Friday
Dec212012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Cheating at the IPCC
Dec 21, 2012 Climate: IPCC Donna Laframboise has a must-read article about the IPCC creating made-to-order journal articles:
IPCC officials know that the papers to be published in that issue of the PNAS have not been written yet. Their own document says the submission deadline isn’t until January 31, 2013.
So why is the IPCC giving its authors this kind of heads-up? Is it clairvoyant? Does it already know that these papers will be so ground-breaking the IPCC won’t be able to ignore them?
Perhaps. Or perhaps IPCC officials are telling authors where to look for material that fills inconvenient gaps in their narrative.
Reader Comments (53)
I am so surprised.
Get those papers in boys. Quick as you can.
'Cause we're sinking'
This is a typical ploy that occurred at Wikipedia. Whenever the warmists (IPCC) editors lost the argument and some real sciene got in, they would just get another paper written to rewrite the science.
It was unbelievably corrupt. Imagine a court case, where the prosecution could just rewrite the law if the defence ever found a way to defend their innocent client.
I thought this was how post-normal science worked, you write the papers to fit the narritive? no?
I don't think many people are going to bother reading the IPCC report this time around. Everyone knows* that it's nowhere near as bad as they said previously, so wolf has been cried too loud.
* as in Savile, etc.
TheBigYin, I hope LOTS of people take time to read the report.
And I hope they spend LOTS of time detailing all the differences, between the draft, and the final edition. So that at least a few closed minds, begin to WAKE UP!
To quote a phrase "It is worse than we thought".
@Richard Betts- you are involved with the IPCC process. What are your thoughts on this?
Yes - situation normal at the IPCC. They will keep up the meme as long as they can.
Over at the New Scientist - we see more of the usual steer-droppings. Its worse than we thought!!!!
http://www.newscientist.com/special/worse-climate
Just the headline to the Food Production section leapt out at me. Food prices have gone up - that is due to Global Warming - it is worse than we thought!!!!!!! I guess there will no mention that the Green movement bullied governments into bio-fuel. 40% of US maze now goes to bio-fuel, creating a shortage, raising prices and starving people in the third world. Greens are burning food and according to the UN food programme killing 200,00 per year plus.
Blimey, you'll be accusing policemen of telling lies next, you naughty man.
Its simple no AGW no IPCC , it has no choice if it wants to survive has an organisation to do what ever it takes to keep the story going . And there are plenty they are happy to help it either becasue the funding bucket is still deep and well filled or because their own careers depend on AGW, which for some has lifted them higher than they could ever have dreamed. No grand conspiracy is needed just lots of self interest and those that see 'climate doom' has band wagon onto to which they can load their political objectives .
At least the Mayans had the good manners to make their prediction and then stop harping on about it.
41 minutes to go.
The Last Post?
Cheating at the IPCC? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you ... The venerable UN institution as Rick's Cafe. It's a nice thought. Who's going to start the Marseillaise?
Let's see how many times the word 'pleb' appears in the final draft.
I suspect the schemers, and their like-minded followers, who inspired or encouraged the IPCC will be thinking it has served its purpose and should now be sidelined or dissolved. It has been an enormous success for them, but now the limitations of its in-house leadership, of its procedures, of its blinkered pursuit of pessimism, and of its key political materials such as press releases and summaries for (or should that be 'by'?) policy makers are being exposed more and more frequently it would seem. Bad publicity year after year is not good. There's an ideological baby in that all bathwater that is being thrown out by perceptive, well-informed critics.
The Scientific American magazine (like Nature, like New Scientist, like anywhere, man, where 'environmentalism' is not seen as ever being destructive and deluded) has been a useful player in the PR game. One of its associate editors recently suggested:
'“The final draft isn’t due until next fall and the leak highlights a need to consider updating the IPCC process. Global warming no longer needs confirmation—instead the world needs solutions to climate change’s challenges.'
Is it time for 'all good men to come to the aid of the party'? Should climate comrades everywhere now leave the troublesome science debate behind and go full-time on promoting suppressed development and the elevation of the new eco-elite to even more wealth and power? A good many have risen to heights they could barely have dreamt of before being lifted by the rising tide of climate alarm. Are they now secure enough to consolidate their positions even as that tide turns? We shall see.
Wrecking western civilisation was a key motivation for such as Maurice Strong and the Club of Rome, and they spotted CO2 as a dandy vehicle for their ambitions. Is it time for these to be made more explicit by more leaders? Have enough people been infantilised with fear about the future to give these leaders an easy passage? We shall see.
Hilary (as hro001) commented on this in response to a somewhat similar cri de coeur from me on WUWT [Dec 20 at 11:49pm http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/19/why-doesnt-the-ar5-sods-climate-sensitivity-range-reflect-its-new-aerosol-estimates/#comments]:
'I think we’ve been seeing signs of climate science “de-emphasis” – in favour of “sustainability” – accelerating for the past two years. Even as early as July 2009, Pachauri (whose unscripted pontifications and pronouncements have always struck me as being of the SD [sustainable development] advocacy kind rather than anything remotely “scientific”) during the course of articulating his “vision” for AR5 had included the following word salad:
" Equity, Fairness, Sustainable Development and Life Style Changes: Problems of collective action, or public good problems that may overlap with various parallel challenges, can only be solved if the solution is considered to be fair and based on adequate equity principles. In general, the equity principle has to be applied to inter- and intra-generational justice as a prerequisite for sustainable development as well as lifestyle changes."
Other signs include (but are not limited to): the birth of the IPCC’s younger sibling, IPBES which has been waiting in the wings for about two years (and in reports of other UN acronymic offsprings’ activities has gotten more mentions than IPCC). The Rio+20 “outcome” document in which the “final score” was climate change 22, sustainable/sustainability 400. Not to mention the serial flops of the IPCC’s “main client”, the UNFCCC during the course of its last four confabs.
So it would seem that these climate scientists’ days in the sun are perhaps numbered.'
We shall see! In the meantime, let us praise Gaia for producing people like Donna Laframboise and for her stalwart actions as an investigator appalled by the odious IPCC. They have already dismayed us with their facilitation of retrospective edits by 'policy makers' of the reports they are meant, you would suppose, to be responding to as recipients. They would see it as an example of positive feedback I suppose. Now they seem to have gone further and created a positive feedforward mechanism whereby policy-supporting papers yet to be written are flagged in advance. Science will lose moral stature but not financial support from this sort of thing, but then, as the degradation of the Royal Society illustrates, this is what can happen when your leadership wants to go political.
Many people are racing to get their papers submitted / accepted in time for the Fifth Assessment Report. That's only human. Likewise, many UK academics are rushing to get their papers out in time for the Research Evaluation Framework of 2014.
People organize special issues for all sorts of reasons. The PNAS one targets the IPCC. That's only human. Likewise, there are special issues in preparation to support nominees for the Nobel Prize.
The PNAS special issue is devious for the following reason. It reports on a model comparison exercise. Model comparisons are useful in that they show what conclusions are robust, which models are outliers, and why.
Model comparisons are misleading because no two models are the same. Some models are more advanced than others. Model comparisons are like convoys: The least advanced model sets the pace.
The PNAS special issue is on models of the impact of climate change. The lowest common denominator - the comparitor - in these models is the impact climate change would have, without adaptation, on today's world.
We know from the literature that adaptation greatly reduces the impact of climate change. We know that future vulnerability to climate change will be very different from today, and probably much lower - for instance, concerns about the impact of climate change on malaria vanish if and when a vaccine will be developed.
The PNAS special issue will therefore not compare our best estimates of the impacts of climate change, but rather our worst-case estimates. It is alarmist by default (some would say by construction).
At the same time, graphical output from multi-model ensembles is very tempting to any assessment, including the IPCC.
That I really learned from, Richard, thank you. The deception is in the detail, as always.
'It is alarmist by default (some would say by construction).'~ Richard Tol
Richard, if I may: does this 'alarmist by default,' not create a situation where Bad policy decisions would be made? For example, if, say, the US were to rush into major geoengineering programs, with massive deleterious side-effects- only to find out after (and while) the damage is being done, that said projects were never needed in the first place?
John Shade
".... and created a positive feedforward mechanism ..."
Is this like CO2 leading Temperature, do you suppose ;)
@Otter
Sure. Deception is a standard tool in politics. We discussed the PNAS Special Issue in Chapter 10 of IPCC WG2 AR5 and decided that we're not going to fall for it. Will other chapters follow suit? Because the PNAS Special Issue will appear just before the cut-off date, referees will have little to no chance to comment on inappropriate use of this material.
When you citing the latest published work, you are citing the least reliable portion of the scientific record.
We know how the Jesus paper didn't get published on time but yet was very useful to hold parts of a chapter together in AR4. This is like publishing a whole journal volume of Jesus papers.
@shub
You don't know half of it. An entire chapter of WG2 AR5 will be devoted to "emergent risks". New literatures always start with a we're-all-gonna-die paper.
Well lets face it. At the UN climate-dreamworks, the latest update in the fictional series: is IPCC AR5. Which is a known unknown to those in the know, to those outsiders not in the know but able to peer review it on the net - it won't get past its first reading, so all in all a complete waste of everyone's time and effort - wouldn't ya know it!?
But then, so is the UN period.
@ Dec 21, 2012 at 10:42 AM | Richard Drake
Venerable UN institution? Don't you mean "venereal"?
Fryingham: I never took time to read the novels of the IPCC’s love guru and chairperson so it's very hard for me to comment.
John Shade
Congratulations sir! Your post: Dec 21, 2012 at 10:51 AM | Unregistered Commenter John Shade sent the syllable counter into previously uncharted territory ^.^
Richard Tol: 'An entire chapter of WG2 AR5 will be devoted to "emergent risks," '
I do hope they won't overlook earthquakes due to water mass redistribution. E.g. see here.
It always struck me as easy way to game the system by simply coming up with the conclusion that you want first, and then spending the money it takes to *purchase* the research you need to support it. That this entails the purchase of the publishers as well is no surprise really.
But, but, but... the cut off date for submissions was some six months ago, was it not? That's why the Gergis paper never made it, right?
Just as you think you've learned all the tricks they pull on you, out they pull another Ace from their sleeve.
And they whine about loss of reputation, those climate scientists, because loss of jobs isn't on their agenda at the moment.
It is high time the governments cut funding to that corrupt little community in order to thin out their ranks.
@sHx
WG1 and WG2 have different cut-off dates. For WG2, papers should be submitted before February, accepted before September.
Thank you Dung (1:55PM). Some decades ago I asked a mathematical friend who had just put down a newspaper whether there was anything in it. 'No, not really. Just the same old letters, re-arranged into different sequences ...' was the reply.
>It always struck me as easy way to game the system by simply coming up with the conclusion that you want first, and then spending the money it takes to *purchase* the research you need to support it.
Climate Management Consultancy?
As usual Donna excellently documents the bizarreness of the behaviour of the IPCC.
This "timing" behaviour must be an observed phenomenon in the meta-science of climate by now surely?
There seems to a plethora of liturchur about how deniers have held back "action" on climate, but I haven't yet seen anything about how the back pressure wave of the IPCC timescale effects climate science papers - maybe there has been some and I missed it?
I'm guessing it must be easier for Oreskes to use the Google algorithm, and Lewandowsky to make up bogus algorithms, than either to do any original thinking to notice the IPCC 5 year timescale pressure wave ;)
The fact that this huge climate science Eurovision/Olympics/Oscars timescale event exists, seems to me, must demand positioning by the particpants in its onset - e.g. see Gergis et al - but I am just a punter not a scientist so what do I know ;)
I mean look at the Oscars for an example - we movie buff punters can all guess and see what goes on- we have Les Mis, Django, and Zero Dark, all sprung into cinemas in good time for the academies "consideration". ;)
Where else in science does this exist?
I mean there isn’t a regular (5 yrs-ish) big multi gov assessment of how fusion power is getting on; or how many new planets found in the goldilocks zone, or whether Cern has discovered another Higgs particle this week.
Or maybe there is?
Is all science crap today and only the technologists are the worthy guys?
That idea reminds me of an Asimov story...
Oh, and of course, further to my Olympics analogy. We all know that that in the bad old days that some sporting God participants learned how to ramp up malfeasance and avoid detection with personal or national enablers in order to look and perform their best with willing assisted PR for the well timed event ;)
Couldn't happen in science ...
Oh yes it can ...*
*in honour of panto
Leopard in the Basement,
there's a regular 5 year-ish government assessment of academic research in the UK. It goes under the guise of what is known as the REF exercise (referred to by Richard Tol above). Everyone is jockeying for position to ensure papers are published in the right journals etc. There's even a 'transfer system' for research superstars. Buy in a high flier and their publications and you might be quids in for the next few years!
Dec 21, 2012 at 9:49 PM | Paul Dennis
I'd be interested in seeing a fuller answer on your feelings how that effects you and others ...
Frequency waves of funding is a major meta study that occurs to me that should happen and maybe be almost the meta - meta truth of all humanity since the Nile flooding 's where commanded to be dealt with by the first Pharo to the first "scientist" or dead person ;)
A bit O/T brian cox just said on newsnight " lets be specific we used the Mayan prophesy to sell out this magnificent facility" true word said in jest?
All should read the breaking news here, from which I quote:
" This story is huge. America’s prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and related government bodies found no greenhouse effect in Earth’s atmosphere. Evidence shows the U.S. government held the smoking gun all along – a fresh examination of an overlooked science report proves America’s brightest and best had shown the White House that the greenhouse gas effect was not real and of no scientific significance since 1979 or earlier."
For those who have been following the research by myself and others from among nearly 200 members at Principia Scientific International, I'd like to draw your attention to an Appendix now added to my current paper.
Have a Happy Christmas everyone!
[manners]
Journalists of the future investigating how the AGW scam finally collapsed will find their greatest resource in what used to be known as blogs and not the 'free' media.
Not entirely surprised.
PNAS has reportedly tightened-up their reviewing process in recent years, possibly because it needed tightening-up. As I understand it, "Contributed by-....." used to mean that a member of The National Academy of Sciences could submit four papers a year that would be published. No review required. Period.
Based on the presumption that a member of the Academy was not only of first-rank intellect, but also impeccable ethics (which is undoubtedly the case in most instances), it occasionally gave rise to suspicions that this was not always the case. Changes have been made, to what effect I don't know, but it should be borne in mind.
Salvador Dali used to make a lot of money, allegedly, by applying his signature to works not created by himself.
The trouble is Jimbo, that journalists ain't what they used to be, and I see no reason to believe the future journalists will be any different.
This is a special-interest field only. Journalists don't dig through history, and especialy don't do the difficult stuff when there is so much easy (current) stuff to report on.
That is the reason books like THS are so very important to get out. They will be only readable history in the future.
Leopard, don't let them grind you down. That's their language - not yours.
Chill.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/12/21/who-is-hans-joachim-schellnhuber/
And Donna has a new post today about PIK-meister Schellnhuber, uber-alarming-propagandist and creator of the "made-to-order" 2°C
Who is Hans Joachim Schellnhuber?
Sorry, clipe ... my mouse didn't that see that you had posted about this!
Re PIK and Deutsche Bank, from the 2009 Annual Report of the Bank, have a look at the Climate Change Advisory Board.
Was not 2009 the year of Climategate 1? Were any of the Advisory Board members involved subsequently?
https://annualreport.deutsche-bank.com/2009/ar/supplementaryinformation/advisoryboards.html
Where is the rest of the MSM when 500 police are reported to have raided DB HQ a few days ago, and that a senior manager is in questioning over irregularities with trading carbon credits? I don't know these answers, I'm merely reporting what's in the easily-available literature.
Sorry, I was well out of order, won't happen again.
Leopard
no idea what you posted but the ability to put your hand up and admit a mistake is one of the most admirable traits in homo sapiens fallibilis.
Course as I have never been wrong it's not one of my many talents.
PS if you find a persona in your Basement by the name of 'Eric the Amazing Talking Fish' he belongs to me. I went to bed last night with all 17 of my persona safely locked away but when I woke up this morning Eric was missing. He likes basements.
Seasons greetings from the 16 that remain!
'We finally radioed broken arrow to Skeptic Central.....'
I think Pointman has had some of my mushrooms!
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/ladiees-and-gennulmen-we-have-a-winnah/
Bish sorry OT but tis the season to be Mary and these tights are killing me
Dec 21, 2012 at 9:31 AM | Don Keiller
Hi Don, sorry, I've only just seen this. I looked at BH to respond to the Nic Lewis thread a bit more (after a busy couple of days) , but saw this one.
The document on the Inter-Sectoral Impacts Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) was included in the IPCC Buenos Aires meeting at my request, and I also gave a presentation on it on behalf of the people who are leading the project (so it came from me as a Lead Author, not from the IPCC "officials" - I assume Donna means the Co-Chairs or Technical Support Unit here).
My motivation here was to tell the other Lead Authors about this project because (a) it is one of of the few studies that are actually doing impacts projections using the new climate projections are being used in WG1, as opposed to still using the older models from AR4 like most impacts studies, and (b) it is an attempt to quantify uncertainties in these projected impacts, as opposed to just looking at one projection. Two of the criticisms that the IAC had about the AR4 WG2 report were that it did not quantify uncertainty as well as it could have done, and that there was often a focus on worst-case scenarios. ISI-MIP looks like it will help improve matters on both these fronts. When I suggested this, Chris Field and the TSU welcomed the idea.
I don't think there is anything wrong with bringing current work to the attention of fellow IPCC authors, in fact I think it is a good thing as it helps the report be up-to-date. Authors are free to consider or ignore such a heads-up as they wish. Richard Tol seemed grateful when I let him know about some work of my colleagues looking at climate impacts on the UK rail network, which is relevant to his chapter on Key Economic Sectors and Services - this was done as a piece of consultancy for Network Rail, but now my colleagues are writing it up for the peer-reviewed literature so it can be externally reviewed and accessible to others. Richard noted that there were very few studies of climate impacts on the transport sector, so this usefully contributes to the knowledge base. (BTW Richard, the papers will be submitted next month, I've just been sent them for internal approval, and I've said the first one can be sent to you as we previously arranged - indeed you may already have received it).
If anyone has any papers relating to climate change and terrestrial ecosystems they'd like to be looked at in the preparation of my own chapter then please do send them on to me or post links here. Also, again, I encourage people to consider signing up as an Expert Reviewer of the WG2 SOD - then you'll be able to see which papers we are citing, suggests others to look at and tell us about submitted papers that we may not be aware of - and you won't have to wait for the WG2 chapters to be leaked in order to read them :-)
Dec 23, 2012 at 1:11 AM | Richard Betts
Just a reality check, Richard: Are you saying that the undated, unsigned document Donna had cited, which was entitled "Special [PNAS] Issue on ISI-MIP Results", to be edited by PIK-meister Hans <2°C & consumption of fossil fuels is “a lifestyle of mass destruction"> Schellnhuber, was authored by you?
You also wrote:
That seems reasonable to me. What does not seem reasonable, though, is the somewhat loosey-goosiness of this document. And - even setting aside the rather loosey-goosey PNAS "peer review" process - what is somewhat worrisome is that the timing is such that the Government and Expert Reviewers may not have the opportunity to examine these "up to 18" papers during the course of their review.
Unless, of course, you can guarantee that all such papers will have been submitted by Jan. 31/2013 (according to the schedule) and - if cited in WGII - will be made available to the reviewers beginning Mar. 29, 2013.
And, assuming that these as yet unwritten and/or as yet unsubmitted papers are not available to the "author team", do you put everything on hold until Jan. 31? If not, what have you folks been doing since the 22-26 October 2012 Lead Author meeting in Buenos Aires?! Do you find it reasonable that this IPCC schedule dictates that you have slightly less than two months to whip the WGII SOD into shape?! Or does the "author team" count on the licence it has to ignore reviewer comments and make further (unreviewed) alterations to the text?
But, such questions aside ... what I find considerably more worrisome is as Donna has subsequently noted:
This Is Called Cheating (Part 2)
Athough it does occur to me that perhaps Pachauri was one of the "scientists" with whom former UNFCCC head honcho, Yvo de Boer had conversed, leading de Boer to recently conclude: