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UN To Create Independent Panel To Review IPCC
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that an independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the world's top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report that included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, although there is no scientific consensus to that effect. That brief citation — drawn from a magazine interview with a glaciologist who says he was misquoted — and sporadic criticism of the panel's leader have fueled skepticism in some quarters about the science underlying climate change. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, said the review body would be made up of 'senior scientific figures' who could perhaps produce a report by late summer for consideration at a meeting of the climate panel in October in South Korea. 'I think we are bringing some level of closure to this issue,' says Nuttall. One area to be examined is whether the panel should incorporate so-called gray literature, a term to describe nonpeer-reviewed science, in its reports. Many scientists say that such material, ranging from reports by government agencies to respected research not published in scientific journals, is crucial to seeking a complete picture of the state of climate science."
Nothing could be sillier than some fake UN panel investigating itself.
Whatever anyone thinks of AGW or GW or CC or anything else, this has to be seen for the nonsense that it is.
There are no "independent" climate scientists and haven't been for decades, if ever.
UN agrees to let scientists disagree ...
... and this won't be any different. Their contribution will most likely be just another thumb on the political scale of this controversial topic.
The UN doesn't really do anything very well
By who?
Something is causing the environment to change. It may not be all us but it is very likely that we are contributing in a significant amount.
Since you've already decided that people [especially relatively rich Westerners] are the significant contributors to your already decided 'changes' in environment, you're just the kind of 'scientist' being solicited for the 'independent panel'.
I was thinking the same thing. For example, a political action group could be using this process to strip climate science of the peer-review process. As a consequence, certain ideologically motivated (*cough* laissez-faire capitalists *cough*) institutions will further their actual claim that there isn't scientific consensus.
However, there was scientific consensus in the 70s.
So -- how do you know what is real?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The main problem with this issue is that science and government operate very differently. When are people going to realize that governmental panels on climate change will not work as science.
The report is going to conclude that a bunch of minor errors were made, and does not alter the fundamental conclusions. This is what has been said all along.
The climate change deniers, who believe it's all part of a massive conspiracy against them, will simply see that as more evidence of the conspiracy. They did not understand the science in the first place, which is why they were able to seize on small errors and blow them out of proportion.
I suppose it's intended to demonstrate integrity, to develop another report confirming that the errors did indeed exist (and possibly even uncover others). They should even go in with the full intent of finding serious errors, should they exist. But failing to find those errors will not convince anybody who needs convincing. Nor can I imagine what would.
The 2 big issues I've heard about that report are the citing of a non-peer reviewed source for the Himilaya glacier and an incorrectly phrased line about flooding in the Netherlands (propertly cited, just incorrectly stated)
Now those two mistakes should not be in a paper from such a highly regarded organization, but...
THE PAPER WAS OVER 3000 PAGES LONG.
If I were to write a 3000+ page paper and only had 2 significant mistakes in it, I would be freaking estatic! I mean really, we are humans, there are going to be mistakes in everything we do. That the IPCC has been so responsive in retracting the parts of the paper that have not stood up to review and that out of such a huge document so few mistakes have been reported, shouldn't we instead see this as a great work?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The sun is the primary source of the far strongest greenhouse gas.. water vapor.
"His name was James Damore."
are we even sure there's a correlation between greenhouse gases and temperature ? And, if that's the case, what those gases are and where they come from ?
I've just listened to a 1-hour program on national radio, with kinda independent climatologists (a French luxury, where many scientists do work for the government), about climate change. These guys don't really seem to agree on anything, with one them them strenuously making the point that earth temperature was mainly linked to solar activity... to the point of making anything else irrelevant.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Every year for the last ten years has been setting record temperatures.
Wrong, unless you are talking about localized records, in which case that will always be true.
Its been cooling a bit for the last 8 years... the trend began in 2002. You are either making things up, or repeating what you heard from someone else who was making things up.
"His name was James Damore."
It's good that another review has been announced in order to offset the political hype, but it's discouraging that there was political attacks on the science to begin with. As the article points out, the controversy has essentially been about a single wrong number in the IPCC report, which itself is a summary of over 10,000 peer-reviewed papers published over the last three or four decades. Criticism of this single error has only gained traction because of pointless repetition by critics who stand to make some profit over creating controversy.
The discussions and debate should be focused on policy, not on the science. We have already made our best effort at determining whether there is a problem. Now we need to determine what to do about it.
Remember what used to be the mythical North-West Passage? I hope to be wrong but there is now ocean where you can sail ships through that used to be a global ice cap.
Shh.
Regardless of which side of this debate you are on, you must realize that 10 years doesn't mean anything in this debate AND if we're all honest with ourselves, the past 200 years barely scratch the surface. Both camps will claim(when it is convenient for them) that the longer trends are what is important. Hell, we just recently learned of a 60 year cycle in the climate*** and yet we're still bringing up 10 years as if it means something. Knowing there's a cycle that lasts 60 years should mean we should be looking at the past 2,000 years before we open our mouths...
I personally am skeptical of both sides. I can see how AGW would be plausible but I can also see that some of what the so-called deniers are claiming is also factually true and being glossed over.
***That climate cycle just shifted to its cool pattern in the past year so I'm even more skeptical of the claims of "global warming is causing this bad snow", though it *could* hold some truth..I just think they're declaring a winner before the race has even begun.
AND to top it off, the AGW side wants non-peer-reviewed science to be counted on their side but if it's not peer-reviewed and it says the opposite then it's considered garbage. Double standards are not the way to go here if they want to be believed.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Philip Campbell was one of the "scientists" selected to join the "independent" review panel for the UEA leaks. He later had to step down when it was revealed that he had already made up his mind before any review:
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/aposclimategateapos+review+member+resigns/3536642
I'm sure he was replaced by somebody equally independent and impartial and that we can expect the same level of impartiality from the UN's review of the IPCC. This is nothing but a waste of taxpayer's money.
There's an interesting toy at this website. It's called the global climate dashboard. You can view Temperature, carbon dioxide, incoming sunlight, sea level, arctic sea ice for various periods, adjusting the siders to zoom in on various decades and so on. (Pay attention to the vertical axis, though)
The interesting thing is that 1998 stands out like a sore thumb. 1997 was cooler and so was 1999.
But the naughties? Warmer than 1999. Warmer than 1997. Most of the decade was just slightly cooler than 1998, with very little variability.
IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The climate has been changing for hundreds of thousands of years. But to me the name suggests there is some kind of unprecedented change to the climate that we are now tasked to study. Doesn't that prejudice the findings? What if (just a hypothesis) the data shows that the climate is not going through any kind of change that is out of line with historical patterns of change. The conclusion would be that the current dynamics of that climate to not represent a "macro" change in the climates behavior.
Why not name the panel the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Monitoring? Let the data suggest the conclusion, not the panel name.
Here ya go. Now you can't say that you've never seen a report that says that there has been warming since 1998.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Its been cooling a bit for the last 8 years... the trend began in 2002.
Wow! I can't believe anyone seriously uses that argument anymore. This last decade as been the hottest decade on record. Any slight cooling doesn't change that. You make it sound like it must be much cooler than the record books, but 2009 was globally the 5th hottest year on record.
Have a look at any temperature graph and tell us how significant is your cooling period. Can you spot any other similar cooling pattern in the preceding decades? If so, did those times also prove that it is getting cooler, or did it just bounce back even higher?
Hey, how about you quote what Phil Jones actually said? It's not hard, and yet somehow the words that came out of his mouth directly contradict what you claim he said.
The trend is positive (i.e, there is generally warming), but it is not significant at the 95% level. Also, although Jones doesn't say this in his answer, if you run the same calculation from 1994 to the present, the trend is significant to the 95% level. And if you run the calculation from 1995 to 2010, when we have that data, I bet you it'll be statistically significant.
Basically, this is a case of the reporter doing his homework and asking a question that would get the response he wanted. After all, 1995 is kind of weirdly specific, isn't it? Why not, you know, "in the last fifteen years" or "last couple of decades"?
Yes. For example, if there were no greenhouse effect at all (that is, if components of the atmosphere were transparent across the EM spectrum), the Earth would be about 35 degrees Celsius cooler than it is given its distance from the Sun. Venus has an atmosphere about equal in mass to our total atmosphere (that is, air + oceans) but composed almost completely of CO2, which we know spectrally is opaque to huge swaths of the infrared spectrum. Because of the absorption of re-radiated solar input, Venus is 400 degrees Celsius hotter than its orbital distance would suggest. Undebatable, or basically not worth the time to debate anyone who disagrees with that assertion.
The real debate is whether or not the extraction and burning of fossil fuels adds enough CO2 to our atmosphere to noticeably change the climate. Current science yields a consensus on the side of "yes", with some qualifications. Debates among qualified individuals are ongoing on the effects of changes in solar input, the individual validity of the various computer modelling efforts, &c.
Now, while the scientists argue over those points of qualification, politicians and other idiots use these differences as reasons to sit around with their thumbs up their asses like they want to do anyway. I will add that I have noticed that these are the same people also support the teaching of creationism in schools (teach the controversy!), but oppose the teaching of sex education in schools (you're giving our children mixed messages!). A lot of them also think that displaying the Ten Commandments everywhere will make America wholesome again, just like it was when your melanin count determined which bathroom you could take a crap in, or even earlier when it determined if a person with less melanin could own you. Often this was the order of business in the very states these politicians represent! Draw your own conclusions.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
The sun is the primary source of the far strongest greenhouse gas.. water vapor.
The sun does not emit water vapour. You probably meant to repeat Climate myths: CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas and Climate myths: Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans.
... if they want people to take their science seriously, they've got to quit getting misquoted in Oil Company backed blogs and media. I mean, that stupid nonsense about their article on the world freezing over from that magazine they had nothing to do with, is a great example of why this controversy still exists. Even when people point out that it's a bogus and that science can always change -- it gets repeated over and over again. What's up with that, Climatologists? Your opinions are only like a few thousand, and there are many more non-climatologists getting quoted on this controversy -- you can't even beat out a Russian Economic Think tank that gets money from US oil concerns.
Heck, the LOL-Cat has more press savvy than you guys.
Instead of 100% of you Climate Scientists lying for that $10,000 grant, and your Grad Students being in on this huge global conspiracy -- you should go out and earn 10 times more with your math skills on Day Trading, get a lot of money, and learn how to rent-to-own press outlets. Maybe some of your grant money would be better spent on advertisements on CNN rather than all this blinking electronic equipment.
Stupid scientists!
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
There actually are independent scientists, and as the CRU emails show, they have been disparaged and shut up at every possible point
The CRU emails show show no such thing.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Catching scientists in a misrepresentation isn't "the scientific process worked", it's "the scientific process failed, but it could have failed even worse if they had gotten away with it". Lying is an attempted subversion of the process, not part of the process. You might say that being able to catch lies is part of the process, but not lying is still better than lying and being caught.
And many of the proposed anti-global-warming measures themselves have the potential to "eventually devastate our social and economic well being".
Yes, older thermometers are less reliable and hence temperature data has to be corrected for just like things like urban island effect has to be corrected for today.
Unfortunately, it appears the modus operandi is to correct the real rural stations UP to match the urban stations, exactly opposite what any rational person would do.
And apparently my joke went over your head. Yes, of course the ice core data is used by AGW proponents (and climatologists in general). The seeming discrepancies in the ice core data, at least in recent time, is well accounted for in models, actually; I don't mean fudged, btw--things like the Medieval Warm Period occurring in Greenland and/or Europe doesn't mean that it was a global event (Souther Hemisphere data indicates it wasn't). It very well might have had to do with the North Atlantic Current.
Sorry, I missed the joke. Currently the Southern hemisphere really isn't seeing warming anywhere near the trends of the Northern hemisphere; perhaps the relative lack of land down South stabilizes the temperatures (being so totally dominated by oceans)? Nevertheless, data is data, and many of the most vocal proponents of AGW appear to have no issues with tossing data that doesn't fit the model, which is pretty much the opposite of what the scientific method calls for.
The real question to ask is, why is it that current models only map well to current temperatures when man-released CO2 is a significant component in the noted global warming; that is why don't things like methane, natural CO2, solar variance, etc account for nearly all the warming?
Perhaps because CO2 is something that can be taxed and controlled, as opposed to solar output or ocean currents. There's at least one scientist with a model that appears to tie climate change to the Sun and currents, and does so quite accurately.
But then, if it's not something we can control then there's no justification for taxation by Governments meaning why finance that type of research?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!