IPCC Working Group 1 Responds on Stolen Emails
For the Record:
Working Group One of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has put out an official response to the East Anglia University email thefts:
In conclusion, IPCC WGI firmly stands behind its unique procedures and behind the scientific
community and their collective work which has been, and continues to be, the basis of unbiased,
open and transparent assessments of the current knowledge on the climate system and its changes.
The complete text is below and the document is attached.
Bern, 4. December 2009
Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) firmly stands
behind the conclusions of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the community of researchers
and its individuals providing the scientific basis, and the procedures of IPCC Assessments.
Comments on blogs and in the media about the contents of a large number of private emails stolen
from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, have questioned
both the validity of the key findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) and the integrity
of its authors. IPCC WGI condemns the illegal act which led to private emails being posted on the
Internet and firmly stands by the findings of the AR4 and by the community of researchers worldwide
whose professional standards and careful scientific work over many years have provided the basis for
these conclusions.
The key finding of IPCC AR4, "The warming in the climate system is unequivocal [...] ", is based on
measurements made by many independent institutions worldwide that demonstrate significant
changes on land, in the atmosphere, the ocean and in the ice-covered areas of the Earth. Through
further, independent scientific work involving statistical methods and a range of different climate
models, these changes have been detected as significant deviations from natural climate variability
and have been attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases.
The body of evidence is the result of the careful and painstaking work of hundreds of scientists
worldwide. The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the
scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges, many of whom
have dedicated their time and effort to develop these findings in teams of Lead Authors within the
production of the series of IPCC Assessment Reports during the past 20 years.
The IPCC assessment process is designed to ensure consideration of all relevant scientific
information from established journals with robust peer review processes, or from other sources which
have undergone robust and independent peer review. The entire report writing process of the IPCC is
subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as by governments. Consequently,
there is full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of published literature
and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views.
In compliance with the procedures of IPCC, the conclusions of AR4 have undergone scrutiny in the
form of several stages of reviews by peers and governments, have been revised and refined to take
into account these review comments, and have finally been approved word by word by the
governments of the world1.
Every layer in the process (including large author teams, extensive and multi-step reviews,
independent monitoring of review compliance, and plenary approval by governments) plays a major
role in keeping IPCC assessments comprehensive, unbiased, open to the identification of new
relevant literature, and policy relevant but not policy prescriptive. Therefore, no individual scientist in
the IPCC assessment process is in a position to change the conclusions, or to exclude relevant peerreviewed
papers and scientific work from an IPCC Assessment Report.
In conclusion, IPCC WGI firmly stands behind its unique procedures and behind the scientific
community and their collective work which has been, and continues to be, the basis of unbiased,
open and transparent assessments of the current knowledge on the climate system and its changes.
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| WGIstatement04122009.pdf | 420.79 KB |
Wow that Whitewash was quick. I expected them to actually pretend to examine the matter first. I guess they just threw it in the washer and threw on the heavy spin cycle. Bingo report done in 1 hour.
Expect more of this garbage before coppenhagen. After Coppenhagen, any investigation and due dilligence grinds to a halt.
"Wow that Whitewash was quick. I expected them to actually pretend to examine the matter first."
Duh. If the IPCC hadn't responded so quickly, you'll simply say that they were caught with their pants down and needed time to do damage control or something. Whatever the IPCC does, you'll just find a way to 'reason' about it to 'prove' that the IPCC is wrong.
Ad hoc 'logic' from the inactivists.
-- bi, http://frankbi.wordpress.com/
This is what the IPCC-response said about the CRU-scientists:
"The internal consistency from multiple lines of evidence strongly supports the work of the
scientific community, including those individuals singled out in these email exchanges, many of whom
have dedicated their time and effort to develop these findings in teams of Lead Authors within the
production of the series of IPCC Assessment Reports during the past 20 years"
They didn't need an investigation for that because the evidence the CRU-scientists helped to provide has been on record for quite a while.
And talking about speed: nothing surpasses the tempo in which you guys made up your minds about the nature of these emails.
The e-mails and data quickly reveal the deception that has occured and is corroberated by real life events, like the Hockey stick fisaco. The motivation of big $$$ is clearly present to exagerate a small issue in global warming. Sceince has been corrupted in a big way and to simply ignore this and greenwash it will not attract any new supporters but will rapidly create many opponents. We are witnessing the slow implosion of the environmental radicals before our eyes. Keep us these laughable tactics, as in reality no carbon emissions will occur without public support. Right now Global warming has no credibility and is losing support fast. At my business I bring up climategate and tell people to research it themselves. They come back the next day and say "wow, what a scam". We will see which comes out on top. Grassroots Truth or big monied Pr SPin and lies. I wouldn't bet on the Big Corrupt green monster coming out on top of this one, people are not stupid.
CamMacKay you were the bringer of glad tidings: "as in reality no carbon emissions will occur without public support."
hey - the public fully supports carbon emissions enthusiastically!
Remember -- Phlogiston, Jock Shockley, and CamMacKay can't be bothered to actually read what the IPCC or any other scientists write unless it supports what their opinions are.
Nice one, Littlemore. Your immediate support for UNWG1, and your whole-hearted assumption of their credibility in the face of the CRU emails, rather destroys your own credibility. Then again, I suppose Hoggan's clients will keep paying you to write this bilge until the scam dies. Good luck with that.
This is priceless!
So much for "Deniers" being funded by "Big Oil", here's CRU getting their snouts in the trough.
Hypocrites
From: "Mick Kelly"
From "Watts up With That"
The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.
About time too. My only fear is that with the same kind of fraudsters doing the review, is that it will be a "whirewash"
Get some true "independents" in like Anthony watts, Steve McIntyre and Pat Michaels to scrutinise the data. Only then will I and the general Public, believe it
"True independents"?
Well, if the fossil fuel industry funded PR-campaign can make you believe that it can make you believe anything.
By the way that Anthony Watts you are speaking of is the same guy who recently tried to suppress a video. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk
And Pat Michaels is the same 'scientist' who knowingly misrepresented Hansen's graphs in Senate testimony. This is what the New York Times columnist Nobel Prize winner Professor Paul Krugman said about it:
"In 1988, Dr. Hansen was well out in front of his scientific colleagues, but over the years that followed he was vindicated by a growing body of evidence. By rights, Dr. Hansen should have been universally acclaimed for both his prescience and his courage. But soon after Dr. Hansen's 1988 testimony, energy companies began a campaign to create doubt about global warming, in spite of the increasingly overwhelming evidence. And in the late 1990's, climate skeptics began a smear campaign against Dr. Hansen himself.
Leading the charge was Patrick Michaels, a professor at the University of Virginia who has received substantial financial support from the energy industry. In Senate testimony, and then in numerous presentations, Dr. Michaels claimed that the actual pace of global warming was falling far short of Dr. Hansen's predictions. As evidence, he presented a chart supposedly taken from a 1988 paper written by Dr. Hansen and others, which showed a curve of rising temperatures considerably steeper than the trend that has actually taken place.
In fact, the chart Dr. Michaels showed was a fraud -- that is, it wasn't what Dr. Hansen actually predicted. The original paper showed a range of possibilities, and the actual rise in temperature has fallen squarely in the middle of that range. So how did Dr. Michaels make it seem as if Dr. Hansen's prediction was wildly off? Why, he erased all the lower curves, leaving only the curve that the original paper described as being "on the high side of reality.""
Pat Michaels is a paid hack.
Look at this from Deltoid:
"Speaking of hacks, Bob Burton has discovered some more about Pat Michaels funding:
[New Hope Environmental Services], which he wholly owns, describes itself as "an advocacy science consulting firm." These days, New Hope's main activities are publishing the firm's blog, World Climate Report, and helping anonymous clients to publicize "findings on climate change and scientific and social perspectives that may not otherwise appear in the popular literature or media."
While both Michaels and New Hope Environmental Services are secretive about who their clients are, a little piece of their funding jigsaw is tucked away in the backblocks of the 2006 and 2007 (pdf's - see page 10) annual returns of the Cato Institute. In its returns, Cato reports that since April 2006 they have paid $242,900 for the "environmental policy" services of Michaels' firm."
And the third one in this noble trio, Steve McIntyre, is the 'agit prop auditor' who has developed the art of smearing while apparently keeping his hands clean. This was most recently shown in the case of Briffa whom he oh so subtly accused of having cherry picked his data. He kept hassling the man for years about the Yamal data having had these in his possession all along as he recently acknowledged.
There is only one sucker born every day, but by great coincidence they all seem to meet each other on this blog.
Normally scientists, accountants, engineers are hired by firms for their professional expertise not too bend the truth. Claiming that Pat Micheals or fred Singer are biased is absurd. They do the science and get paid for their work.
A guy like Micheal Mann on the other hand gets paid to obstruct the science, fudge data and corrupt the peer review process. The work of the skeptics you mention has been proven to be accurate, and your claims become laughable when so called "Big Oil" funds alarmism at a much greater rate. Micheal mann was is in the pocket of Big oil and so was Dr. Jones (No relation to indiana). Where is the smear campaign from the enviro nut cases on them?
What dishonest nonsense.
Glad to hear from real scientists. I wish the media wouldn't let denialists sucker them. Ian Plimer was briefly shown on CBC news last night.
Why even look at the emails, the question of AGW is moot, the theory has already been disproven.
In science the burden of proof is on the theory.
The theory must provide the proof.
If the theory makes a prediction, which it must to not simply be a hypothesis, and the prediction is wrong then the theory is discarded.
That is part of the scientific method.
The AGW theory predicts that an increase in CO2 causes an increase in global temperature.
CO2 is higher now then it was in 1990.
Average global temperature is the same now as it was in 1990.
The prediction made by the theory is wrong therefore the AGW theory must be discarded.
QED.
It is called the scientific method. It takes only one wrong result to disprove a theory.
For a satirical look and the climategate programming:
Anthropogenic Global Warming Virus Alert.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
You don't know much about science, do you?
There may be some confusion between falsifiability
www.wikipedia.org.wiki/Falsifiability
and testability
www.wikipedia.org.wiki/Testability
If you honestly believe that the preponderance of AGW alarmist research
has adhered to 'testability' by allowing, much less encouraging, reproducible sets of counterexamples, you need to quit mixing meds.
Much of what is posted here has little to do with actual science. There is, however, an abundance of advocacy research.
"allowing ... reprocible (sic) sets of counterexamples" ? That sounds like nonsense to me. How would climate scientists not "allow" the basic underlying theory (CO2 is a greenhouse gas - the more there is of it in the atmosphere the more heat that will be trapped) to be tested? Anyone with the laboratory equipment that Tyndall already had 150 years ago can reproduce his tests.
From an article by Dr.Cormac O'Raifeartaigh in The Irish Times:
"Many readers will know that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’. Another breakthrough occurred in science that fateful year, this one with an Irish connection. The discovery attracted much less attention than Darwin’s theory of evolution at the time, but it has become one of the hottest topics in science today (literally).
In July 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall, one of the great scientists of the 19th century, established that certain atmospheric gases absorb heat quite strongly. This innocuous-sounding discovery was established over a few short weeks, but it provided the solution to one of the great riddles of science: the famous ‘greenhouse effect’.
The greenhouse effect was first proposed by the French polymath Joseph Fourier, almost a century before Tyndall’s experiments. Fourier had wondered how the earth maintains its warm temperature, and he speculated that while heat from the sun passes easily through our atmosphere on the way to earth, heat radiated outwards by the warm earth must somehow be trapped in the atmosphere. The hypothesis was highly controversial, as it was widely assumed that gases are transparent to heat.
Tyndall, a fierce proponent of the new experimental method of science, devised a series of simple experiments to test Fourier’s hypothesis. Working in the dusty basement of the Royal Institution in London in the summer of 1859, he soon established that, while most gases are indeed transparent to light and heat, some gases – carbon dioxide and water vapour in particular – can absorb heat energy at certain wavelengths. As traces of each gas were known to exist in the earth’s atmosphere, the puzzle of the earth’s temperature was solved."
What a good article; here's the link to it:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0803/1224251928788.html
And Dr. O’Raifeartaigh's blog looks interesting also:
http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/
Might I recommend a vision exam so you are able to accurately read(sic) these posts? Or, perhaps some remedial (sic) English if in fact you believe you made a proper effort yet fell woefully short.
My 9-year-old niece is available for tutoring (sic) if you're ready to admit your shortcoming.
Witless and impotent abuse. Well it is a bit of a change to your usual hodgepodge of confused and confusing remarks.
Witless and impotent abuse indeed. You must lead a very sheltered life; the rest of us ought to be thankful!
I shall endeavor to accomodate what appears as an embarassingly low thresh-hold for confusion.
An upside; while you read, your tortured keyboard enjoys well-deserved respite.
"I shall endeavor to accomodate what appears as an embarassingly low thresh-hold for confusion"
Really? You mean that henceforward you will try to stick to truth and logic? Is that a promise?
Arie, the heating effect of CO2 does not increase with higher concentrations. Its effect diminishes as concentration increases to a point where increasing concentration has no further heating effect.
Please get your basic science right before you sound off!
Provide some evidence for this wacky new view of the properties of CO2.
I have amended this post. I had overlooked the bit between brackets in my previous post that justified Shockley's inference.So I have withdrawn my comment on his reading ability with my apologies. This does not mean however that the bit between brackets was wrong.
Read this:
"A direct relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and global warming has been established in a new study by a team of scientists.
The study was done by Damon Matthews, a professor in Concordia University's Department of Geography, Planning and the Environment, along with colleagues from Victoria and the UK.
The team used a combination of global climate models and historical climate data to show that there is a simple linear relationship between total cumulative emissions and global temperature change.
Until now, it has been difficult to estimate how much climate will warm in response to a given carbon dioxide emissions scenario because of the complex interactions between human emissions, carbon sinks, atmospheric concentrations and temperature change.
Matthews and colleagues show that despite these uncertainties, each emission of carbon dioxide results in the same global temperature increase, regardless of when or over what period of time the emission occurs."
Could you provide a link, or the source of the paper?
It would be nice if it was that simple, but of course there are all kinds of other inputs apart from CO2.
It's the complexity of the system over time that makes it hard to read. In order to fully accept the current science, you have to be prepared to believe that scientists have unlocked the distant past and the future.
Scientists thinking they know more than they do is nothing new.
Actually, scientists are more likely to realise what they do and do not know, as opposed to bloggers who know little about science and less about how little they know. It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect:
"...The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Getting a couple scientists to stick their names on a concept that elevates themselves and belittles everyone else is a real shocker.
Science is basically this: "We found out what people previously believed is wrong, because we are very very smart."
Future scientists will say the same about current climate concepts. It's what science does.
No, science is more like: "What happens if I try this? Hey, cool, that helps to explain that." It's about finding out stuff, not about showing off.
That's on the promo wrapper, VJ. The reality is much more human.
So. Are you saying that Professor Ian Plimer with a Ph.D. in Geology is not a real scientist?
What constitutes a real scientist? One that fits your pre-conceived notions?
A professor of mining geology: a scientist, but not a climate scientist.
Next question: is he a good scientist?
"...Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite.
It is hard to understate the depth of scientific ignorance that the inclusion of this information demonstrates. It is comparable to a biologist claiming that plants obtain energy from magnetism rather than photosynthesis..."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ian-plimer-heaven-and-earth/story-e6frg8no-1225710387147
The Met office announced they will be releasing their data and is seeking permission to release other data belonging to other countries as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/05/met-office-publish-climate-data
Here is a quote....
The Met Office is to publish some of the data it uses to analyse climate change after allegations that researchers have manipulated the evidence supporting manmade global warming.
Information collected by more than 1,000 weather stations from across the world would be released next week, a Met Office spokesman said.
That will be a surprise to anyone who's bothered to look at the actual records. Andrew30, it's probably foolish of me to try and respond to your confident ignorance, unless possibly it's sincere. (VJ, thanks for mentioning the Kruger-Dunning effect. I hadn't heard of it, but I've lived it.) If you look at the GISS (Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies) record, for example (see http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.txt), 1990 was the warmest year since the record began in 1880. It was 0.38 degrees C. above the 1951-1980 average (GISS's baseline). Perhaps you meant to cite 1998, which was even warmer and which is the usual benchmark for the false allegation that global warming has inconveniently "stopped" in the 2000s. 1998 was even warmer than 1990 - +0.56 degrees. It had a lot of help from a very strong El Nino. Nevertheless, four of the years since then have been as warm (1) or warmer (3), and 9 out of the 10 years since 2000 have been warmer than 1990. Similarly, 10-year and 5-year moving average temperatures (the all-important trend rather than isolated years) have risen precipitously since 1990. In recent years, the 5-year average has been about twice as high as it was in 1990.
Has far been overshadowed by the Peter principle and Group think within the climate science community. You think throwing fame and fortune at a bunch of scientists the more they ramp up the scare rhetoric doesn'tmotivate them? Climate change is the biggest exageration of all time. It's the most nebulous unprovable theory in history. Start thinking for yourself before its too late.
They all live like rock stars and have beautiful men/women throwing themselves at them . . .
I suppose the email correspondence is also responsible for the fact that ice recovery in the arctic this fall is tracking neck to neck with the lowest ever on record (http://nsidc.org), or that all of the other indicators are behaving towards the most extreme scenarios predicted by the IPCC?
One positive outcome of all of this is that the emails will be fully examined by people who actually understand what these guys were discussing and can state clearly why nothing about the science has been undermined. This whole tempest has also inspired Obama to make more of a showing at the critical hour in Copenhagen. Mr Harper will be dragged kicking & screaming along, since he has stated we will match the US response.
FM
edited to add: Meanwhile our esteemed PM is touring China trying to sell our filthy tar sands oil. Could it be more obvious?
I'm also hopeful that the major media will eventually do some real investigative journalism on this. The media always wants a fresh angle. The angle so far has been "awkward." The new angle: "climategate hysteria." PBS's "Frontline" and, here in Canada, "The Fifth Estate" have the time, the skill and the credibility to do a good job of reaching national audiences with a responsible story on the subject.
I'll say. You don't get much more unique than lying, exaggerating, manipulating the data, withholding data, corrupting the peer-review system and then claiming a consensus.
Should we grade your comments on the scale you have just provided? How many do you think you've scored so far?