IPCC Fails Again

[Jerome]

IPCC Fails Again

The Netherlands has asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate claim in a landmark 2007 report that more than half the country was below sea level, the Dutch government said Friday.

According to the Dutch authorities, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be asked to account for its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP.

The incident could cause further embarrassment for the IPCC, which recently admitted a claim in the same report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was wrong.

IPCC experts calculated that 55 percent of the Netherlands was below sea level by adding the area below sea level -- 26 percent -- to the area threatened by river flooding -- 29 percent -- Vallaart said.

World-Wide Scientific Consensus?

[Crumb]

[Jerome]

Does anyone know if the IPCC did any real science?

[fragment]

The IPCC doesn't "do science", it reports on it.

It's also got a very open review process; practically anyone can sign up as an expert reviewer and comment on the drafts. Which makes me wonder why a bunch of stories about errors in the working group 2 report are turning up a year and a half after it was released, when the people finding them could have reviewed the draft stage and improved the accuracy of the report. Surely it couldn't be that there are people who would rather discredit the IPCC than improve it?

[Doctor X]

And yet . . . Obama is still President.








How could that happen?

--J.D.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by fragment

It's also got a very open review process...

That said, review has pretty clearly failed in at least a few instances in the WG2 report. Here's an interesting read on the Himalaya glacier error. Bottom line: check the sources for yourself.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by fragment

The IPCC doesn't "do science", it reports on it.

Ahh, the World-Wide Scientific Consensus is just from a reporter.

[Doctor X]

But Obama is still President.

--J.D.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

Ahh, the World-Wide Scientific Consensus is just from a reporter.

If you're actually interested in the science, you could go and read it. But you're not, are you? You've already made up your mind up about what to believe without cracking open a single scientific paper, am I right?

[Doctor X]

Originally Posted by fragment

You've already made up your mind up about what to believe without cracking open a single scientific paper, am I right?

Which is how we know Obama is not the President.





I mean, he said the Supreme Court was going to rule on it . . . over a year ago . . . must be busy or something.

--J.D.

[fragment]

As usual, RealClimate has an interesting and informative write-up.

[Jerome]

Originally Posted by fragment

If you're actually interested in the science, you could go and read it. But you're not, are you? You've already made up your mind up about what to believe without cracking open a single scientific paper, am I right?

Wrong, I have read many of the IPCC reports.

[Pan Narrans]

While you weren't running one your medium-sized corporations, I take it.

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally Posted by JEROME DA GNOME

Wrong, I have read many of the IPCC reports.

I thought the IPCC reports weren't science.

[Adam]

[Kael]

Exactly, and because they're not science, anything and everything they claim must be false. QED.

[fragment]

Funnily enough, over on TR I invited JDG to have a discussion of the scientific papers with me, and ignore the IPCC. He evaded doing that.

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by fragment

Funnily enough, over on TR I invited JDG to have a discussion of the scientific papers with me, and ignore the IPCC. He evaded doing that.

Fragment, what is Talk Rational?

Is it another offshoot of Infidels (which, by the way, seems to be winding down its usefulness more with each passing day).

[The Man]

List of IIDB Spinoff Forums - RnRWiki

[F-X]

Dear IPCC,

Can you please get your shit together? I am starting to doubt what you say.

African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC
One more alarming claim in the IPCC's 2007 report is disintegrating under closer examination, says Christopher Booker

Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC's 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.

Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.

African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC - Telegraph

[Clutch Munny]

The offending passage:

Projected reductions in yield in some countries could be as much as 50% by 2020, and crop net revenues could fall by as much as 90% by 2100, with small-scale farmers being the most affected. This would adversely affect food security in the continent.

Even the Telegraph's hatchet job notes:

the group's co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC's 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by "up to 30 per cent".

So now "likely P" is supposed to be at odds with "could be not-P". And an up to 50% decline is alarmism, while an up to 30% decline is a totally different conclusion.

This was an unclear phrasing, to be sure -- even an inaccurate one. It is one of many, no doubt, in a massive and deliberately inclusive collection of works. A "catastrophe"? Only in the minds of crazed denialists and their dupes.

[F-X]

A "catastrophe"?

I thought the reporter was deliberately using the same sort of language the IPCC uses, to be ironic.

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

"global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent"

That is a catastrophic reduction in food production. See?

[Clutch Munny]

So it's not really a serious problem. Okay! Glad we agree that the attempt to depict this as a noteworthy problem with the IPCC would be a catastrophic stupidity.

[F-X]

Why do you trust the UN? Are you really a reptilian overlord?

[The Lone Ranger]

Well, I for one am glad to know that a possible 30% reduction in crop yields is not only not catastrophic, but isn't even significant.

Whew!

I mean, it's not as if there are food shortages in Africa already, after all. Oh, wait ...