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Key Note presentation by Vicente Barros , Co-chair of Working Group II, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Photo credit: Citt)
Key Note presentation by Vicente Barros , Co-chair of Working Group II, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Photo credit: Citt)McKeon Nominated for ‘Porker of the Year’ Award
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Destroying The Mojave Desert: The Dark Side Of Solar Power
"Doing it for the climate."
There's your answer to the riddle of who 'wins' when you buy into the proposition that co2 increase leads global warming at a time when we have been coming out of a mini ice age - rather than recognizing that the fossil record indicates warming leads co2 rise. ( Who is the IPCC )
Don't pollute. That quip about the insanity of blowing the tops off mountains is 'bang on'. And Sourcewatch has a shocking information nexus about the dangers of coal ash accumulation from scrubbers. Nor should we quit keeping industry and mining away from our waterways and protected areas.
Is it antiscientific to require a proposition conforms to Scientific Method to be referred to as 'science'? Denierism is a lie and political opinion shaping tool borrowed from Logical Fallacy for Strawman Argumentation by Poisoning the Well - which totally disables logical review.
You are playing games based on a culturally appropriate adaption of using a crystal ball.
There's your answer to the riddle of who 'wins' when you buy into the proposition that co2 increase leads global warming at a time when we have been coming out of a mini ice age - rather than recognizing that the fossil record indicates warming leads co2 rise. ( Who is the IPCC )
Don't pollute. That quip about the insanity of blowing the tops off mountains is 'bang on'. And Sourcewatch has a shocking information nexus about the dangers of coal ash accumulation from scrubbers. Nor should we quit keeping industry and mining away from our waterways and protected areas.
Is it antiscientific to require a proposition conforms to Scientific Method to be referred to as 'science'? Denierism is a lie and political opinion shaping tool borrowed from Logical Fallacy for Strawman Argumentation by Poisoning the Well - which totally disables logical review.
You are playing games based on a culturally appropriate adaption of using a crystal ball.
andThe World Meteorological Organization
The role of the IPCC is to "assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic information that relates to human induced climate change".
It is therefore not a research lab, but a organism that assesses and summarizes research work done throughout the world. This is an important point, because any research worker that belongs to a relevant discipline - including, of course, someone that would support the absence of influence of man on the climate - can ask for an assessment of his work in the reviewing processes managed by the IPCC.
The supreme body of the IPCC is the general assembly
The IPCC is divided in three working group that each have the role of conducting assessments on :
What they are asked is not to give an opinion "like that" : they carry out a long - and sometimes not that funny - compilation of all the available scientific litterature, or of the works in progress in the research labs that investigate the subject. For example, the chapter "model evaluation" (in the report of the working group 1) is written by model specialists that analyze hundreds of articles opn model evaluation (meaning : do models correctly reproduce this or that phenomenum) published in the scientific litterature (the bibliography is always indicated at the end of each chapter).
These sectoral syntheses allow to produce a first draft of report, that will be read and criticized by other experts of the concerned disciplines, what will lead to a second draft, that will be sent to the same experts than for the first draft, and, in addition, to representatives of the governments of member countries. It's only after the draft went to and fro twice, with very formal procedures, that a definite document is submitted to the general assembly of the IPCC, in order to be approved before publication.
Overall, several thousands people - generally renowned researchers, but the process is open to anybody who wishes to be heard, as mentionned below - are involved into the writing and the reviewing of the report that will be published.
Before being published and declared "official reports" of the IPCC, these assessment reports are explicitely approved by the full assembly of the member countries, where representatives are generally competent - but not always - in science. Up to this day, all the assessment reports of the IPCC have been unanimously approved by the member countries, including by the USA, or by Saudi Arabia.
The documents produced by the IPCC are used as a reference in the international negotiations on greenhouse gases
These publications result from a long debate between experts, who are the only ones to know whether a given uncertainty prevents from giving a general conclusion or not. The general assembly, where all the countries that have at least one competent scientist, has always approved unanimously the proposed assessment reports.
It is therefore legitimate to consider that all that is consensual in the IPCC reports can be held as an established fact*. This particularly includes :
Given this, what should we think of the various individuals that periodically throw themselves in front of cameras or get headlines in the papers and contest "the scientific file" ? Here are a couple of reflexions :
Finally, an individual who is not a competent scientist directly involved in climate change - which is my case, all I have done is reading a non ridiculous amount of scientific litterature and discussing with a small part of the competent scientists - is not able to have a technical judgment on a field he does not know (I would not dare judging the way ice cores have been extracted, or whether the calibration of the mass spectrometer was correctly done : on what basis could I do so ?). All we can do is ask ourselves these two simple questions :
Well, if even PowerLine makes it here, I guess I might as well go whole hog
U.N. Looks to Take Charge of World's Agenda
Details concerning the two-day, closed-door sessions in the comfortable village of Alpbach were closely guarded. Nonetheless, position papers for the meeting obtained by Fox News indicate that the topics included:
-- how to restore “climate change” as a top global priority after the fiasco of last year’s Copenhagen summit;
-- how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen the discussion further to encompass the idea of “global public goods”;
-- how to keep growing U.N. peacekeeping efforts into missions involved in the police, courts, legal systems and other aspects of strife-torn countries;
-- how to capitalize on the global tide of migrants from poor nations to rich ones, to encompass a new “international migration governance framework”;
-- how to make “clever” use of new technologies to deepen direct ties with what the U.N. calls “civil society,” meaning novel ways to bypass its member nation states and deal directly with constituencies that support U.N. agendas.
Not coincidentally, the conclave of bureaucrats also saw in “global governance” a greater role for themselves.
According to the paper prepared by Secretary General Ban’s own climate change team, however, the newly rebranded challenge still depends on the same economic remedy proposed for Copenhagen: a drastic redistribution of global wealth, “nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the global economy.”
)
Well, I woke up to some bad news this morning. It turns out that the GAO, the US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade.
They were already told not to do that by the GAO. In the 2005 GAO report with the swingeing title of “Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should Be Clearer and More Complete”, the GAO said … well, basically what the title said. But noooo, those sneaky bureaucrats didn’t do that at all.
The latest 2011 GAO Report says the US government has not changed their ways. They have been clandestinely providing about half the operating funds for the IPCC for the last decade. In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.
The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.
I also found out that the IPCC got $12.1 million dollars from the US Global Change Research Program. That one really angrifies my blood. The IPCC flat out states that they do not do a single scrap of scientific research … so why is the US Global Change Research Program giving them a dime, much less twelve million, that was supposed to go for research?
October 1, 2011
In a sensible universe, the list that appears below would be sufficient to vaporize the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – now and forever, once and for all.
Beginning in 2004 (around the time that work was beginning on the 2007 Climate Bible) the activist World Wildlife Fund (WWF) systematically began recruiting IPCC scientists. By late 2008 it says it had persuaded 130 “leading climate scientists mostly, but not exclusively from” the IPCC to join its parallel initiative called the Climate Witness Scientific Advisory Panel.
The scientists whose names appear below have not only been examining one of the world’s most important questions for the IPCC. They have a documented, public relationship with professional lobbyists who have a strong interest in influencing this matter. (For readers who are just tuning in, the WWF believes it is “nearly impossible to overstate” the threat posed by climate change – see here, backup link here.)
The people on the list below either played some role in the 2007 Climate Bible or are helping to write the next IPCC report which is expected to be completed in 2013. In many cases, they’re doing dual duty.
On this list are 23 coordinating lead authors – those the IPCC placed in charge of an entire chapter. The list also includes Osvaldo Canziani. Having served as Working Group 2 co-chair for both the 2001 and 2007 reports, he is one of the IPCC’s most senior officials.
The only apparent difference between them is the absence of Stephen Schneider‘s name from the second (he died in 2010).
So said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as she opened the organisation’s latest extravaganza in Durban, South Africa this week. Her words are a neat demonstration of how UN bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), far from being neutral and independent organisations, are highly political. The task before the gathered governmental delegations is urgent, we are told, because the concentrations of greenhouse gases have ‘never been higher’, the impacts have never been ‘greater’ but action is ‘achievable’. (Figueres was also being disingenuous - there’s pretty much zero chance of any meaningful agreement coming out of the Durban talks.)
These statements are all built upon the wisdom provided by what Donna Laframboise rightly refers to regularly as the ‘Climate Bible’: the periodic assessment reports produced by the IPCC. But while the UNFCCC is clearly a political body, hammering out just who is going to pay to sort out the planet-threatening problem of global warming, the IPCC is widely seen as a body simply offering the very best expert advice from the finest scientific minds in the world.
In The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert (a fabulous title that surely deserves to be a winner with charades players everywhere), Laframboise provides chapter and verse on the Climate Bible and the body that produces it. The IPCC is presented as being made up of thousands of top scientists who work tirelessly and self-critically to bring together the best peer-reviewed research and reach an unbiased, cautious and independent assessment of where global temperatures are heading and what the consequences will be. Sadly, as Laframboise shows, the reality is very different.
Sitting in a coffee shop around the corner from the spiked office, Laframboise explains to me how she came to write the book. Formerly a feature writer and editorial board member at Canada’s National Post, she left the paper in the early Noughties and turned her back on journalism, feeling it was ‘time for a change’. She continues: ‘I didn’t write anything for seven or eight years but in early 2009 I became so annoyed at the way climate change was being covered in the media, it was just so shallow... so I started doing my own research and I started blogging.’
What Laframboise found was that there is a lot more uncertainty about climate change and its effects than the general public has been led to believe. Indeed, her original book project was simply going to spell out 10 reasons why we should stay calm about the whole issue. What really drew her to focus on the IPCC, she tells me, is that ‘this organisation is regarded as a prototype. It’s the golden child, it’s won the Nobel Peace Prize. So the UN has now set up an IPCC-like body for biodiversity and another one for agriculture, and another for soil degradation. And in each case, they appear to be trying to recruit the science and the scientists to help them pursue a global agenda on these issues.’
Before digging deeper into the issue, Laframboise tells me that she assumed - like most people - that the IPCC was ‘dependable, trustworthy and professional’. She adds: ‘The more I investigated the IPCC, the more I thought it was like a child that had been praised and flattered, that had been given rules to follow but, when it doesn’t follow the rules, faces no consequences. And now it’s grown up into a problem, collectively, for all of us.’
In her book, Laframboise takes us through the major claims made about the IPCC and demolishes them one by one.
For example, there’s the idea that the IPCC report is the product of the world’s top experts. But in reality, knowing a subject well is not nearly as important, it seems, as having a face that fits. So, leading IPCC contributors sometimes do not even have PhDs in their subjects, never mind being world-class experts, while other researchers in charge of chapters had expertise in a completely different area to the one they were working on. Meanwhile, the nature of the review process means that when leading experts are critical, they can safely be ignored by chapter authors.
Another piece of IPCC spin is that its reports are built upon the best available research. In fact, there is heavy reliance on the so-called ‘grey’ literature - material that is not from peer-reviewed journals at all. This material can even just be magazine articles or propaganda from environmentalist groups. The most famous example of this is the ‘Himalayagate’ affair, which centred on the important claim made in the 2007 report that glaciers, apparently crucial to the water supply for billions of people, would disappear entirely by 2035.
Nothing could demand urgent action more than this. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The glaciers are likely to last for hundreds of years, as was pointed out by expert reviewers - who were ignored. However, in early 2010, it was pointed out that the erroneous idea came from a document produced by environmental group WWF, which in turn had quoted an earlier interview in New Scientist magazine.
Read more...
But what happens when the people who are in charge of these journals are the same ones who write IPCC reports?
Today’s exhibit is the Journal of Climate. It’s published by the American Meteorological Society – which certainly sounds reputable. But let’s take a look at its IPCC connections.
It’s chief editor, Anthony J. Broccoli, was a contributing author and expert reviewer for the IPCC’s 2007 report (known as AR4).
Nathan Gillett, one of its editors, served in four separate AR4 capacities – as a lead author, an expert reviewer for both Working Group 1 and Working Group 2, and as an expert reviewer of the Synthesis Report. He is now a lead author for the upcoming IPCC report (AR5).
Marika Holland, another editor at the Journal of Climate, contributed to two chapters of the 2007 climate bible.
Editor Andrew Pitman was an IPCC lead author, a contributing author, and an expert reviewer for the 2007 edition. Moreover, he’s involved in the upcoming report as a review editor.
As editor James Renwick’s bio page makes clear, he was a contributing author to the 2001 IPCC report, a lead author for the 2007 report, and is currently a lead author for AR5.
Editor Brian Soden was a 2007 contributing author and an expert reviewer who is currently serving as an AR5 lead author.
Editor Shang-Ping Xie is currently an AR5 lead author, and editor Michael Alexander was a 2007 IPCC expert reviewer.
Other personnel associated with the Journal of Climate may be found under the headings Editors Emeritus and Associate Editors. Prominent IPCC participants such as Michael E. Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Andrew Weaver, Francis Zwiers, Gabriele Hegerl and Peter Stott appear on these lists.
Is this not too incestuous for words?
Is no one concerned that there is no distance whatsoever – never mind anything approaching a firewall – between the people who decide whether a study deserves to join the haloed ranks of the scientific peer-reviewed literature – and the people who then write IPCC reports declaring what this peer-reviewed literature tells us about climate change?
And let’s not even talk about what percentage of the published papers authored by some of those mentioned above earned their peer-reviewed status via the Journal of Climate. That’s another story for another day.
The general architecture of a report is the following : each chapter deals with a specific subject (for exemple the physical properties of the greenhouse gases, the adequacy of the representation of the climate processes in the numerical models, the past climatic variations, the evolution of the greenhouse concentrations in the atmosphere, etc), and the authors of the related chapter are in charge of wrinting a synthesis of the available scientific knowledge on the corresponding topic.
What they are asked is not to give an opinion "like that" : they carry out a long - and sometimes not that funny - compilation of all the available scientific litterature, or of the works in progress in the research labs that investigate the subject. For example, the chapter "model evaluation" (in the report of the working group 1) is written by model specialists that analyze hundreds of articles opn model evaluation (meaning : do models correctly reproduce this or that phenomenum) published in the scientific litterature (the bibliography is always indicated at the end of each chapter).
These sectoral syntheses allow to produce a first draft of report, that will be read and criticized by other experts of the concerned disciplines, what will lead to a second draft, that will be sent to the same experts than for the first draft, and, in addition, to representatives of the governments of member countries. It's only after the draft went to and fro twice, with very formal procedures, that a definite document is submitted to the general assembly of the IPCC, in order to be approved before publication.
Overall, several thousands people - generally renowned researchers, but the process is open to anybody who wishes to be heard, as mentionned below - are involved into the writing and the reviewing of the report that will be published.
Before being published and declared "official reports" of the IPCC, these assessment reports are explicitely approved by the full assembly of the member countries, where representatives are generally competent - but not always - in science. Up to this day, all the assessment reports of the IPCC have been unanimously approved by the member countries, including by the USA, or by Saudi Arabia.
The documents produced by the IPCC are used as a reference in the international negotiations on greenhouse gases
These publications result from a long debate between experts, who are the only ones to know whether a given uncertainty prevents from giving a general conclusion or not. The general assembly, where all the countries that have at least one competent scientist, has always approved unanimously the proposed assessment reports.
It is therefore legitimate to consider that all that is consensual in the IPCC reports can be held as an established fact*. This particularly includes :
* Political fact
Given this, what should we think of the various individuals that periodically throw themselves in front of cameras or get headlines in the papers and contest "the scientific file" ? Here are a couple of reflexions :
* Wonder how hard he's looked given the tone of 'comment threads' dominated by pro AGW pundits : echo chambers pushing orthodoxy at all costs and denying financial implications exist. This regarding a global tax on 'carbon'....use of Fire. Did you catch the reasons for the flight of small nations at Copenhagen ? Fraud on the UN reports and switched position papers setting debate.
non-scientific authors whose long lasting personnal theories or personnal interests are hardly compatible with the probable implications of fighting against climate change. That includes "diehard liberals", globally against any constraint whatsoever, a category to which probably belongs M. Philip Stott (writer of an article in the Wall Street Journal which is a pure marvel of nonsense), oponents to nuclear energy (which is a possible action level of any policy aimed at a fast decrease of greenhouse gases emissions), individuals that belong to an industrial sector heavily dependant on fossil fuels (coal mines, oil companies, but also steel companies, chemists...)...
This category includes Blorn Lomborg (who is a statistician, therefore holds a university position, but in a speciality that has no connections with climate change ; look here for a commentary on the "climate change" chapter of his book "the skeptical environmentalist"), or someone like Claude Allègre (a competent french geophysicist that became Secretary of state, in charge of schools ans universities), or the late Haroun Tazieff (a weell know vulcanologist in France that also had a political role) - but that was a long time ago.
He eventually ended being a lead author in the 2001 assessment report, and several months later - pure coincidence ? - he co-signed a paper published by the american National Academy of Science, written on Bush Jr's demand (the object was to assess...the IPCC assessment process), in which the following sentences can be found (page 4) : "The committee finds that the full IPCC working group 1 report is an admirable summary of research activities (...). It is critical that the IPCC process remains truly representative of the scientific community.(...)" (the second sentence clearly suggests that the IPCC process IS representative today). So what should we think of M. Lindzen's declarations to the press after that ?
And at last one must recall that all the "counter-arguments" invoked by the "skeptics" that are of scientific nature (role of the sun, for example) have been long known by the competent scientists, since they are precisely examined and discussed in the assessment reports.
This observation generates the following advice, for those interested by climate change : never ever consider an article of the general press as a reliable source of information, but always go back to the original documents. All those that are in the position to compare what they personnally know on a complex or technical subject and how the corresponding facts are generally presented in the press will surely understand me !
Finally, an individual who is not a competent scientist directly involved in climate change - which is my case, all I have done is reading a non ridiculous amount of scientific litterature and discussing with a small part of the competent scientists - is not able to have a technical judgment on a field he does not know (I would not dare judging the way ice cores have been extracted, or whether the calibration of the mass spectrometer was correctly done : on what basis could I do so ?). All we can do is ask ourselves these two simple questions :
( Powerful, isn't it ? Yet the statement is clear - if you don't belong to the club of the committed your opinion doesn't count with international governmental authority. Are you familiar with Logical Fallacies ? Would you bet spin specialists aren't ? Appeal to Authority
In addition, such a reasoning (a world conspiracy to get money for research) might apply to a couple of people, but suggesting that thousands of researchers, that are generally honest people, coming from dozens of different disciplines, can try to enforce this same idea at the same time, seems totally improbable. Anyway, speculating on this possibility to consider that we don't have any reason to be worried is a bet that I will not take.
Well, if even PowerLine makes it here, I guess I might as well go whole hog
U.N. Looks to Take Charge of World's Agenda
Details concerning the two-day, closed-door sessions in the comfortable village of Alpbach were closely guarded. Nonetheless, position papers for the meeting obtained by Fox News indicate that the topics included:
-- how to restore “climate change” as a top global priority after the fiasco of last year’s Copenhagen summit;
-- how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen the discussion further to encompass the idea of “global public goods”;
-- how to keep growing U.N. peacekeeping efforts into missions involved in the police, courts, legal systems and other aspects of strife-torn countries;
-- how to capitalize on the global tide of migrants from poor nations to rich ones, to encompass a new “international migration governance framework”;
-- how to make “clever” use of new technologies to deepen direct ties with what the U.N. calls “civil society,” meaning novel ways to bypass its member nation states and deal directly with constituencies that support U.N. agendas.
Not coincidentally, the conclave of bureaucrats also saw in “global governance” a greater role for themselves.
According to the paper prepared by Secretary General Ban’s own climate change team, however, the newly rebranded challenge still depends on the same economic remedy proposed for Copenhagen: a drastic redistribution of global wealth, “nothing less than a fundamental transformation of the global economy.”
)
We Are Winning the Debate and Greens Don’t Like It
February 7th, 2012Source: UK Express
LORD LAWSON had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.
Lord Lawson says there is no scientific basis for some of the alarmism
The veteran politician had just taken part in a calm debate about the merits of extracting gas from shale. During the discussion on the BBC’s Today programme he stated his firmly held view that there has been no global warming so far this century.
It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”
Former Chancellor Lord Lawson celebrates his 80th birthday in March and might be forgiven for wondering, at his time of life, if he really needs to endure all this. His supporters insist he is turning the tide in the bitter debate over the impact of global warming but such is the might of the green lobby there must have been occasions when he felt like a lone voice. Read the rest of this entry »
It was the catalyst for an outpouring of venom on message boards and social networking sites. In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”
Former Chancellor Lord Lawson celebrates his 80th birthday in March and might be forgiven for wondering, at his time of life, if he really needs to endure all this. His supporters insist he is turning the tide in the bitter debate over the impact of global warming but such is the might of the green lobby there must have been occasions when he felt like a lone voice. Read the rest of this entry »
blog.chron.com/…cc-reports-were-essentially-crooks/
Defund the IPCC Now
Guest Post by Willis EschenbachWell, I woke up to some bad news this morning. It turns out that the GAO, the US General Accounting Office, says US has been secretly hiding their funding of the IPCC for the last decade.
They were already told not to do that by the GAO. In the 2005 GAO report with the swingeing title of “Federal Reports on Climate Change Funding Should Be Clearer and More Complete”, the GAO said … well, basically what the title said. But noooo, those sneaky bureaucrats didn’t do that at all.
The latest 2011 GAO Report says the US government has not changed their ways. They have been clandestinely providing about half the operating funds for the IPCC for the last decade. In other words, the IPCC funding arrangements are of a piece with their “scientific” claims and their other actions—secretive, shabby, with a hidden agenda, and full of disinformation.
The report says that the State Department provided $19 million dollars to the IPCC. Thanks, guys. Foolish me, I hadn’t realized that paying for bureaucrats to go party in Cancun and Durban was part of the function of the United States Department of State.
I also found out that the IPCC got $12.1 million dollars from the US Global Change Research Program. That one really angrifies my blood. The IPCC flat out states that they do not do a single scrap of scientific research … so why is the US Global Change Research Program giving them a dime, much less twelve million, that was supposed to go for research?
The 2011 GAO report had some strong advice for the climate profiteers behind this secretive funding. They said:
Wrapped into the many amendments recently passed by the House of Representatives — a total of $60 billion in spending cuts that the president called a “nonstarter” — was one by Republican Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars from going to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group whose occasional missteps have been the source of countless confrontations among climate scientists over the past year.
in this new paper there appears to be some evidence for a negative climate feedback, in the form of slightly lowered relative humidity trend, which makes climate sensitivity lower. Relative humidity (RH) is the ratio of the actual amount of water vapor in the air to the amount it could hold when saturated expressed as a percentage OR the ratio of the actual vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure expressed as a percentage. The amount of water vapor the air can hold increases with temperature. Relative humidity therefore decreases with increasing temperature if the actual amount of water vapor stays the same. While the study found a slight increase in specific humidity (the mass of water vapor per unit mass of air), relative humidity (near the surface, 2 meter measurement) decreased by 0.5% per decade, resulting in an overall slightly drier atmosphere.
If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change.
It seems PEW is superseded by the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Enters Second Phase
“Congress and the public cannot consistently track federal climate change funding or spending over time,”Oh, no, wait, that’s what the GAO said back in 2005. Unfortunately, they have no enforcement powers. What they said this time around was that the funding information:
“… was not available in budget documents or on the websites of the relevant federal agencies, and the agencies are generally not required to report this information to Congress.”The GAO report is available here. And all is not lost, at least one Congressman is working to defund the IPCC:
Wrapped into the many amendments recently passed by the House of Representatives — a total of $60 billion in spending cuts that the president called a “nonstarter” — was one by Republican Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars from going to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the group whose occasional missteps have been the source of countless confrontations among climate scientists over the past year.
Support for the saturated greenhouse effect leaves the likelihood of AGW tipping points in the cold
From The Hockey Shtick, word of a new paper that supports Miskolczi’s theory of saturated greenhouse effect.in this new paper there appears to be some evidence for a negative climate feedback, in the form of slightly lowered relative humidity trend, which makes climate sensitivity lower. Relative humidity (RH) is the ratio of the actual amount of water vapor in the air to the amount it could hold when saturated expressed as a percentage OR the ratio of the actual vapor pressure to the saturation vapor pressure expressed as a percentage. The amount of water vapor the air can hold increases with temperature. Relative humidity therefore decreases with increasing temperature if the actual amount of water vapor stays the same. While the study found a slight increase in specific humidity (the mass of water vapor per unit mass of air), relative humidity (near the surface, 2 meter measurement) decreased by 0.5% per decade, resulting in an overall slightly drier atmosphere.
If a positive water vapor feedback response existed in the climate system, you’d expect both the specific and relative humidity to increase with time. It didn’t. This ends up putting the kibosh on the idea of tipping points, and a lack of positive water vapor feedback pretty much takes all the scare out of CO2 induced climate change.
It seems PEW is superseded by the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Enters Second Phase
Follow the Money: 78 Names at the IPCC
Source: NFCOctober 1, 2011
In a sensible universe, the list that appears below would be sufficient to vaporize the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – now and forever, once and for all.
Beginning in 2004 (around the time that work was beginning on the 2007 Climate Bible) the activist World Wildlife Fund (WWF) systematically began recruiting IPCC scientists. By late 2008 it says it had persuaded 130 “leading climate scientists mostly, but not exclusively from” the IPCC to join its parallel initiative called the Climate Witness Scientific Advisory Panel.
The scientists whose names appear below have not only been examining one of the world’s most important questions for the IPCC. They have a documented, public relationship with professional lobbyists who have a strong interest in influencing this matter. (For readers who are just tuning in, the WWF believes it is “nearly impossible to overstate” the threat posed by climate change – see here, backup link here.)
The people on the list below either played some role in the 2007 Climate Bible or are helping to write the next IPCC report which is expected to be completed in 2013. In many cases, they’re doing dual duty.
On this list are 23 coordinating lead authors – those the IPCC placed in charge of an entire chapter. The list also includes Osvaldo Canziani. Having served as Working Group 2 co-chair for both the 2001 and 2007 reports, he is one of the IPCC’s most senior officials.
- Abdelkader Allali - a 2007 review editor who wore four other hats for the 2007 report
- Oleg Anisimov – a 2007 coordinating lead author who helped with two summary documents and is now serving as a coordinating lead author (see p. 18)
- Peter Ambenje – a Working Group 1 contributor to the 2007 report
- Vincenzo Artale – a 2007 lead author
- Rizaldi Boer - a 2007 lead author
- Jim Bruce - a 2007 expert reviewer
- Osvaldo Canziani - a co-chair of Working Group 2 for the 2001 report, in addition to being a co-chair of Working Group 2 for the 2007 report
- Ulisses Confalonieri – a coordinating lead author of the 2007 health chapter who is currently serving as a review editor (see p. 12)
- Declan Conway – a 2007 expert reviewer
- Mike Demuth – a 2007 contributing author
- Ghislain Dubois - a 2007 contributing author and expert reviewer
- Paul Epstein – an expert reviewer for Working Group 2 as well as the Synthesis Report of the 2007 Climate Bible
- Lin Erda - a 2007 lead author who is now a coordinating lead author (see p. 17)
- Philip Fearnside – a 2007 review editor and expert reviewer
- Andreas Fischlin - a coordinating lead author who helped write two summaries and served as an expert reviewer for the 2007 report. He is now a review editor (see page 9)
- Chris Furgal – a 2007 lead author
- Carlos Gay García - a 2007 coordinating lead author who is currently serving as a lead author (see p. 18)
- Christos Giannakopoulos - a 2007 lead author
- Brij Gopal - a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer
- Ren Guoyu - a 2007 expert reviewer of both the Working Group 1 report and the Synthesis Report
- Hideo Harasawa - wore four hats for the 2007 report including coordinating lead author of the chapter in which the Himalayan glacier mistake occurred
- Ove Hoegh-Guldberg - a 2007 contributing author now serving as a coordinating lead author (see p. 19)
- Lesley Hughes - a lead author, a contributing author and an expert reviewer for the 2007 report. She is once again serving as a lead author (see p. 17)
- Saleemul Huq - a coordinating lead author who acted in four other capacities with regard to the 2007 report, and is again a coordinating lead author (see p.14)
- Erik Jeppesen - a 2007 contributing author
- Roger Jones - a coordinating lead author for the 2007 report who is once again serving as a coordinating lead author (see p.
- David Karoly - a lead author who wore five other hats for the 2007 report and is currently serving as a review editor (see p. 17)
- Manmohan Kapshe - a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer
- Gavin Kenny - a 2007 contributing author and expert reviewer
- Christian Körner - a 2007 contributing author
- Paul Kovacs - a 2007 lead author who is serving once again as a lead author (see p. 18)
- K. Krishna Kumar - currently a coordinating lead author (see p. 7)
- Zbigniew Kundzewicz – a 2007 coordinating lead author who wore an additional three hats
- Murari Lal – wore four hats for the 2007 report, including serving as coordinating lead author of the chapter in which the Himalayan glacier mistake occurred
- Rodel Lasco – a coordinating lead author who also helped write two summary documents for the 2007 report and is now a lead author (see page 17)
- Rik Leemans - a 2007 lead author who is now serving as a review editor (see p. 15)
- Michael MacCracken – served as a 2007 contributing author, review editor and as an expert reviewer in three different capacities for the 2007 report (see here, here, and here) – which makes five hats in total
- Dena P. MacMynowski – a 2007 contributing author for two chapters and as well as an expert reviewer
- José Marengo - a 2007 lead author who is currently a review editor (see p. 1)
- Eric Martin - a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer who is serving once again as a lead author (see p. 17)
- Mahmoud Medany – a 2007 coordinating lead author and lead author
- Claudio Guillermo Menéndez – who served as a lead author for the 2007 report
- Annette Menzel – a 2007 lead author
- Guy Midgley – a 2007 coordinating lead author who helped write two summary documents and is once again serving as a coordinating lead author (see p. 14)
- Charles Kenneth Minns - a 2007 contributing author
- Monirul Qader Mirza – a 2007 coordinating lead author who wore four other hats for the 2007 report and is now serving as a lead author (see p.
- Alison Misselhorn – a 2007 contributing author
- Ana Rosa Moreno – a 2007 lead author and currently a review editor (see p. 18)
- Mark New - a lead author for the 2007 report
- Shuzo Nishioka - a 2007 review editor
- Carlos Nobre - a 2007 lead author and currently a coordinating lead author (see p. 18)
- Patrick Nunn – currently a lead author (see p. 7)
- Leonard Nurse - a coordinating lead author who wore five other hats for the 2007 report and is once again a coordinating lead author (see p.19)
- Mark Nuttal – a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer
- Anthony Nyong - a coordinating lead author who wore four other hats for the 2007 report
- Govind Ballabh Pant – a 2007 review editor
- Barrie Pittock - a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer
- N.H. Ravindranath – a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer who is again serving as a lead author (see p. 25)
- George Rose - a 2007 lead author
- Joyashree Roy – a coordinating lead author who wore four other hats for the 2007 report and is once again serving as a coordinating lead author (see p. 24)
- Victor Magaña Rueda - a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer
- Stephen Schneider – a 2007 coodinating lead author who wore four other hats, as well. Prior to his death in 2010 he was again appointed a coordinating lead author (see p.15)
- Mohamed Senouci – a 2007 review editor
- Anond Snidvongs – a 2007 expert reviewer who is now a lead author (see page 9)
- Daithi Stone - wore seven hats for the 2007 Climate Bible, including lead author and expert reviewer for the Synthesis Report – and is once again a lead author (see p. 15). In publications he is often identified as D.A. Stone.
- John Sweeney - a 2007 review editor, contributing author, and expert reviewer for Working Group 1 and 2
- Piotr Tryjanowski – a 2007 lead author
- John Turner – a 2007 expert reviewer
- Riccardo Valentini - currently a coordinating lead author (see p. 17)
- Jef Vandenberghe – a 2007 lead author and expert reviewer
- Richard Washington - a 2007 contributing author
- Poh Poh Wong - a coordinating lead author who served in three additional capacities for the 2007 report and is once again a coordinating lead author (see p. 9)
- Gary Yohe - a coordinating lead author who served in four other capacities for the 2007 report. He is now serving once again as a coordinating lead author (see p.
- Zong-Ci Zhao – a 2007 lead author currently serving as a review editor (see p. 5)
- Gina Ziervogel - a 2007 contributing author and expert reviewer
The only apparent difference between them is the absence of Stephen Schneider‘s name from the second (he died in 2010).
The IPCC Exposed: Political To Its Core
‘We meet here at a time when greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have never been higher, when the number of livelihoods that have been dissolved by climate change impacts has never been greater and when the need for action has never been more compelling or more achievable.’So said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as she opened the organisation’s latest extravaganza in Durban, South Africa this week. Her words are a neat demonstration of how UN bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), far from being neutral and independent organisations, are highly political. The task before the gathered governmental delegations is urgent, we are told, because the concentrations of greenhouse gases have ‘never been higher’, the impacts have never been ‘greater’ but action is ‘achievable’. (Figueres was also being disingenuous - there’s pretty much zero chance of any meaningful agreement coming out of the Durban talks.)
These statements are all built upon the wisdom provided by what Donna Laframboise rightly refers to regularly as the ‘Climate Bible’: the periodic assessment reports produced by the IPCC. But while the UNFCCC is clearly a political body, hammering out just who is going to pay to sort out the planet-threatening problem of global warming, the IPCC is widely seen as a body simply offering the very best expert advice from the finest scientific minds in the world.
In The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert (a fabulous title that surely deserves to be a winner with charades players everywhere), Laframboise provides chapter and verse on the Climate Bible and the body that produces it. The IPCC is presented as being made up of thousands of top scientists who work tirelessly and self-critically to bring together the best peer-reviewed research and reach an unbiased, cautious and independent assessment of where global temperatures are heading and what the consequences will be. Sadly, as Laframboise shows, the reality is very different.
Sitting in a coffee shop around the corner from the spiked office, Laframboise explains to me how she came to write the book. Formerly a feature writer and editorial board member at Canada’s National Post, she left the paper in the early Noughties and turned her back on journalism, feeling it was ‘time for a change’. She continues: ‘I didn’t write anything for seven or eight years but in early 2009 I became so annoyed at the way climate change was being covered in the media, it was just so shallow... so I started doing my own research and I started blogging.’
What Laframboise found was that there is a lot more uncertainty about climate change and its effects than the general public has been led to believe. Indeed, her original book project was simply going to spell out 10 reasons why we should stay calm about the whole issue. What really drew her to focus on the IPCC, she tells me, is that ‘this organisation is regarded as a prototype. It’s the golden child, it’s won the Nobel Peace Prize. So the UN has now set up an IPCC-like body for biodiversity and another one for agriculture, and another for soil degradation. And in each case, they appear to be trying to recruit the science and the scientists to help them pursue a global agenda on these issues.’
Before digging deeper into the issue, Laframboise tells me that she assumed - like most people - that the IPCC was ‘dependable, trustworthy and professional’. She adds: ‘The more I investigated the IPCC, the more I thought it was like a child that had been praised and flattered, that had been given rules to follow but, when it doesn’t follow the rules, faces no consequences. And now it’s grown up into a problem, collectively, for all of us.’
In her book, Laframboise takes us through the major claims made about the IPCC and demolishes them one by one.
For example, there’s the idea that the IPCC report is the product of the world’s top experts. But in reality, knowing a subject well is not nearly as important, it seems, as having a face that fits. So, leading IPCC contributors sometimes do not even have PhDs in their subjects, never mind being world-class experts, while other researchers in charge of chapters had expertise in a completely different area to the one they were working on. Meanwhile, the nature of the review process means that when leading experts are critical, they can safely be ignored by chapter authors.
Another piece of IPCC spin is that its reports are built upon the best available research. In fact, there is heavy reliance on the so-called ‘grey’ literature - material that is not from peer-reviewed journals at all. This material can even just be magazine articles or propaganda from environmentalist groups. The most famous example of this is the ‘Himalayagate’ affair, which centred on the important claim made in the 2007 report that glaciers, apparently crucial to the water supply for billions of people, would disappear entirely by 2035.
Nothing could demand urgent action more than this. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The glaciers are likely to last for hundreds of years, as was pointed out by expert reviewers - who were ignored. However, in early 2010, it was pointed out that the erroneous idea came from a document produced by environmental group WWF, which in turn had quoted an earlier interview in New Scientist magazine.
Nigel Lawson Calls For DECC To Be Broken Up
Nigel Lawson, the former Chancellor and a former energy secretary, has called on the Government to break up the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). He believes the time has come to put responsibility for climate policy back into the environment department, and to put energy policy into the Department for Business, Innovation and...Read more...
www.sciencepoles.org/…h_sea_level_rise_projections/
Apr 18, 2011 ... He was a coordinating Lead Author for the 4th Assessment Report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 ..www.powerlineblog.com/…2/01/who-is-anti-science.php
Jan 16, 2012 ... The IPCC has failed to establish a strong link between changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and changes in temperatures; ...
The Journal of Climate & the IPCC
We’re supposed to trust the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because much of the research on which it relies was published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.But what happens when the people who are in charge of these journals are the same ones who write IPCC reports?
Today’s exhibit is the Journal of Climate. It’s published by the American Meteorological Society – which certainly sounds reputable. But let’s take a look at its IPCC connections.
It’s chief editor, Anthony J. Broccoli, was a contributing author and expert reviewer for the IPCC’s 2007 report (known as AR4).
Nathan Gillett, one of its editors, served in four separate AR4 capacities – as a lead author, an expert reviewer for both Working Group 1 and Working Group 2, and as an expert reviewer of the Synthesis Report. He is now a lead author for the upcoming IPCC report (AR5).
Marika Holland, another editor at the Journal of Climate, contributed to two chapters of the 2007 climate bible.
Editor Andrew Pitman was an IPCC lead author, a contributing author, and an expert reviewer for the 2007 edition. Moreover, he’s involved in the upcoming report as a review editor.
As editor James Renwick’s bio page makes clear, he was a contributing author to the 2001 IPCC report, a lead author for the 2007 report, and is currently a lead author for AR5.
Editor Brian Soden was a 2007 contributing author and an expert reviewer who is currently serving as an AR5 lead author.
Editor Shang-Ping Xie is currently an AR5 lead author, and editor Michael Alexander was a 2007 IPCC expert reviewer.
Other personnel associated with the Journal of Climate may be found under the headings Editors Emeritus and Associate Editors. Prominent IPCC participants such as Michael E. Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Andrew Weaver, Francis Zwiers, Gabriele Hegerl and Peter Stott appear on these lists.
Is this not too incestuous for words?
Is no one concerned that there is no distance whatsoever – never mind anything approaching a firewall – between the people who decide whether a study deserves to join the haloed ranks of the scientific peer-reviewed literature – and the people who then write IPCC reports declaring what this peer-reviewed literature tells us about climate change?
And let’s not even talk about what percentage of the published papers authored by some of those mentioned above earned their peer-reviewed status via the Journal of Climate. That’s another story for another day.
www.globalclimatescam.com/…egory/copenhagen-treaty/
Archive for the “Copenhagen Treaty” Category .... In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of ..... above sea level, Indian and Pakistani…
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Inside Story - Neglecting* the diseases of the poor
Several global organisations, pharmaceutical firms, charities and research groups, and the* I suspect you would be far more accurate saying stimulating diseases of the poor. I'm thinking of the DDT ban freeing malaria to wreak havoc and UN troops implicated in them cholera outbreaks in Haiti
www.actionaid.org.uk/doc_lib/farmgate_2002.pdf
•
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CONTINUING THE FARMGATE SCANDAL: EU HEADS OF STATE, CAP REFORM AND POOR FARMERS Briefing paper for Copenhagen Heads of ... overview position paper of the current ...
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