Thursday
Aug022012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill It gets worse
Aug 2, 2012 Climate: WG2 In the wake of Pielke Jr's revelations about the factual content (or lack of it) in the congressional testimony of IPCC WG2 chairman Chris Field, Steve McIntyre has outlined some outrageous framing of the narrative along warmist lines in the report he oversees.
There can be no argument - the IPCC is corrupt.
Reader Comments (40)
Well said, Bish!
And interesting too in that article by Steve McIntyre that he highlights the usage of the Harry-readme dataset -
"Postscript: In Field’s day job, he does statistical analyses of crop yields. His main claim to fame is arguing that increased temperatures have reduced crop yields. Given the astronomical increase in crop yields during the 20th century concurrent with temperature increases and many confounding factors, this is an uphill job. Field’s frequent coauthor, David Lobell, attracted attention with an article in Science last year, expanding on this point. I looked briefly at that article (but did not post on it.) I was amused that it used the CRU-TS data set excoriated by Harry-Readme. (As I recall, the harry readme was explained away on the basis that no one used the CRU-TS data set, a memo that Field and coauthors do not appear to have received"
http://climateaudit.org/2012/08/01/hide-the-megadroughts/
And I seem to remember you've already covered inaccurate statements on crop yields in the Stern Report....
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/4/21/sterns-wheat-graph.html
No they are not corrupt, nor are they idiots as Steven Goddard keeps calling them.
They are dirty commie rats with a dirty commie rat agenda. They are good at it, and they should be treated as what they are.
Do we all agree this behaviour is outrageous?
Or is it more scandalous that some of us are bored by these revelations?
While I suspect that there may be ripples under the carpet - it must be all very hush hush if this is the case. Reminiscent of "What happens in the family stays in the family" etc. and makes one wonder whether it may be worthwhile drawing attention to these matters via email (and gathering any reaction later via FOIA).
It sounds as though another member of the Watermelon Tendency has been revealed.
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Bishop, it is hardly news that the IPCC selects data to make the case it is actually established to make. To do anything that would prejudice the case would be a gross betrayal. Maybe more traitorous than corrupt?
Tactically I worry that the words ‘There can be no argument - the IPCC is corrupt’ will be read by some as some sort of revelation when what Steve McI now reports is, in fact, the umpteenth example of this sort of practice.
By giving the impression that there may now be something to discuss allows those who seek to defend the IPCC to insinuate that you (and maybe we) have believed that the IPCC could have been free of institutional bias and that its reports maybe have been reliable, when, in fact, we have never believed any such nonsense.
matthu ..is it more scandalous that some of us are bored by these revelations?
Scandalous and dangerous. As long as sceptics think it’s useful to throw around insults like “commie rat” an “watermelon” we shall be treated as marginal eccentrics. On the other hand, if someone like Montford points out that influential scientists are corrupt, this just might provoke a legal reaction, which would be highly visible (good) but also expensive (bad).
I’m wondering if it might be useful to start a “virtual fund” - a confidential list of potential contributors to the legal expenses, either of a libel action or a judicial review. There’s a few thousand of us I’d guess. Could we collect £10k, £100K ...? Would it be useful to know?
I think we have long realised that alarmism is the product of torquing up in terms of data and talking up in terms of verbiage.
One thing in common that all global warming alarmists share: they are really bad liars. Their lies and fraudulent studies are all too easily taken apart. IPCC has outlived its failed propagandist purpose and should be put down, like a diseased cow.
Question: is Michael Mann's canuckophobia caused by his subconscious desire to kill his own hockey stick chart? Since Canadians are really good at ice hockey--is Mann's recent public conflicts with Canadians Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Tim Ball, and Mark Steyn simply an unconscious cry for help? Poor Mann, all that pressure and stress must be suffocating. I hope Mann really sues Steyn, so that Mann can finally be put out of his suffering.
'There can be no argument - the IPCC is corrupt.'
And bears sh*t in the wood
The IPCC is a political body which depends on AGW for its very existence, its not a real surprise to find it acts like a political body and produces results which are designed to improve it chances of continuing to exist.
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 10:44 AM | geoffchambers
Scandalous and dangerous. As long as sceptics think it’s useful to throw around insults like “commie rat” an “watermelon” we shall be treated as marginal eccentrics. On the other hand, if someone like Montford points out that influential scientists are corrupt, this just might provoke a legal reaction, which would be highly visible (good) but also expensive (bad).
I’m wondering if it might be useful to start a “virtual fund” - a confidential list of potential contributors to the legal expenses, either of a libel action or a judicial review. There’s a few thousand of us I’d guess. Could we collect £10k, £100K ...? Would it be useful to know?
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Indeed it is certainly interesting, Geoff, how there are some that would seek to stifle debate with the veiled threat of legal action or even the mere mention of it. ..... as for the Bish's assertion well there is certainly ample evidence, and from the 'scientists' themselves!!!
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 10:44 AM | geoffchambers
"Scandalous and dangerous. As long as sceptics think it’s useful to throw around insults like “commie rat” an “watermelon” we shall be treated as marginal eccentrics. On the other hand, if someone like Montford points out that influential scientists are corrupt, this just might provoke a legal reaction, which would be highly visible (good) but also expensive (bad).
I’m wondering if it might be useful to start a “virtual fund” - a confidential list of potential contributors to the legal expenses, either of a libel action or a judicial review. There’s a few thousand of us I’d guess. Could we collect £10k, £100K ...? Would it be useful to know?"
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Yes indeed, Geoff, it is interesting to see there are those who attempt to stifle debate with the veiled threat of legal action or even the mere mention of it.......as far as the Bish's assertion is concerned, well there is ample evidence, and provided by the 'scientists' themselves.
Note: the IPCC might be corrupt even without any of its participants being corrupt. Organizations aren't just a collection of individuals.
matthu: "Or is it more scandalous that some of us are bored by these revelations?"
It's post post normal science!!
Post normal "science" was the relaxation of that unnecessary constraint that the evidence had to prove your assertion, but that isn't good enough, because quite often then is absolutely no evidence or worse, contrary evidence which has "temporarily" sprung out the woodwork until the next buddy review paper "proves" it wrong.
So, we now have post post normal science, even post post postnormal ... commonly called lying through your teeth in the face of the evidence.
... but it's perfectly OK, because there's a very sound philosophical concept backing it all up. Post normal grant funding ... or as we usually hear it ... normal funding for (academic) posts.
omnologos:http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/ipcc-lead-author-misleads-us-congress.html
'It is one thing to disagree about scientific questions, but it is altogether different to fundamentally misrepresent an IPCC report to the US Congress. Below are five instances in which Field's testimony today completely and unambiguously misrepresented IPCC findings to the Senate.'
You can't get better evidence of the IPCC's duplicity than this. It is no longer a scientific organisation.
Throwing insults is not the answer, just continually presenting contrary evidence and challenging the methodology of people like Field is the only rational way to proceed and it will take many years yet to overcome the IPCC. It will only finally happen when our politicians stop giving them our money.
There is a plethora of information out there on mega droughts in previous millennia, as anyone knows from a few simple searches, eg ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2000) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/02/000208075420.htm
"A group of researchers who study tree ring records have found evidence of a "mega-drought" in the 16th century that wreaked havoc for decades in the lives of the early Spanish and English settlers and American Indians throughout Mexico and North America.
The tree ring records tell of the worst drought in 1,000 years, with an extended period of dryness lasting 40 years in places. In this case early records from Spanish and English settlements in the Carolinas and Virginia corroborate the paleo-climatic findings."
"Asia's most devastating droughts reconstructed"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100422153929.htm
"A new study of tree rings provides the most detailed record yet of at least four epic droughts that have shaken Asia over the last thousand years, from one that may have helped bring down China's Ming Dynasty in 1644, to another that caused tens of millions of people to starve to death in the late 1870s."
"Drought in the African Sahel: Long term perspectives and future prospects, Nick Brooks, Saharan Studies Programme and Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: http://www.nickbrooks.org/publications/TynWP61.pdf
“Long-term climatic and environmental change in the Sahel is associated with variations in the strength and position of the African Monsoon. At the last glacial maximum (LGM) some 21 thousand years ago (ka), the Sahara desert covered a much larger area than at present, as apparent from the dating of fossil dunes some 5° south of the present extent of mobile dunes (Talbot, 1983).
“Over the past 1.65 million years, approximately corresponding to the Quaternary period, there have been some seventeen glacial cycles, each lasting approximately 100ka (Goudie, 1992). Evidence from lake sediments in the central and southern Sahara indicates a succession of arid and humid episodes broadly coincident with glacial and interglacial periods respectively (Kowalski et al., 1989; Szabo et al., 1995; Cremaschi, 1998; Martini et al., 1998).”
“On multi-millennial timescales, shorter than those represented by the 100ka glacial cycles, monsoon dynamics are modulated by the Earth’s 21ka precessional cycle, which determines the angle at which the Earth’s axis is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic (the plane in which the planets orbit the sun) (Kukla and Gavin, 2004).”
Anthropogenic CO2 must have a great impact on the earth's precessional cycle....
https://sites.google.com/site/medievalwarmperiod/
“The most striking aspect of the period of American climate, between the 2nd and 16th Centuries, is the incidence, extent, prevalence, duration and severity of droughts, throughout the Americas; particularly - but by no means exclusively - over western and central regions of the Americas.
These droughts often lasted for a decade or longer and have been dubbed mega-droughts. Two droughts, in California and Patagonia, each lasted for well over 100 years and have been described as epic droughts."
More historical examples of mega droughts, mega floods etc, can be found here:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/extreme_weather_extreme_claims.html
It's just not possible Geoff.
I was once involved in an attempt to overturn an unfair and illegal official decision by way of a privately funded Judicial Review. You have to remember that they are funding their defence with unlimited amounts of our money.
When it's a question of self-justification or saving face, officialdom will throw caution to the winds and chuck public money around like a drunken sailor - plus they have access to in-house and uncosted legal resources.
The only legalistic way forward to policy change is for an established NGO to get legal funding via a "public interest certificate" - sadly all the NGO's who are skilled in this area are on the other side. GWPF is just not big or influential enough for that league.
IMHO the only way forward is to hurl as much sh1t as possible at the bastards via the cheap & nasty end of the tabloid press until your average Sun reader puts down his can of Carlberg wife-beater, looks at his gas bill and realises he's been royally screwed.
When we see a four inch banner on their front page saying "Stuff yer windmills up yer ar*se greenies!" - politicians will start hurling themselves off the green bandwagon like lemmings - & we'll know we've won.
I know that pains your delicate ex-Graun sensibilities - but it's true.
'There can be no argument - the IPCC is corrupt.
I do so hope that Tom Chivers has returned here and taken on board that statement.
Aug 2, 2012 at 11:30 AM | Unregistered CommenterMarion
Marion
In principle I'm all for it.
But (I'm no expert) it would need to be done with great care - I know that there are some circumstances where contributors to legal expenses can find themselves lumbered with unforeseen large liabilities in the event of a case going the wrong way.
Chivers has called the IPCC HQ, they told him they're not corrupt, so he's now saying he keeps trusting them.
I’m wondering if it might be useful to start a “virtual fund” - a confidential list of potential contributors to the legal expenses, either of a libel action or a judicial review." geoffchambers
Leave a space for me, Geoff.
Marion
I know there’s a lot of silly insults, and a lot of veiled threats in the climate wars. I’m thinking of the moment when the likes of Montford are considered important enough that their accusations have to be taken seriously - a “J’accuse” moment. Someone might just be foolish enough to launch a libel action, or a libellous counter attack. (Steve Jones’ BBC report came close to libelling Montford and Newbery, I thought).
The other possibility is a judicial review (eg of government energy policy) along the lies of the review which rapped Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” over the knuckles rather effectively. Tony Newbery of Harmless Sky has been suggesting this for a while, but the money (£50,000+) wasn’t there.
Readership of BH is clearly going up. A simple on-line poll (confidential of course) might help to determine whether the motivation, and the money, was there to explore this possibility.
I wasted some of my youth in the company of idiots who shouted “fascist pig” at anyone they didn”t agree with. I don’t want to waste my old age blathering away in the company of people who shout “commie rat”.
Meantime, I prefer insidious ridicule.
My planning application includes a system to sequester hydric acid.
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 11:54 AM | DennisA
The problem is, DennisA, that it never was about the science as I'm sure you're aware.
The logo on the link you provided -
http://www.globalactionnow.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=53
stated -
"The scientific diagnosis has been made. The time for action is now"
Indeed that is the meme in all the propaganda, a sense of urgency as yet more of the population turn towards scepticism.
They will try to rush through legislation before the world is fully aware just as was done in the EU. If not up front then via organizations such as the EPA.
The funding will go once the objectives have been achieved - indeed in the run up to Copenhagen there was some concern that Met Office funding was to be cut -
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/26/hadley_centre_for_climate_change_budget_cut_mod_funding/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/19/possible_met_office_cuts/
(Not surprising there was so many signators to the Julia Slingo petition, those who feared for their jobs - but of course no excuse for those who continue to support it even now!)
But Copenhagen wasn't quite the success they had hoped it to be, thanks in some good measure I'm sure to Lord Monckton's efforts in the US.
Let's hope that the Tea Parties prevail there and that scepticism continues to grow in the polticial parties in Canada and indeed in Australia.
There needs to be a fight back against the encroachment of governments.
(Nor do I believe that we have 'many years' - our education system is already being badly affected and future generations subjected to political propaganda.)
It is not enough for the IPCC to be exposed as corrupt--any political cynic already knew that, as a fundamental truth about politics (particularly world politics, and more particularly the UN). Its defenders, even more alarmed to be thought fools than about a "runaway climate", will only say it was corrupted in a good cause, and "The Ends Justify the Means" (the natural philosophy of anyone, under enough mental pressure to "win through", deservedly or not). Climate science also has to be exposed, as incompetent--the lukewarm nonsense is every bit as bad as the alarmist idiocy, as my simple comparison of temperatures in the atmospheres of Venus and Earth should have already made plain. There are only two ways to do it: 1) Cut all funding of the current consensus climate science, and 2) Present a correct, complete theory of climate to the world, as an accomplished fact. Those are both Utopian goals, thoroughly unrealistic given the fact of massed (and thus massive) human intransigence, even in the face of ongoing failure. We are still in the "Giordano Bruno", denial phase, with regard to the proper self-correction of science (not just climate science, I'm afraid). Denial and avoidance have been the name of the game in climate science, really, ever since the general acceptance of the greenhouse effect. It is far, far more likely the world will have to go through a third world war, before enough people realize their need for the hard truth, as opposed to the various dogmas they believe in today. But take heart: Our avoidance today means we will not have to face it; it is for the next generation to wonder how they got into the mess they will find themselves in. And what will we care if they blame us?
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 12:34 PM | geoffchambers
Geoff, A Judicial review didn't stop 'An Inconvenient Truth' being shown in our schools, and there seems to be a number of sceptics whose company you seem to find awkward -
"The misunderstanding comes I think from confounding the tiny number of active sceptics, who’ve come to a reasoned conclusion, with the Jeremy Clarkson fans who show up in polls. You’re just not going to catch many of us in a survey of the general population. The “old white conservative male” label is no doubt true for the population at large, and can be easily explained, but it tells you nothing about the nature of reasoned scepticism....
I would agree that our political and cultural backgrounds strongly affect the way we express our scepticism. There are Tea Party types who think global warming is a commie plot to install global government; nimbys who don’t like windfarms; engineers scornful of the mathematical models used to generate temperature projections; scientists and academics fearful for the reputation of their professions; and Tories who don’t like hippy treehuggers. It takes all sorts."
http://talkingclimate.org/understanding-climate-scepticism-a-sceptic-responds/
Shame that you believe only a "tiny number of active sceptics, who’ve come to a reasoned conclusion"
And as for ....
"I can see some partial solutions, none of them really satisfactory. Comments off; a tight moderation policy; comments “by invitation only” to people interested in the specific subject: none of these would solve the problem of someone getting upset and causing aggravation to Corner.
I’ve got questions I want to ask about social science research into attitudes to climate change. There are sceptics who don’t like this research, who don’t like government funding for this research, who don’t like government, who don’t like psychologists or social science. You can’t ban them from expressing their views. All you can do is plead that they stay polite and on topic."
http://www.bishop-hill.net/discussion/post/1889385
Did you ever get to ask those extra questions of yours?
IPCC = UN
Corruption is a given!
You debase the language by throwing around unsupported charges like confetti and the net result is that neither you nor your commenters can any longer tell the difference between routine editing and 'corruption'. And you wonder why no-one takes you seriously.
Even Richard Betts finds this kind of stuff boring... and that is saying a lot.
Marion
I’ve already apologised to anyone who thinks I was being rude about anyone here when I distinguished between “informed” sceptics and “Jeremy Clarkson types”. I wasn’t. I was distinguishing between the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who have formed an informed opinion, (ie everybody here) and the hundreds of millions who are labelled sceptics in opinion polls, and who might be influenced by a campaign of the sort mentioned by Foxgoose. I like Clarkson. He makes me laugh. But I wouldn’t want to be part of a movement that looked to him as a leader.
The judicial review of “An Inconvenient Truth” established that Gore was in contradiction with the IPCC and was not to be trusted. A week later they shared a Nobel prize and the story was forgotten.
One of the most enlightening things I ever read (on the recommendation of TonyN of Harmless Sky) was the judgement of Justice Burton. The legal route seems to me the one which has the greatest chance of success. Lawyers love detailed argument. Most of the rest of us have lost the art. It’s expensive, but in some way definitive, and highly visible in media terms. Whether we shout “commie rat” or “illegitimate statistical methods”, no-one is taking any notice.
Yes, I did ask the questions, Corner answered, and it’s going up soon (I hope) on a blog near you.
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 2:43 PM | Frank
I would suggest that you actually read Steve McIntyre's article and find out just exactly what comprised the 'routine editing' -
and we here in the UK know all about 'droughts'
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82614
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82617
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 2:55 PM | geoffchambers
I'm sure it will be an interesting and informative read Geoff, I look forward to it!
Unfortunately one cannot always rely on the legal system -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2192093/Stuart-Wheeler-loses-EU-Lisbon-Treaty-court-case.html
Statement of James M. Inhofe
Hearing: Full Committee hearing entitled, “Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.”
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
I must say it feels like we're back to the good old days. It may be hard to believe, but it was in February of 2009, during the height of the global warming alarmist movement, that this committee last held a hearing on global warming science. Back then we heard promises from the Obama administration of a clean energy revolution with green jobs propped up by billions in taxpayer dollars to companies like Solyndra.
What came of all those promises? The global warming movement has completely collapsed and cap-and-trade is dead and gone.
I suspect a look back over the past three years will be a little painful for my friends on the other side. In 2009 with a Democratic President, and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate, global warming alarmists were on top of the world - they thought they would finally reach their goal of an international agreement that would eliminate fossil fuels. Yet the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill didn't happen.
Of course, what drove the collapse of the global warming movement was that the science of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was finally exposed. For years I had warned that the United Nations was a political body, not a scientific body - and finally the mainstream media took notice:
New York Times editorial: "Given the stakes, the IPCC cannot allow more missteps and, at the very least, must tighten procedures and make its deliberations more transparent. The panel's chairman...is under fire for taking consulting fees from business interests..." (February 17, 2010)
The Washington Post: "Recent revelations about flaws in that seminal IPCC report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel's work but also in projections about climate change.
Newsweek: "Some of the IPCC's most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles..."
UK Daily Telegraph on Climategate: "The worst scientific scandal of our generation."
Just how unpopular is the global warming movement now? The Washington Post recently published a poll revealing that Americans no longer worry about global warming and one of the reasons is because they don't trust the scientists' motivations.
The IPCC has even lost the trust of the left. Andrew Revkin of the New York Times recently called for IPCC chair Pachauri to make a choice between global warming activism and leading the IPCC. They are also saying similar things about global warming alarmist James Hansen. As David Roberts of Grist acknowledged, Hansen has "become so politicized that people tend to dismiss him."
Just one look at this committee and we can see how bad things have gotten for the alarmists: today there are no federal witnesses here to testify about the grave dangers of global warming. President Obama himself never dares to mention global warming and some on the left have noticed: Bill McKibben recently criticized the President for not attending the Rio + 20 sustainability conference noting that, "Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend."
It must be very hard for my friends on the left to watch the President who promised he would slow the rise of the oceans posing in front of pipelines in my home state of Oklahoma pretending to support oil and gas.
I imagine they are trying to keep quiet because they know President Obama is still moving forward with his global warming agenda - he just doesn't want the American people to know about it.
Now what the American people don't know: President Obama is doing through his bureaucracy what he couldn't do legislatively. He is spending billions of taxpayer dollars on his global warming agenda. We've already identified $68 billion.
Today we should have a fascinating debate. I want to thank climatologist Dr. John Christy for appearing before the Committee to provide his insights. I am also looking forward to the testimony of Dr. Margo Thorning, a noted economist who will discuss the economic pain of the Obama EPA's current regulations.
We've been through this now for the past 3 ½ years and the results are clear: President Obama's green energy agenda has been a disaster. The time has come to put these tired, failed policies to rest and embrace the US energy boom so that we can put Americans back to work, turn this economy around, become totally energy independent from the Middle East, and ensure energy security for years to come.
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Geoffery should not worry too much because "plain vulgar abuse" is not actionable in law, perhaps because a libel case everytime someone yells "get lost fathead" would overwhelm even the resources of our bloated legal class. However I would advise people to be very careful about what they say on Twitter.
I love Steve Mc's postscript, it pretty much hits the nail on the head.
We have in Field an academic (hard to call him a scientist, but he seems to have bored himself a nice tight little hole in the academic woodwork) whose career is based on claiming up is down, left is right, dark is light, etc.
So it's not at all surprising that when trying to present IPCC material to Congress he'd get it backward.
Re: Aug 2, 2012 at 3:49 PM | 1.618
:-)
Monbiot at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/aug/02/climate-change-political-funding-us
Interesting statements from across the pond. Personally I would think that the American system allows more of a personal impression to be registered as a statement but it would be very interesting to find out what UK authors and lead authors would agree with from the representations. Obviously if they are willing to communicate with us on IPCC issues in the interest of scientific clarity.
Not corrupt per se, merely acting according to design specs.
It's the designers that are corrupt.
Long post if I may.... in thinking about Field's behavior this week (and he is nominally an academic scientist, hard to believe) I wondered re: IPCC’s AR5: Some notes on the authorship of the IPCC’s WG2 AR5 report: “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability”
Also thinking about findings of Donna L. on AR4 and the extensive citations of “grey literature” and activist NGO reports, etc. I took a look at the authorship list for WG2, AR5.
While I am heartened to know that Richard Betts and Richard Tol are both on the list, there seem to be a lot of people who are not evidently scientists, economists, etc. and/or are with more partisan types of NGOs etc. already committed to specific views of "climate change" as an enormous peril. It is hard to say too much from a quick survey, which is all I’ve done so far, but I think this bears close scrutiny. AR5
doesn’t necessarily “need” to cite much grey literature if a lot of that material is already embraced by the CLAs, LAs, and REs! This list seems to be full of “grey co-authors” who are not evidently academic scientists or scientists at all in many cases.
I far from someone who thinks one has to be an academic scientist to contribute well to this report (as we know from some of our favorite “skeptic” websites), but there seem to be a lot of people on the authors’ list whose organizations already reflect a rather strong commitment to particular beliefs about climate change and extreme impacts. A lot of them have strong financial and organizational imperatives to promote "extreme" scenarios it seems. A lot of these organizations have just as strong a prior commitment to a set of beliefs as anything that could be said of, e.g., the CATO or Fraser institutes, Heritage or AEI, the GWPF, etc. There are also assorted “Independent Consultants” which I did not yet try to track down. These are just some initial examples….
Of course some of these people could be more rigorous scientists than plenty of Michael Manns of the academic world, I’m not suggesting this list is anything but suggestive for further inquiry (some links are included for examples of what the co-authors and/or their organizations stand for). BUT it doesn’t initially give me any more confidence in WG2 than if all of these affiliations were “Greenpeace” and “Environmental Defense Fund”…. what I am saying is that on first look a lot of these people are not obviously among the world’s leading scientists or obviously coming at AR5 from a fresh perspective unshaped by long-term beliefs and commitments:
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/AR5_authors.php
Chapter 1 — Point of departure
William Hare
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Chapter 2 — Foundations for decisionmaking
Monirul Mirza
Environment Canada
Nicholas King
Independent Consultant
Stewart Cohen
Environment Canada
Chapter 5 — Coastal systems and low-lying areas
Jochen Hinkel
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Chapter 7 — Food production systems and food security
Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal
Global Change Impact Studies Centre
http://www.gcisc.org.pk/abt.aspx
Chapter 8 — Urban areas
David Satterthwaite
International Institute for Environment and Development
http://www.iied.org/climate-change
Chapter 9 — Rural areas
David Dodman
International Institute for Environment and Development
http://www.iied.org/climate-change
Katharine Vincent
Kulima Integrated Development Solutions
http://kulima.com/partners_and_organisations_with_whom_we_work/
Chapter 10 — Key economic sectors and services
Douglas Arent
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Eberhard Faust
Munich Reinsurance Company
Chapter 12 — Human security
Geoff Dabelko
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/sizzling-summer-what-climate-change-feels
Coleen Vogel
Independent Consultant
Grete Hovelsrud
Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo
http://www.cicero.uio.no/about/index_e.aspx
Chapter 13 — Livelihoods and poverty
Tom Mitchell
Overseas Development Institute
http://www.odi.org.uk/opinion/details.asp?id=6653&title=climate-change-policy-science-evidence-rio-sustainable-
development
http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/details.asp?id=6513&title=environment-sustainable-development-post-2015
Chapter 14 — Adaptation needs and options
Ian Noble
Consultant
Chapter 16 — Adaptation opportunities, constraints, and limits
Richard Klein
Stockholm Environment Institute
http://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid=1888
Rebecca Shaw
Environmental Defense Fund
Habiba Gitay
The World Bank
James Thurlow
United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research
Chapter 17 — Economics of adaptation
Muyeye Chambwera
International Institute for Environment and Development
Liza Leclerc
Independent Consultant
Anil Markandya
Basque Centre for Climate Change
Chapter 18 — Detection and attribution of observed impacts
Wolfgang Cramer
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Chapter 19 — Emergent risks and key vulnerabilities
Maximiliano Campos
Organization of American States
http://www.oas.org/dsd/Staff/mcampos_e.htm
Chapter 20 — Climate-resilient pathways: adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable develop
Fatima Denton
International Development Research Centre
http://ccafs.cgiar.org/about/who-we-are/our-staff/ccafs-independent-science-panel/independent-science-
panel/fatima-denton
Koko Warner
United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security
Achala Chandani Abeysinghe
International Institute for Environment and Development
Chapter 21 — Regional context
Timothy Carter
Finnish Environment Institute
Lisa Schipper
Stockholm Environment Institute
Maarten van Aalst
Red Cross / Red Crescent Climate Centre
Tom Downing
Global Climate Adaptation Partnership
[chapters 22 - 30 are for specific geographical areas - if anything they seem to have even more dubious appointments, although I have stopped my list for now with ch 21]
The link above for the author list is on the IPCC website, but this link goes to a newer list dated June 11, 2012:
newer list of WG2 authors
I did not try to compare them for changes, but this link may be the better one in case there have been any changes to the list.
Yes, the IPCC is corrupt. In fact, "strange" official responses to Climategate e-mails and documents in 2009 strongly suggest that
a.) The seeds of Climategate and post-normal consensus science were planted together in the ruins of Hiroshima about the time the UN was established on 24 Oct 1945, and
b.) Kuroda, Hoyle or Yukawa probably warned George Orwell in ~1946-1947 that Western science was being compromised and triggered him to write the futuristic novel in 1948, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), that correctly describes** Western governments today.
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-720
- Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com
**Notice the validity of Orwell’s 1948 forecast in this link to 1984:
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/