Will release of AR5 draft help IPCC make good?
Richard Treadgold | December 23, 2012Let us hope so
From Judith Curry comes a remark of such simple goodness I pause in admiration and slowly nod my agreement. Of course there’s hope for the IPCC!
In a learned comment on Matt Ridley’s analysis of the draft AR5 discussion of climate sensitivity, including aerosols, clouds and water vapour, Professor Curry concludes:
JC summary: The leak of the SOD was a good thing; the IPCC still has the opportunity to do a much better job, and the wider discussion in the blogosphere and even the mainstream media places pressure on the IPCC authors to consider these issues; they can’t sweep them under the rug as in previous reports.
via Climate sensitivity in the AR5 SOD | Climate Etc..
There’s nothing difficult in that statement; it’s quite ordinary, really. So it would be easy to overlook the obstacles to making it. Like the instinct for revenge against the IPCC for making so much of a non-existent climate problem to so many for so long.
Who would not want to see them not merely corrected but put entirely out of business? Who dreams of seeing the organisation crushed into dust?
When a mistake by the IPCC is exposed there’s a perfectly understandable urge to chastise the wicked climate scientists and bureaucrats until they fear even to move, much less to speak. Some would like to observe no life left in the IPCC at all.
But Prof Curry reminds us that all we need from the IPCC is good climate science. Just as the climate is uninfluenced by carbon trading, annual conferences in far-flung holiday resorts or, for that matter, human emissions of CO2, so it is unimproved by punitive measures against the IPCC (whatever they might be).
The IPCC leaders need only stop selecting scientific papers that suit their case and stop choosing climate forecasts that reinforce their belief in future calamity for the rest of their team to start putting together an accurate picture of the climate.
We need a picture of the climate, the complete climate and only the climate. For any part of the picture to be misleading does us all a disservice — the members of the IPCC no less than the ordinary citizen blogger.
The consequent reduction in over-blown rhetoric might also permit a realistic assessment of actual environmental damage caused by western nations, instead of the rather silly “climate justice” accusations levelled at us by foaming-at-the-mouth extremists.
The IPCC only needs to do its job and everyone will be happy. It begins to look as though this 1st Regiment of Irregulars, as our voluntary militia might be called, in agitating and auditing in all its various capacities, could succeed in bringing the IPCC process to heel where establishment bodies have signally failed.
Though well-directed denunciation and criticism have brought us thus far and probably should not be abandoned, Judith hints that to give praise where praise is due — which is fair — could not, surely, betray the aim, which all of us share, of truth.
What the IPCC has done, throughout its existence, is criminal abuse of truth, science and the world’s people. It is not revenge to say it should be eliminated, it is correction of an intolerable, tyrannous situation. And it is not enough to eliminate the IPCC (or completely restructure and repeople it, with unbiased seekers of truth), because of course the responsibility for the fraud stops at the door of the climate scientists, not the politicians. You don’t forgive a criminal still in the middle of his crime. That, really, is a betrayal, of civilization itself (which depends upon lawful behavior and true reasoning about the real world — conspicuously absent in climate science, and in the continuing “debate”, as evinced by the sorry article above). What is at stake is not “saving face” of the IPCC or of climate scientists; it is having a trustworthy system of governance and a healthy society.
…see also “The IPCC’s Self-Indictment” on my blog:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2012/12/ipccs-self-indictment.html
Harry,
You say:
What are the admissions and where are they?
Harry,
You say:
I must agree. However Prof Curry was holding out the possibility of the IPCC finishing their duties properly, and not sweeping the contentious issues “under the carpet” as they have done previously. If they do that, the world gets a climate analysis worth our scrutiny. That’s my aim. What’s yours?
We’ve had Nic Lewis’s calculation of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (using the IPCCs own figures and methodology) at 1.75 degrees C.
Of course, many will disagree with the methodology, but what Nic Lewis has done is in the true spirit of science, I believe.
Yet what do you think the IPCC will do with their estimates? Do you think they will adjust their models? Will they publish the various graphs that appear in the SOD that show that models have failed to predict either warming or the methane levels (of particular significance to NZ)?
I don’t hold out much hope for “reform” of the IPCC anymore than I hold out hope for reform of the EU.
>”The IPCC leaders need only stop selecting scientific papers that suit their case…..”
I’m OK with that as long as the papers are fully represented when say one aspect of a paper is selected to support a case (and papers that don’t (or support an alternative case) get a mention too). Agee 2012 wrt GCR trend is a case in point. Agee’s repeated statements of the uncertainty in cloud datasets possibly being insufficient to identify trend was ignored but GCR was summarily dismissed anyway.
Made-to-order journal articles are a no-no too:-
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/12/20/this-is-called-cheating-part-1/
Should be “(and papers that don’t [or support an alternative case] get a mention too)”
Apparently Monckton has compiled a list of about 450 of those that didn’t.
Shameless. Donna’s doing some great work.
A comforting thought is that the climate will tell us with certainty (not “virtual”) over the coming 3 – 5 years whether a 6th Assessment report is required or not.
There is something slightly tragic about discussing climate issues on Christmas Eve, even by my low standards.
So I wish everyone a very happy Christmas and let Fenbeagle provide the mirth
http://fenbeagleblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/we-see-things/
Draft AR5 errors are currently being corrected by many different websites all over the internet.
All Pach needs to do, is hire a few bods to scour the web and note the corrections.
here’s one of those pesky people distorting the science of climate change – one of the many official “expert reviewers” of the UN-IPCC
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/climate_science_vs_politics_the_road_ahead.html
(a bit of cut and paste)
In AR5, this comparison involves just one graph in a chapter on “Attribution.” Yet the IPCC studiously avoids discussing the several striking examples where observations disagree with climate models: no global warming during at least the past decade — in spite of rapidly rising CO2 levels; Antarctic is cooling — not warming; absence of the model-predicted “hot spot” in the tropical atmosphere, and others.
and
There is good news and bad news about climate. The good news is that science evidence has made it quite clear that the human contribution to a possible global warming is minor; in fact it cannot even be identified in the data record. The bad news is that the media and politicians pay no attention whatsoever to the science
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics.
Not a climate scientist then
And relevant to NZ he has some interesting things to say about the EPA Endangerment Finding – that finding was challenged and, In June 2012, the Court’s 3-judge panel ruled in favor of the EPA; it said in essence “we’re not scientists, we cannot decide between EPA’s scientific claims and those of the plaintiff, and therefore we give deference to the administrative agency’