic of religions, the more difficult it becomes to make decisions that are founded exclusively on rationality.

        …and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.

        So I don’t think that this is true. The religious aspect brings entirely new forces to bear.

      • Nice try Willard.

        “Principles stand or fall on their own merit, not because one can dismiss them as religious.”

        Now explain how Pachauri’s stated principles fit with the responsibilities of his position as IPCC Chair.

        When you’re done with that, address the difference in how one’s stated principles might clash with one’s actions and which is more telling.

      • > I am saying, however, that there are many people whose belief in the truth of global warming is more akin to a religious faith than it is to a rational belief founded upon evidence.

        We were talking about Patchy, so I believe the “many people” serves another of Swood’s bait and switches.

        Compare and contrast:

        There are many people whose belief in nullius non verbal is more akin to a belief in an implausible principle than anything else.

        There are many people whose disbelief in AGW is more akin to market fundamentalism than anything rational.

      • We were talking about Patchy, so I believe the “many people” serves another of Swood’s bait and switches.

        Wasn’t the following text a part of the article at the top of this page?

        Yes, the IPCC – which we’re told to take seriously because it is a scientific body producing scientific reports – has, in fact, been led by an environmentalist on a mission. By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling. Even here, at the end, Pachauri fails to grasp that science and religion don’t belong in the same sentence; that those on a political mission are unlikely to be upholders of rigorous scientific practice.

        Doesn’t this raise the question of the general impact of holding scientific beliefs religiously, not just its effect on “Patchy” specifically. Furthermore, someone made this statement:

        …and the point is that principles are principles, whether they’re religious or not.

        This is a statement about religious principles not limited to “Patchy,” right? So why the sudden assertion that we’re only talking about “Patchy” and the specific religion he holds?

        There are many people whose belief in nullius non verbal is more akin to a belief in an implausible principle than anything else.

        Nullius in verba?

        I’m afraid that the meaning of your final two paragraphs has eluded me.

      • 1000-

        ==> “But as you know, it has been observed by some that the attitude of many people toward climate change takes on elements that we normally associate with religion.”

        Hmmm.

        “Takes on elements….”

        Rather a vague reference.

        At what point does noting shared elements become useful for understanding the issues? At what point might pointing to shared “elements” between two phenomena, in the face of much greater incongruity between those two phenomena, look more like building on unrepresentative sampling to fallaciously steer towards unsupported conclusions?

        Where is the balance here of similarity versus dissimilarity? What is the evidence?

        ==> “For example, when people say that they “believe in” climate change this can be an example of faith, which does not always lose strength in the absence of corroborating facts.”

        Really? Faith? How many people have “faith” in climate change in the same way that people have faith in God? I mean I hear the claim made quite often that belief one way or the other about climate change is “like a religion,” but where is the evidence supporting the claim?

        What is the prevalence of people who think that there is no doubt about climate change in the same way that people think that there is no doubt about the existence of god?

        How many people think that the fact of climate change cannot be proven with scientific evidence in the same way that people think that the existence of god cannot be proven with scientific evidence?

        Since we should be careful about distinguishing between belief based on evidence and belief based on other influences, what is your “evidence” that you use to qualify and quantify your claims?

        ==> “…the idea is that the motivations spurring climate change “believers” should not be those that we association with religion, such as faith, sin, absolution, infidels, prophesy, salvation, sacrifice, evangelism.”

        Interesting, isn’t it, that those associations you list are often seen by “skeptics” as existing between “realists” and their belief in climate change Should we then conclude that “skepticism” has elements associated with religion?

      • 1000-

        And btw….to follow up something I said in my previous comment….

        What is the prevalence of people who think that there is no doubt about climate change in the same way that people think that there is no doubt about the existence of god?

        Keep in mind two things:

        1. Most people who have firm beliefs one way or the other about climate change are not very familiar at all with the evidence, and don’t have the technical skills needed to evaluate that evidence at any rate.

        2. I am often told by “skeptics” (when they aren’t telling me that “skeptics” aren’t monolithic), that hardly any skeptics “doubt” that the Earth is warming, that ACO2 causes warming, and that ACO2 is contributing to the warming of the climate.

        Hmmmm.

        Does climate “skepticism” “share elements” with religious belief?

        If so, do you think that is important?

      • > Doesn’t this raise the question of the general impact of holding scientific beliefs religiously, not just its effect on “Patchy” specifically.

        People raise questions, not whatever is referred by “this”.

        Also, Swood’s assumption that the AGW belief is held religiously begs the question at hand.

        The indirect admission that Patchy was used as a bait to switch to the AGW belief us duly acknowledged.

      • Joshua –

        Really? Faith? How many people have “faith” in climate change in the same way that people have faith in God? I mean I hear the claim made quite often that belief one way or the other about climate change is “like a religion,” but where is the evidence supporting the claim?

        1. Normally when scientists want to test a theory they make a prediction based on the theory. If the prediction fails the scientific approach is to revise the theory. In a religion if a prediction fails the faithful are typically undeterred. Let’s consider the response by climate believers to the ‘hiatus’. It seems to be more like the religious approach than the scientific approach, even so far as to deny the existence of a hiatus.

        2. Historically, religion has relied on the Appeal to Authority but science has had no need for that, instead relying on observations. But we see that climate science relies heavily on an Appeal to Authority.

        3. Historically, religions have often relied on intimidation or force rather than on logic and explanations. But my experience is there are few people more contemptuously overbearing than a climate change true believer on a blog. They have even come up with their own term of derision: the ‘denier’. A ‘denier’ is a person to be marked and shunned. Is this the scientific approach to convincing someone of the correctness of one’s scientific belief, or does it more resemble a sad chapter of religious history?

        4. The observation that climate change has religious elements has been made by many. For example, Freeman Dyson: “The main point is religious rather than scientific.” http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson Freeman Dyson was then subjected to outrageous personal abuse. Is that the scientific approach, or is that the medieval strong-arm approach?

        5. Here you can watch a confession: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/22/cnn-anchor-confesses-his-eco-sins-to-cleanse-for-earth-day/

        6. Nobel prize winner Ivar Giaever referred to the statement from the American Physical Society

        where it is stated: The evidence is incontrovertible; i.e. it can’t be discussed, just like religion. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/the-nobel-divide-and-the-climate-divide

        So the APA is treating climate change just like Christians view the Gospel. It cannot be denied.

        7. Judith Curry was called a “Climate Heretic” by Scientific American. Is this not a religious expression? See http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/07/no-ideologues-part-iii/ which describes five characteristics of an ‘ideology’ (also of a religion):

        There are five attributes of ideologues:
        1. Absence of doubt
        2. Intolerance of debate
        3. Appeal to authority
        4. A desire to convince others of the ideological “truth”
        5. A willingness to punish those that don’t concur
        Note that each of these characteristics is anathema to science.

        Few will deny that these are characteristic of the approach taken by climate change believers.

        What is the prevalence of people who think that there is no doubt about climate change in the same way that people think that there is no doubt about the existence of god?

        There seem to be very many who view it in exactly the same way – as something not open to question. Don’t you agree?

        How many people think that the fact of climate change cannot be proven with scientific evidence in the same way that people think that the existence of god cannot be proven with scientific evidence?

        I don’t think that “cannot be proven with scientific evidence” is a necessary characteristic of religion. There have been many people who have thought that the existence of God can be proven with scientific evidence. They have just not been able to convince everybody. There have also been many people who have thought that the existence of God can be proven logically. Similar difficulty.

        Since we should be careful about distinguishing between belief based on evidence and belief based on other influences, what is your “evidence” that you use to qualify and quantify your claims?

        See above.

        Interesting, isn’t it, that those associations you list are often seen by “skeptics” as existing between “realists” and their belief in climate change Should we then conclude that “skepticism” has elements associated with religion?

        Don’t follow.

      • Willard –

        People raise questions, not whatever is referred by “this”.

        ‘This’ referred to the immediately preceding quotation.

        Also, Swood’s assumption that the AGW belief is held religiously begs the question at hand.

        I supplied examples, not just assumptions.

        The indirect admission that Patchy was used as a bait to switch to the AGW belief us duly acknowledged.

        What indirect admission was that?

      • good one :)

      • 1000-

        http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/03/ipcc-in-transition/#comment-680233

        FWIW, exchange with you has become increasingly disappointing. I had hopes.

      • Don’t get down in the mouth, Josh. I’m sure there are thousands of people on the web who would play small beer games with you.

      • Do you believe in atoms, Swood?

      • > ‘This’ referred to the immediately preceding quotation.

        Indeed, and the preceding quotation is not the one that raises the question. You are. Own it.

        Nobody’s making you do it.

        ***

        Do you believe in the Big Bang, BTW?

      • > Few will deny that these are characteristic of the approach taken by climate change believers.

        One should not conflate religion with ideology.

      • Willard –

        Do you believe in atoms, Swood?

        Your point being that “believe in” is an alternate form of asking if I believe that there are atoms. No doubt many people use it with this meaning. But I think that this expression is typically used under circumstances in which the person is not aware of clear and logical proof to rationally support the proposition.

        Do you believe in the Big Bang, BTW?

        I believe that the Big Bang is the current best explanation, although http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

        Indeed, and the preceding quotation is not the one that raises the question. You are. Own it.

        The quotation included this: “By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling.” This raises the issue of those who approach climate change from a religious perspective.

        Nobody’s making you do it.

        I can leave my life of perdition if I only set my mind to it?

        One should not conflate religion with ideology.

        Religion and ideology are not the same but have many attributes in common. A belief in God is characteristic of religion but is not necessary. For example, Buddhists do not believe in God. What is necessary is a central all-encompassing belief system that gives one’s life meaning and which is regarded as the way to salvation. One typically feels joyful about what has been revealed to be possible, wants to spread the Good News, and is contemptuous of the enemies named by the religion who have resisted attempts to proselytize them, who have unaccountably turned a deaf ear to the Good News, and who are the downfall of innocent souls who could have been saved. It is a belief system that typically is held regardless of the evidence. When I hear somebody say that he “believes in global warming” I usually take him at his word. To believe in something is typically a religious act, or at the very least usually signifies something beyond mere rationality.

        Perhaps I could say that I don’t have enough faith to believe the claims made about climate change, but no doubt I would also need to be on board with the whole complex of other goals typically shared by the faithful.

      • > I think that this expression is typically used under circumstances in which the person is not aware of clear and logical proof to rationally support the proposition.

        I’d settle for any kind of clear support, but I don’t think requiring logical proofs for empirical propositions is that clear. One might even argue it’s not quite rational.

        Are you aware of clear support for the existence of atoms?

      • > Perhaps I could say that I don’t have enough faith to believe the claims made about climate change, but no doubt I would also need to be on board with the whole complex of other goals typically shared by the faithful.

        Begging the question with the “faithful” again. The good old Ann Coulter gambit. From an alien perspective, everything looks like a cargo cult.

        There is no need for any Internet dog to be on board of anything. If AGW is the best explanation we have, it is the best we have. It’s easier for AGW to be the best explanation than Big Bang theory, since there is no other plausible alternative anymore.

      • Are you aware of clear support for the existence of atoms?

        I am not aware of any physicists who question it. It appears at least to be a remarkably good explanation for the observations we have made despite the fact that problems in quantum mechanics have not been resolved. I am also not aware of any movement to shun or denigrate anyone who questions the existence of atoms. If a scientist came along who questioned the existence of atoms there would be no writing of vitriolic diatribes denouncing him and no thundering demands for his dismissal.

      • If AGW is the best explanation we have, it is the best we have.

        The problem is that people confuse “the best we have” with “the best one possible” and “sufficient to justify trillions of dollars in expenditures, major changes to our economic system, and a huge drop in the standard of living for most people on the planet.” Geocentrism was the best explanation we had for over a thousand years.

        …there is no other plausible alternative…

        How about the alternative that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate? Not plausible? Of course the direction that warming has taken is not in accord with predictions but that can be ignored. What cannot be abandoned is the basic supposition. There is a name for that style of thinking.

      • swomill, one of the things I find intriguing is that it is that AGW is perfectly rational, and CAGW is practically psychotic. What is up with that?

        Somehow a mundane scientific phenomenon has been transfigured into an existential crisis requiring world shaking re-ordering of human society.

        Oh well, these pathologies have their crises. Hope it ain’t a quartain.
        =============

      • Another thing, and I mentioned this elsewhere after being thought provoked by Cap’n D. The meme, ‘Future climate will not be as bad as we thought’, is a perfectly rational, easily marketable, true narrative, yet it is taboo to say it. Serfs, that’s pathological. The Master is not well.
        ===================

      • Joshua –

        2. I am often told by “skeptics” (when they aren’t telling me that “skeptics” aren’t monolithic), that hardly any skeptics “doubt” that the Earth is warming, that ACO2 causes warming, and that ACO2 is contributing to the warming of the climate.
        Hmmmm.

        Apparently you cannot comprehend such a concept because it contradicts your core belief. The idea is that a doubling of CO2 will result in a 1°C rise in temperature, there will be no catastrophic positive feedbacks, and everything will go on as before.

      • 1000-

        ==> “Apparently you cannot comprehend such a concept because it contradicts your core belief. The idea is that a doubling of CO2 will result in a 1°C rise in temperature, there will be no catastrophic positive feedbacks, and everything will go on as before.”

        Apparently,you have no idea about my “core beliefs,” let alone my non-core,beliefs, but don’t let that get in the way of speculating about them. Do you consider yourself a”skeptic?”

        Anyway, outside your speculation about my briefs, would you care to assess my points?

      • Kim –

        swomill, one of the things I find intriguing is that it is that AGW is perfectly rational, and CAGW is practically psychotic. What is up with that?

        Name-calling is resorted to when rational explanations fall short, when the need is felt for a blunt object.

        Somehow a mundane scientific phenomenon has been transfigured into an existential crisis requiring world shaking re-ordering of human society.

        I think there is something to be said for the proposition that there has been a “green” movement for some time now, with a variety of goals, but it just couldn’t get the traction that its supporters had hoped it would. Some of them see this as their last best hope.

      • Joshua –

        Does climate “skepticism” “share elements” with religious belief?
        If so, do you think that is important?

        For some people, no doubt it does. But they just don’t seem to approach it with the same messianic ferver.

      • > I am not aware of any physicists who question it.

        Here:

        http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr

        Now you know one.

        ***

        > It appears at least to be a remarkably good explanation for the observations we have made despite the fact that problems in quantum mechanics have not been resolved.

        Arguing from ignorance is seldom a good explanation.

      • > How about the alternative that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate?

        What evidence do we have?

        How is that an explanation?

        How could it be a scientific claim if “catastrophic” is not defined in a scientific manner?

        If that’s not a scientific claim, does it mean it’s ideologically driven?

        Could we go so far as to say that it introduces a belief base akin to religiosity?

        ***

        “But CAGW” is a straw man.

      • You asked “Are you aware of clear support for the existence of atoms?” I replied “I am not aware of any physicists who question it.” You referred me to the link about Niels Bohr with the statement “Now you know one.” But the link says

        “Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom…Today, the Bohr model of the atom has been superseded, but is still the best known model of the atom, as it often appears in high school physics and chemistry texts.”

        So why do you say that Bohr questioned the existence of the atom?

      • > It appears at least to be a remarkably good explanation for the observations we have made despite the fact that problems in quantum mechanics have not been resolved.
        Arguing from ignorance is seldom a good explanation.

        Isn’t it the alarmist side of the question that raises that type of argument, saying that their theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?

        Furthermore, saying that something is a remarkably good explanation is not the same as saying that it is true. It is saying that it is a theory with much practical usefulness despite theoretical inconsistencies.

      • > How about the alternative that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate?
        What evidence do we have?
        How is that an explanation?

        The burden of proof is on those who argue for a sudden catastrophic change in climate, not on those who question it.

        How could it be a scientific claim if “catastrophic” is not defined in a scientific manner?

        There have been many claims about the harmful results of climate change. http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm These claims are collectively and colloquial what is referred to as “catastrophic”.

        Could we go so far as to say that it introduces a belief base akin to religiosity?

        Don’t see it.

        “But CAGW” is a straw man.

        Nor that.

      • 1000-

        ==> “saying that their theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?”

        When “they” provide error bars and CI’s, does that mean that “they” are saying that “their” theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?

        ==> “The burden of proof is on those who argue for a sudden catastrophic change in climate, not on those who question it.”

        Do you think that something can be “proven” here one way or the other?

        Do you think that playing games is a good substitute for good faith discussion?

      • Steven Mosher

        “The burden of proof is on those who argue for a sudden catastrophic change in climate, not on those who question it.”

        Huh?

        do you think the “burden of proof” is just a thing that magically appears?
        that we can look at a situation and say “oh, logic says the burden of proof belongs to X”

        Lets take a simple example. Your neighbor and you share a stream for drinking water. Neither of you own the stream but you both use it.

        One day you see your neighbor pouring a liquid in the stream.

        You: what you doing?
        N: just getting rid of this stuff
        Y: in our stream?
        N: ya
        Y: Is it safe?
        N: been doing it for a while, and you are still alive.
        Y: but is it safe?
        N: The benefits are great. I cant afford to truck the stuff away
        so it saves me money. and I use that money to buy your cow milk.
        whats the problem.
        Y: is it safe?
        N: well, seems to me the burden of proof is on YOU.
        Y: really? seems to me the burden is on you.
        Y: what if the stuff is cancerous?
        N: you know you cant actually prove things like that, its all probabilities.
        But go ahead try to prove its dangerous, I have a host of skeptical
        techniques honed to perfection over the centuries. They work
        to prevent agreement between reasonable people.

        Question: is burden of proof observable? can we disagree about it?

      • When “they” provide error bars and CI’s, does that mean that “they” are saying that “their” theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?

        Not always.

        Do you think that something can be “proven” here one way or the other?

        I think only that scientific theories can be proposed and a statement made as to certainty, which can be disputed.

        Do you think that playing games is a good substitute for good faith discussion?

        Can you elaborate on what constitutes playing games?

      • > Isn’t it the alarmist side of the question that raises that type of argument, saying that their theory must be regarded as true unless a better one can be shown?

        No, it simply argues that it’s the best explanation known to date.

        On the other hand, Swood’s argument that he doesn’t know of any physicist who denies the existence of atoms is an appeal to ignorance, in this case his own.

        There’s a big difference between appeals to ignorance and inference to the best explanation.

        ***

        > Furthermore, saying that something is a remarkably good explanation is not the same as saying that it is true. It is saying that it is a theory with much practical usefulness despite theoretical inconsistencies.

        Strictly speaking, only facts should be said to be true.

        Saying that a theory is true is oftentimes just a way to that it’s the best explanation we have. It works because facts rely on them. (Hint: transitivity.) Why facts are said to be true while resting on conjectural theories is left as an exercise to Denizens.

        Must be something religulous.

        ***

        Now Swood is left with a wedge between “is true” and “is the best explanation we have.” If that’s all we Denizens have, we stand little chance.

      • Steven Mosher –

        In your example, if the fellow were to be charged with a crime the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor. In general it seems to me that if someone is asserting that some change is going to take place the burden of proof is on that person to prove his assertion.

      • the issue of who bears the burden of proof was discussed in my paper Nullifying the climate null hypothesis
        https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/null-wires-numbered.pdf

      • 1000-

        ==> “…must be regarded as true…”

        Let’s try again.

        If someone provides error bars and CIs with respect to a theory, are “they” saying that “their” theory “must” be true?

        That’s what i mean by playing games.

      • > There have been many claims about the harmful results of climate change.

        They don’t help you define your own hypothesis in a scientific manner.

        Saying “I claim non-P because you say P” is pure contradiction:

      • > if the fellow were to be charged with a crime the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor.

        First, it was a conversation between two neighboors, not a court room.

        Second, it’s not always true:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Code

        Third, here would be a more proper setting:

        The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) performs an essential public health task by making sure that safe and effective drugs are available to improve the health of people in the United States.
        As part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), CDER regulates over-the-counter and prescription drugs, including biological therapeutics and generic drugs. This work covers more than just medicines. For example, fluoride toothpaste, antiperspirants, dandruff shampoos and sunscreens are all considered “drugs.”

        http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofMedicalProductsandTobacco/CDER/default.htm

        Compare and contrast Swood’s lawyerly mode with the tobacco’s industry’s smokes and mirrors.

        Must be a religulous thing.

      • Shorter version of Mosher’s hypothetical.
        “I have a headache. I theorize that it’s because you poured something in the stream. It’s up to you to prove – a. that I don’t have a headache even though you saw me blasting AC/DC on my headphones just now and b. That you didn’t cause my headache (that may or may not be real).”

      • I’m left wondering if, when “skeptics” say that emissions mitigation is “economic suicide” that will starve millions of children in Africa, “they” are saying that their theory “must” be true. Previously, even though those “skeptics” who say that don’t provide error bars and CIs to quantify “their” certainty, I didn’t assume they were arguing that their theory “must” be true…but maybe i should consider otherwise. Although, i will say that the alternative interpretation of their argument sounds awfully “alarmist.”

      • =>> “the issue of who bears the burden of proof was discussed in my paper Nullifying the climate null hypothesis.”

        Did you explain that burden of proof finger-pointing in the climate change wars are irrelevant tribal games?

      • Steven Mosher

        swood

        “In your example, if the fellow were to be charged with a crime the burden of proof would be on the prosecutor. In general it seems to me that if someone is asserting that some change is going to take place the burden of proof is on that person to prove his assertion.”

        You missed the point. The point is you cannot simply “read” the burden of proof from the circumastance. in this case you appealled to the law.
        specifically US law.

        But that’s not the question. The question is where is the burden of proof WRT C02.

        When the regulations are changed, and they will be, then the burden of proof will change under your conception of burden of proof.

        So here is the burden for you.

        our politicians listen to the IPCC.

        you want them not to? the burden is on YOU to come up with a better theory

      • Steven Mosher

        who bears the burden of proof isn’t a scientific question.

      • Does a bear burden the woods with proof?
        ============================

      • “I’m left wondering if, when “skeptics” say that emissions mitigation is “economic suicide””…”

        Skeptics don’t say that emissions mitigation is economic suicide. The emissions mitigation that came from the natural gas boom in the US has been economically fantastic. The emissions mitigation from the construction of nuclear plants has been economically great. That’s why you could have bi-partisan emissions mitigation if you really cared about emissions mitigation.
        Skeptics say fake “emissions mitigation” policies – billions blown on “Easter Bunny solutions,” tax schemes, and pie-in-the-sky mandates – would be economic suicide.
        And that’s not a “theory.” I always find it amusing that if the topic is AGW, then “everybody knows” raising energy prices won’t hurt the economy, but when the topic is an actual real energy price increase, “everybody knows” it hurts the economy. Here’s one example from Time Magazine:
        http://business.time.com/2011/03/09/gas-price-spike-a-long-term-job-killer/

        It is the signal achievement of the left to politicize AGW such that you earn the label “anti science” or “denier” only by refusing to do something truly ridiculous that would have no impact on emissions. It’s a great political strategy, a lousy environmental strategy. But that’s a feature, not a bug, right Josh?

      • It’s a mad political strategy for perilous short term gains. Desperate, frenzied, doomed. A tarentella.
        ============

      • ==> “Skeptics don’t say that emissions mitigation is economic suicide”

        Lol. Just one of many, many examples:

        http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2013/05/02/european-green-movement-verge-collapse-due-failed-climate-change-and-global-warming-polic#axzz3TSGjqpoB

        I have frequently pointed out to “skeptics” that they fail to acknowledge uncertainty when they talk about the economic outcomes of mitigation. And that’s without even discussing the net uncertainty even before they double down by assuming outcomes w/r/t benefits/loss with of externalities. Such over-confidence, and reliance on un-unverified and in-validated economic modeling is one of the reasons that i put “skeptics” in quotes, as i consider a failure to address obvious uncertainties to be a “tell” for confirmation bias.

        I do remember one time, however, when Judith expressed some uncertainty about the outcomes of economic modeling. I gave her kudos for that. It’s good when she shows a little consistency when taking about uncertainty. Ordinarily, mr. Monster just ups and walks out if the room when she considers what “skeptics” have to say.

      • Josh,
        Thanks for proving my point! I said skeptics oppose fake-mitigation and you link to an article where skeptics can be found opposing…. wait for it…. fake mitigation.
        “EU energy prices have skyrocketed, families have been forced into energy poverty; meanwhile the EU carbon market has collapsed with no evidence of healthier environment or ‘abundant’ green jobs.”

        That’s actually true, in fact it’s the reason EU countries are dialing back the fake-mitigation- reducing subsidies for Easter Bunny renewables, rethinking carbon markets, trying to figure out how to spin the fact that they’re nowhere near emissions reductions targets.

        Here’s the New York Times being all skeptical- why just as skeptical as the GWPF in fact:
        http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/business/energy-environment/german-energy-push-runs-into-problems.html

        By the by, I don’t think this is because Europe suddenly went Republican. The fact is that Germany can’t bail out Greece and have a generous welfare state and shut down it’s industrial base. Wealth is a prerequisite to redistribution of wealth,. Since they won’t give up the first and second, they can’t do the third.

      • who bears the burden of proof isn’t a scientific question.

        It is a part of the policy debate. As Judith puts it in her paper Nullifying the climate null hypothesis:

        “In deciding who should bear the burden of proof in a public debate, we should ask “Where lies wisdom?” …The central scientific disputes are the relative importance of anthropogenic forcing and natural variability and whether a warmer climate will lead to changes that are likely to be judged dangerous. These issues are ill suited to null hypothesis testing, since the primary issues are the estimation of relative effect size and meaningful mechanistic understanding and model predictions. The policy debate is centered on whether anthropogenically-induced climate changes are dangerous, versus too trivial to require action or too costly to fix. …The debate regarding which side bears the burden of proof hinges primarily on societal tolerance for risk, i.e. whether the weak or strong version of the precautionary principle should prevail. …Attempts at providing a scientific rationale for mandating that one side versus the other bears the burden of proof in a public debate is futile given the broader concerns of the jury and the conflict of values on both sides of the debate. … [A person who asserts that skeptics now bear the burden of disproving CAGW] bears the burden of proof on reversing the null hypothesis.”

      • How could it be a scientific claim if “catastrophic” is not defined in a scientific manner?

        Whether or not “catastrophic” is defined in a scientific manner, the concept is used over and over in a scientific context to describe the problem. Also from Nullifying the climate null hypothesis:

        “…the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) policy deliberations are intimately connected with the concept of “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” http://unfccc.int/ While Trenberth (2011; AMS paper) does not specifically use the word “dangerous,” he does use the phrase “climate disasters” in the context of policy making.”

      • I have frequently pointed out to “skeptics” that they fail to acknowledge uncertainty when they talk about the economic outcomes of mitigation.

        Is this not the pot calling the kettle black? Alarmists seem ready to jump into it without much consideration at all of the economic consequences, and with a simple calm assurance that everything will be OK and will at least be better than the alternative (catastrophe).

      • > Whether or not “catastrophic” is defined in a scientific manner, the concept is used over and over in a scientific context to describe the problem.

        The “catastrophic” is mainly used by those who use the CAGW strawman.

        Those who use the CAGW strawman may sometimes use it in a scientific context, like Judy does, but it’s usually done in the public sphere.

        The term is not use to “describe,” but to evaluate.

        Swood’s rope-a-dope evades his task, which is to formulate an alternative hypothesis, which he confused for an explanation:

        How about the alternative that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate?

        Claiming in a scientific context that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate has the burden to provide what “catastrophic changes” means.

        Claiming the same in a PR context like a congressional hearing only requires enough saliva to cover one’s track with a Gish gallop.

      • The “catastrophic” is mainly used by those who use the CAGW strawman.

        When the UNFCCC refers to “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” is that a CAGW strawman? When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” is he raising a CAGW strawman? What is a CAGW strawman? Can you give me a simple explanation of exactly what you are objecting to and why?

        Claiming in a scientific context that doubling CO2 will not bring about catastrophic changes to climate has the burden to provide what “catastrophic changes” means.

        You are proposing that the null hypothesis has been reversed. What reasoning leads you to that conclusion?

      • Willard –
        By the way, Judith did not in her paper use the term “CAGW”. She referred to “Trenberth” which I replaced with “[A person who asserts that skeptics now bear the burden of disproving CAGW]”.

      • > When the UNFCCC refers to “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” is that a CAGW strawman?

        Since when “dangerous” equates to “catastrophic”?

        ***

        > When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” is he raising a CAGW strawman?

        Yet another loaded question. Swood is more and more sounding like a lawyer.

        Some context on Judy’s exploitation of that single word Trenberth used:

        http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/2744926652

        Which reminds me when Judy read “elite” when Schneider said “expert”:

        http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/11/politics-of-climate-expertise-part-ii/#comment-30967

        ***

        > What is a CAGW strawman?

        Brandishing the CAGW strawman is using the public statement of a talking head to raise concerns about mainstream science. In other words, it’s level 2 in the Contrarial Matrix and up:

        https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/do-not-panic/

        ***

        > You are proposing that the null hypothesis has been reversed.

        Not at all. I’m saying that instead of offering an alternative explanation to AGW, Swood’s using non-CAGW as an alternative hypothesis while refusing to define it.

        A nice lawyer we got there, peddling his new reading list. This time, it’s Trenberth. Let’s revisit all this five-year old material.

        The audit never ends.

      • > Judith did not in her paper use the term “CAGW”.

        Her paper was funded by the NOAA. It requires some decorum. That decorum did not prevent her to meander Trenberth’s discussion of AGW to her own favorite pet topic, whether she referred to it as CAGW, alarmism, or else.

        In other words, what I refer to as the “but CAGW” strawman.

      • Brandishing the CAGW strawman is using the public statement of a talking head to raise concerns about mainstream science. In other words, it’s level 2 in the Contrarial Matrix and up:

        I asked for a simple explanation of exactly what you are objecting to about the term CAGW and why. Are you able to do that?

        I’m saying that instead of offering an alternative explanation to AGW, Swood’s using non-CAGW as an alternative hypothesis while refusing to define it.

        CAGW refers to the “climate disaster” that Trenberth referred to.

        This time, it’s Trenberth. Let’s revisit all this five-year old material.

        Is the term “climate disaster” no longer “operational” as Nixon used to put it?

        Do you recognize a distinction between these two concepts: (a) a warming caused by anthropogenic activity that is not something to worry about, and (b) a warming that likely will be dangerous?

      • > I asked for a simple explanation of exactly what you are objecting to about the term CAGW and why.

        AGW is scientific, while CAGW is not. CAGW is a contrarian construct. The corresponding label is “alarmist.”

        Those who claim that the mainstream messages surrounding AGW are alarmist have the onus to prove that the messages are indeed alarmist.

        Basic critical thinking, which one should expect lawyers have studied.

      • Those who claim that the mainstream messages surrounding AGW are alarmist have the onus to prove that the messages are indeed alarmist.

        Let me just ask you this. Do you regard the prospect of AGW as alarming?

      • The purpose of this argument method is to keep asking leading questions to attempt to influence spectators’ views, regardless of whatever answers are given.

        Not at all. Let me explain the rationale for my question. You said:

        Those who claim that the mainstream messages surrounding AGW are alarmist have the onus to prove that the messages are indeed alarmist.

        This implies that the mainstream messages are not alarmist. If you believe that the mainstream messages are not alarmist then what are we talking about? If you believe that the mainstream messages are alarmist, then why are you saying that I must prove it?

      • Is there a Willard-interpreter present who can explain to me Willard’s position, what he means by “Just asking questions,” and why my questions are invalid?

      • Nope, I’ve been unsuccessful for years at figuring this out.

      • > This implies that the mainstream messages are not alarmist.

        Not at all. It only implies that those who make claims have the onus to show their evidence for it.

        If the claim is that mainstream climate science is alarmist, then the onus is on the claimant to show that it is indeed alarmist.

        The philosophical burden of proof or onus (probandi) is the obligation on a party in an epistemic dispute to provide sufficient warrant for their position.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof

        This ensures productivity, a requirement “just asking questions” evades.

      • > Is there a Willard-interpreter present who can explain to me Willard’s position,

        Does that ring a bell? Ah yes:

        Is there a willard interpreter available to assist me in understanding what is meant here?

        https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/climate-dialogue/#comment-48898

        ***

        For more on leading questions, start here:

        Aside from being an informal fallacy depending on usage, such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner’s agenda.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

        Let me ask you this: is this what Swood has been doing since day one at AT’s?

      • If the claim is that mainstream climate science is alarmist, then the onus is on the claimant to show that it is indeed alarmist.

        I could answer in two ways. I could cite you as an expert on the question as to whether mainstream climate science is alarmist and ask your opinion. What is your opinion?

        But look, hasn’t this gotten just a little too ridiculous, like your Monty Python sketch? (Quite amusing, by the way.) Unless you are asserting that mainstream climate science is alarmist, that the prospect of climate change is alarming, then there is no issue for us to discuss.

      • Is there a willard interpreter available to assist me in understanding what is meant here?

        I freely acknowledge that I am often unable to understand what you are talking about. Is it a logical fallacy to ask for help?

      • swood1000, engaging with Willard and Joshua can often be like entering a black hole of pointlessness. My advice is not to bother responding to comments addressed to you that are pointless or seem not to be in good faith, or seem to be ‘gotcha’ attempts.

      • > I could cite you as an expert on the question as to whether mainstream climate science is alarmist and ask your opinion.

        May I ask where’s Swood’s subpoena?

        Instead of asking me a leading question regarding the contraposition of an hypothesis he himself introduced earlier, why wouldn’t he offer his reasons why he believes mainstream climate science is alarmist?

      • > Unless you are asserting that mainstream climate science is alarmist, that the prospect of climate change is alarming, then there is no issue for us to discuss.

        What discussion?

        How does citing Denizens and asking them loaded questions qualify as a discussion?

        Does it mean that Swood is asserting that mainstream climate science is alarmist, otherwise he would not be discussing?

      • It’s asking for an interpreter the same as asking for help?

        Is asking for an interpreter a good faith question?

        Is there an interpreter here?

        Is asking for an explanation as efficient as asking for an interpreter?

        Is asking clarifying questions a good faith way to communicate?

        Is pointing to specific points not understood a good way to clarify if you don’t understand?

        Is there a way to describe asking if there’s an interpreter as a bad faith rhetorical device?

        Are you smart enough to understand that asking for an interpreter is likely to be interpreted ads a bad faith rhetorical device?

        Is there a way to consider ask possible rhetorical questions in so little time?

      • Actually I am enjoying swood1000’s contributions, and they make more sense to me than anything you are willard are criticizing him over.

      • Are you smart enough to understand that asking for an interpreter is likely to be interpreted ads a bad faith rhetorical device?

        What is the difference between saying that and saying that I don’t understand what that last posts meant? Where is the element of bad faith?

        What discussion?

        Indeed. That one had definitely run its course.

      • My advice is not to bother responding to comments addressed to you that are pointless or seem not to be in good faith, or seem to be ‘gotcha’ attempts.

        Excellent advice, which I will follow.

      • swood1000, engaging with Willard and Joshua can often be like entering a black hole of pointlessness.

        I am still clinging to the advice given to me by ATTP:

        Understanding Willard can be a challenge, but it can be worth the effort.

      • > My advice is not to bother responding to comments addressed to you that are pointless or seem not to be in good faith, or seem to be ‘gotcha’ attempts.

        Shouldn’t this advice apply to Swood’s leading questions?

        Why should this advice apply to Donna’s and Judy’s gotcha game with Patchy’s letter?

        Why is the word “faith” used right after raising religulousness as the most “serious issue”?

        Should we be surprised that Judge Judy rubber stamps Swood after the latter piggy backed on her “but CAGW” argument against Trenberth?

        ***

        Sometimes, pointlessness goes all the way up to congressional hearings.

      • Q.E.D.

      • I’ve recently found Counselor Gattinara’s advice to the young Charles the Fifth, contemplating war with Francis. He gave seven reasons against warring and ten reasons for warring.

        Such modern sophists as these are both obvious and indelicate.
        ================

      • Steven Mosher

        “Is there a Willard-interpreter present who can explain to me Willard’s position, what he means by “Just asking questions,” and why my questions are invalid?”

        See? you did it again.two invalid questions.
        “just asking questions” is a tactic. Like the question you ask here. You really are not asking for a willard interpreter. You just mean to insinuate that there isnt an interpreter. All you have to do to understand willard is to read what he links to. slow down, and think about what you are doing with language. And your second question. Well, that question has been answered in several places. Its not a real question.
        You ask leading questions, loaded questions, rhetorical questions.
        None of these work. stop it.

        Here is a challenge. write what you believe without asking a question.
        if you respond with a question you lose.
        if you respond with what you believe then you’ll bear a burden of proof.

      • Steven Mosher –

        Here is a challenge. write what you believe without asking a question.
        if you respond with a question you lose.
        if you respond with what you believe then you’ll bear a burden of proof.

        uggggg
        swood1000. Don’t use questions to argue.
        Just stop it. It’s annoying.

        Well, there are two issues here. One is your objection to my asking questions. The other is your assertion that a person who states what he believes always bears the burden of proof about that. Consider these statements of my belief:

        1. I don’t know what you mean by a CAGW strawman.
        2. When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” I understand him to be doing what is referred to as “raising a CAGW strawman.”
        3. You appear to regard AGW as alarming.
        4. If a person is finding a balance between being effective and being honest, as Schneider proposed in one interview, that necessarily involves a little bit of compromise to each. Nothing else can be meant by “balance”.
        5. Two scientists should report the results of a study the same way, regardless of their policy preferences.

        The first three are statements of personal belief which require no proof. The last two statements are ones that I would have no objection to supplying proof for. There have been two difficulties, however. The first is that if my immediate goal is to ascertain a person’s position it should make no difference whether I ask the person’s position in the form of a question, of if I state a belief and ask the person whether he disagrees with it. Do you see a difference? The second is that whichever way it is asked, there is nothing illegitimate about these questions. Number four assumes that Schneider did make such a proposal, so if that is doubted it is proper to ask for proof of this. But each of these questions was met with evasions and/or assertions that the question was illegitimate as “just asking questions” or as a “hypothetical question” or as beneath the dignity of a response for some similar reason. Can you explain any of this, as well as what is objectionable about asking for a person’s position?

      • 1000-

        ==> “One is your objection to my asking questions.”

        Not that I could, or want to, speak for mosher…but I would suggest that it isn’t the simple act of asking questions that he was criticizing.

        Can you see that there are different kinds of questions?

        Can you see that some questions can look more like an expression of bad faith than a real effort to clarify understanding?

        Can you see, for example, why asking if there’s an willard interpreter here might seem like that kind of question to some?

        Do you see that for some that might look more like a criticism of willard than a good-faith attempt to understand something?

        Can you see that even if you didn’t intend such a question to be an expression of bad faith, with a little bit of forethought you might have been able to anticipate that people might respond that way?

        Can you see that if you had given that kind of forethought, you might have been able to express yourself in ways that would be able to advance the discussion more constructively?

      • Steven Mosher

        Well, there are two issues here. One is your objection to my asking questions. The other is your assertion that a person who states what he believes always bears the burden of proof about that. Consider these statements of my belief:

        why do you object to my objection? I dont understand you.
        why do you think you bear no burden of proof if you assert something?

        1. I don’t know what you mean by a CAGW strawman.

        Look up CAGW. Look up strawman. you understand english.
        read HARDER. think deeper.
        2. When Trenberth refers to “climate disasters” I understand him to be doing what is referred to as “raising a CAGW strawman.”
        You would be wrong.
        3. You appear to regard AGW as alarming.
        Wrong again.
        4. If a person is finding a balance between being effective and being honest, as Schneider proposed in one interview, that necessarily involves a little bit of compromise to each. Nothing else can be meant by “balance”.
        wrong again.
        5. Two scientists should report the results of a study the same way, regardless of their policy preferences.
        wrong again. you are making assumptions about the impossibility
        of objectively describing the same thing in different ways.

        The first three are statements of personal belief which require no proof.
        I believe you do know what people mean by CAGW strawman
        and you are feigning ignorance. This is my personal belief
        and by your reasoning requires no proof.
        Second, if you dont know what people believe by strawman you
        can hardly apply that to trenberth. Third, you think I find agw alarming.
        you are wrong. I believe you are made of cheese. This according to
        you requires no proof. See how that works

        “The last two statements are ones that I would have no objection to supplying proof for. There have been two difficulties, however. The first is that if my immediate goal is to ascertain a person’s position it should make no difference whether I ask the person’s position in the form of a question, of if I state a belief and ask the person whether he disagrees with it.”

        Wrong. It does make a difference.

        Do you see a difference?

        Yes.

        The second is that whichever way it is asked, there is nothing illegitimate about these questions.

        wrong again

        Number four assumes that Schneider did make such a proposal, so if that is doubted it is proper to ask for proof of this.

        Perhaps it was his personal belief and requires, as you argue, no proof.
        See how that works?

        But each of these questions was met with evasions and/or assertions that the question was illegitimate as “just asking questions” or as a “hypothetical question” or as beneath the dignity of a response for some similar reason.

        I haven’t read a single question of yours that strikes me as valid.
        That is my personal belief.

        Can you explain any of this, as well as what is objectionable about asking for a person’s position?

        Yes.

        Want to play some more?
        bet you cant.

      • Steven Mosher

        Joshua

        Not that I could, or want to, speak for mosher…but I would suggest that it isn’t the simple act of asking questions that he was criticizing.
        #############################
        This is true. I think if people would ask willard an honest question, I did once I think, they will get a good answer. He pointed me to an author to read so I could understand where he was coming from. It required work on my part. The work was rewarding.

        Can you see that there are different kinds of questions?

        Can you see that some questions can look more like an expression of bad faith than a real effort to clarify understanding?
        ########################################

        I am far more aware of my own tendency to use questions in this way
        because of willard’s efforts. I do wish he were more expository, but
        I cannot fault him for being cryptic.. hehe.

        Can you see, for example, why asking if there’s an willard interpreter here might seem like that kind of question to some?

        ###############################################

        My bet is he wont see that.

        Do you see that for some that might look more like a criticism of willard than a good-faith attempt to understand something?

        Can you see that even if you didn’t intend such a question to be an expression of bad faith, with a little bit of forethought you might have been able to anticipate that people might respond that way?

        Can you see that if you had given that kind of forethought, you might have been able to express yourself in ways that would be able to advance the discussion more constructively?

        ####################

        I will merely note that when challenged, he could not avoid questions.
        Funny thing I forgot. I used to force students to remove all questions from
        their text. Not that asking questions is necessarily bad, but just an an exercise to find better ways of expressing themselves. I cannot estimate the number of freshman papers that started with a throat clearing question.

      • Steven Mosher –
        When I try to understand your reasoning you respond with nonsense, apparently attempting to imply that my statements were nonsense, but falling short of the requirements of basic rationality. I do believe that you would not insist on the irrational answer if you were aware of a more reasonable one, although I do detect a seething bitterness on your part for which this kind of response can serve as an outlet. Either way,

        Want to play some more?

        No.

    • to “the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems”

      More anti-science from the consensus.

      So, no new species? As in no evolution?

      It’s kinda ironic, because behaviour is largely genetic, and we’re evolved to be religious!

      Hopefully, higher order brain activity prevails, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

      • > So, no new species? As in no evolution?

        Right. Patchy forgot about all that could grow out of toxic wastes, eg:

        New fungal and bacterial species, discovered by Andrea A. Stierle, and Donald B. Stierle, have been found to have adapted to the harsh conditions inside the pit. Intense competition for the limited resources caused these species to evolve the production of highly toxic compounds to improve survivability; natural products such as Berkeleydione, berkeleytrione and Berkelic acid have been isolated from these organisms which show selective activity against cancer cell lines. Some of these species ingest metals and are being investigated as an alternative means of cleaning the water.

        http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit#Extremophiles

        What would happen to the poor extremophiles if the mining industry was forbidden to dump their waste in our lakes?

      • Ask your USAA agent.

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        Willard, like Pachauri, is seemingly unaware that new species are continually arising.
        WIllard, like Pachauri. is seemingly unaware that as a new species arises the old may be considered extinct.

    • Steven Mosher

      Full quote

      ‘“For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma. ”

      The difficulty is not that he has a dharma. Being charitable I would say that
      his use of the word “religion” was unfortunate, but it’s probably the closest one can come to dharma.

      The problem is he instituted no checks against his dharma.
      It’s fine that he have a “world view” or guiding principle. There are other dharma, I see no evidence that these world views were accorded their due by the IPCC.

      • > I see no evidence that these world views were accorded their due by the IPCC.

        All the evidence we have leans toward yet another half-baked editorial.

      • Mosh:

        The problem is he instituted no checks against his dharma.
        It’s fine that he have a “world view” or guiding principle. There are other dharma, I see no evidence that these world views were accorded their due by the IPCC.

        Very well said Steve. This to me is the key point. Note Donna switches from ‘religion’ to ‘political mission’:

        Even here, at the end, Pachauri fails to grasp that science and religion don’t belong in the same sentence; that those on a political mission are unlikely to be upholders of rigorous scientific practice.

        I think the last part is fair comment, given Pachauri’s record. But I think it’s fine for science and religion to be in the same sentence, like this one and Donna’s. Indeed, I can imagine even more interesting sentences in which the two words may appear :)

        Proper politics is about compromise between all interested parties, which in this case means all users of energy and enjoyers (or otherwise) of climate on planet earth. With a constituency of every living human being checks and balances should be absolutely of the essence. The disregard for such is a reason to say good riddance to the Doctor. I have no idea who is best placed to do better – but much, much better it has to be.

      • Who was it who wanted to separate religion and state anyway? And why, for Gaia’s sake?
        ============

      • Steven Mosher

        No Willard. It would be very easy to institute controls.

      • …I see no evidence that these world views were accorded their due by the IPCC.

        For the same reason that fish did not discover water.

        It’s a little like one religious fanatic believing that the other religious fanatic’s beliefs are quite moderate.

      • > It’s a little like one religious fanatic believing that the other religious fanatic’s beliefs are quite moderate.

        I thought the fanatics believed they were less fanatics than the fanatics they fanatically fought.

        Ideology is what the otter entertains.

      • Steven Mosher

        swwod

        “For the same reason that fish did not discover water.”

        Huh?
        1. your analogy sucks
        2. arguing by analogy sucks
        3. understanding WHY they do not use controls is useless speculation.

        In short, you cannot elect a head of the IPCC who is free of having a ‘world view” or “religion” or set of principles that they will not subject to
        investigation. your job is to propose a BETTER approach for controlling for the “world view” of the IPCC leader.

        For Example, Judith has a view about our obligations to species and sustainability. Were she the head of the IPCC what process would you use to control for her views on these matters.

        That Patchy had views is UNREMARKABLE. Pointing that out is boring.
        suggesting a better method gets you points.

    • I have to agree with Mosher the use of the word religion was a mistake. Religion is a belief system; something people believe to be true based on faith not necessarily proven facts. Science is about proving something to be true or factual. Science is a process. Religion is a personal spiritual experience that can be shared.

      Patchy may have a personal spiritual feeling about climate change and it may be a shared experience. I don’t think the IPCC was set up for that purpose. Not reading their mission statement, I think it was set up to study the ramifications of human caused climate change and what can be done about it. In other words it should be a scientific process not a shared spiritual experience. Ahh the end is near!

      • David in TX

        Moral imperatives are not science. Nature has no moral code those are either invented by humans or handed down by God takes your pick.

        “the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion”

        Science reveals that 99,9% of all species that ever lived are now extinct. Ecosystems aren’t sustained by interference from other species, they all collapse with time, and are replaced by something better able to exploit the niche. Given that humans evolved like all other living things our technologies are a natural outgrowth of evolution.

        I find it ludicrous to say in the same breath that humans are a product of the same evolutionary forces that created all other species while at the same time saying that human industry is unnatural. Given that humans weren’t specially created by a bearded sky thunderer then by definition all human industry is a natural product of evolution.

        Environmentalists are as religious as anyone else they just claim a different source for their moral imperatives. That source is no more or less credible than other and in no case is it based on scientific inquiry or the study of nature.

      • David in TX

        Ordvic can you demonstrate that all species should be preserved? That sounds like an article of faith to me completely devoid of math and science. Pachauri made no mistake in calling it religion,

      • Steven Mosher

        dont get me wrong. i dont think there is a hard line between science and any other way of explaining the world. as in science is a religion

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        Hi ordvic. The UN has prayers to recite which say that we’ve lost our senses and our sensibiities.
        So I doubt you can say the IPCC is clear of the UN reilgiosity.

      • David in TX and thisisnotgoodtogo,

        I should have made it more clear. What I meant by mistake was not implying Patchy considered it a mistake but that his honesty was a mistake from a PR standpoint. If people think the IPCC has been run by a zealot all this time (hard not to come to the conclusion anyway) it’s credability can’t escape scrutiny.

      • @david TX

        http://judithcurry.com/2015/03/03/ipcc-in-transition/#comment-680249

        Re human industry an extension of evolution….I agree completely and have often voiced that view. That was an extremely good comment IMHO.

    • thisisnotgoodtogo

      Willard, you’re right that misreading is isn’t the way to go.
      Neither is leaving out the most pertinent part of a quote.
      “For me the protection of Planet Earth”

      He was referring to protecting Planet Earth, which means saving it from CAGW.
      Protecting all the species isn’t the work which he was talking about, after all. It’s saving the Earth from CAGW.

      • > > Neither is leaving out the most pertinent part of a quote.

        Right after this, no less:

        https://nofrakkingconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/pachauri_my_religion12801.png

        No mention of dharma nor sustainability there.

        ***

        > He was referring to protecting Planet Earth, which means saving it from CAGW.

        It rather means something about the sustainability of ecosystems, This, a challenge that may be a bit more general than the challenge AGW provides.

        Denizens’ own CAGW straw man has very little to do with this.

      • The fragility of ecosystems is their strength, adaptability.

        ‘Sustain’, in the parlance has taken a tragically frozen connotation.

        When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?
        ===============

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        Willard, Pachauri was talking about leaving his IPCC work. That is about anthro climate change, not generally about saving species. Hotter might be better for some species :) .
        And you know he’s fighting anthro warming.

        Dr. Curry’s take was closer to the mark than yours was.

        It really is better not to exclude the main thrust eh, WIllard?

      • > It really is better not to exclude the main thrust eh, WIllard?

        The main thrust of Patchy’s letter was not that climate change is his religion. Judy got suckered in by Donna’s trick. You just can’t win, This.

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        The main thrust of the quotation, WiIlard.
        You really lost the argument when you excluded it.

      • Repeat as much as you want, This.

        One does not simply “highlight” an issue by forging two sentences, by eliding both subjects and complements, and then grafting the two together.

        Frankensteinian editorial practices ain’t good enough for “the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation.”

        This is a no brainer. Disputing this highlights what may be the most serious issue for the Denizens’ reputation.

        A very basic reading exercise, which even engineers should grasp.

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        Willard, you’re switching to Donna, when your comment was directed against Dr. Currry.
        Funny, that.

        Pachauri was talking about his IPCC work, which is about climate, not about species, per se. The protecting of Planet Earth was wrt to climate change.

        You know it.

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        Frm Donna’s article:

        “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

        She showed the whole thing, Willard. And she offered an abridged version, which actually does capture exactly what Pachauri was saying, minus the farce.

      • The “abridged version,” which fits into the green bashing narrative being sold by churnalists since the heydays of Thatcherism, has been transmogrified into “climate change as his religion.”

        Even the Daily Mail would have problems defending this.

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        “the green bashing narrative being sold by churnalists since the heydays of Thatcherism”
        Looks like Pachauri just supplied the evidence that they were right, eh, Willard?
        He couldn’t help but puff himself up. Heheh, done, Willard.
        So you try to dechurn the butter. Too late. Have some warm milk and get some rest.

      • > Looks like Pachauri just supplied the evidence that they were right,

        Torturing two lines into forced confession finally confirms 30 years of editorial lines and yellow journalism.

        The last stake in the last nail of the final straw.

        The truth is now out there.

        Well played!

      • thisisnotgoodtogo

        Only there was no torturing other than what you’ve been up to, Willard.
        Donna’s abridged quotation only omitted the fluff accompanying Pachauri’s statement.

        Pachauri offered confirming evidence that his work was driven by religious conviction, not scientific curiosity
        All that is unfortunate for the perpetually dishonest alarmist, but that’s the way the cookie crumbled, eh,WIllard?

    • Rob Starkey

      Joshua asks- “Do you think that something can be “proven” here one way or the other?”

      Probably not “proven” to everyone’s satisfaction, but certainly there should be better evidence available to support the claims that a world with higher CO2 levels will have worse conditions for humans. It may get warmer, but so what? Can you point to a SINGLE thing that you are confident is significantly worse overall as a result of humans having had a significant role on raising CO2 concentrations by 70%?

  8. Dr Curry, may I comment now?
    When dealing with anything attached to the UN, one is dealing with politics, international politics as well as big money. From its inception with Woodrow Wilson’sLeague of Nations to today’s UN, financial & political supporter leadership has been vested in POTUS, now community organizer Obama. He is sure to advocate an even larger role for IPCC.
    IPCC from its inception was to establish a quasie legitimacy for a political agenda. That is why the science of natural variation has not been investigated until the “pause/plateau” made for an unconveniant truth. This why science was never really a part of Climate Science. When the science took some researchers away from CO2 as The Control Knob, the mudslinging and academic bad behavior dominated and the funding stopped.
    Obama has billionaires speaking loudly in his face so the full weight of the now corrupted Environment Movement is energized for this final push in Paris. There will be no let up. A strong CAGW advocate will be enshrined shortly to carry the torch. I hear the warrior drum beats from the likes of Trenberth, Schmitz, Mann and other already, their efforts to carry the day. Make no mistake, this is war. The first casualty of war is the truth.
    The IPCC has the full backing of Obama as an instrument of his battle plan. The science is the next casualty. Scientist’s reputations are the next to fall.
    No good deed will be left unpunished.

  9. nottawa rafter

    I’m not optimistic about any greater attention to natural variability. That would require analysis of the strongest case for such with data, historical perspective and graphs. Just cracking the door open a little bit will bring on a flood of questions. Not by the climate establishment, but by the legions of citizens who have accepted IPCC’s judgment about AGW, without reservations. Once the hockey stick’s demise is given any authenticity, the rock solid case for AGW begins to crumble.

    What percent of the public are able to cite the arguments for and against the MWP or LIA? What percent of the public are aware of the similarities of the rate of warming or SLR between 1910-1940 and 1975-2000. I suspect a very small percent.

    Most troubling is the likely very great number of persons who see nothing wrong with Pachauri’s statement about this mission being a religion. Whether they care to admit it or not, they embrace it as a religion.

    • I’m AM an optimistic about a greater attention to natural variability.

      Mother nature throws snow on the Alarmists and the World sees that.

      The world sees Natural Variability. The world does not see anything in nature that matches Model Output. The media covers it up, or tries to, but the world is watching the actual events as they happen. The world sees the climate carrying along the same temperature and sea level cycles that have been mostly the same for ten thousand years.
      They see the “adjusted” data and “Hockey Sticks” challenged and thrown out. They see a Hockey Stick in one IPCC report and not in another. They see the 2013 IPCC with a much lower projection that the 1990 report. They see the “hide the decline” in Climate-gate emails.

      The world sees Germany building coal fired power plants to help the wind and solar that didn’t work so well. In Australia, they voted the alarmists out of office. In the US, we voted some of the alarmists out of office. We are not done yet.

      The world sees and the world is paying a greater attention to natural variability.

      • “In the US, we voted some of the alarmists out of office. We are not done yet.”

        Doesn’t matter. The alarmists have absolute control over EVERY executive and regulatory department and have a closed loop ‘sue and settle’ scam that is essentially funded by tax dollars. If the alarmists lose control of the legislature or the presidency, doesn’t matter much. One judge, ruling on a suit filed by an environmental group funded in part by the government, can vacate any legislation and force the imposition of policies that the legislature specifically refused to enact. CO2 ruled to be a pollutant that the EPA is REQUIRED BY LAW to regulate? The result of a suit filed against the EPA by groups funded by the EPA.

        Restrictions cannot be placed on regulatory bodies by congress nor, without absolute, veto proof majorities in both houses of congress, can funding for them be cut.

        As our government is currently constituted the congress is largely irrelevant.

        Headline today: “Obama “Very Interested” In Raising Taxes Through Executive Action”

        Any chance that the congress will point out that it is the taxing authority under the Constitution and that any tax imposed by executive action is prima facie unconstitutional? Or that anyone would pay any attention to it if it did? Or that if someone refused to pay the Obama imposed taxes, citing the Constitution, that their assed tax liability would change a dime? Or that the penalties imposed by the IRS for refusing to pay would go away?

    • Steven Mosher

      AGW dont need no stickin HS

  10. Steve Fitzpatrick

    Judith,
    “This situation is terribly unfair to the scientists who have worked very hard for the IPCC, at least some of whom are not dogmatists.”
    Sure, but the problem is the ones who are.

    One other point: if nothing else, the charges of sexual harassment, if true, suggest an appalling lack of judgement. A big issue for the IPCC is that his lack of judgement may very well have applied to a range of subjects….. and it seems to me the “my religion and my dharma” comment is confirmation of this. The question that needs to be asked of the next IPCC Chair is if they are comfortable with: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission.”

    Whoever becomes Chair, I expect they will think pretty much the same way, so the IPCC will continue to have serious problems.

    • The situation HAS been unfair to the scientists who are not dogmatists.
      Some, like Dr. Curry, don’t get invited back and maybe would not go back.

      Getting a change at the top has a good chance of making it less unfair to the scientists who are not dogmatists.

  11. Appointing an economist to head the IPCC would be no better than the outgoing mechanical engineer. They need a climate scientist, or someone with relevant hard science training and extensive experience as an administrator of similar large international projects.

    Economists tend to have an unjustified belief that economics is the key to unlock all social science questions — or even all science questions (see “Freakonomics”.), and excessive confidence in their theories. The IPCC already has far too much of both, imo.

    This would take them in the opposite direction from that needed to increase their credibility.

    • Climate Scientists have been educated to be biased.
      There are exceptions, I would support Dr Curry in that position.
      They don’t need an administrator of similar projects.
      They do need an administrator of un-similar, unbiased, projects.

    • What about appointing an honest person?

      • Jacobress,

        If you have a touchstone to detect honesty, choosing an IPCC official is the least of its applications.

        In the 4th century BC Diogenes of Sinope searched for an honest man using a lantern to illuminate the faces of people he met on the street. Sadly, that doesn’t work and no better method has been found.

      • Honesty falls, not like the gentle rain of mercy, but the soft white damn of a snowflake.
        ===========

      • I got it. Never trust anybody without apparent dandruff. Diogenes wasn’t illuminating faces, rather collars. Looking at their faces was just to allay the suspicions which even an honest man might have under such close examination of his neck.
        ==================

  12. Planning Engineer

    Pachauri: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

    I am bothered by the religion quote especially combined with “survival of ALL species”. It seems highly non-scientific and tied to a belief that nature is perfect as is and ignores that evolution and the diversity of life on this planet are dependent upon and driven by extinctions. Not that widespread extinctions would not be a cause for concern but 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct.

  13. Curious George

    The only way IPCC can get any credibility is to start again with a new name and a new location and new people. Unfortunately, this also applies to the UN itself.

  14. “The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity.”

    From Wikipedia:

    “The IPCC produces reports that support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is the main international treaty on climate change.[5][6] The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e., human-induced] interference with the climate system”.[5] IPCC reports cover “the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”[6]”

    In other words, since its establishment it has treated the ‘fact of’ the danger of ACO2 as axiomatic and its job is to provide scientific reports that confirm the danger and make recommendations for adaptation and mediation. It assumes, as a given, that ‘the science is settled’.

    It can’t regain what it never had and was never INTENDED to have.

    It needs to ESTABLISH its scientific objectivity.

    I would say that there are two chances of that happening: slim and none. Except that I don’t think that ‘slim’ actually has a realistic chance.

    • nottawa rafter

      I think they lost the last chance to do the right thing when they wrote up the initial papers. What a large omelette on their faces to retrace all the fear mongering and say “We didn’t really mean it. We were just foolin’ ya.”

  15. What an honor it will be for whoever is chosen to follow in Pachauri’s footsteps… the Bill Cosby Chair of Global Warming Science has a nice ring to it.

  16. michael hart

    Well spoken, Judith.

  17. Steven Mosher

    Lost in translation I’m sure

    “And the nearest analogy I can uncover of somewhat similar attraction
    Is that of a moth around a candle and its tragic fate,
    Where the intense heat and fire are for the moth coldly destructive,
    But the fire that beckons me does my drab life magically rejuvenate!

  18. They are afraid that many more scientists (and common taxpayers) will adopt the position of Professor Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

    I work toward that goal, every day. It is not so difficult, The consensus side only has model output on their side. All the actual data works against them.
    More and more people are coming to realize that a skillful model would at least, agree with real data. They don’t even sometimes get that lucky.

  19. Steven Mosher

    “Several of these names are unfamiliar to me, and I don’t know any of the candidates personally. But a brief google search on each of these individuals suggests that any of them would be an improvement over Pachauri. I briefly comment on two of the names that strike me favorably:”

    Stocker is non starter from the transparency point of view.

    • Alexej Buergin

      OMG, I am so shocked: I absolutely agree with Steven Mosher.

      • He’s dead right often. Most in the center ring, some way off when the wind is up.
        =========

      • Well, as tb would say, Stocker will at least admit privately that we don’t understand the oceans. If only the humility would take root and thrive. The soil is rich.
        ================

      • Kim

        For how long the deep oceans cant be measured for warming not even tonyb knows.

        Tonyb

      • Calling Captain Nemo. Well, the archivist of his records.

        They are there. Believe.
        =================

      • Tony, you’re gonna make me go reread ClimateAudit on Stocker. I thought I’d successfully forgotten that, but your being the only ‘wandering wonderer’ who touts him, and you’ve tooted terrifically always before, makes me wonder.
        ===========

      • Kim

        I can only go by what I saw and heard during the climate conference in Exeter we both attended. Me as a questioner and him on a distinguished panel. Is he totally transparent or someone sceptics would like to have? No I suspect not, but to publicly admit that climate science has its failimg is rare and for that he scores points.

        Personally I would go for prof richard betts of the met office who I also met at the conference and also had a meeting wth just last Monday. In Margaret thatchers words , ‘ he is someone we can work with.’ however I don’t think he is in the running.

        Tonyb

      • Steven Mosher

        jones went to meet with Stocker to discuss strategies for FOIA and the IPCC. its in the mails

        here is a clue. we disagree on the science.
        FOIA aint about the science.
        IPCC leadership aint science
        Ar6 will not be science. it will be a summary of science

        people who cant separate scientifc views from policy, from transparency, etc.. need to think a little deeper.

        but thanks for agreeing

      • There’s a fine Keith DeHavelle at the beginning of your second link, AK.
        ===============

  20. The new head of the IPCC should be an intelligent, honest person, who has no Climate Bias. A best choice might be A Judge. They are called on to make decisions about matters in which they are not the Expert. They call on Experts from all sides to testify and and determine what is truth.

    Pick someone with a Climate Bias, and we will be no better off.

  21. I detect an exaggeration in the report at the end of the post.

    A friend, continuing on a local site council after his child progressed beyond grade school, was categorized as a ‘former parent’, to his great delight.
    =================

  22. The AGW debate exposed the UN as a worldwide propaganda machine after seventy years’ (1945-2015) operation.

    The danger now is desperate acts to retain the delusion of world control:

    1. Inciting religious or ethnic violence
    2. Genuine or “false flag” wars
    3. Economic collapse

  23. Dr Curry. I’m kind of surprised to see you quoting New American. I’m familiar with it and it has a tinge of right wing fringiness to it. It’s put out by the John Birch Scociety. I’m no left winger and there’s probably nothing wrong with the article. But just in case you didn’t know, I thought I’d warn you before Sou and the wabett start hopping all over you.

    • Canman, I appreciate your concern. I quote statements i find interesting from a wide range of sources. Sou and the idiots are hopping all over me anyways, I most definitely don’t worry about playing to that crowd.

      • Good reply. I think the

        !!!

        following also leaves some wriggle room :)

      • Thanks, Richard, I’d misinterpreted the exclamation. Now I see she doesn’t think she can part the Climate Sea for safe passage through. Well, she’s wrong there.
        ============

      • Love the sentiment but (a tad seriously) I think parting seas is more of a team game these days. The !!! spoke to me of humility, something we all need. And we must all have courage to step forward, be Moses for the next man. (Alliteration plays against gender neutrality. Need your help as always.)

      • Be moaning for the modest woman, or bemoaning a maunderous minimum.
        ===============

    • David in TX

      Why would an accomplished scientist like Curry give a rat’s ass what Rabett or Sou thought about them?

      Non sequitur.

      • She has a rather moderate image, and someone might use this to start a twitter storm to tar her as some kind of right wing ideolog.

      • David in TX

        A twitter storm started by twits, eh? I repeat, why should she care?

        Maybe they can start a twitter storm over this instead:

        https://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/search.php?name=judith+curry&cycle=All&sort=R&state=GA&zip=&employ=&cand=&submit=Submit

        Seems Professor Curry made three political donations while she lived in Georgia. All three to Barack Obama for President. Seems a bit atypical of right wingers, eh?

      • I am no longer making political donations, since they are public. While my donations to Obama have been ‘convenient’ in certain arguments, I prefer to keep my voting preferences out of my public debates on climate change.

      • David in TX

        I certainly don’t blame you for not wanting anyone to know you’re an Obama supporter. He is a prime mover in keeping global warming science alive and so the contribution is enlightened self-interest on your part. It should therefore surprise no one.

      • I think the lesson learned from Train-wreck-in-Chief Obama is don’t vote for someone just because of their race, gender, or national origin. Vote for someone qualified to run the US. Period.

      • He fooled a lot of people. McCain was attractive to the press and not the people. Romney was attractive to the people and not the press. They both came close to beating him. My tuppence worth. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

        For the present, we endure, and hope for change. Some even work for change, spare change.
        =================

    • Canman,

      That’s got nothing on that rabid Oz rag, Quadrant ,that Judith has a strange attraction to (it has a total of 5 paying subscribers in Oz).

      It’s gone from an anti-communist propaganda organ, to attacking Indigenous Australians, and now bored with that, has taken up the anti-science cudgels, with a particular focus on climate science.

      Pelple concerned about dogma would steer well clear. Fringe conservative lunacy.

      • I can see why Michael doesn’t like Quadrant. Thanks for pointing it out. From the article:

        Gone are apolitical scientists who once told the whole story. In their place are activists who distort, omit crucial facts, cherry-pick and torment data contrary to common science ethics. I was initially prepared to write it off as incompetence, but we’ve seen so much of it, time and time again, not to grasp that some darker influence must be at work. The Climategate emails pulled back the curtain on a cabal of scientists who “hide the decline”; select a small subset of, in one infamous instance, tree ring-data that supports their claim while ignoring a broader base of survey findings; conspire to have scientific journals’ editors sacked, and discuss how to stall and stymie perfectly legal Freedom of Information requests. As those emails showed, the climate cabal even expressed joy over the death of a persistent critic.

        http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/03/global-warming-killing-scientific-integrity/

      • barn E. Rubble

        RE: Michael | March 4, 2015 at 1:46 am
        “That’s got nothing on that rabid Oz rag, Quadrant , . . .”

        Thanks for the tip Michael. I’m a guess’n if’n yer ag’n it, I’m fur it.

        Just a guess tho . . . as I’ll have to check it out to be sure . . .

      • ‘rabid Oz rag’, has got a ring to it,
        Froth on the lips, haply from sing of it.
        =====================

  24. Adam Gallon

    The appointee will be chosen purely on political grounds.
    No scientific credentials are required, just a pure outlook that whatever the question is, it’s the “Fault” of us, that Carbon Dioxide is bad & we must be punished for our sins of creating it, by paying our Climate Indulgencies.
    Transparency is definately off-limits, a degree of opacity that defies the most penetrating rays is definately a prerequisite.
    Being white & male is incompatable with this role, indeed being female & coloured would be good, but since a good chunk of the beneficiary countries operate rampant misogeny, the female bit is a no-no, so it’ll be a non-white male who gets the nod.

  25. Let’s pray to Gaia that Edenhofer doesn’t get the job. He’s Pachauri on steroids.
    “First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion
    that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”

    • Sounds like Edenhofer was custom made for the position.

    • It doesn’t matter a rat’s ass who get’s the job. The UN/UNFCCC/IPCC is a corrupt bureaucracy intent on world government. The sucker scientists who “contribute” their time to IPCC AR’s are getting high off the international travel and high end hotel living. Those that participated early on with the idea of making important scientific contributions have seen the light and moved on.

  26. Everything we need to know about the IPCC report credibility can be found in the glacier incident. The glacier incident was actually a tiny issue, but it is instructive to the built in process of bias and protectionism in the IPCC.

    -non peer reviewed source.
    -pointed out as incorrect in review, ignored and overruled.
    -pointed out as wrong, ignored.
    -pointed out as wrong in a more serious matter in official Indian government report…..and the head of the IPCC chose to attack the scientist with “voodoo science”.
    -continued to ignore or defect until attention to the mistake reached danger point. Such as the typo excuse used for a while.
    -Then issue a correction and claim how well they respond to criticism.

    There was a systematic flaw that not only allowed the flaw ( more likely encouraged it), but protected the flaw at every step of the way. How scientific is a report that passes over the whole scientific literature on this area, to use a magazine interview as a source? You can’t tell me that people referenced a magazine interview thinking is was credible scientific resource without comparing it to peer reviewed literature. And then you can’t tell me they chose the interview number, over the peer reviewed data, for anything other than alarmism. And again getting the chance to correct in review, and still choosing the ridiculous one. And again whenever it was questioned, they could have corrected at any time, but they “chose” to keep in the unscientific alarmist point over the scientific number at every step. From the top down, at every step.

    And is anyone surprised now that Pachuri claims “religion” and “mission”? Is anyone surprised that the man who threw out “voodoo science” claims at reputable scientist (as opposed to say, checking the IPCC facts), is now lying his a** of again claiming he was hacked? It is in perfect character to what he oversaw at the IPCC. He could say anything, no matter how ridiculous, and legions of people would defend him voraciously.

    It doesn’t matter if you are a denier, sceptic, lukewarm, warmist, alarmist or any other thing people have been called, Pachuri has overseen and contributed to the loss of credibility. The IPCC made the matter worse by not getting rid of him after everyone saw his true colors before. Indefensible.

  27. Craig Loehle

    Pachauri has benefitted financially in a big way from being IPCC chair, with big grants coming to TERI which pays him. So much for it being an “unpaid” position.
    Thomas Stocker has in the past done various monkey business (see history on Climate Audit).
    Chris Field is a good scientist but is a committed believer in bad things happening from climate change–not exactly objective IMHO.

    • > Pachauri has benefitted financially in a big way from being IPCC chair, with big grants coming to TERI which pays him.

      It might be interesting to compare with Pat Michael’s salary.

      For everything else, there are congressional hearings.

      • Why shouldn’t he believe? Look what fervent faith in and acts for his religion have wrought for him? Well, ’til now, that is, and that is a lesson.
        ===============

      • Craig Loehle

        Really Willard? You think those are the same? The grants are because he is IPCC chair.

      • Denizens ought to ask if the belief in efficiency akin to some kind of faith in Grrrowth:

        http://youtu.be/fguJod_voPc

        40% of how much is not made clear.

      • willard –

        Is “belief” in the free market a religion?

      • Joshua, no, it’s commonsense based on vast experience.

      • Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

      • Willard – I’ll remind you that you are a denizen.

      • My faith in Grrrowth knows no bound, Lucifer. Once you are touched by its Grace, sustainability becomes irrelevant. Everything is, actually, except Grrrowth. What about you?

    • UN jobs not only highly paid but global tax free to boot.

  28. Not sure how anyone could take him seriously since day 1 especially with all his baggage.

  29. I blame Bush.
    ==========

  30. “The bottom line is this. It is very difficult to ‘enforce’ or even defend the IPCC consensus when the leader of IPCC for more than a decade is alleged to have partaken in sleazy and illegal behavior, regards climate change as his religion, has massive conflicts of interest, and has used his position as a platform for personal advocacy.”

    This will have zero impact for the IPCC among progressives, and probably none even for Pachauri, once he goes on Oprah and cries.

    Anybody ever heard of Bill Clinton? He’s still a rock star of the left, Juanita Broderick and Chinese campaign contributions be damned,

  31. “While I’m not sure why any scientist/academic would want this (unpaid) position that requires you to travel all over the world and deal with some nasty politics, it seems that there is a strong list of candidates, none of whom would appear to have anything approaching Pachauri’s conflicts of interest.”

    Progressives are all about the power. Get the power and the money will follow. Ask the Clintons, Obamas, Gores, Hansens….

  32. John Smith (it's my real name)

    just a quick dose of reality from earth to the climate blogosphere…
    again, I live in a major US east coast city, choked by a major university
    most folk I know have post graduate degrees or more
    None of them have ever heard of the IPCC
    much less that it’s leader has resigned over sexual misconduct
    they believe without doubt in AGW and that their flex-fuel SUV is helping the polar bears
    I can’t see where the machinations at the IPCC change anything outside of our little cyber world

    ‘Climate Change’ is the new religion of the western secular elite, just like the guy says

    So, now that the former pope of the IPCC has confirmed it, I shall go forth and be criticized for calling it a religion

    • Interesting point. This topic is not getting much traction in the twitosphere, either.

      • Religion? Ah, that’s so first two millenia.
        ============

      • Netanyahu said today the greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of radical Islam with nuclear weapons. Silly me, and here I’ve been thinking all along it was anthropogenic climate change.

      • “This topic is not getting much traction in the twitosphere, either.” – JC

        Maybe that’s because it’s just trivial titillation and those who want it to “get traction” are engaging in tribalistic food-fights?

    • It’s a really good point. Most people are also not all that into politics.
      Until they are. Meaning that people do care about the bills they pay and the jobs they can no longer get. And when the former goes up, they start looking to find out why. And when the lights go out in Britain they’re really going to ask why. That’s when they will stumble on this site, that’s when they’ll find out about the leadership of the IPCC. That’s the moment the Willards and Michaels fear.
      Right now, frankly, AGW is a joke to most people “it’s 20-below, where’s my global warming!” Or another example of goofball tree-huggers- “let’s study Keystone for another six years because all us pro-science, reality-based types can’t accept the reality and the science supporting Keystone!”

      • > … And when the lights go out in Britain they’re really going to ask why. That’s when they will stumble on this site

        Nope …

        Because: 1) when the “lights go out”, computers, internet, ATM’s etc wont work; 2) in the fleeting moments when the grid is working, all of us will be struggling to survive – apportioning nuanced blame will be utterly irrelevant

      • Ah, but when the lights go back on!
        ================

      • @kim

        > Ah, but when the lights go back on!

        That’s my point 2)

        I appreciate your light touches of irony, but it is a disappointment to find that you may not be able to count :)

      • The best thing we could do is stop buying things on line and delete our facebook and twitter accounts. Target is getting ready to lay off thousands of people in anticipation of building up the on-line business. If we met out friends in restaurants or otherwise visited with each other, we would spend more money on snacks or meals and might even find face-to-face is more enjoyable than re-posting the latest amazing video. Getting off social networks would also make NSA have to spy the hard way, with boots on the ground. They would have to be a lot more selective.

      • Eventually Scottie gets the generator for the operating room tent working in the rain and you can fix all the glorious and bloody mistakes made while the lights were out, and from the concussive destruction of the event causing the blackout. Or so it goes in the movies.
        ==============================

      • Oops, an ugly thought. Get it out and begone. Who expects nuanced blame? Also, anger is a survival mechanism, often quite useful when directed against the cause of the threat to survival.

        I once hoped that ridicule and derision would end this willful mania for catastrophe, but my friend Peter Bocking told me that too many people have died already. No such easy answer.
        ==========================

      • ian,
        sorry to be so late to respond, but when the lights go out there is no reason to believe the apportionment of blame will be “nuanced.”
        Which is why the lights won’t actually go out. Like Germany, they’ll build coal-fired plants, frack for gas, connect to nuclear plants in other countries and issue press releases extolling the virtues of the windmills and solar panels powering (barely) the coffee pots of the local “deputy sub minister of sustainable bureaucracy” .
        The IPCC is doomed because it’s no longer useful. The “sustainable bureaucracy” is in place, the funding mechanism for it is there (albeit at a lower level than many had hoped), and nobody really took the issue seriously anyway. So, next host to parasite!

    • Danny Thomas

      John Smith,
      Hmmm. Interesting that this follows what we see in public opinion polls. If so many folks partictular areas of the globe (like the East Coast this winter) aren’t showing signs of warming then “what, me worry?”. Thanks for the reminder. Found out today that if one isn’t a full blown AGW’er accepting of all things SPM from IPCC then one is and can only be a denier. Skepticism no longer exists. Must be a new edition of the “Psychology of Climate Change Communication”.

    • If it was the head of the Heritage Foundation, my bet is that it would be receiving a bit more attention.

    • @ John Smith

      “……..believe without doubt………”

      The three key words to CAGW.

      And as you well realize, in the world of post graduate progressives that you find yourself unavoidably immersed in, the impact of actual, observed DATA has been and will continue to be exactly zero.

      No matter WHAT the empirical climate actually DOES, they will continue to ‘believe without doubt’.

  33.  
    Pachauri’s defense is that he is not the only serial abuser of data among the “careerists in the $1 billion-a-day global-warming industry.”

  34. I doubt who leads IPCC matters much. The full time Geneva staff is only 12. Best as I can tell, they are the ‘wedding planners’ for all the meetings. For AR5 WG2, there were 8 main meetings all over the world–not counting the near countless various sub topic meetings. Tough places like Venice, Boulder, Tsukuba.

    What matters are the lead authors. And those without fail have conflict of interest because their grant funding depends on climate change being a problem needing further study. Color me pessimistic.

    What will halt the momentum scientifically is continued pause/model divergence, recovery of Arctic ice, continued non-acceleration of sea level rise… To the point where the basic discrepancies are scientifically embarrassing. What will halt it politically is voter education: a ‘ blow up’ or two concerning the prescriptions. UK, German, California grid going down thanks to renewable intermittency. Removal of renewable subsidies by strapped governments causing massive renewables bankruptcies and shareholder pain, as is now likely in Spain. More massive voter rejection of ‘energy pain’ as has happened in Australia. UNFCC Annex one country rejection of annex 2 demands for a $100 billlion/ year Green Climate Fund wealth transfer scheme exposing UNFCC for what its head Christina Figueres openly says its agenda actually is…

  35. I fear the next chair will be the orthodox Jean-Pascal van Ypersele as he has personally prevented a public presentation of skeptic Fred Singer in Belgium.

  36. I have little time for pachauri but I think the reference to The protection of planet earth being his religion is merely a reference to the Hindi philosophy of nature that the universe is one family, rather than the western interpretation, whereby a green zealot might say that environmentalism is his religion.

    I saw Stocker was dismissed as a potential new ipcc head By mosh up thread. I met Stocker in Exeter last year where he secured the rare honour of being one of the few scientists to admit that there were limitations to scientific knowledge, in this context it was that he admitted we did not have the technology to measure the temperature of the deep ocean.

    Assuming that Dr Richard Betts of the Met office would not stand, who I think would be excellent in the job, it would be Stocker that would get my vote but perhaps additional and better contenders may come along.

    Tonyb

    • tony –

      ==> …”but I think the reference to The protection of planet earth being his religion is merely a reference to the Hindi philosophy of nature that the universe is one family, ”

      Geez. Ya’ think? You mean it doesn’t just happen to mean exactly what would confirm the bias of “skeptics?”

      Shocking thought…

      ==> “I met Stocker in Exeter last year where he secured the rare honour of being one of the few scientists to admit that there were limitations to scientific knowledge,…”

      Lol! Yeah. So rare. The vast majority of scientists think that there are no limits to scientific knowledge.

      And it’s so “rare” to get one of them to “admit” it.

      Too funny.

      • Joshua

        I was talking in the context of post modern climate science where the big gaps in our knowledge of the climate system are rarely articulated in public.

        Who would get YOUR vote, other than Judith, obviously?

        Tonyb

      • tony –

        ==> “I was talking in the context of post modern climate science where the big gaps in our knowledge of the climate system are rarely articulated in public.”

        You mean unlike when the IPCC “admits” the uncertainty with all those estimates that quantify uncertainty?

        Lol.

        Don’t you see, tony, that the hyperbole undermines your point?

        ==> “Who would get YOUR vote, other than Judith, obviously?”

        I’m not a fan of personality politics, tony.

        But if I were (heh), Latif and John NG seem like good blokes – who as near as I can tell, try to avoid all the gutter politics and tribalism.

        Tamsin would be a fascinating choice, although she’s too invested in the personality politics for my liking.

      • Joshua, “You mean unlike when the IPCC “admits” the uncertainty with all those estimates that quantify uncertainty?

        Lol.”

        Where the climate science warmists admit uncertainty is in the direction of policy influence. If the models are wrong, to them that means it is worse than they thought, e.g. Gavin’s 110% in order to keep the high end alive.

        The absolute limit of possible natural/internal variability has been +/-0.1 until the “pause” that doesn’t exist now it is creeping up towards, +/- 0.2 C. The one big thing you will never hear a die hard warmist say is , “it’s not as bad as we thought.” That should tell you something even it you don’t follow the science.

      • Joshua

        So that uncertainty would be of the 95 or 97% would it? Sounds pretty certain to me.

        I suspect Tamsin would be too young and too female to win universal approval from the very diverse countries that make up the ipcc.

        Tonyb

      • It’s very powerful, Cap’n, that ‘it’s not as bad as we thought’ is a completely marketable true narrative and it still can’t be said. Where, really, was the sin that would ask for contrition, absolution, and forgiveness? There was trust, mutually, by all. Until there wasn’t.

        This is one of the enduring mysteries of the debate. To a large degree, everyone got trapped by this extraordinary tropical social storm.
        ===============

      • C’mon, kids, all the job requires is an honest and effective executive, er administrator. Find me one, please. They’re all over.
        =================

      • tony –

        ==> “So that uncertainty would be of the 95 or 97% would it? Sounds pretty certain to me.”

        Notice that you left out the >50% portion of the statement, which leaves in the end a great deal of uncertainty even at 95%.

        And notice that you left out the stated, quantified uncertainty w/r/t sensitivity.

        And notice that you left out the stated, quantified uncertainty w/r/t the impacts.

        All uncertainty “admitted” by scientists. Kind of looks like there’s a lot of room there for “admitting” that there are “limits to scientific knowledge.”

        Like I said, tony, the hyperbole doesn’t suit you, IMO.

        It’s that kind of tribalisitic leveraging of uncertainty that, IMO, discredits “skeptics” when they talk about the importance of acknowledging and being up front with uncertainty (which is something that I agree with). Every time I here “skeptics” trotting out the tired “they said that the science was settled” meme, I scratch my head and wonder why they think that they advance the ball by using fallacious arguments.

        Ask swood1000 about that one.

        ==> “I suspect Tamsin would be too young and too female to win universal approval from the very diverse countries that make up the ipcc.”

        You asked who would get my vote, not who I thought was likely.

      • The science is not as bad as we thought but the policy is
        a lot worse than we think.Think global dimming like in WW 2.

      • Joshua

        Have you actually read Ar5 or, as few people do, the much more influential and widely read summary for policy makers?

        http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf

        You will see that most categories are likely or very likely with increasing certainty as the projections are made for the decades ahead.

        Tonyb

        If we are voting for females unlikely to be elected I will nominate Judith.

      • John Smith (it's my real name)

        I don’t know much
        but I know the Gita
        and I know the Sutras of Patanjili
        if he’s worried about the future, he ain’t read his good books
        can’t blame his new religion on his old religion

      • https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/nominate-judith-curry-next-chair-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change/2PYxtyQF

        WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:

        Nominate Judith Curry as the next Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change.

      • nottawa rafter

        Given Judith’s previous statements, she might want to dust off General Sherman’s quote “If nominated, I shall not run: if elected, I shall not serve.” :)

    • Seeing that “Mr Smith” has responded to Tony’s reference to Patchauri’s “Hindu philosophy,” I’ll add to it. The concept of pancasila (five-fold morality) developed in India perhaps 3000 years or more ago (it was around long before the Buddha used it as the foundation of his practice more than 2600 years ago). That involves abstaining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and harsh speech and intoxicants. When abstaining from all impure actions, only pure actions remain. (In addition, maintaining the moral practice is an essential prerequisite to developing samadhi, concentration of the mind, and panya, wisdom, understanding based on direct experience of reality as it manifests from moment to moment.) The concept of karma, whereby the volition which drives your actions will bear fruit, negative, neutral or positive depending on the volition, in the future, has been around for a similar length of time. So, Tony, I think that if you seek to interpret Patchauri’s use of the word “religion” in terms of Hindu views, you need to conclude that he was not a devoutly practising Hindu.

      • Faustino

        I would not disagree with you. Many who proclaim (and believe themselves to be) on the moral high ground do not always live up to the heights of their own expectations.

        tonyb

      • Faustino-

        Does Buddhism say anything about attributing malicious intentions and motivations to others?

      • John Smith (it's my real name)

        what is karma practice?
        Ramana Maharshi said,
        “karma yoga is ceasing to arrogate to yourself the origins of your actions”
        if you aren’t doing it’s not bearing fruit for anybody
        fortunately, there is no consensus on Hindu philosophy
        this is just the one I pick
        I just don’t think the man’s cultural religion is an excuse for turning science into religion
        I completely yield to Faustino on these matters

    • How deep was the deep ocean he was talking about?

  37. Pachauri is not the problem. It’s been obvious for a long time that he is a trough-swiller par excellence, heavily into lechery and exhibitionism at public cost. (The chartered plane from NY to India for cricket practice was never a secret.) Nobody could possibly have been in doubt as to his qualifications and background, since those things have also been in plain view.

    Religious impulse is not the problem. I went to Catholic schools in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s and had absolutely NO experience of creationism. Evolution has been widely accepted for yonks (probably in far too facile a way), yet we have lately been bombarded with Heroic Atheism and Defiant Darwinism as if these notions were new and their proponents a persecuted elite. Richard Dawkins may have a special appeal to doe-eyed sophomores, but what he actually represents is an old, stagnant, dull and intolerant mainstream.

    People who have been calling themselves “climate scientists” need to avoid posturing as heroic defenders of method and accept that their own incurious, mechanistic, literalist approach to a subject of fantastic complexity has been far more silly and costly than anybody’s religion. Even Pachauri’s.

  38. FWIW, I suspect Pachauri’s “my religion and my dharma” is as profound as his love and consideration for younger female employees and their wellbeing and careeers: Lots and lots of sugar candy words to say Me Myself I. I think any guy & girl in the street is able to spot this.

    He could have said “science” in stead of “religion”, but I can’t see how it would make much difference.

  39. Pachauri’s departure may pave the way for some new thinking in the IPCC, Although Pachauri was not entirely responsible for the misdirection, that went back earlier to his instructions from the IPCCC that the ‘science was rettled’, so Pachauri did not have to run a scientific research institution;. One of the more serious mistakes was to ignore the history of climate in the early 20th century. so they missed the singularity at 1940 which contained vital information on the on/off nature of climate change and the role of the ocean’s transport delay in the next ttemperature tise.

  40. Pachauri and Gore are the Borgia popes which the climatariat deserved. There should be no vote on a new IPCC leader because there should be no IPCC.

    The climate is old and nasty, cannot be altered. The climatariat is new and nasty, but there may yet be time to at least shrink it. As a first step, let’s lobby for the abolition of the IPCC, the head from which the fish has been rotting.

    The money saved could be spent on beer – or even debt reduction if you are the frivolous type.

    (And for future eventualities: Never trust any institution with a name which sounds like it came out of a Superman comic.)

    • Or a name like someone out of Star Wars. I denounce myself.
      ==================

    • The UN should be moved of Africa — with the members commuting to and from their homelands by bullock — and, then they can show us by their example how to get by on less energy.

    • moso, for once I disagree with you. You say that “The climate is old and nasty.” No, the climate is not “nasty,” it is what it is. Any attribution such as nasty is purely in the eye of the beholder. The climate for thousands of years has been good enough to support the rapid growth and development of our species; be grateful for that.

  41. Bottom line , the IPCC is a UN organisation, this tells us two things , one its main aim is to ensure to keeps going not to solve the issues it was formed to deal with , and two its senior appointments have little to do with ability and much to do with politics and with the UN that can mean ‘whose countries turn is it now ‘

    After this you can see how the IPCC like other UN bodies can display a mixture of self serving interest and incompetence. Which has come out time and again in its reports.

    Has for his replacement , well remember point one , a ‘safe pair’ of hands is a shoe in , ability and experience are not needed .

    • I gotta funny feeling BRICs’ll call the turn. The Works are turning grand, and the tragic victims queue.
      ==============

  42. David in TX,

    nice shot of Al and Raj. The Nobel certificates are out of focus. The one held by Raj actually shows “Michael Mann” as the awardee. If it didn’t, it would mean the picture of the Nobel Certificate posted by Dr. Mann on Twitter and Facebook was a forgery. The Nobel Foundation commissioned certificates for the Peace Prize, with recipients’ names hand-penned in. Mann, and an estimated 2000 other leading contributors to the TAR received photocopies (Mark Steyn waggishly says printed by Kinko’s), in which IPCC was whited out, and the contributors’ names were penned in by somebody who wasn’t authorized by the Nobel Foundation.

    Mann, according to his own testimony, was unaware that genuine, bona fide Nobel Laureates received phone calls (wee-hours for American winners), paid-travel-and-stay-expense invitations to go to Oslo (or Stockholm) from the Fuoundation, medals, and shares of approx. $1.4M, with a maximum of THREE sharers, or over$400,000 per Nobel Prize shared recipient.

    I knew these things in college. Like Dr. Mann, I did my undergrad work at Berkeley, where I was exposed to the controversy of the 1975 Nobel not being co-awarded to the man (Harry Rubin) who discovered and proposed that viruses could have RNA, not DNA, which his student Howard Temin won. He was shot down, and crawled away from his proposal. He was a Caltech postdoc, but “only” had a DVM. Never mind that he also rocketed cell culture by coming up with the idea of feeding mammalian cell cultures fetal serum. If you want to do modern cell and molecular biology without using “Harry’s” innovation in your medium, good luck with that. He also created the “reverse plaque assay” for isolating cancer cells. Three Nobels that he arguably could have won, in Physiology or Medicine, and he was nominated, zero actual awards.

    Anyway, I learned a lot about Nobel Prizes in the 70’s. Michael Mann didn’t understand that a photocopied Nobel certificate, with “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” whited out, and his name penned in, by somebody working for Raj Pachauri, did NOT make Dr. Mann a “Nobl Lareate”. Where was his medal, or share of the monetary prize?

    Nevertheless, Mann filed suit against Mark Steyn, and in his suit, Mann claimed to be a Nobel Laureate. He was represented by an ex-Joe Camel /RJ Reynolds (winning) law firm. “Leading global warming scientist hires a Big Tobacco firm to sue a critic.” Did the NYT, LA Times, WAPO mention this FACT?

    It’s almost comical, isn’t it? And now IPCC Chairman Pachauri is revealed to be a lecher, skirt-chasing and sexually harassing an assistant young enough to be his granddaughter?

    I started doubting CAGW when the UEA emails were leaked. Get new editors, re-invent “peer review” to reject anthropogenic global warming questioning papers, “hide” things, use “tricks”, destroy emails that might be subject to FOIA. If anyone didn’t realize these represented ANTI-SCIENCE moves, he/she doesn’t know what science is.

    I’ve read MBH ’98. There isn’t enough statistics demonstration to establish anything. There isn’t a statistician coauthor, which was vital to a project that pushed “not well established” statistical methods..

    M & M dismantled it, despite Mann’s blocking release of the raw data.

    I don’t blame Mann. I believe somebody suggested to him, “The IPCC needs a gun, because control of fossil fuels by the capitalists is not being reversed. Nobody has given us one. Make the gun, and your future is secured.”

    Poor guy. A nobody at Berkeley. (Advancement to first-rate graduate school in physics, to MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech, Princeton or Berkeley, required more than a B+ /borderline A- GPA. A nobody at Yale, where it took him 9 years to get hisPhD.

    He was given the chance to be A SOMEBODY. A VIP. So, he took it. Glomming onto the UN IPCC mandate to find that global warming needed a worldwide changeover from free-enterprise to authoritaian-controlled communism, Mann bit.

    BTW, the IPCC/GoreNobel award was a Peace Award, not a Nobel science award. Barack Hussein Obama won the Peace Nobel without doing anything beyond community activizing.

  43. Don Monfort

    Patchy is the innocent victim of hackers. Just like the Climategate kidz. Birds of a feather.

  44. Slightly off-topic for this thread – but experimental test of Biotic Pump Hypothesis (Makarieva/Gorshkov) here:
    http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2776099/without_its_rainforest_the_amazon_will_turn_to_desert.html

    • Excellent article! Deforestation is a REAL problem. When I was in Manaus, Amazonas it would rain everyday at 2pm, “as chuvas as duas” (the rains at 2) they called. A torrent.

    • No, you don’t. He is in an existential struggle with a powerful nation led by fanatical, regressive fanatics. He is no trained rat.

      The trained rats can be found here:

      http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_(1971_film)

      • By regressive fanatics, I wonder if you are referring to this, Justin:

        Terrorist attacks by Jewish extremists targeting mosques and churches in Occupied Palestine are taking place with an alarming frequency.

        Unfortunately, the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which is often dubbed a government of settlers, for settlers and by settlers, has done very little to stem the tide of settler terror. On the contrary, government inaction and presumed acquiescence seem to have enabled this phenomenon to linger on and on.

        On Thursday, Israeli police said a fire damaged a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem.

        Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said “anti-Christian” slogans were scribbled in Hebrew on the seminary’s walls. Some of the slogans left on the wall of the Church read: Jesus is son of a b….”

        http://www.medhajnews.com/article.php?id=MTQwNjk=

      • The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

      • … and my friends are never fanatics.

        Fancy that.

      • But my enemy is a fanatic.

      • David in TX

        Willard has friends?

      • Steven Mosher

        willard has, like it or not, transformed the climate wars as they appear on blogs. Deal with it.

        I wish he would use an expository approach to explain his perspective. But then again I cant criticize being cryptic now can I?

        sometimes he is annoying. meh I cant complain about that either

    • David in TX

      SO not on topic.

      What’s the deal Willard, you got no friends to talk to about things in the news that bother you? What a surprise. You’re such a little pest.

  45. The IPCC is a UN bureaucracy and it’s leader is chosen by a UN committee. There are so many UN rice bowls supported by the IPCC that it’s impossible to believe that the next IPCC chair will change the organization’s direction. Bureaucracies are like vampires; they live forever and consume human blood!

    • It is shakedown of first world economies.

      • The Chinese expressed their chagrin at the failure of the shakedown in Copenhagen by feigning outrage at the neo-colonial manipulations of one Barack Obama.

        The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah.
        Down in the sewer for me and you
        And the ants go marching on.
        =====================

  46. Will El Nino finally come to the fore?

    http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/elninometer-current.gif

    • Danny Thomas

      Darn it! We self labeled independents are left out once again.

      • Willard only talks to Labels he learned tnat from Joshua.

      • Obviously the country will benefit from unification under the new religion:

        I pledge allegiance to the pennant
        Of the low-carbonfootprint of America
        And to the totalitarian state for which it stands
        one nation, under the iron fist of Gaia
        With no liberty and no justice for all!

      • Ordvic-

        I get it was a cheap shot, but i don’t know what it it’s in reference to. Care to explain?

      • Joshua, yeah it was a cheap shot an attempt at half hearted humor. Some posts back we had a conversation about left/right politics and your constant reference to labelistic memes you use to tweak denizen sceptics.

      • Ordvic-

        ==> ‘and your constant reference to labelistic memes you use to tweak denizen sceptics.’

        I think you’re mis-remembering. I try to avoid labeling. If you could provide examples. it might help me prevent such lapses inn the future.

      • If you could provide examples. it might help me prevent such lapses inn the future.

        Massive unintentional irony. Almost every time you use the word “skeptic”, whether or not you put it in scare quotes.

      • > We self labeled independents are left out once again.

        Quiye right, although the last plot may be for you, unless you’re likely to vote for the Tea Party but would never associate yourself with them.

        One day, we might be all independents:

        https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/569979747654094848

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,

        Re:”, unless you’re likely to vote for the Tea Party but would never associate yourself with them.”

        You see, I could, about 10% of “them”. And about 20% of “conservatives”, 50% of moderates, 20% of “liberals”, and even 10% of socialists: And as a representative (Head, Leader) of IPCC this would be exactly the kind of person I’d love to see in place. Then, should they be willing to take on the task, I’d ask them to give 110%! It’s my worldview and relating to WWII it’s how folks come together. As it stands for this observer, most are in the the middle area and it’s the outliers that won’t give.

        AK speaks well for my view in his response to Joshua:”The alarmist “consensus” position is clearly unitary, with anybody who questions any tenet open to being labeled a “denier”. (E.g. the Pielke’s.) IIRC you’ve even been critical of this process. But you seem to miss the obvious corollary: if anybody who questions any aspect of a unitary consensus is a skeptic, “skeptic”, or “denier”, then the positions of these people are exactly the opposite of unitary. Nobody can honestly be held responsible for anybody else’s opinion(s).”

      • None of whom need Russian gas or have relatives on the Space Station.
        =================

      • Ordvic-

        It’s AK offering an example of what you were talking about? It is that just another example of a “skeptic” arbitrarily jamming whatever he wants into a definitin to confirm his biases?

      • @Joshua…

        Just think about how often you hold “skeptics” responsible for what one another think. Rather than considering that each individual person skeptical (or “skeptical”) of the alarmist “consensus” position could be skeptical in a different way.

        The alarmist “consensus” position is clearly unitary, with anybody who questions any tenet open to being labeled a “denier”. (E.g. the Pielke’s.) IIRC you’ve even been critical of this process. But you seem to miss the obvious corollary: if anybody who questions any aspect of a unitary consensus is a skeptic, “skeptic”, or “denier”, then the positions of these people are exactly the opposite of unitary. Nobody can honestly be held responsible for anybody else’s opinion(s).

      • > Nobody can honestly be held responsible for anybody else’s opinion(s).

        The same should apply to everyone.

        “Yes, but Denizens” amounts to special pleading.

      • Lost in the Weellards.
        ===============

      • > As it stands for this observer, most are in the the middle area and it’s the outliers that won’t give.

        Indeed, hence the trick to portray the mainstream position both as monolithic and acting like an outlier.

        As long as it speeds up appearances in congressional hearings, anything goes, I guess.

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,

        What subset are you defining as “mainstream position”?

      • Here, Danny:

        https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml

        Beat this and you’re rich and famous. Or richer and famouser.

        As a bonus, you could get invited to congressional hearings.

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,

        You’ve made my point for me. From you view, “the consensus position” is “mainstream”. From my view, there are billions of folks do not share that context. Part of the evidence comes from Pew where CC isn’t even on the radar.

        I’ve no desire to “testify before congress” but nervously would if asked in order to make the case that: 1) the science is not settled and even one with a background lacking science can see that 2) There are reasonable positions on all sides of the conversation and all views should be considered.

        Then, I’ll take the rich part but with my name care not so much for being famous. All those photogs and such.

      • > From my view, there are billions of folks do not share that context.

        Denizens might need to wonder why you’d fantasize about worldwide referendum, Danny. The mainstream is mainstream within the relevant institutions. What may believe retired engineers, amateur IT specialists or contrarian physicists is as relevant as specialists in Vulcan sexuality or zombie apocalypses. Speaking of which:

        http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/unscientific.png

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,

        Been traveling so apologies for the delay.
        I’d asked for how you were defining “mainstream” and you came back with effectively the consensus view.
        This is the note to which I was responding and I’m sure “the denizens” here and elsewhere might not agree with the view you offered as being “mainstream” in their sense. But that is up to them to decide.
        As far as the rest of you response, once you go back and see why I responded as I did, I think the context will appear out of place.

      • > I’d asked for how you were defining “mainstream” and you came back with effectively the consensus view.

        Guilty as charged, Danny. That we have a scientific consensus over AGW tells a lot about the kind of mainstream we’re talking about, don’t you think?

        If you wished to define mainstream on the political axis, that would change, since the big energy interests are pretty well established on both sides of the democratic circus. By circus, I am not referring to congressional hearings.

        These interests are so well established their cognitive frame is being replicated by climate zombies and other kinds of freedom fighters:

        http://youtu.be/Qh3TeTxgNVo

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,
        Since you asked: “That we have a scientific consensus over AGW tells a lot about the kind of mainstream we’re talking about, don’t you think?”
        What I actually think is that the so called “consensus” if one were to take the time to ask, might fall much as it does in the “blog-o-sphere”. Warming, sure. But nuts and bolts, not so much. By this, I mean that if we took the very same folks and asked each of them specifics point by point w/r/t cause, attribution, SPM, (all the nuts and bolts which make up the entirety) then that “consensus” might be found to vary upon a scale from catastrophe to a large yawn. That “consensus” I’d expect to be of some value (or confirmation of the B-O-S). The current one is only a propaganda tool being used to supporting the politics behind. As I do not support the “entirety” I’ve been called a “denier” myself but am indeed more of a lukewarmer. So “mainstream” is equivillent nonsense when it’s used to describe the topic of climate, IMO. Disclosure, no big oil paying me.

      • > As I do not support the “entirety” I’ve been called a “denier” myself but am indeed more of a lukewarmer.

        You can’t support the non-entirety without knowing enough nuts and bolts, Danny.

        I expect the blogosphere blogosphere to follow what the Pew Research Center found, with those who drive the political discussion getting the most political klout, which includes congressional hearings to those who otherwise may not be under anyone’s radar.

        Lukewarmism ain’t about attribution, BTW. It’s about sensitivity. It’s also about playing the middleman, like you just did. So you got that part right.

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,
        “You can’t support the non-entirety without knowing enough nuts and bolts, Danny.” You are so right. Looking forward to edification.
        What I know I don’t know:
        CFC’s and Ozone’s place in the equation. Deep oceans. Why temps aren’t doing as modeled. Why Antartica sea ice extent is at record highs, opposite of models. CO2’s actual sensitivity. Total solar radiation which does not reach the surface due to GHG. Why’s and what’s of AMO/PDO. What caused all warming prior to +/- 1850. How much of that cause is currently affecting GW. El Nino/La Nina causes. Full effects of trade winds. Aerosols extent and impact. Actual SLR. Actual global temps since 1700. Volcanos contribution. Why clouds are sometimes neg. and sometimes pos. feedbacks and when. Why methane is consider such an issue when ruminent populations are approx. the same as 1850 at least in the U.S.
        Why IPCC needs a “consensus” to put forth an agenda if the science was so settled. Why the science is not settled and the IPCC acts as if it is. (Just a couple of things I can think of off top of my head)
        Do tell.
        (Post already to long to list that which I’m comfortable stating I do know).

      • A little exercise for you to see the connection between attribution and sensitivity.

        The higher the sensitivity of temperature to CO2, the colder we would now be without man’s efforts.

        So find a sensitivity figure that frightens you, and calculate how cold we would now be without man’s efforts.

        There are other ways to illustrate the connections between the two concepts, but this one is graphic and simple. Bon voyage.
        ====================

      • Joshua, too hard to go through all the posts. It could be I’ve misremembered. I first remember you making fun of skeptics for their butt-hurt at being called deniers. Second you often end comments calling out denizens for ridiculous claims or comments when it was probably only one with such a notion. Now caling people here denizens is not necessarily labeling unless you are using a broad brush implying everyone thinks the same. After being called out on labeling you decided to use your own terms that I can’t remember whatyamacallit and whoyamacallit something like that. You then began to refer to your tribe as ‘realists’.

      • Danny,

        Just caught your comment. Thank you for your shopping list of known unknowns. I’ll see if I could add some of them to level 0 of my Matrix:

        https://contrarianmatrix.wordpress.com/lots-of-theories/

        If you have any citations for some of them, that would be great.

        ***

        I take it you accept that nothing we know about them provides a better explanation of GW than A. To prefer known unknowns to known knowns would amount to arguing from ignorance. So unless these known unknowns become known knowns, there’s little much to do about them than to be thankful for the concerns they help raising.

        You could try to argue that unless such and such known unknowns become known knowns, you won’t buy AGW. That would sound like ad hoc rescue to me. So I’d rather not consider that’s not what you mean.

        Let me just ask you this: if someone were to tell you that “if humans use 3,000 quads of coal by 2075, we’re ruined,” what would you respond?

        Many thanks!

      • Danny Thomas

        Willard,

        Just got home after more travel. I see no answers to my list.

        But I will answer yours:”Let me just ask you this: if someone were to tell you that “if humans use 3,000 quads of coal by 2075, we’re ruined,” what would you respond?”

        I’d ask for proof.

    • Dig deeper – most of the msm is left wing and created, inadvertent ply, the market for Fox. Prior to Fox, that market was not served.

      Somehow, the left hijacked the term “liberal” and got away with it. The left is not liberal.

      It is true at that lefties like to unfriend people that don’t share their political viewpoints. In fact, they are more likely to choose a community based on the politics of their potential neighbors. See the book “the Big Sort”. Disgusting.

      • Three examples from my on life of “progressives” who are totally ignorant of science of any kind, but get belligerent if I try to show them some data.

      • > Prior to Fox, that market was not served.

        An alternative explanation:

        We’re losing people like my father to the despair of Fox News, and it’s all by design.

        My dad is 67 years old, a full year younger than the average Fox viewer, who is 68, according to an analysis in New York magazine by columnist Frank Rich. I’ve read accounts of people my age — 40 or so — losing parents to cancer or Alzheimer’s, but just as big a tragedy are the crops of grandmothers and grandfathers debilitated by Fox News-induced hysteria.

        I enjoyed Fox News for many years, as a libertarian and frequent Republican voter. I used to share many, though not all, of my father’s values, but something happened over the past few years. As I drifted left, the white, Republican right veered into incalculable levels of conservative rage, arriving at their inevitable destination with the creation of the Tea Party movement.

        http://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_how_a_generation_was_captured_by_thrashing_hysteria/

      • The old joke about Murdoch is that he found a niche market for Fox, half of America.
        ===========

      • > half of America.

        Only if we reduce America to those who watch cable TV:

        Among viewers of all ages, FNC is the only network that grew year to year – up 5% to 1.693 million viewers, compared to MSNBC’s 677,000 viewers (down 14%), CNN’s 408,000 viewers (down 39%), and HLN’s 307,000 viewers (down 2%).

        http://deadline.com/2014/01/fnc-extends-cable-news-ratings-winning-streak-in-january-672497/

      • Yeah, reduce America to only the part penetrated. Sometimes, Willard, you are just too obvious.
        =======================

      • Koldie finds me too obvious.
        Moshpit finds me too cryptic.
        Denizens are tough to please.

      • To miss the point
        Is obviourse,
        Unless of course,
        That is the point.
        ============

  47. Once more, lots of tasty food-for-thought in JC’s remarks. One of the best lines has some typos though. No big deal, I just hate to see a word processor slip mar such a key passage.

    “Perhaps the Pachauri scandal will be jolt the knocks the IPCC out of its paralysis”

    One can only hope the scandal WILL be the jolt that knocks the IPCC into a sensible position, which includes some maneuvering room for a sane course of action no matter which way the science leads.

  48. I agree that it is good not to have the distraction of Pachauri as the IPCC heads towards Paris. I don’t think changing leadership by itself will gain any converts even if they go with another engineer and economist, like Pachauri, rather than a scientist, who would be an immediate punching bag for them.

  49. OT, but probably the only way the progressives here will hear about this.

    Email is increasingly becoming the bete noir of progressives.

    Forget Michael Mann and Hansen trying to get people to avoid emails.

    Forget Lois Lerner crashing her hard drive and the entire IRS pretending they did know there were back up tapes readily available, as required by law.

    Now we have the Secretary of State, the Empress in waiting, Hillary Clinton, flagrantly. violating the law, and putting the country at risk, by creating her own domain for email, outside the Secretary of State’s computer system, so she could hide her emails on official business.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414773/latest-clinton-scandal-quintessentially-hillary-charles-c-w-cooke

    Pretty soon, progressives are going to have to take a lesson from Osama bin Laden, and give up electronic communication. Maybe they can employ the 13 million illegal aliens as message runners.

    The most dishonest, most opaque (most incompetent) administration in US history.

    • Other more recent reports say that the rule only was imposed by the Obama administration after she left office. It is a relatively new regulation, otherwise we would know a lot more about what Bush’s White House was doing prior to the Iraq war, for example, but they didn’t care to make that type of thing known as much as Obama apparently does. Anyway, now at last the conservatives have had a change of heart, so it’s all good. Better late than never.

    • ==> “OT, but probably the only way the progressives here will hear about this.”

      Lol! Yeah, because it’s only a front page story at the NYT, ABC news, CBS News, MSNBC, etc.

      And how quickly they forget, eh?

      At least eighty-eight Republican National Committee email accounts were granted to senior Bush administration officials, not “just a handful” as previously reported by the White House spokesperson Dana Perino in March 2007. Her estimate was later revised to “about fifty.” Officials with accounts included: Karl Rove, the President’s senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.

      The RNC has 140,216 emails sent or received by Karl Rove. Over half of these emails (75,374) were sent to or received from individuals using official “.gov” email accounts. Other users of RNC email accounts include former Director of Political Affairs Sara Taylor (66,018 emails) and Deputy Director of Political Affairs Scott Jennings (35,198 emails). These email accounts were used by White House officials for official purposes, such as communicating with federal agencies about federal appointments and policies.

      Of the 88 White House officials who received RNC email accounts, the RNC has preserved no emails for 51 officials.

      There is evidence that the Office of White House Counsel under Alberto Gonzales may have known that White House officials were using RNC email accounts for official business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records.

      The evidence obtained by the Committee indicates that White House officials used their RNC email accounts in a manner that circumvented these requirements. At this point in the investigation, it is not possible to determine precisely how many presidential records may have been destroyed by the RNC. Given the heavy reliance by White House officials on RNC email accounts, the high rank of the White House officials involved, and the large quantity of missing emails, the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act may be extensive.

  50. In my opinion, the IPCC should change its approach to climate change to include all natural and human factors.

    As it is now, the assumption is that any observed climate change must be caused by mankind because no natural phenomena are known to be responsible. This is an “argumentum ignorantiam”, an argument based on ignorance that has no place in science.

    • David in TX

      If it weren’t for argumentum ignorantiamn.and argumentum terrorem they’d have no argumentums et al!

      hahaahahahaha I kill me sometimes!

  51. “I suspect that raw politics will be more important than individual credentials or platforms.”
    You Betcha!

    Let’s get it all out in the open though.

    I’m for a round of FOIA for all involved!

  52. What they really need is somebody who knows what running a big international organization is all about these days.

    I nominate Sepp Blatter.

  53. The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity.
    Regain?!
    It never had scientific objectivity to begin with. It was designed to fake scientific objectivity for political purposes. I doubt it could ever acquire scientific objectivity given its pedigree and history.

  54. “Can the IPCC clean up its act?”

    No. It is top to bottom a political body, politically funded, serving politics. It will so continue to always corrupt its findings so as to favour politics.

    And more specifically, it is part of the UN, an organisation dedicated to world governance. And climate alarmism is of course god’s gift to that cause …

  55. “The panel, set up in 1988, will be tackling the questions of a typical midlife crisis: what’s my purpose? Am I going about it in the right way? Does anyone really care about me?”

    Okay, here are the answers. None. No. No.

    Also, the navel-gazy reference to midlife crisis gets its own NO. Go be Blanche Dubois somewhere else.

    I have strong sympathy for anyone going through any crisis. But the IPCC is not a person and I just want it gone for good. Don’t bother with any transitions, IPCC. Just go.

  56. OT. Oil inventories increased by a whopping 10 million barrels. Some were expecting a decrease in inventories due to rigs coming out of service. Others were expecting ~3 million bbl build. Didn’t happen. Stay tuned.

  57. I don’t think I’ll ever get over listening to liberal feminists trash Lewinsky.
    ============

  58. I doubt if it will take 4 score years into the 21st century before it dawns on all of the folks that flushing a billion dollars a day down the gullets of the careerists in the global warming industry has produced nothing of value in return but, it might… perhaps the next appointment the UN’s high office of Temperature Adjustment Czar may tell us something about how long it will take to return to societal sanity.

    • It has been a huge benefit to the champagne and caviar industries.

      • I wonder if Pachauri responded to a matchbook ad on how to succeed as a professional climate change, global warming alarmist. Like Al Gore, he certainly has no scientific credentials but Western academia is willing to throw the robe of respectability over the shoulders of anyone who is passionate about preaching the Left’s narrative to the great unwashed masses.

      • Missing child milk carton with ‘Catastrophe of Pachauri’ on one side and ‘Preposterous Catastrophe’ on the other.
        ======================

  59. Matthew R Marler

    More important than changes in IPCC will be the research carried out and published by scientists in the next 4 years. IPCC can’t ignore it without losing credibility no matter who the director is. My expectation is for research that has the effect of reducing the estimates of sensitivity to a doubling of CO2; of course I could be wrong, but such results (and others one could surmise) would be more important than any changes to IPCC. Likewise if the preponderance of the evidence were to raise the sensitivity estimates.

    • No way will they be able to sustain 95% confidence in attribution, so there should be a tipping point in the trend. But watch ’em try anyway. Maybe they’ll learn about leverage around tipping points.
      ================

      • maybe you haven’t noticed the continuing warming.

        More warming means higher confidence in human attribution

        Not just that, but more TIME, more years means higher attribution.

        Because with every passing year that global temperature doesn’t go down the natural contribution becomes less likely.

        For instance the lack of cooling during the current quiet sun is already a real problem for those claiming the late 20th century warming was caused by the sun.

        Same problem for PDO.

      • nottawa rafter

        lolwot is trying to out think himself and wants to deny the run up to the MWP. No one has falsified we are on a course to temperatures of the MWP.

      • Rob Starkey

        More warming is unimportant unless it is at an alarming rate and that results in other dangerous changes. It isn’t.

      • Matthew R Marler

        lolwot: ecause with every passing year that global temperature doesn’t go down the natural contribution becomes less likely.

        What is your estimate of the change of evapotranspirative transfer of heat from the Earth surface to the troposphere due to an increase in the surface temp of 1C? Are you one of the “evapotranspirative change” deniers? You understand how this affects (calculations of) climate sensitivity, right?

  60. Judith , on the WUWT web-site an article just came out wanting to petition you to head the IPCC. I personally think they need someone like you.

    You might be interested in this. take care

    • I appreciate the support, but this has the chance of Inhofe’s snowball in hell. Not to mention that I’m not leaving my armchair.

      • It sounds to me like somebody clearly doesn’t like you, if they’re trying to railroad you into that job.

      • Judith

        35 votes now I have added mine.

        As For Chris Field , these are the notes on him that I wrote when he was on the expert panel at the climate conference I attended at Exeter last year. Thomas Stocker was there as well and I have made waves with some denizens by suggesting we could do worse and select him, as although he has a poor record with some sceptics, at the conference he did at least admit that there were serious gaps in the expert knowledge of the deep oceans..

        As for Chris field I wrote this as he was doing a 10 minute presentation;

        ‘Seems a nice guy but very quiet spoken. Could hardly hear what he was saying. Tedious outdated graphics showing climate on one side and socio economic processes on the other. Too soft spoken and undemonstrative to really make an impact. Rather tedious.’

        So for those sceptics seeking someone who is unlikely to be able to dynamically lead the IPCC, Chris Field is your man. However, if you want someone who will make waves and get the world to sit up and take notice there are probably better candidates.
        tonyb

      • Ok, what’s it worth not to tell David Rose at the Mail on Sunday about this petition? . They have a readership of some 4.25 million.

        tonyb

    • oh come on, 23 votes and counting!

      • Danny Thomas

        Dr. Curry,

        No disrespect to your wishes and expressed preferences, but I plan to add my name and here’s why. If nothing else, should enough folks express support you already substantial visibility might even grow. So folks, I ask that you ignore that our host has stated if selected she will not serve, but let’s make the best use we can of a reasonable voice.

        All those in favor:

      • Danny

        Well its gathering momentum. I think she needs a British historical climatologist to lend perspective and context and someone who is fairly new at the game who can give the perspective of the man in the street.

        Coincidentally that could be you and I. Are you free for the next few years at a modest salary of around £150,,000 a year plus travel?.
        tonyb

      • Danny Thomas

        TonyB,
        (Don’t want to appear too interested). Well, I have a few questions. What’s the credit limit on my company charge card? Do I get an electric car for “business purposes”?

        I can clear my calendar should we reach an agreement. What will you do with you other current paid staff?

      • Danny

        I am not so sure after all that you are the right person. Obviously there is NO limit to your company Charge card.

        Yes you will get a fleet of electric cars. They will be sited at 100 mile intervals around the country until we solve the range problems…
        Tonyb

      • Danny Thomas

        TonyB,

        Eh. Okay, I reluctently accept.
        Regards,

        (now let’s get that British contingent in place, suddenly I don’t wish to miss out)

      • 126 down, only 99874 to go!

      • landslides start with just a few stones :)

      • The mongol khans made much of their pony express. Lush transportation and communication facilities.
        ================

      • Go, our armchair supremo!

      • It’s at 273 now. lol

      • :) :)

        Although you will have to work hard to match Pachauri for entertainment value

    • The job is a meat grinder. Only a Zealot, a Psychopath or a Crook would actually fight to have it. A well-meaning academic would be torn to pieces.

      • A stairway to Heaven. Look what happened to the poor humble, spiritual little Indian railway engineer, doing his darnedest to keep the trains running on time. Was it his fault or the gestalt’s that the commute became so repulsive for so many?
        =============

  61. You would be great, but then again you have to do what you want to do ,not what others want you to do.

  62. The man who signed on to the ‘Snark’ as a cook, was no cook, but soon proved his worth as a photographer, to Jack London’s and the rest of the voyagers’ vast gastrointestinal relief.

    Martin Johnson, not yet husband to Osa.
    ============

  63. Looks like we need an Inter-Planetary Panel on Climate Change:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/giant-storms-on-uranus-2015-3

  64. Genius

  65. John Smith (it's my real name)

    completely anecdotal
    spoke with a friend this AM who is a self proclaimed ‘climate journalist’
    masters in journalism, for him the ‘consensus’ is irrefutable
    writes mostly for pop publications
    he does not know what IPCC stands for and of course had no idea that it’s leader has resigned
    few adherents of any religion actually know their faith
    I was born a Methodist
    I’d be hard pressed to explain what a Methodist is
    there is gambling in Casablanca?

    • John Smith (it's my real name)

      just want to add
      I think very few people, even the most educated, have any idea that such a thing as the IPCC exists
      they are also unaware of the impact such organizations have on their lives
      if they did, there be a lot more skepticism

  66. Berényi Péter

    First of all, the IPCC needs to change its protocol.

    It is simply ridiculous, that the Summary for Policymakers is released earlier than the report itself. And, before releasing it, they make sure it is consistent with its own Summary. Even Orwell could not come up with such a convoluted idea.

  67. Why is Rep. Grijalva lending the weight of his office to careerists in the $1 billion-a-day global-warming industry who want to escape the scrutiny of legitimate skepticism when we know that the hiatus is inexplicable by all the global warming alarmists except by finally admitting the role of natural causes in climate change and after we’ve learned that the higher layers of the upper atmosphere over the tropics have not significantly warmed since the 90s? Doesn’t Grijalva love science? Does Grijalva love his country?

  68. Dan Pangburn

    I wonder what the chances are that, post transition, the IPCC would start to seek the truth about climate.

    The analysis at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com demonstrates that CO2 has no significant effect on average global temperature (AGT). Because CO2 is a trace gas, no significant effect on AGT also means no significant effect on climate.

    It and the peer reviewed paper at Energy and Environment, vol. 25, No. 8, 1455-1471 disclose the two natural factors that do explain average global temperatures (95% correlation since 1895) and credible trend back to the depths of the Little Ice Age (around 1700).

    This work proves that ‘climate sensitivity’, the effect on AGT of doubling CO2, is not significantly different from zero.

    • ==> “I wonder what the chances are that, post transition, the IPCC would start to seek the truth about climate.”

      I suspect the chances are low. Why would a group of people, whose real goal is to increase tax burdens on the American poor, and to starve children in Africa, suddenly be interested in “truth?”

      Besides, they’re “progressives” and “progressives” aren’t capable of critical thinking. You can’t seek “truth” if you don’t have the capacity for critical thinking.

      Nope. Chances are they will just continue along the same path of seeking what’s false about climate.

      Not that it would be a conspiracy, or anything like that, of course.

  69. There is not much mystery to IPCC nor its leadership, a relious belief, a mission which transcends other’s values; noble cause corruption. The POTUS, NASA, NOAA are on board with the full backing of billionaires of the now corrupted environmental movement.

    The Putche is toParis for a U.S. declaration and not a treaty; hence, bypassing the advise and consent of the US Senate.

    Only the alignment of Congress and Executive will there be laws to thwart maniacal imperiorism.

  70. The only people who care about “IPCC credibility” are climate deniers and only because they have a strong political need to undermine it.

    “On the other hand, the Telegraph writes: He may now finally have gone, but the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable”

    The Telegraph article written by Christopher Booker. LMAO. I rest my case!

    “Donna LaFramboise highlights what I regard as the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation”

    You just don’t get it. No-one cares. Deniers like Donna and Christopher Booker are frantically trying to undermine the public’s confidence in the science by latching onto anything they can (“omg the IPCC chair is a RAILWAY ENGINEER not a climate scientist!”)

    “Climate change skeptics aren’t entirely jubilant about his exit, said Myron Ebell, director of the center for energy and environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute”

    I rest my case again (LOL!). An admission that climate deniers NEED these little titbits and hooks on which to spread their “IPCC is damaged” meme.

    When Booker writes “the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable” he’s not wishing for a “better world” in which the IPCC is perfect. No, he’s telling everyone what he wants them to believe. Trying to create reality by asserting it to be so. A bit like advocates of the pause that never wause then lol.

    • ==> “The only people who care about “IPCC credibility” are climate deniers and only because they have a strong political need to undermine it.”

      I think it’s more a matter of CONCERN about credibility.

      • yep.

        Climate skeptics NEED there to be a scandal. They have to talk about scandal loudly at all times because it’s part of their effort to convince others by proxy that global warming is all a hoax.

        The fact is for all the skeptic “CONcern” about “standards”, they would secretly far prefer an “economist/railyway engineer” like Pachauri was running the IPCC than a climate scientist who they’d have less angle of attack on.

      • Rob Starkey

        LOL @ lolwot

        So in your view, is there no impact on the crediability of the IPCC. Keep calling anyone who disagrees with your system of beliefs a “denier”. That will convience them!

      • Credibility in science is about predictions corresondance ter
        reality, isn’t it? Oh that AR5 graph!
        Ihttp://climateaudit.org/2013/09/30/ipcc-disappears-the-discrepancy/

  71. Theo Goodwin

    “The IPCC’s media promoters are afraid that many more erstwhile global-warming believers may jump ship at the very time that the warming alarmnists are trying mightily to win popular support for the UN’s upcoming climate summit in Paris…”

    Everyone who might be subpoenaed in Pachauri’s case will most definitely jump ship.

  72. Theo Goodwin

    “Pachauri’s defense is that his email accounts, mobile phone, and messages have been hacked.”

    There is the measure of the man.

  73. russellseitz

    There appears to be a typo in Tom Fuller’s letter of nomination proposing Professor Curry.

    There should be an ‘N’ before ‘IPCC’

  74. Rob Starkey

    Joshua writes- “I have frequently pointed out to “skeptics” that they fail to acknowledge uncertainty when they talk about the economic outcomes of mitigation.”

    Joshua you typically write nonsense in regards to the economics of CO2 mitigation actions.

    1. There is certainty regarding the proposed initial additional cost to implement a CO2 mitigation action.
    2. There is certainty that nation states operate on budgets and can’t indefinitely spend more than they generate in revenue.
    3. There is certainty that if a nation state spends its revenues on a CO2 mitigation action then there is less available for other things (like improving infrastructure)
    4. There is uncertainty whether a CO2 mitigation action will reduce or increase adverse weather

    • Jeffn-

      Here ya’ go, bud.

      • Rob Starkey

        Typically more nonsense in reply.

      • Rob –

        Until further notice, consider the following to be my stock answer to you, the next time you respond to my pointing out that some “skeptics” don’t acknowledge uncertainty, by failing to note uncertainty:

        What about policies that could help limit this loss? Knowing whether they are worth being implemented is done through actuarial calculus. An abatment policy will generally have an immediate cost, but provide returns in terms of a higher level of well-being tomorrow. We can evaluate whether the gains outweigh the costs by computing the difference between their discounted sums. This is still done over a time horizon that goes until 2200, and the choice of the discount rate becomes here crucial. The low value chosen by Stern gives strong justifications to rapid action while other authors argue in favor of much more progressive abatment policies, based on much higher values of the discount rate. For instance, Nordhaus retains a value of 4.5%.

        It is on this point that has concentrated most of the debate upon the Stern report, with many authors arguing that Stern’s assumption on discounting was unduly low, much lower than typical values of market interest rates, therefore giving excessive weight to concern for the
        future.

        Other authors have however refined the analysis to point at additional reasons why the message of the Stern report had to be taken seriously. A review of all the arguments is provided in Heal (2008). Among these arguments, we find the fact that market rates of interest are not a good normative guide for intergenerational comparisons, especially when we think that markets do not work efficiently. There is also the idea that the problem is not that much the consequences assessed in central scenarios, but the risk of very extreme ones -the application of the precautionary principle-. There is also an idea suggested by Weitzman that the true value of the discount rate may be itself uncertain and that, in the long run, precedence must be given to the lowest of its plausible values. Another major point is that the analysis must take into account the imperfect substitutability between produced goods and natural capital, a feature that is ignored both by Stern and Nordhaus. As soon as this sustainability is imperfect, the divergent paths of production and environmental amenities lead to changes in relative prices that have to be taken into account in the cost-benefit analysis of environmental policies. Reference to a unique discount rate is no more valid, following an argument already provided long ago by Malinvaud (1953). This point has been emphasized by Guesnerie (2004) and Sterner and Persson (2007). The latter have shown that a modified version of Nordhaus’s DICE model incorporating such an heterogeneity can lead to conclusions that are
        still more in favor of strong immediate action than the Stern review did. Further elaboration of this line of argumentation will be found in Guéant, Guesnerie et Lasry (2009, under progress).

        http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf

      • All of Rob’s points go directly to fake mitigation that alarmists push. Your “stock” answer doesn’t address why opposition to fake mitigation is a bad thing.
        Let’s take a recent victory for the alarmists – or we can call them the fake warm if you prefer: the veto of the authorization of the Keystone Pipeline.
        Science says this veto will have no beneficial impact on emissions or the environment in general, in fact the pipeline would be safer for the environment than trains and trucks and have fewer emissions. Nobody believes the tar sands will be “left in the ground.”
        Economics says there is a definite cost to the policy of continuing to delay the pipeline project.
        So we have the fake warm celebrating fake mitigation for maximum partisan purposes and calling other people “deniers.” Or another way of putting it- if you’re goal was to come up with a strategy to ensure nothing at all was ever done about global warming, this veto would be an absolutely pitch-perfect part of that strategy.

  75. A fan of *MORE* discourse

    GOOD NEWS  IPCC6 will have plenty of new solid-science to talk about.

    ———–

    BUSINESS INSIDER:
    This Video Of
    The Largest Breakage Of Ice
    From A Glacier Ever Filmed
    Is Absolutely Frightening

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU

    Observation  Sea-level rise from thermal expansion of warming ocean waters, sustained through many decades without pause or decadal oscillation, is on-track to accelerate from ice-sheet sliding.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfsCmEP94pU

    Conclusion  Radiation-balance physics and thermodynamic analysis, as the sole explanations of the observed sustained sea-level rise and ice-mass loss, are greviously weakening — possibly even extirpating? — the climate-change “uncertainty monster.”

    Can the “uncertainty monster” survive the combined onslaught of affirmed thermodynamical theory, ever-better observational data, the ending of the surface-temperature pause, and the ever-plainer visibility of climate-change to ordinary citizen-scientists?

    The world wonders … IPCC6 will provide answers.

    \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

  76. Willard and Joshua appear to be having a meltdown. What’s the matter?

    • It’s quite interesting how, for some “skeptics,” things always “appear” in exactly the way that will confirm their biases.

  77. It is the mark of every truly great leader that, each morning, even before he takes a sip of coffee, he abolishes another QANGO.

    No IPCC. Let them all return to Almora.

  78. David in TX

    A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 4, 2015 at 6:16 pm | Reply

    “GOOD NEWS IPCC6 will have plenty of new solid-science to talk about”

    Solid as in frozen solid perhaps. It’s gonna snow tonight in south central Texas. In the subtropics. In March. Global warming my ass.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      David in TX affirms “It’s gonna snow tonight in south central Texas. In the subtropics. In March. Global warming my ass.”

      Lol … David in Tx, please keep in mind that, scientifically speaking, “the plural of anecdote is not data”.

      http://www.texasobserver.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/201411-State-of-Texas-birds-759×684.jpg

      David in Tx, your fellow Texan citizen-scientists will be pleased to enlighten you further!

      \scriptstyle\rule[2.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}\,\boldsymbol{\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}\,\heartsuit\,{\displaystyle\text{\bfseries!!!}}\,\heartsuit\,\overset{\scriptstyle\circ\wedge\circ}{\smile}}\ \rule[-0.25ex]{0.01pt}{0.01pt}

    • Get TonyB on the case.

      • Yes, tonyb might be able to point the strugglers to this:
        http://www.npr.org/2012/07/07/155995881/how-one-drought-changed-texas-agriculture-forever

        But the question is, why is it needful to point out these things to the presumably educated and presumably concerned? How is it possible they don’t know? I have never been to Texas or the USA, but I find it hard NOT to know of the conditions there 1950-1957. We are talking about a major climate event here, on a par regionally with the tragic conditions of the 1930s.

        Will the present Texas drought one day be forgotten to suit some future agenda? What gives with all this New Climate stuff? A pocket of extreme heat in Central Queensland and an unseasonably warm winter in parts of Alaska are supposed to stop us noticing what is happening in most of the whole bloody Northern Hemisphere?

        Sorry guys, it’s called snow, ice and cold and none of it is more exotic than the snow, ice and cold of severe winters past. And when you consider that the 1899 blizzard reached across the Caribbean waters around the time Cyclone Mahina in Queensland was making the biggest known storm surge…things may actually be less exotic right now.

      • Yeah moso …

        Context’s the thing whereby
        we may unearth the problem
        situation of the king (and troops.)
        Situational analysis is able ter
        transcend the myopia of
        point of view and opacity
        of time and space.

        Fer ‘king’ think ‘IPCC.’
        Fer ‘situational analysis’
        think regional weather
        variability analysis.

      • Present/recent drought in Texas is probably worse all up than that of the 1910s and almost certainly worse than that of the 1930s. It may be on a par with the ruinous drought of the mid-1880s, depending on just where you are in a very large state, I suppose. But the 1950s Big Dry is something else again.

        There are very clear reports of severe drought in Texas from the 1700s. Surely an adult will just draw the conclusion that Texas, like most of Australia and California, is lethally drought-prone – and act accordingly.

        Ah, but the catch is that word “adult”.

    • A fan of *MORE* discourse

      When MOSOMOSO looks three centuries into the PAST: “There are very clear reports of severe drought in Texas from the 1700s. Surely an adult will just draw the conclusion that Texas, like most of Australia and California, is lethally drought-prone – and act accordingly.

      Ah, but the catch is that word ‘adult’.”

      Now switch-sign on the arrow of time:

      When ADULTS look three centuries into the FUTURE: “There are very mechanisms of lethal heat and multi-meter sealevel rise and the tropical and low-lying nations for the 2300s. Surely an adult will just draw the conclusion that Earth (like all water planets), is lethally susceptible to climate-change – and act accordingly.

      Ah, but the catch is that word ‘adult’.”

      Hmmm … ‘adult’ … what does that mean in practice?

      Climate scientists,
      Texas’ top water official
      disagree on dealing
      with drought, heat waves

      Carlos Rubinstein, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board, said that past weather is the best guide to determining how much the state will need. “Everything we’re doing is retrospective,” he said. “There’s value to that because it happened.”

      Katherine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, said that the climate is changing too quickly for that. “The one thing we know is that using the past as a guide to the future will give us the wrong answer in most circumstances.”

      Hayhoe said state leaders need to accept some hard truths. “Climate is changing faster than it has in the history of Western civilization,” she said.

      Hayhoe likened reliance on past droughts in water planning to driving Lubbock-area highways. They run dead straight for miles, but then they can take sharp turns. “If we drive by looking in the rear-view mirror, we’re not going to be able to handle those turns,” she said.

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/02_ARR_Katharine_Hayhoe.jpg

      Conclusion Good on `yah for ADULT climate-change cognition, Katharine Hayhoe and your Texas climate-science colleagues.

      And thank you mosomoso, for your illuminating remarks!

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      • When * Adults* look three centuries into the future …
        Oh now I get it, ‘adult’ means omnipotent predictor.
        That excludes yr Socrates, Montaigne modest types
        don’t it. So immachure.

      • The problem with Katherine Hayhoe is that she is presuming that climate is changing faster than in the past when it managed it on its own. But there is just no evidence for that at all. Her presumption is based a priori on an assumption that emissions are having a dramatic impact on world temperatures, therefore any weather that is deemed unusual or extreme can be linked to that effect.

        But this is typical confirmation bias. The reason you have to look in the past, and a long way into the past is that in order to judge whether or not what you are seeing is significant you need a large sample of natural variability to compare it against.

        Here is a test for whether or not bias is at work; Katherine Hayhoe should be looking for evidence that rules OUT human influence on the climate, and not evidence that is “consistent” with it. Her argument is that the extreme weather events (such as drought) are more ‘likely’ going into the future because the dice is loaded in favour of them. She points to events “that we have seen” to make it easier to make the connection to recent events we have experienced and fresh in our mind to what at first blush appears to be a reasonable theory.

        But there is no evidence that there is a change in the number and nature of extreme events, which even the IPCC stated in the most recent report.

        The way intelligent people can fool themselves in this way is described in great detail in Daniel Kanhemanns book “Thinking Fast and Slow”. It’s particularly relevant for the climate debate where people are looking for significance in from absurdly (from the point of view of statics and objectivity) small samples.

      • I suppose FOMBS will receive a communique from God as to the climate over the next 3 centuries. Or since he appears to be enamored with the Pope of late, maybe the Pope will get the message from God and pass it on to FOMBS. Other than that, hubris much?

      • Science is easy when your initial assumption assumes the form of your conclusion.

  79. Antonio (AKA "Un físico")

    Pachauri’s resignation is not only a case of sexual harassment. It provides the biggest clue for the general ethical behavior of climatic experts.
    “IPCC is about politics, money and dogma, rather than science”. And I will add: IPCC is about corruption. A corruption now extended to: Nobel prize institutions, TERI (a research institute that e.g. studied the imaginary melting of the Himalayas), European-Union fellows (that payed public money for that imaginary study) and, of course, to IPCC.
    If you believe in Santa Claus: all what happens is that Pachauri is a victim of a hacker; otherwise, now we understand that all this corruption is used to create new jobs in New Delhi’s TERI, and from all new nubiles in the office the “Landlord” selects one for his harem.

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  82. Pachauri: IPCC should take official role in assessing country pledges to curb climate change
    09 Feb 2015, 15:45
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/02/pachauri-ipcc-should-take-official-role-in-assessing-country-pledges-to-curb-climate-change/

    • The creeping (sometimes leaping) encroachment by
      authorities, guvuhmints, UN agencies, to usurp more
      and yet more power unto themselves. Like the IPCC,
      from mission science assessment to political intention,
      – that’s how it goes.

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