The "Climate Change" Meltdown: Another Shipment of Shoes

By Daniel Foty

It's another week - and it's getting to the point where we can thus expect another shoe to drop in the startling meltdown of the "climate change" narrative.

But in the past few days, there's been an unloading of shoes that looks more like someone tipped over Imelda Marcos' closet.

Put on your (OSHA-compliant) hard-hat for protection, then continue below the fold.

Well, where to begin....

First, it seems that the IPCC has once again been caught out for ginning up another howler that actually had no scientific basis at all:

The United Nations climate science [sic - ed.] panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

Of course, one of the key "climate change" howling points has been that every bad storm anywhere on the planet is proof-positive of "climate change" (thus, at least allowing us the fun of watching the intellectual yoga required to explain that oppositely-correlated events are meaningless) - combined of course with apocalyptic predictions of an avalanche of more and bigger severe storms. 

There are, of course, attempts to consign those predictions to the memory hole while hoping that they will be conveniently forgotten.  After Hurricane Katrina and the unusually active 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, we were assured that this was all due to "global warming" and was the shape of things to come; however, Atlantic hurricane seasons have become quite placid since then.  But attempts to get the prediction-toothpaste back in the tube remain thwarted by the collective memories stored on the internet - where Mr. Gore's explicit use of Katrina-as-harbinger in his "documentary" (and the explicit linkage implied in the publicity for that "documentary," depicting smoke from a stack twirling into hurricane) will be findable forever.

In any case, what happened in this case?

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed [!!!! - ed.], nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

As someone who actually has considerable experience with the peer-review process, I've noted before that this process has flaws - and that in this particular matter, the peer review process failed disastrously.  And the more we learn, the more we see that those who actually pointed out the flawed nature of many of the staple IPCC claims were simply ignored; apparently, "reviews" (of whatever type) were desired for support but not for illumination.

Meanwhile, back at the non-disappearing Himalayan glaciers, it appears that while IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri isn't (yet) as well-known as Mr. Gore, he has been showing an appetite for using the whole climate-scare meme in the service of a different sort of "green"....

The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus.

....

In one presentation at last May's launch, Anastasios Kentarchos, of the European Commission's Climate Change and Environmental Risks Unit, specifically cited the bogus IPCC claims about glacier melt as a reason for pouring EU taxpayers' money into the project.

Interested readers should follow the link above to read through the entire story, so as to marvel at Mr. Pachauri's tangled web of behind-the-scenes financial interests - including (bizarrely) his apparent involvement with a Houston oil-exploration firm.

But we'll close out this sub-section with this non-sequitur:

Any suggestion that TERI has repeated an unchecked scientific claim without checking it, in order to win grants, could prove hugely embarrassing for Pachauri and the IPCC.

I'll say.

Meanwhile, there are some new developments in the underlying story of the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035:

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders [emphasis mine - ed.].

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed [!!!!, again - ed.] scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

In layman's [!! - ed. :-) ] terms, people calling themselves "scientists" were happy to create and disseminate a bogus, unsupported conclusion/prediction solely for the purpose of causing policy choices that they think/thought should happen regardless of the underlying scientific realities.

The layman's word for such behavior is "dishonest."  But it's also interesting to note this admission when it's juxtaposed with the IPCC's own statement of principles on the separation of science and policy:

According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’ [emphasis mine - ed.].

Well, that ship sailed a long time ago - so it would be nice if the IPCC would do us the favor of not pretending that all they do is "science" without any concern for "policy"....

Meanwhile, the swirl around the "2035" claim becomes even more interesting:

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed [!!!!, yet again - ed.] journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

Of course, as we've seen a number of times in recent weeks/months, many "reviewers" did express serious misgivings (at least) about the various bizarre claims - but they were just ignored.

To wit,

For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly [this can't be happening!!!! - ed.], citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.

In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Of course, the deep-Himalaya region is one of the most remote and difficult-to-reach places on Earth - so, not surprisingly, data are difficult to come by.  It's work, but some real work has been getting done....

One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’

When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’.

Well, when the facts didn't conform to the IPCC theory, too bad for the facts - the poor folks who did real work and produced (get this) real results were rewarded with sneers and aristocratic disdain.

Now, I know first-hand that academic scientists can be a touchy lot.  But the gent who led actual on-the-ground studies of the Himalayan glaciers has made a seemingly-deserving demand for a proper apology:

V.K. Raina, the former Deputy Director-General of the Geological Survey of India -- whose research document on the Himalayan glaciers debunked the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that these glaciers would disappear by 2035 -- is not satisfied by the regret expressed by the United Nations agency.

“I want a personal apology from the IPCC chairperson R.K. Pachauri who had described my research as voodoo science,” Mr. Raina told The Hindu over phone from Panchkula. “Forget IPCC, Dr. Pachauri has not even expressed regret over what he said after my report -- Himalayan Glaciers: a state-of-art review of glacial studies, glacial retreat and climate change -- was released in November last year.”

“But all along I knew that this [IPCC claims] was not based on facts. During my 50 years of research and several expeditions to the region, I never found anything as sensational as was predicted in the IPCC, but no one heard me then.”

We hear you now, Mr. Raina.

Perhaps Mr. Pachauri, Mr. Gore, and the IPCC can return that Nobel Prize, so that it can be given to Mr. Raina?

Anyway, the world's ice remains stubbornly in place.  The only thing that's melting rapidly these days is the IPCC's credibility - as is the entire "climate change" narrative....

Comments

[Lance Hagen]

Want more ..... head on over to Andy Watts web site. Seems that the IPCC claims about the Amazonian forests were also bogus.

[T. Shea]

Dan,

You certainly delivered on your promise from yesterday.

I await Sandy "I make it up as I go along"'s screeching response in an attempt to contradict facts (with hyperbolic 'feelings' or 'consensus').

I also look forward to your future installments.

Best Regards,

Tom "Mr. T." Shea

[William Boardman]

So was 2009 the second warmest year on record, or not?

William Boardman, Woodstock

[David Usher]

Controlling Climate Change/Global Warming is an ideology in search of funding... a desperate plunge into the swirling vortex of ethics, politics and policy. Even more troubling is the bill of goods that has been sold to mankind that we can control the earth's climate.

Will we have a vote on the 'right' target global temperature?

[Sandy Hauserman]

Mr. Foty, as I’m sure you know, the IPCC report relied on research from 2005 and before. In case it didn’t occur to you, science inevitably moves on and much critical research has been done since 2005. Despite this, you don’t ask about the latest science, you instead attack several minor errors in the 450+ page IPCC report and quote some emails out of context and pretend like WOW, I’ve uncovered evidence that all the science of climate change is misleading and tumbling into the sea.

By the way, recent research indicates that the IPCC, in many instances, has been too conservative with its estimates. Thank goodness, therefore that the IPCC made an error in its estimate about Himalayan Glaciers. It gives us more time to take action to slow their retreat. Nevertheless, if it makes you happy, continue living in your fantasy world of hoaxes and worldwide conspiracies, but I doubt the country should base its policy decisions on your non-science.

Meanwhile, 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations and 25 leading climate scientists recently wrote congress that “observations throughout the world make it clear the climate change is occurring and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer reviewed science.”

In addition, the American Meteorological Society released a statement agreeing.

I know it is easier to be an anti-science zealot than face the hard reality of what is happening, but your credibility would be greatly enhanced if you presented actual science instead of false equivalents, innuendo, and untruths. And if you don’t believe the science is sound, you should encourage your fossil fuel friends with billions of dollars to fund research. Let them try to undermine the scientific consensus. One would think that even you, might take pause, when you consider that companies like Mobil, Exxon etc. with unlimited resources have had no luck in scientifically disproving human caused global warming.

For some of the latest science you can start with these two articles:

Ice Is 'Rotten' in the Beaufort Sea

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121164011.htm

Last Decade Was Warmest on Record, 2009 One of Warmest Years, NASA Research Finds

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121170717.htm

[Daniel Foty]

Hey, Tim - you're prediction skills are clearly great.

As you can see from the delay in getting back to these things, I'm really tied up today - care to have a go at that volunteer pinata?

I have to stop laughing so hard at a no-technical-background lawyer calling an engineering Ph.D. with 100+ published articles, etc., etc., an "anti-science zealot."

We need better opposition commenters around here.

[Sandy Hauserman]

Hey, Mr. Foty - your may be great at redirecting circuit boards, but you are a little shy on the science of global warming. Just stick to the science. I'm happy for your PHD, but that doesn't make your diatribes any more real. The point here is you can expostulate all you want, but where is your reference to peer reviewed scientific articles? Where is the body of scientific climate change research backing up your assertions? You have written that Arctic sea ice is not shrinking - ok, please point us to scientific evidence (not some news article written by a journalist who invariably knows less than you) - that over the last 30 years the area and volume of Arctic sea ice has expanded or stayed the same. If you can't, or object, then either you were previously playing word games or despite your PHD you are a poster child for what happens when one abandons objectivity and becomes idologically driven.

[T. Shea]

Sandy,

Thanks for the usual laughs.

I see your linked In profile lists your industry as "insurance", yet you accuse a PhD of being an "anti-science zealot".

You seem to be decompensating in response to overwhelming evidence that much of the gullible wormer corwd's 'scientific' data was either purposely distorted, fake, or withheld when relevant to the issue.

Finally, one reason that your fellow capitalists at Exxon, BP etc. play along with the game is that they intend to make money in ANY case. You, on the other hand have a vested interest in your consulting business to carry on the charade of gullible worming.

By the way, Mr. Accuracy man, if you really were interested in "actual science instead of false equivalents, innuendo, and untruths", you might want to check out your suppositions.

Exxon IS Mobil and has been since their merger in November, 1999. That would be when this year's high school graduates were in second grade. Much critical research has happened since then. You should attempt to keep up with the basics.

[Brattleboro_conservative]

Hey Sandy,
If 2009 was the warmest year on record, was that information collected from those weather stations set up in a parking lot?

[Vermont Woodchuck]

When one has a sandcastle business built on fraudulent science, it's tough to see the waves of truth wash all of it away.

Been better to keep it in the realm of real science, not religion, Sandy.

[Daniel Foty]

Sandy, listen up because I'm only going to say this once.

First, as has been noted earlier and above, you owe us full disclosure of your own vested interests in this matter. A little searching turns up someone in Vermont with this name who is an environmental attorney who is clearly positioning himself to try to hop aboard the gravy train associated with the climate meme (which has spawned some "novel" legal theories).

Second, you owe me personally - as well as Geoff, Jack, the other contributors, and the readership - an apology for such disgraceful and anti-social behavior. As others have noted, the flinging of insults is bad enough - but to slur a science Ph.D. with a solid record of professional accomplishment as "an anti-science zealot" (and the further set of gratuitous insults in the second tirade) is beyond all boundaries of decency and proper behavior. The funny part is that I've spent my entire career having to make "science" work in practice (try crossing the second law of thermodynamics and watch what happens). But even without that background, this kind of behavior (and what followed in the second diatribe, which the rest of the crew is just getting to see before I post this) is simply not acceptable.

Send an apology to Geoff; it's his call on more general things, but since each of us is sub-editor of our own material, without such an apology I will simply delete any further "comments" in the interest of basic social hygiene (and to protect the site and everyone else from exposure to libel).

The readership is getting an education on how upside-down this whole thing has become. The "peer-reviewed" talisman is waved around, yet we now know that the entire "peer-review" process was corrupted. (I wish that I could say that this surprises me, but I've seen this kind of thing happen before - as ever, there are temptations built into "peer review" that can be breached because of the usual nexus of power, money, ego, influence, etc.) The world is upside down because the "official science" is a total mess (at best), and it's the intellectually-curious outsiders who asked simple, dry scientific questions and were shocked at the hissy-fits in reply (that was a tip-off). It's the outsiders who are acting like scientists, and it's the outsiders who are trying to restore the integrity of science (in place of this abortion that is masquerading as "science").

What's going on now is that as the layers of the onion are (belatedly) being peeled away, we're finding out one thing after another - such as that the "peer-reviewed" claim about Himalayan glaciers was actually from what amounted to the gossip column of New Scientist, another "peer-reviewed" claim source turned out to be from a WWF publicity flyer, those NASA folks have been carefully discarding weather stations over the years (without either disclosure or explanation), and so on and so on.

"Climate science" is broken (at best) and needs to just start over.

Throwing poo at someone for daring to point these things out doesn't give the melting narrative any added credibility....

[Bill]

Leftists have to promote global warming scare tactics to justify their own overwhelming totalitarian impulses. Once upon a time such obvious political manipulations of science were confined to the Soviet Bloc. But there is good news. I believe more young people are questioning the global warming indoctrination they are receiving in most public schools. The credibility of the indoctrinators is beginning to crumble.

[G. Cross]

Keep up the good work Sandy. There is always a need for opposing positions. This blog is bascially the opposing position on many different topics and that is good. Every idea, position, concept, etc. needs to be vigorously challenged. Your challenges of the "group-think" presented here are at least appreciated by a few of us readers. But let me assure you that the possibility of your changing the minds of the "group-thinkers" is not very high. Having said that, I have no particular "position" on the climate change questions. Just like the debates.

[Daniel Foty]

George,

That's an interesting viewpoint.

Actually, it was groupthink that drove the entire climate scare meme up into the air and now has (non-coincidentally) brought it crashing back down to earth.

When I first started looking into this a few years back, the most startling difference between the "alarmists" and "skeptics" was how the *alarmists* were so mired in groupthink. It was rather odd, since they seemed to be more interested in cross-checking to make sure that they all were working from the same talking points rather than whether or not what was going on made sense. On the other hand, the "skeptics" were the ones who were discussing all sorts of different aspects of the problem and were (like good.... scientists) not afraid to disagree with each other.

I found out first-hand sometime last year when I heard one of the New York Times (!!) "science and environment" correspondents (who first admitted that he had no scientific background or experience) state that he found the "alarmist" case to be more credible - simply because the "alarmists" all seemed to be in agreement about everything while the "skeptics" disagreed with each other about all sorts of things. That's pretty frightening to contemplate.

Since it's getting late, I'll just note that I'm disappointed that you aren't concerned about the utter lack of civility. I disagree with just about everything you've ever written in here, but I don't think I could ever charge you with being uncivil. There's a large difference between discussion, and coming in here to just fling scurrilous and gratuitous insults at a contributor for having the gall to be in disagreement.

Disagreeing is one thing. Trying to verbally abuse and bludgeon someone into silence isn't democratic. I hope you understand that.

[Dennis Lukas]

Thanks to all this global warming fear mogering, food prices have risen as corn is a basic ingredient to many foods.Corn also feeds our live stock, and the poor of the world,or it used to,now we are burning it in our gas tanks. And with ethanol mandates increasing production by 2020 more and more farm land is being converted to corn production edging out other healty vegatables.By 2020 food will triple in price. Thanks Sandy for supporting a unproven theory, were you on board in the 70's with global cooling, another real scientific event.

[Dennis Lukas]

Sorry I meant "mongering"

[the vermont patriot]

P.S. Wow, sorry about the long post, I think I got a little carried away with the quotes.

Thank you for the forum. I do recognize that I come into this discussion with a bias, but I am trying to allow myself to be convinced that global warming/climate change is not real. So far I have not been overwhelmed.

Either way, I need to make everyday choices that will provide a better future for my children and for my children's children. I find the actions asked of the global warming community line up better with the values and actions that I think will create a better future for my progeny and I wish to see everyone behave in such a way. Maybe that is the source of the passion.

[GreggB]

Are you insane? The actions of the GWers will destroy any chance of prosperity for your children. Health, clean environments and such come from prosperity not rainbows.

[T. Shea]

Sandy, George, vp,

Can you explain this??:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece

"Details of the breach emerged the day after John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, warned that there was an urgent need for more honesty about the uncertainty of some predictions. His intervention followed admissions from scientists that the rate of glacial melt in the Himalayas had been grossly exaggerated.

In one e-mail, Professor Jones asked a colleague to delete e-mails relating to the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He also told a colleague that he had persuaded the university authorities to ignore information requests under the act from people linked to a website run by climate sceptics. "

What's that about being 'anti-science'? Isn't science supposed to be about uncovering knowledge, not suppressing it?

[Gregory J. Decker]

Here's a list of 500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming.

http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html

[Gregory J. Decker]

BTW sandy, I know how 2009 became the second warmest on record. It's because the weather has been "turned up to eleven". Remember this scene from the 1984 movie "This is Spinal Tap"?

---------------

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

[Daniel Foty]

Greg, I'm in Washington DC right now trying to cope with too many things. But that's a pretty good list. There's a lot out there like that which can be found with a little effort.

Another good place is that enormous report that Fred Singer and Craig Idso put together for Heartland; that tome has so many literature references (spread out over ten or twelve topical chapters) that the count doesn't matter. Anyone who is interested can download the entire Singer/Idso tome from here:

http://www.nipccreport.org/index.html

Of course, "peer-reviewed" has been waved around like some magic talisman (and as I said earlier, I know from the inside - as an author, a reviewer, and an editor - that the process has its strengths but also its flaws). But it's been funny to watch readers find problems in "peer-reviewed" material.... and when they point these out we hear that their questions aren't "peer-reviewed" and thus can be consigned to non-existence.

It's very strange stuff.

Several years back I did my own analysis of what was going on, and reached my own conclusion using my own background and skills. Let's just say that it's been interesting to watch the "narrative" slowly but steadily moving in the direction of those findings.

If I can get some time (ha ha ha ha) in the next couple weeks, I probably should write up a post about a simple mathematical kitchen experiment anyone can do to get insight into the climate problem.

In the meantime.... hey, someone else trying to get Geoff interested in Spinal Tap? :-) I guess that the warmers are trying to tell themselves that they are becoming more selective in their appeal. But to the rest of us, it sounds like "Break Like the Wind," don't it?

[Gregory J. Decker]

Daniel, the AGW math is wrong on so many levels the last few years has been like watching a slow motion car wreck. I did a few posts on AGW a few years ago but proving the math will do nothing to dissuade the true believers.

I think the best solution is for each of us to act on our own beliefs. If Sandy believes in AGW by all means encourage him to invest in its related technologies. I will be betting against him.

At this point I don't think it necessary for us to prove the alarmists wrong. They've already lost the high ground so the onus is on them to prove their position. Let the best science prevail.

[the vermont patriot]

From Gregg B.
"Are you insane? The actions of the GWers will destroy any chance of prosperity for your children. Health, clean environments and such come from prosperity not rainbows."

America has historically been very prosperous due to its exploitation of resources, both human and natural, and we certainly have not had a clean environment throughout that history. That didn't start to happen on a large scale until the late 60's and early 70's (ironically spearheaded here in Vermont by Republicans). So no, I am not insane.

I advocate a sustainable use of human and natural resources and that we need to amend our lifestyle to meet that sustainability. Global warming is only part of the story. I can accept that it is not true, but I cannot accept that our rape-earth policies for the immediate pleasures of our wasteful society are responsible or ethical. If we are not acting sustainably, then what are we leaving for our children?

[T. Shea]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese

Whoops. More inconvenient lies.