Feb 09 2012
The IPCC That Cried “Wolf!”
Major Update Below
We are witnessing the total credibility collapse of the Global Warming Alarmists as their shoddy statistical modeling and over-hyped conclusions start to unravel in the face of Nature’s brutal reality. I bet when the Green Lobby thought up the plan to take control of the world’s top economies – under the guise of saving the planet from imminent doom – it never occurred to these people that maybe, one day, they would have to prove the planet really was in imminent danger. If you look at the nonsense like the Hockey Stick fudged data and graph or the endless claims that every day-to-day change in nature we now see is caused by human industrial activity it is a wonder this canard did not fall apart sooner.
But all things will succumb to the power of Nature. We are a by-product of nature – not its enemy or nemesis. Nature’s natural path to date brought us to where we are. And whatever grand plan Gaia or God has in store for us, part of it entails Nature’s creation of humanity and its desire to build, fix, explore and succeed (biologically). We are not mindless animals that will consume until we die. We have enough awareness to know we need to be good and faithful stewards of this planet so that we can remain viable. Because without the a healthy planet we will die a horrible death of failure.
Nature will make sure of that.
We know we have to be careful. With great gifts comes great responsibility. Humanity has been handed great gifts. And what the IPCC and alarmists have concocted is the opposite of responsible stewardship. They got egotistical, power hungry and greedy. The fell to the same sickness that infects many who rise to a position of power. They suffer from the idea that notoriety and prestige automatically equates to wisdom and unique insight. Sadly, notoriety and prestige are simply a test of character – not a confirmation of it. Just look at DC and you can see how it works. Either you do great things with your success (e.g., Abraham Lincoln, George Washington) no matter how hard the slog, or you fail miserably despite being handed even the most mundane challenges (e.g., Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama).
Thank goodness we did not rely on Carter to build a lasting nation or Obama to heal a divided country.
We are seeing an ever expanding avalanche of devastating news regarding the mythology of global warming. If you have not seen these stories that have come out over the past weeks, enjoy them now in holistic vision of the state of the climate alarmist camp.
Example 1: It has now been scientifically proven the Himalayan Glaciers are not melting or receding at all. Instead of quirky field studies and questionable math, consistent and repetitive satellite data provides the correct measure of Himalayan Glacier status:
The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
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The scientists are careful to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges – sometimes dubbed the “third pole” – are definitely melting. Satellite images and reports confirm this. But over the study period from 2003-10 enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate.
Emphasis mine. Its called the water cycle and it has been operating for 100’s of millions of years. I mean – duh!
Example 2: In Germany a new book is coming out by a leading, recovering alarmist:
One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found.
The truth is most scientist cherish their vocation and the honor it implies. That honor is built upon quality work under the rigors of open review and comment. This is not something the infamous IPCC Hockey Team (made up of pretend scientists) would grasp. The alarmists abused the implied trust within the scientific community to push falsified graphs and manipulated data. No single group has done more damage to statistical processes than this group. And now they are being caught at it.
Major Update: The Der Speigel link is a must read. Pass this around to everyone you know!
Now, as the outgoing CEO of the renewable energy group RWE Innogy, he is about to embark on his next major battle. “I’m going to make enemies in all camps,” he says.
He wants to break a taboo. “The climate catastrophe is not occurring,” he writes in his book “Die Kalte Sonne” (The Cold Sun), published by Hoffmann and Campe, which will be in bookstores next week.
End Update
Example 3: Earth refuses to warm up in the face of rising CO2 levels:
In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.
Even more problematic for climate ‘science’ is the expanding body of evidence exposing the shoddy math behind the claims.
Here is a detailed explanation on why the claims of the IPCC statistical studies are exaggerated – since they don’t know how deal with uncertainty or keep it hidden:
Now, the “global average” referenced is not a static thing, in the sense that, say, measurements from identical (and identically situated) thermometers at fixed locations are averaged together and called (arbitrarily, of course), the global average. Instead, the global average as it is operationally defined mixes sources and locations freely each year (and even within years). Therefore, when the “average” is computed there will be some uncertainty in it. Further, the uncertainty is larger in times historical than in times present.
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Whatever else you do in life, you must not, you must never, look at the pretty red (or blue, etc.) straight line you have just drawn and claim it is, or think of it as, the real data. (It is only in climatology where I have seen scientists forget error bars, and then pitch a fit when somebody points out the omission. You at least have to put predictive, and not parameters-based, error bars on the line, even ignoring measurement uncertainty of the data.)
Here is more horrible statistical abuse (or abuse of statistics):
In other words, a quarter of the global ocean has been sampled less than once a year per 10,000 sq. km. by Argo floats … yet they claim an error of only a few thousandths of a degree in the global average.
Can you take the temperature in your home town once a year and claim to know the temperature for 100 km in any direction to a thousandth of a degree for the year?
Laughingstock comes to mind here.
I really enjoy this chart, which shows how the preponderance of scientific study concludes the current climate is COOLER than it was during Medieval Times (before the industrial revolution).
Figure Description: The distribution, in 0.5°C increments, of Level 1 Studies that allow one to identify the degree by which peak Medieval Warm Period temperatures either exceeded (positive values, red) or fell short of (negative values, blue) peak Current Warm Period temperatures.
Since our current climate is not historically warmer than the Medieval Warm Period, it is very UNLIKELY any current warming is dominated or driven by CO2 levels, and it most likely all driven by whatever process ended the Little Ice Age in the mid 1800’s. This shows the IPCC is focused on the minority view in those blue colored studies, not the majority conclusion made in the far more numerous red colored studies. My eyeball tells me we have around 20 blues and 90 reds, making the minority view around 18% of the total study space.
And speaking of consensus, I find this analysis (pdf file) damning to the claim the science is settled and a majority of scientists concur with the alarmists:
How can you deny that man made global warming is real when 97 percent of climate scientists agree that it is true?” At this point I have to explain that the 97 percent figure is not what it appears to be.
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The survey was sent to 10,257 scientists. It was intended to be very easy to respond to and was supposed to take only two minutes to complete. As a result 3,146 scientists responded to the survey.
OK, so 70% of scientists had no opinion (30% responded). What happens next is a sin against statistics and polling:
When compared to pre-1800 levels, do you think mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? Of the 3,146 respondents 90% said risen. Herein lies one of the flaws in the survey. This is a loaded question.
You can go read why the question is loaded, but the point is 27% of those surveyed agreed (90% of 30%) with the comment. Of course, it has been warming since the Little Ice Age which ended in the 1800’s, so I am surprised even 10% said otherwise. PhDs just aren’t what they used to be.
Question number two is even more suspect. The question is: Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? Of the 3,146 respondents only 82% answered yes to this question.
For those math challenged scientists out there, that means 24.6% of the people surveyed (of which 30% responded) agreed humans have some effect. Is this CO2? No, the question is much broader than that and includes urbanization, deforestation, etc. Things I am much more concerned about than CO2.
But the final insult to the intelligence is this:
The 97% figure from the survey comes from a whittling down of the accepted number of responses from 3,146 to 79. The 79 scientist are those that said they have recently published 50% of their papers in the area of climate change. Of these, 76 of 79 answered “risen” to questions one (96.2%). How this number is not 100% is very strange. As to question two 75 of 77 answered “yes” (97.4%).
As I said, a crime against statistics. These ‘scientist’ shrunk the pool down to a measly 0.77% of those surveyed. The 79 special responders are 2.5% of the total who responded. The 97% number is a complete fudge. A lie. Propaganda.
How long did these people think they could run this scam? Who do they think they are – Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting?
Update: A lively debate on the Himalayan glacier false alarm is naturally occurring over at WUWT.
Not, a crime against statistics, AJ. A crime against humanity. The biggest con game ever attempted.
Kindly note that the people pushing the global warming scam had carefully arranaged to make themselves a great deal of money out of it. And power – for most of these people, power is far more valuable than money.
These con men MUST be tried, convicted, and punished. Long prison sentences, massive fines. For the integrity of both government and science.
BTW, I think this highlights the need to put scientific policy under the supervision of engineers. We engineers have the scientific knowledge to follow the arguments, leavened with the realism to avoid going down ideological rabbit holes.
The rise in Global temperatures in the last 20-30 years or the last 200 years (since the LIA) is insignificant when compared to the warming of the last 10,000 years (exiting the last global ice age). The earth has gone through a natural warming cycle and has warmed significantly in that time – having nothing to do with man’s presence.
The earth has gone through periods where the CO2 content was much higher than it is today – again – a natural cycle. It is incredibly arrogant to believe that the current climate is any more natural than previous climates (or future climates) and that we can control the earth’s climate to make it do our bidding.
We need a RICO investigation of AL GOREleone and his “global warming” criminal syndicate and the demshevik party, member of the international marxist movement, bent on destroying the West/capitalism/USA.
I tried to follow the thread over at Briggs. An interesting discussion of statistical methods and the difference between predictions and projections. One thing that stood out was that the major forcings in the models need to be chosen/weighted to establish a predictive outcome. So Phil Jones or Michael Mann can weigh aerosol effects or GHG radiance to whatever level they want to get the answer they want. And their rationale: I am the climate expert.
It boggles the mind that GHGs would have a bigger influence on climate than ocean currents (conductive/convective heat transfer) or cloud formation (radiant heat transfer) – yet that is the assumption these guys have made.
What ever happened to doing the old sanity check they drummed into our heads in engineering school?
To answer my own question, I think MikeM is right:
“BTW, I think this highlights the need to put scientific policy under the supervision of engineers. We engineers have the scientific knowledge to follow the arguments, leavened with the realism to avoid going down ideological rabbit holes.”
The first question an engineer would ask themselves is: “Do we really have proof that the climate is changing?” If the answer was “maybe” then the next question would be: “Is it reasonable to believe that a fractional percent increase in a GHG that makes up a small fraction of our atmosphere is causing a catastrophic change in our global climate? Even if the answer to that question was “maybe” then we’d ask question 3: “Are there any other more likely explanations for whatever climate change is occuring?”
I can’t imagine anyone but a zealot getting through those three questions and coming up with the answer: CAGW.
Layman1, first I’m not disagreeing with you, but global warming is not worth an engineer spending his time on it. It should just be turned over to law enforcement to press charges against them for fraud. Anyone that has given a casual observance to the weather over the last 50 years knows that all of this has been a scam. Now it is entirely coincidental that I’m an engineer, because I’m sure that common sense would tell me the same thing as my engineering background did.
I’ve read just this week that ‘gasp’ ‘panic’ the arctic caps and mountain peaks snow and ice has not melted as rapidly as expected, in fact, ice cover has ‘grown’ of course some mountain peaks even have ‘heaven forbid’ MORE ice than they did 20 years ago. The seas have not risen as expected from all the ice melting.
I’ve decided there is no such thing as ‘predictions’, it is all fraud and misdirection. Yes, it’s a huge scam on a global scale.
Kinda like obama now exempting states from ‘no child left behind’. goodness knows we don’t want teachers unions to lose members just because they can’t teach. let’s just accept that children learning is not as important as obama’s career and union members jobs.
That Der Speigel link was interesting:
“While books by climate heretics usually receive little attention, it could be different in Vahrenholt’s case. “His fame,” says Marotzke, “will ensure that there will be a debate on the issue.”
Layman1, Redteam:
Of course it’s a fraud, that’s why I think formal criminal charges are required.
My call for engineering supervision was more general. Scientific research and theory has a license to be wrong. This is entirely appropriate, part of the whole scientific method is the creation and proving/disproving of a hypothesis. But it leaves science vulnerable to politics. There is no penalty for being wrong – and thus no penalty for selling the facts out for political or financial gain.
Engineering does NOT have a license to be wrong. Which means that engineers are good for exercising oversight over science. They have the scientific knowledge to follow a scientific argument, blended with the hard-edged realism to NOT follow that argument into folly.
The problem with giving even engineers “authority” over any part of the system: anytime you create an elite, no matter how well intentioned, that elite will then be corrupted and use it’s new-found power to extort cash and power from the public at large. That’s exactly what the scientists involved in this attempted to do – exchanging one elite for another is no bargain.
Everyone and every group is corruptible, give the right incentives. The key is to never let any one group have the power. Checks and balances, checks and balances. Maybe give scientists first say, give a significant group of engineers a veto power, and give the public veto power over both of them. A critic would say that this would only guarantee that nothing would ever get done, but that’s fine with me.
as far as combating this thing:
Exposure and ridicule are the only tools we have, and they are very good ones. They are the ones that AJ and those like him are employing now, and they’re working. That’s how you change public opinion.
Charging people with crimes is an entertaining fantasy but not a real plan, because even though the actions are reprehensible they haven’t been criminal – not to mention the impossible jurisdictional issues.
If a scientist is wrong, even intentionally wrong, then he deserves to be fired but he hasn’t committed a crime. If a journalist does a bad job and only publishes one side of an issue he also deserves to be fired, but he hasn’t committed a crime. We can’t go down the path of the 3rd world countries and use the police to punish everyone we have a political disagreement with – that way lies madness.
note: every one time capitalist who’s gotten crosswise with Putin ends up being charged with “fraud” or some other financial crime. Russia for the last 100 years (who am I kidding? for the last 500) is exhibit “A” in how NOT to handle political disputes.
WWS, I’m not so sure. If a person commits fraud, that is purposely putting out a false story or whatever for personal financial gain, that is a criminal act. If someone comes to you, tells you a completely false story, gets you to invest your time and money on their behalf, then you find out that they were lying and were actually financially rewarded for their shenanigans. I’m relatively sure you could have them convicted of fraud. Either that, or you should get a different DA elected at the next election.
If the reporter you mentioned only publishes one side, and gains fraudulently, it would constitute a crime.
The problem is the “state of mind” requirement for conviction, or in legalese, the “mens rea”. For a specific intent crime like Fraud you have to prove State of Mind at the time beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s a high bar to get over. You can suspect, but legal Proof can only come if there is documented evidence (sworn, written) that the person’s overriding intent was fraud and nothing else.
In this instance, money as proof of intent doesn’t work because the action is too dissociated from the payoff. Someone steals a credit card and runs up charges on it, it’s easy to prove fraud because you have a direct wrong action leading to an immediate payoff – not to mention that any written order for goods (even electronic) stands as written evidence against in court.
But as soon as there are more than a couple steps in between the fraudulent act and the payoff, it gets damn close to impossible to prove. If there is *any* vaguely plausible reason for the actions other than a fraudulent one, then the court is required to assume that the vaguely plausible action is true. (yeah, defendants are favored) All an opinion writer has to prove is that what he wrote was his opinion and nothing else. (he writes his opinions for money every day, and it’s not illegal) That’s why charges are never issued in this kinds of things, DA’s don’t like to get made fools of in court.
WWS, i agree with what you said, but in the case of opinion, I’d think it is obvious if the situation is one that just involves opinion vs misleading.
I’ll give you a simple example. Say a guy has a broken leg(he broke it falling off a ladder while painting his living room) and he comes in to see you for representation to sue his neighbor because he knows his neighbor has good property insurance. You agree to take the case on contingency. You spend 50 hours on the case, then you discover the truth. He don’t get a dime, you don’t get a dime. You gonna just live with it? I don’t think so…
All these guys involved in the global warming fraud are not doing it so much to defraud anyone as they are doing it to make a lot of money in funding grants and publicity. A single person is not so likely to be harmed as a government that is funding all the research is. He’ll likely just walk, unfortunately.
I have no way of knowing the extent of the fraud taking place, but I find it hard to believe that anyone that is actively involved in the IPCC business seriously believes in global warming. They all know it’s a fraud and they know why they’re supporting it.
I think we’re certainly on the same side on all this baloney…..
I want to sure and point out that I agree with you that the whole global warming scam is a fraud! The problem is that it’s been a completely legal fraud, and there’s a whole lot more of that around than most people realize. There’s a lot of rotten things that happen that can’t be acted on by a court.
Interesting example:
“You agree to take the case on contingency. You spend 50 hours on the case, then you discover the truth. He don’t get a dime, you don’t get a dime. You gonna just live with it?”
It will probably surprise you to know that every lawyer who takes contingency cases has that happen to them almost every week. And yes, they just live with it – no other options. That’s why very few lawyers will take contingency work anymore, and why the ones that do demand such a high cut, to pay for the dozens of times this happens to them.
It’s also why a prudent lawyer won’t commit to taking a contingency case until he’s had some time to look into it and convince himself there’s a high chance of success. Paid by the hour is a different matter, because bluntly put, then it doesn’t matter to the lawyer who wins or loses. Nothing wrong with a hopeless case if you’re paid by the hour.
And that’s why the most successful lawyers will charge a high fee, paid in advance, just for a consultation. To separate the wheat from the chaff, nothing more.
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