

UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters - cwan
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece

======
nfnaaron
"Some researchers have argued that it is unfair to attack the IPCC too
strongly, pointing out that some errors are inevitable in a report as long and
technical as the IPCC's round-up of climate science."

Yeah, especially if you willfully ignore them when they're known, in favor of
a position.

I'm getting the sense that advocacy is playing too high a role in both the
science and the policy of climate change. Indeed, advocacy seems to have
coupled science and policy into one large system.

I'm also wondering if "climate change" shouldn't even be a phrase in common
usage, at least not the way we use it to refer to an accepted direction in
policy and earth science.

~~~
barrkel
The problem is that there are concentrated vested interests in disputing and
denying the evidence. It's in this kind of environment that pro climate change
advocacy formed, to counteract self-interested lobbies.

There isn't a simple solution here. When profit-making corporations have
unlimited free political speech, how does science make itself heard, without
also seeming to turn into political advocacy?

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I think the notion that profit-making corporations with vested interests are
to be found on only one side of this debate is completely false. Companies
such as GE, Siemens, the renewables industries and essentially all industries
that are users of energy as opposed to producers of energy from fossile fuels
have a massive vested interest in driving the current climate panic forward.

Even auto makers, who have indeed been lobbying against far reaching
regulation, are in a double bind situation. I cannot imagine a greater
opportunity for them to make loads of money than governments forcing people to
buy expensive electric vehicles and subsidising them massively.

Last (and probably even least) there are the climate scientists themselves
whose funding and career prospects depend heavily on politics and advocacy.

~~~
barrkel
That only adds fuel to the fire, though. It doesn't reduce the temperature of
the conversation such that there's more light than heat, more reason than
emotion involved.

------
yummyfajitas
My favorite parts of the article:

 _The 2007 study should be seen as a snapshot of what was known then. Science
is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time
around._

In this case, it turns out the mistakes were fixed the _first time_ around:
before the paper was published.

A hint: in general, when writing a review article, you don't both to write
about stuff that isn't finished.

At most, you give it a brief mention in a section "future directions and open
problems". You discuss it with superlatives like, "this looks promising". You
don't, however, pass it off as part of what is _known_.

~~~
anamax
_The 2007 study should be seen as a snapshot of what was known then._

We now know that "snapshot" wasn't the intent because the "no glaciers in
2025" claim was included even though they knew that it was wrong because they
wanted to influence the politics.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-
scie...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-
says-knew-data-verified.html)

FWIW, while they're trying to distance themselves from the claim, they've kept
the immediate author on-payroll. Are they buying him off or protecting their
own?

~~~
cwan
This looks even worse for Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC:

\- The scientist that made the glacier claim now works for Pachauri -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherboo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7062667/Pachauri-
the-real-story-behind-the-Glaciergate-scandal.html)

\- A possible motive? "Pachauri ... may have raised millions of dollars for
his New Delhi institute on the basis of the totally bogus ‘glaciergate’ claim
by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035" [http://blogs.the-
american-interest.com/wrm/2010/01/23/ipcc-h...](http://blogs.the-american-
interest.com/wrm/2010/01/23/ipcc-head-in-glaciergate-crime/) (Walter Russell
Mead)

~~~
anamax
Even if the claim wasn't bogus, we have yet another example of a supposedly
objective scientist/official personally benefiting from pushing AGW.

And yet, most of what we hear is that the "deniers" are in it for the money
because some of them used to work for the petroleum industry.

------
chasingsparks
_If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic._

I feel like there have been an increasing number of posts like this: posts
that straddle relevance. I find the topic of climate change and the associated
politics interesting. However, this type of story comes up in my political and
more mundane newsreader. (I don't mean that to sound snotty, but I believe
many readers are like me in that regard.)

I come to HN for _very_ interesting stories that get pushed by a community
composed of smart people. They propagate good stories that either are breaking
news or could have been missed.

I don't think this story qualifies...but I am not sure how to properly
disqualify it. However, I think PG's TV news rule is a very good acid test.

~~~
dschobel
I think a lot of the worth of HN is in the analysis by the intelligent people
who roam these virtual halls so even if the story is mundane I often learn a
lot from the people who follow climate science and politics much more closely
than I.

I do agree that the 2nd or 3rd story on <highly regarded panel cooks the
climate data> has diminishing returns but I don't think a mundane/popular
media story should be grounds for disqualification a priori for the afore
mentioned reason.

~~~
chasingsparks
I agree with your first statement. In fact, the conversations -- especially
the arguments -- may exceed the value of the stories themselves. They often do
for me.

However, the topic of climate change seems to be a lightning rod for bad
arguments. Ones that devolve into comment trees that provide good examples of
bad arguments that PG can use in a follow up to "How to Disagree."

Good arguments on climate change have occurred on this site. There has been a
lot of good debates over the limits of science in the face of complexity, the
politicization of science, etc.

However, as you put it, there are diminishing returns on this story. The good
arguments have been exhausted, and now it is becoming a political gotcha style
story. Again, I don't know why I was bothered by this post, but it may be
because it was the third or fourth thread on this topic, just with a new small
piece of information.

(P.S. I do not mean to sound like the arbiter of "Good Arguments.")

~~~
gaius
"However, the topic of climate change seems to be a lightning rod for bad
arguments."

I'd say these stories are more about scientific rigor (or the lack thereof)
than they are about climate change per se. There is only really one position
on that here (I hope) and that's that science should be above that and where
it's not that worth getting some attention.

~~~
jbooth
But the scientists are faced with a conundrum, here. When they do proper
science, "Evolution is a theory", they get attacked for it by bombastic
blowhards - "It's just a THEORY!". So they've been forced into adopting some
marketing principles simply to get their voices heard.

Meanwhile, it seems that everybody's lost their mind about the whole purity
factor. If you give them, say, a 50% chance of being right, when "right" means
trillions of dollars of damage, common sense says we should be doing
something. Yet we're spending all our time arguing over whether they have a
100% chance of being right or not. That's because the people on the other side
of the argument are not arguing in good faith - many of them have a direct
financial or ideological stake in the matter and science is the furthest thing
from their minds.

------
tome
It looks like the credibility of the IPCC is diminishing by the day. I hope
some trustworthy body which is concerned about climate change but strong
enough to avoid the kind of bias and shoddy lack of rigour we've seen from the
IPCC can come through to take its place.

~~~
gruseom
Politically speaking, it won't happen. Global warming is inextricably bound up
with the IPCC in people's minds. So much effort was expended on telling
everyone that they had to believe the IPCC because it was a consensus of all
the scientists in the world (what, you think you're smarter than all the
scientists in the world?) that to come along now with "Did we say _that_
consensus? We meant _this_ consensus" can't possibly work.

I meant to post this the last time the subject came up, just for the record:
it's beginning to look like the IPCC (and with it, perhaps, the entire issue)
has hit its peak.

------
brc
The issue here is that the IPCC has wielded the 'peer reviewed' phrase like a
hammer, and repeatedly knocked anyone on the head with it if they presented
something that wasn't peer reviewed. There are many, many quotes from the IPCC
brushing off conflicting information with 'it's not peer reviewed, like all of
our science'. Now that they've been found to not apply their own standards,
others are using that same hammer to hit back with. Even if it's only one or
two instances, the damage is done.

Now that one error involving a non-peer reviewed (so called 'grey' reference)
has been found, people are crawling all over the rest of their reports,
finding other instances. The WWF report from 2005 that contained the himalayan
glacier melt story is still cited throughout the report - they just removed
the offending factoid about 2035.

Until they comprehensively go back and apply their own standards more
rigourously, they are going to attract more and more scrutiny, more errors
will be found (the sheer length of the report almost guarantees that). And
their current position of 'it's only one error' is going to look bad.

If they are to be effective, there's going to need to be some serious changes
put in place. People's support for the IPCC-backed science and policies in
Western countries is eroding (if you believe the polls) and while not yet
under the 50% mark, it's not in the direction the IPCC wants. Until they make
some changes, I don't see their support rising again.

------
teeja
So what? People do bad science, bad business, bad education _all the time_ ,
because of unconscious biases, because of pressures to 'succeed', publish,
etc. How many people are 'playing the game' in this old world?

Not to excuse exaggerations: but just because some people get overzealous,
that _doesn't_ change the facts ... e.g. that glaciers worldwide are
shrinking, the oceans are becoming more acidic.

Many GW deniers are also guilty of being blind in one eye.

