Reform the IPCC for the sake of science

By Matt Riddley, 2010 08 31

From today’s Times, my op-ed piece.

This month, after a three-year investigation, Harvard University suspended a prominent professor of psychology for scandalously overinterpreting videos of monkey behaviour. The incident has sent shock waves through science because it suggests that a body of data is unreliable. The professor, Marc Hauser, is now a pariah in his own field and his papers have been withdrawn. But the implications for society are not great — no policy had been based on his research.

Yesterday, after a four-month review, a committee of scientists concluded that the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has “assigned high confidence to statements for which there is very little evidence”, has failed to enforce its own guidelines, has been guilty of too little transparency, has ignored critical review comments and has had no policies on conflict of interest”.

Enormous and expensive policy changes have been based on the flawed work of these scientists. Yet there is apparently to be no investigation, blame, suspension or withdrawal of papers, just a gentle bureaucratic fattening of the organisation with new full-time posts….(Full Story)

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For another view of the IAC audit of IPCC processes and reporting quality, have a look at this:

Independent Audit Panel Slams U.N.’s Climate Group, by Jeremy A. Kaplan, 2010 08 30, Fox News

Sep. 24, 2010     Join us Sept 24 for local corn roast and pot luck supper at 6:00 pm. at the Seniors Club.

Our Senior group will welcome the “Hoofprintsofhope” horse-back riders for a corn roast and fundraiser for Alzheimer’s.
$20.00 donations will receive a tax deductible receipt and a chance on the “Hoofprintsofhope” draw.

Sep. 15, 2010     A successful season of Bocci with Ardrossan 55+ Club concludes with a pot luck luncheon in Ardrossan.

Sep. 9, 2010     Watch for our booth at What’s Up in Bruderheim Sep. 9.  Location: Memorial Hall

Aug. 30, 2010     We wish to welcome Walter Schneider as interim president.  Walter can be reached by telephone at 780.796.2306, or by e-mail at walt@folc.ca
Virginia Differenz is covering the treasurer’s position, as Rudy and Chris Thiel have moved to Baptiste Lake.

Our Community Research project is complete. Thanks Susan for a job well done. We’ll be reviewing the findings and working toward implementing the suggestions that have come forward.

(Source)

In other news:

The EPA is considering banning lead weights used to balance automobile tires:

http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1021157_green-groups-ask-epa-to-ban-lead-wheel-weights

Thank the Sierra Club who unbelievably puts this in their press release: (PDF)

“1.6 million pounds of lead from wheel weights is left falling off of cars each year where anyone can find and possibly ingest it,” said Jeff Gearhart, Research Director for the Ecology Center.

Yeah, those people sitting by the side of the road looking for lead weights to eat is a real problem, yesssiree. Too late for California though, a ban is already in effect. Full disclosure: I’m a scofflaw. I have lead wheel weights on my car.

Next I think we should ban dirt. Really, it’s full of nasty stuff just sitting around where anyone can find and possibly ingest it.

From the CDC:

How dangerous is eating dirt? My mother was pretty certain about this—damn dangerous. Soils contaminated by industrial or human pollutants pose considerable threat to anyone who eats them. Reports abound of lead poisoning and other toxicities in children eating contaminated soils. Similarly, we do not have to look farther than the last refugee camp or the slums of Calcutta or Tijuana or Basra to find the dangers of soils contaminated with untreated human waste. But the inherent biologic danger of soil is difficult to assess. Soil unaffected by the pressures of overpopulation, industry, and agriculture may be vastly different from the soil most of us encounter routinely.

Yeah ban dirt, that’s the ticket.

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The quote, above, is part of posting about the news that the US EPA refuses to ban lead in hunting ammunition.

It is worth your while to look up the posting at that link and to make sure that you read the comments.  There you will find gems like this one:

co2insanity says:

August 27, 2010 at 3:56 pm

The insanity of this is that the green types like wind turbines that slice and dice birds but don’t like lead shot.

Walter

August 25, 2010

Enbridge plans regional pipeline expansion from Fort McMurray, Alberta

RICHARD GILBERT, staff writer

Enbridge is making plans to invest more than $400 million in the expansion of a regional pipeline from Fort McMurray….

The Waupisoo Pipeline is a system that takes about 280,000 barrels per day of oilsands crude from Enbridge’s Cheecham Terminal to Edmonton via the Stonefell terminal near Bruderheim, Alberta. …

(Full Story)

Note: The article contains a map showing the route the pipeline will be taking.

Baby boom blamed on cold winter

PA

Wednesday, 25 August 2010

…independent midwife Joy Horner, of Birth Joy, said bad winters often led to baby booms.

She told the Portsmouth News: “We do see a rise in conception rates when there’s been severe weather. The weather does have an impact.

“The snow could definitely be the reason for the baby boom next month.

“If you can not get out of your house, you’ve got to find some way to keep yourself occupied.”….

Full story: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/baby-boom-blamed-on-cold-winter-2061676.html

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Save the environment.  Shower with a friend.

–Walter
http://lce.folc.ca

Mike De Souza, Postmedia News · Monday, Aug. 23, 2010

OTTAWA — Sustained cuts to Environment Canada weather-service programs have compromised the government’s ability to assess climate change and left it with a “profoundly disturbing” quality of information in its data network, says a newly released internal government report.The stinging assessment, obtained through an access-to-information request, suggests that Canada’s climate network infrastructure is getting progressively worse and no longer meets international guidelines.

“Environment Canada is on the road to junior partner status with respect to other agencies, both provincial and international, in the area of climate data gathering, quality control and archiving,” said the report, released to the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based environmental research group.

The analysis — Degradation in Environment Canada’s Climate Network, Quality Control and Data Storage Practices: A Call to Repair the Damage — noted the lack of data on climate conditions can affect decisions on major infrastructure such as roads, buildings and sewers as well as a number of “real-life” decisions made by Canadians every day….

Full Story

It is a good thing that the Pembina Institute made the Freedom of Information Act request, because very few of the rest of us mortals can.  However, the Pembina Institute puts its own political spin on the causes of the calamity by blaming Stephen Harper and his party instead of John Chretien and the Liberal Party, the real culprit responsible for the budget cuts, while the elephant in the room goes unnoticed.

Perhaps the report contained no information on what the elephant is.  If so, it is amazing that neither the author of the Financial Post article nor the Pembina Institute were sufficiently astute to notice the biggest problem of all, which is that the vast majority of Canada’s weather stations that once regularly reported on weather conditions now no longer exists.

One could argue that weather satellites eliminated the need for ground-based temperature measurements, but that would be far too simple a reaction. Weather satellites do not measure local conditions such as rainfall-and snowfall amounts, wind-speed and -direction, relative humidity and hours of sunshine — all absolute necessary not only for climate change modelling but also for accurately forecasting the weather.

The deterioration of the weather services programs was not only caused on account of automation, as claimed in the report, but primarily on account of closing down hundreds and perhaps thousands of weather stations.  That was done many years before Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada made it into Ottawa and even before the Conservative Party of Canada even came into existence.  The fault for the severe cutbacks to the data-collection network lies squarely with the Liberal Party.  It did not happen by accident.  It happened because it was a deliberate policy of the Liberal government.

Have a look at some pertinent comments on the report (at wattsupwiththat.com)

• MaxL says: August 23, 2010 at 2:45 pm

• Dave in Exile says: August 23, 2010 at 3:16 pm

• Dennis Nikols, P Geol. says: August 23, 2010 at 4:37 pm

One of those comments (the first on the list) was made by a Canadian weather forecaster.  It seems to be obvious that no other commenters either at the FP article or at the wattsupwithtthat.com posting have any appreciation of what is necessary to produce accurate weatherforecasts.  It even seems that most of the commenters see no need for accurate weather forecasts, which makes me wonder why they bother to comment on the article except to complain that funding for weather-forecasting is a waste of money.

Many of the commenters see the Environment Canada report as a cry to stimulate more funding, somewhat justifiably surmising that the bureaucrats responsible falsely feel that if we only throw more money at the problem, the quality of  the data produced by the Canadian weather services programs will be improved.  It is very doubtful that will any improvement will happen, although all extra funding will doubtlessly be used up.  After all, Environment Canada’s size grew within a relatively short time from an office with with about 15 employees to become a large employer with a workforce that grew to very large proportions.

Environment Canada is a federal government department with approximately 4,700 employees located in 100 communities. (Source: Environment Canada, “What We Do: Key Facts and Figures,” About Us, 31 March 2003, <http://www.ec.gc.ca/introec/keyfacts.htm> , 13 May 2004)

The Wikipedia entry for Environment Canada presently shows an employment figure of ~6,000, although I have no idea how old that figures is, while it seems to me that not very long ago I read an article that put the total number of Environment Canada employees at 10,000.  Darn it, I did not bookmark that.

Regardless of how much money is being thrown at that problem, even with the best intentions, the quality of the data outputs of the weather service programs cannot be better than the quality of the data that is being input: garbage in = garbage out.

The quoted paragraph is from a book review by Walter Russell Mead: Rajendra Pachauri: Voodoo Scientist and Lone Ranger of Love?” at americaninterest.com,  Rajendra Pachauri being the “formerly outspoken head” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  As the book review explains, and as Rajendra Pachauri has stated during the time he was still much in the public eye as the head of the IPCC while putting his foot in his mouth time and again by making outrageous, justifiably-criticized, propagandistic claims about the alleged calamity of an imminent global-warming catastrophe but nevertheless finding time to create publicity for his book, Return to Almora, the book is claimed to have been dashed off by Pachauri while flying from one international meeting to the next.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Walter Russell Mead’s review.  Having read various excerpts from the book that others used to substantiate their assertions that Return to Almora is somewhat talented writing of a morally vacuous plot spiced with liberal doses of smutt, the review is right on target.

The short summary I posted here does not do justice to the marvelous review by Walter Russell Mead, but if you like short summaries, the comments posted in response to the book review are jewels:

4 Comments

There are few things I enjoy as much as a really skillful critical evisceration. Bravo.

Comment by Dave – August 22, 2010 @ 5:58 pm

Pachauri sounds like an excellent case study for Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed

Comment by Randy – August 22, 2010 @ 6:40 pm

Yet again Walter Russell Mead performs a selfless humanitarian service: reading this clot of codswallop so we don’t have to.

Comment by vanderleun – August 22, 2010 @ 7:05 pm

I will never read “Return to Almora”, but I am glad I read this review.

Comment by Dracovert – August 22, 2010 @ 10:30 pm

Read the full review, and don’t neglect to read also IPCC now in Bizarroland: Pachauri releases “smutty” romance novel, a January 2010 review, posted at wattsupwiththat.com.

Breaking: Leading US Physicist Labels Satellitegate Scandal a ‘Catastrophe’
by John O’Sullivan, 2010 08 19

That posting is an excerpt from a longer PDF version of the article and contains a typo (‘comprised’ should be ‘compromised’). Here is the link to the PDF version.

Leading US Physicist Labels Satellitegate Scandal a ‘Catastrophe’
By John O’Sullivan, 2010 08 19

In his post Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable Anderson’s findings corroborate my own that NOAA sought to cover up the “sensor degradation” on their satellite, NOAA-16. The U.S. physicist agrees there may now be thousands of temperatures in the range of 415-604 degrees Fahrenheit automatically fed into computer climate models and contaminating climate models with a substantial warming bias. This may have gone on for a far longer period than the five years originally identified.

Anderson continues, “One has to marvel at either the scientific incompetence this reveals or the completely unethical behavior of NOAA and its paid researchers that is laid open before us.”

See also:

Satellite Temperature Record Now Unreliable 2010 08 18
By Charles R. Anderson

By Journal Staff, August 18, 2010

EDMONTON — A court has approved the sale of insolvent modular home builder Winalta Inc.’s sale of land in Drayton Valley and Bruderheim for a total of $1.6 million….(Full Story)

Ocean Acidification and the CO2-Propaganda

by Dr. Klaus L.E. Kaiser

Now, as the earth does not become rapidly overheated from CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere, nor the Arctic sea ice disappearing, nor the Pacific atolls drowning, nor the Amazonian jungle drying up, all as previously touted by the IPCC and their gendarmes and adjuvants, a new slogan on the supposed danger of CO2 is increasingly being heard, namely “Ocean Acidification”.

The supposedly happening Ocean Acidification, frequently termed “the other effect of CO2”, is largely based on unrealistic biological experiments, actual measurements over an insufficient time to allow any definite trend delineation, and a lack of understanding of the chemistry involved….(Full Story)