A beat up of Himalayan proportions

Newspapers such as the London Times are reporting that the IPCC is about to retract something from the AR4 WG2 report:

A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

The claim was indeed wrong. John Nielsen-Gammon has written a detailed analysis of the error with an update here. I’ve discovered a bit more about it, which I will get to presently, but first I want to look at the Times statement that it was a “central claim” and the New York Times statement that it was a “much-publicized estimate”.

Actually, the estimate does not appear in the WG2 summary and was mostly ignored by the media when the report came out. The Times story on the WG2 did not mention the estimate at all — their story about the mistake is actually longer than their story about the release of the report.

I did a Factiva search for news stories that mentioned Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 and found 198 (not counting duplicates). But the majority of these were recent stories about the IPCC mistake. Only a handful of others attributed the estimate to the IPCC report (even though there were hundreds of stories about the report). More common were stories based on the 1999 New Scientist story, like this one in The Times which makes the same mistake as the IPCC, reporting:

Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years because of global warming, according to a research study. … One of the researchers involved, Syed Hasnain, of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, said studies indicate that the glaciers in the region could be gone by 2035.

This is not to excuse the IPCC’s error — we expect higher standards from them than from the The Times.

John Nielsen-Gammon notes something else that The Times got wrong:

I am quite dismayed by the last paragraph of the Times Online article:

“The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific concensus over climate change. …”

Latest crack in the consensus??? The whole point is that the IPCC report didn’t reflect the consensus. The consensus, as far as we know, was right all along. And the Working Group 1 report of the IPCC reflected that consensus, with solid references to the peer-reviewed literature. The lesson here is that the IPCC does not deserve blanket trust for what they write; their reports are only as good as the references on which they’re based. And if the author had stuck to the IPCC’s own protocols for relying on the peer-reviewed literature, this mistake would never have been made in the firsts place.

Of course, global warming deniers seized on the error to argue that the IPCC can’t be trusted

The Opposition energy spokesman, Nick Minchin, a climate change sceptic, said the report highlighted the ”disturbing” lack of scientific rigour around the IPCC 2007 report.

“These revelations provide even further evidence of the Rudd Government’s recklessness in relying on dubious reports such as this as part of its scare campaign to push the urgent need to introduce a CPRS [emissions trading scheme] ahead of the world,” Senator Minchin said.

But if even relatively obscure errors in the IPCC reports get corrected, that should increase our confidence in the accuracy of the more prominent statements.

And somehow Minchin’s confidence in someone like Ian Plimer is unshakeable, despite Plimer’s refusal to correct even the most blatant errors.

And deniers are also pretending that this error proves that Himalayan glaciers aren’t melting. For instance, The Australian‘s Cut and Paste:

See the iceman leaveth. George Monbiot, in The Guardian on May 10, 2005, on why David Bellamy was wrong to suggest glaciers were not shrinking:

“It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost journals.”

Or more likely stayeth. The Australian yesterday:

Flawed communication between teams of scientists caused the UN climate change agency to claim most Himalayan glaciers would melt almost 300 years earlier than forecast, glaciologists claim.

So, how can we find out what went wrong with the editing of the IPCC report? Fortunately the drafts and review comments are available on-line. In the second draft the offending passage states:

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in other any part of the world (see Table 10.10 below) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps getting warmer at the current rate. The glaciers will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates. Its total area will shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035.

There was no cite at all for the claim and more than one reviewer noted that a citation was needed. If the chapter authors had followed this comment, all would have been well:

I am not sure that this is true for the very large Karakoram glaciers in the western Himalaya. Hewitt (2005) suggests from measurements that these are expanding – and this would certainly be explained by climatic change in precipitation and temperature trends seen in the Karakoram region (Fowler and Archer, J Climate in press; Archer and Fowler, 2004) You need to quote Barnett et al.’s 2005 Nature paper here – this seems very similar to what they said. (Hayley Fowler, Newcastle University)

But the response was this:

Was unable to get hold of the suggested references will consider in the final version

Instead the authors added to a cite to this WWF report, which says

“In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”.

And here we see the perils of lazy citing. The IPCC report should have cited the WGHG/ICSI report, but the authors weren’t able to get hold of it. If they had, they would have found that it doesn’t say anything about the glaciers disappearing by 2035. The WWF report authors hadn’t seen the WGHG report either, but relied on this New Scientist story, by a reporter that hadn’t seen the report either, but had talked to the author of the WGHG report.

See also comments from John Quiggin and James Hrynyshyn.

Comments

#1 Dano
January 19, 2010

Someone else pointed out the vaunted amateur auditors never caught this mistake in the ‘Central Claim’.

Nonetheless, I was briefly trying to run this down several weeks ago, and had trouble finding the passage. It was buried in Ch 10 IIRC under a section that took some work to get to. Not prominently displayed at all, as there was a paucity of sources that looked at timing.

This, of course, doesn’t absolve the section that was light on evidence. But it absolutely points to the denialists/pseudoskeptics who will grasp at anything to delay the realization that their ideology and self-identity is invalidated on the ground.

Best,

D
#2 carrot eater
January 19, 2010

Thank you for searching the media archives – I was suspecting that this paragraph of the IPCC FAR was pretty much ignored until the error was found. If it hadn’t been ignored, the error would have been apparent sooner, after all.

But the authors of that section should have some egg on their face. If they were having trouble, they could have at least shot an email to the people writing the corresponding material in WG1.
#3 carrot eater
January 19, 2010

Good detective work by John N-G.

He does say this, though, which would seem to contradict Tim’s finding here:

“But such an astounding prediction could not help but attract attention. And it has long since become effectively common knowledge that the glaciers were going to vanish by 2035.”

It cannot have been ignored, and yet still be common knowledge. Perhaps a question to John N-G would clarify?
#4 bluegrue
January 19, 2010

The story had also cropped up back in November 2008 without any reference to the IPCC. Here are examples of the [_Telegraph_](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3458927/Himalayan-glaciers-could-disappear-completely-by-2035.html) and the [_Daily Mail_](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1085491/Himalayan-glaciers-disappear-30-years-global-warming.html) citing Muneer Ahmad of the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad.
#5 Deep Climate
January 19, 2010

I notice a lot of blogosphere coverage of this latest “scandal” doesn’t even mention that the error was buried in WG2. I have the impression that WG1 was more rigourous even if Roger Pielke jr pretends otherwise.
#6 Dave Andrews
January 19, 2010

Anybody noticed that Dr Syed Hasnain now works for. head of the IPCC, Pachauri’s TERI organisation? What an incestuous world climate science is.
#7 pough
January 19, 2010

Maybe by “central” they mean that it was in the second of three documents. Central in my last sentence: “it”.
#8 pough
January 19, 2010

What an incestuous world climate science is.

It truly does stand apart, doesn’t it? In my last job we never hired anyone we knew or who were capable of doing the job, just to avoid any seeming incest.
#9 el gordo
January 19, 2010

New Scientist admits their 1999 article is the ‘primary published source’. Pathetic!
#10 TrueSceptic
January 19, 2010

Strange. I’ve seen no reference to [this story](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8387737.stm), which suggests that scientists might have “misread 2350 as 2035″ in a 1996 article by VM Kotlyakov. The ‘New Scientist’ possibility is also mentioned but what was the real origin?

Stranger is why no one questioned this before, in the IPCC review process, in the climate science community, or in the many “sceptic” hotbeds.
#11 TrueSceptic
January 19, 2010

OK, that’ll teach me to read Tim’s links first. I was referring to previous discussion about this on other blogs.
#12 TrueSceptic
January 19, 2010

2 carrot,

Just to avoid confusion: the “F” in FAR means First. You meant AR4, I think.

(Why they didn’t use AR1, AR2, etc., from the outset is a mystery. Did they imagine they’d never get past the third one?)
#13 Dan R
January 19, 2010

So, in short (HA!):
Step 1.
UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme issues a report in 1996 titled “Variations of Snow and Ice in the past and at present on a Global and Regional Scale”, edited by V.M. Kotlyakov. On page 66, it states the following:

“The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates—
its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2350. Glaciers will survive only in the mountains of inner Alaska, on some Arctic archipelagos, within Patagonian ice sheets, in the Karakoram Mountains, in the Himalayas, in some regions of Tibet and on the highest mountain peaks in the temperature latitudes. ”

Step 2:
The government run India Environment Portal [publishes the following](http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/node/319) in 1999:

” “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high,” says the International Commission for Snow and Ice ( ICSI ) in its recent study on Asian glaciers. “But if the Earth keeps getting warmer at the current rate, it might happen much sooner,” says Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Hasnain is also the chairperson of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology ( WGHG ), constituted in 1995 by the ICSI. “The glacier will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates. Its total area will shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square km by the year 2035,” says former ICSI president V M Kotlyakov in the report Variations of snow and ice in the past and present on a global and regional scale ”

Note the mistaken use of 2035 instead of 2350, the mistaken reporting that this figure appears in a recent ICSI report, and the mistake in quoting Kotlyakov – replacing ‘The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth’ with ‘The glacier’.

Step 3.
Fred Pearce reads the above Indian environment portal article, and asks Syed Iqbal Hasnain for an interview. [The 1999 article that results](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16221893.000-flooded-out.html) contains the following:

” A new study, due to be presented in July to the International Commission on Snow and Ice (ICSI), predicts that most of the glaciers in the region will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming. “All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating,” says Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, the chief author of the ICSI report. … Hasnain’s four-year study indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035 at their present rate of decline.”

Note the mistakes. Again, 2035 instead of 2350. Again, the claim that this appears in an ICSI report, which it doesn’t.

Step 4:
The WWF issues a report titled ["An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China"](http://assets.panda.org/downloads/himalayaglaciersreport2005.pdf) in 2005. On page 29 it states
“In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood (sic) of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”………The prediction that “glaciers in the region will vanish within 40 years as a result of global
warming” and that the flow of Himalayan rivers will “eventually diminish, resulting in
widespread water shortages” (New Scientist 1999; 1999, 2003)”

Note the mistakes. Again, 2035 instead of 2350, and again, the claim that this figure appears in an ICSI report, a direct copy/paste of the mistake made in the India Environment Portal article from 1999. In the citations for this report, no mention is made of the ISCI report or the Indian Environment Portal – and only one New Scientist article is mentioned, that of Fred Pearce’s 1999 article, linked to above.

Step 5:
The IPCC publishes its Fourth Asssessment in 2007, and in [chapter 10.6.2 of Working Group's 2 report](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/contents.html), it states the following.

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).”

Despite alluding to the Indian Environment Portal in its use of the words ‘and perhaps sooner’, this information is attributed to the WWF’s 2005 report.

Note the mistakes – 2035 instead of 2350, the idea that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear, and the botch up regarding the numbers for area.

So the lesson for ALL involved should be: If it ain’t published in the peer reviewed literature, it ain’t worth NOTHING. Everyone from step 2 onwards deserves a swift kick up the rear, and all should issue corrections.

As a little Coda, Fred Pearce recently issued [this](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18363-debate-heats-up-over-ipcc-melting-glaciers-claim.html) article for New Scientist. Rather than acknowledge his role in perpetuating this series of cock-ups, and rather than admitting that he never issued a correction [despite having read the ISCI report and noticed that no mention was made of 2035](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece), Pearce goes out of his way to perpetuate even more disinformation, claiming that New Scientist was the only source for this mistake (it wasn’t, see step 2), claiming that the IPCC extrapolated the claim to include all glaciers (they didn’t, this incorrect extrapolation was made in step 2), claiming that the IPCC added in the words ‘very likely’ (they didn’t), and claiming that such language means a greater than 90% chance of occurrence (it doesn’t – the IPCC use the words ‘very high confidence’ to indicate a 90% occurrence).
#14 Steve Bloom
January 19, 2010

Tim, the error and its origins were discussed (albeit in less detail than n-g did) at the AGUFM. See page 40 this pdf of a ppt prepared for a press conference on December 14th (a week before n-g posted his discussion). There’s a lot of other useful material on the present state of things in the Himalayas. Note that the fundamental premise of the Raina report is trashed on page 41. They don’t say so, but in light of current information the original 2350 estimate (from 1996, and referring to glaciers world-wide) is obviously no longer valid.

Checking Google News, the 2035 date got some play but pretty much just in the Indian press. I think I noticed some of that, but didn’t pay much attention to it since it wasn’t all that different from the 2050 figure being quoted contemporaneously from Chinese researchers (and see this Times article from a couple of months ago).

I haven’t had time to follow the trail of references, but be sure to read this recent paper from Hansen and (as far as I can tell pretty much all of) the leading Chinese researchers. While it’s not the focus of their paper, they reference a much higher glacial water loss figure than would seem to be implied by the very low Ganges-only figure quoted by n-g (from a World Bank study I could find no trace of when I looked a couple of weeks ago). But considering that the Indian monsoon covers only the southern portion of the plateau, it may be that glaciers are far more important for evening out seasonal flows in the Chinese rivers.

By coincidence, and I haven’t looked into it further, my interest was piqued by an AGU poster Michael Tobis happened to (partially) photograph when he was there. “Huge water amount seeps out of Nam Co, the second largest lake on the (Tibetan Plateau)” doesn’t sound like a good thing. The lake is in the south-central plateau near Lhasa. FM posters don’t seem to be available on-line as yet, but someone could contact the first author (email in the photo) and ask for the information.

BTW, one thing I’ve noticed is that even scientists get a little loose with their geographic references, sometimes using “Himalaya” to refer to the entire Tibetan plateau region rather than the specific chain at its southern edge.
#15 sillyfilly
January 19, 2010

Here are excerpts from AR4 (II) with regard to glaciers.
I’m unsure if anybody has picked this up but the inference is that only glaciers less than 4 k’s in length will melt by 2035. Can somebody help out?

Tibetan Plateau glaciers of 4 km in length are projected to
disappear with 3°C temperature rise and no change in
precipitation. If current warming rates are maintained, glaciers
located over Tibetan Plateau are likely to shrink at very rapid
rates from 500,000 km2 in 1995 to 100,000 km2 by the 2030s.
[10.4.4.3,10.6.2]

source figure 10.4

For a rise in surface temperature of 3°C and no change in precipitation, most Tibetan Plateau glaciers shorter than 4 km in length are projected to disappear and the glacier areas in the Changjiang Rivers will likely decrease by more than 60% (Shen et al., 2002).

source 10.4.4.3

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).

source 10.6.2

Some other glaciers in Asia – such as glaciers shorter than 4 km length in the Tibetan Plateau – are projected to disappear and the glaciated areas located in the headwaters of the Changjiang River will likely decrease in area by more than 60% (Shen et al., 2002).

source 10.6.2
#16 John N-G
January 19, 2010

Carrot Eater -

My basis for saying that the 2035 date was “common knowledge” is the following. First, I knew about it, and I’m neither a glacier expert nor an India expert. Second, the date was given heavy play in rebuttals to Raina’s report. Third, and most importantly to my thinking, I did a google news search at the time (in early December) and turned up articles from major news sources such as [this one from CNN](http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/05/himalayas.glacier.conflict/index.html) that calmly treat it as a starting point for discussions about water on the Indian subcontinent.

I highly recommend the PDF linked in Steve Bloom’s first paragraph above. Thanks, Steve!
#17 Plimer watch
January 20, 2010

Tim:

Are you (rightly) blaming Plimer for the inclusion of this erroneous point? If you are I think you may be on the right track and further investigation would be warranted, particularly by you.
#18 Andy Russell
January 20, 2010

Tim – great investigation!

It seems a bit desperate to try and bring down the whole of the IPCC from one reviewing error. I’ve written a [blogpost](http://andyrussell.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/glaciergate-in-perspective/) trying to put this error into the perspective of the whole of the IPCC.
#19 Paul UK
January 20, 2010

>My basis for saying that the 2035 date was “common knowledge” is the following. First, I knew about it, and I’m neither a glacier expert nor an India expert.

Erm, I can safely say that in 2007, any mention of glaciers in AR4 did not register with me. It has only been in the last 2 years that glaciers started to kick in for me.

Call it self interest, but rising sea levels were the only thing that made me consider glaciers to be important.
#20 el gordo
January 20, 2010

‘It seems a bit desperate to try and bring down the whole IPCC from one reviewing error.’

Under normal circumstances I might agree, but Dr Hasnain and Dr Pachauri look like a couple of opportunists caught with their hands in the bicky tin.

Pachauri says he has no responsibility for what Dr Hasnain may have said and Dr Hasnain said, rather cheekily, the IPCC had no business citing his comments. They have both done very well out of all this.

The IPCC will fade into insignificance because a Republican was voted into the Senate – cap and trade is a dead duck.
#21 Connor
January 20, 2010

Andy Russell – Link bookmarked :thumbsu:
#22 Boris
January 20, 2010

“The IPCC will fade into insignificance because a Republican was voted into the Senate – cap and trade is a dead duck.”

Ah, the logic of wingnuts–elections disprove science. It’s either Cap and Trade or the EPA regulating CO2, BTW.
#23 TrueSceptic
January 20, 2010

20 el gordo,

You keep doing it, don’t you? Just when I think you’ve said something so stupid that you couldn’t possibly top it, you prove me wrong…again!
#24 carrot eater
January 20, 2010

John N-G: Thank you for adding some context.

TrueSceptic: Sorry, didn’t mean to cause confusion with the naming convention.

I note that RC also feels as I do – better communication between the WG2 and WG1 people would help.

Based on my background, WG1 is of most interest to me. But WG1 is mainly interesting in an academic sense; it’s WG2 and WG3 that actually matter policy-wise. I do hope there is no further sloppiness in those parts.
#25 TrueSceptic
January 20, 2010

13 Dan R

Excellent description. What is it about glaciers/glaciation that makes people make really stupid mistakes? Remember the whole 55%/555 Singer/Bellamy comedy?
#26 Bernard J.
January 20, 2010

I was initially bemused, and somewhat surprised, when this story made such an impact, because I’d always assumed that the Himalayan glacier meme was a pop-sci/media beating-up, and that it was trivially obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of physics that there’d still be a lot of glacial ice hanging around long past that 2035.

Ironically, the people who have been so quick to jump on this bandwagon, after being so slow to understand the underlying science, will probably be just as quick to dismiss any potential nevertheless for glaciers to melt at an accelerated rate, and just as slow to comprehend why even a realistic rate of accelerated melting is of extreme concern to the human and non-human ecologies that are tied to glacial presence.

One simply cannot fill the bottomless Hole of Stupid…
#27 Jeff Harvey
January 20, 2010

Bernard,

As always, an excellent post (# 26).

You have nailed it. The fact is that the rate – rate being the operative word – of glacial retreat is of profound concern. Even if we are talking about 2350. One of the many fatal flows in the denialist mind-set is their complete inability to reference ecological, evolutionary or geological time frames in anything other than a human life time. To these manglers of science, 10 years is a fairly long time and 30 years is deep time. The fact is that very few of them are actually statured scientists and fewer still have any acumen in the biological sciences. They simply cannot – or, more realistically do not want – to place largely deterministic processes in their proper scale.

This explains why they consistently confuse weather and climate, and make outrageous claims about there being cooling since 1998. A poster on Joe Romm’s blog made the appropriate point that the vast majority of the denialists do not derive their conclusions on the basis of science but on the basis of political ideology. Most of them are to the far right politically, and see any form of government regulation as an attack on liberty. Those few that are on the left who are denialists somehow appear to suggest that climate science is an example of western elites using regulations to suppress development in the poorer countries (this ridiculous assertion appears to be growing amongst some on the libertarian left, as I have noted).

Either way, most denialists are distorting science to camouflage their own political and economic views. This should have been obvious for the past 40 years on a wide range of subjects in which environmental regulations were involved; the anti-environmental lobby has always tried to give the impression that they are interested in science when they could not give a damn about it.
#28 Dan R
January 20, 2010

“Remember the whole 55%/555 Singer/Bellamy comedy?”
I sure do. Looks like Bellamy was the fall-guy for that one, copping it in both a [Monbiot article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/may/10/environment.columnists), and a [subsequent T.V. spot](http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/are%20the%20glaciers%20melting/107930). Painful, but worth a look if you haven’t already. Perhaps Plimer hadn’t witnessed this head-on with Monbiot before he agreed to the same treatment, recently shown on ABC T.V., with similar results.

Bellamy’s letter to New Scientist is still on record [here](http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624950.100).
#29 Mauri Pelto
January 20, 2010

The key is not to know when a glacier or range of glaciers may disappear, without knowing future climate that cannot be done, except on the smallest glaciers that are almost gone. The key is to monitor there changes and the impacts. In fact we have alot of information of the retreat and reduced extent of the glaciers, but less of this is tied with good data to the water resource issues, including the expansion of hydropower usage on glacier fed rivers in the Himalayan region. Take the [Gangotri Glacier](http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/gangotri-glacier-retreat-and-hydropower/) as an example or the [Zemu Glacier](http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/zemu-glacier-sikkim-thinning-and-retreat/)
#30 Dave Andrews
January 20, 2010

Shorter Jeff Harvey,

Only my view of the world is correct. All who disagree with me, whatever their political persuasion, are wrong.
#31 Bernard J.
January 20, 2010

[Dave Andrews](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/01/a_beat_up_of_himalayan_proport.php#comment-2216127).

At least Jeff has the laws of physics, and of biology, on his side.
#32 el gordo
January 20, 2010

BJ: You knew it was a sci/media beat-up and didn’t tell the rest of us. Well, thanks for that, we can put you in the same box with Hasnain and Pachauri.

JH: Real scientists know that just one failure in an observation proves a theory wrong, but with so many journalist, politicians and scientists signed up to AGW it will take time to unravel.
#33 trollhattan
January 20, 2010

Whether tall or short, Jeff Harvey seems spot on.
#34 Mercurius
January 20, 2010

El Gordo at 32: ‘just one failure in an observation proves a theory wrong’

You cannot be serious. It registered a few years back that the location and trajectory of the Pioneer and Voyager satellites in the outer solar system were anomalous with the predictions of Newtonian and relativistic equations.

Well, there goes gravity, if you’re el gordo.
#35 Vince Whirlwind
January 20, 2010

#28, that *is* a good Monbiot article.

“…
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand.
You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals.
You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set.
And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist.
…”
#36 Bernard J.
January 20, 2010
[El blimpo](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/01/a_beat_up_of_himalayan_proport.php#comment-2216203):

BJ: You knew it was a sci/media beat-up and didn’t tell the rest of us. Well, thanks for that, we can put you in the same box with Hasnain and Pachauri.

You seem to be missing the point that I made

… that it was trivially obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of physics…

which would seem to put you in the same box as those others who don’t have a grasp of the fundamental underlying science. Or should every trivially obvious point be tediously corrected for the benefit of scientific illiterates such as yourself?

Gawd, we’re chasing our tails trying to educate you as it is, over matters that are just as banal, but more centered on the radars of the ignorant.

…just one failure in an observation proves a theory wrong…

You’re confusing matters of the quality/nature of empirical measurement, with matters of logic.

That a theory may be disproved is not the same as an observation disproving a theory. Consider these two examples:
1. I have a theory that thylacines are extinct. I see a report on Fox news that a special effects artist who, incidentally, has never been to Tasmania, has a photo purporting to show a live thylacine.
  
  Does this observation disprove my theory?
2. I have a theory that thylacines are extinct. I see a living thylacine sleeping in an enlosure, belonging to the Parks and Wildlife Service, and built to hold a group of endangered (and slightly chewed) bettongs bred for release into a rehabilitated habitat.
  
  Does this observation disprove my theory?
#37 P. Lewis
January 20, 2010

Vince Whirlwind said:

You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in the palm of your hand.

Aye. But a crumb, when it disintegrates, becomes two or more crumbs upon which the innumerable ascientific, knowledgeless who enjoy such detritus can continue to feast; and so on ad infinitum, or so it would seem.

Thankfully, there is [kill]file for Greasemonkey.
#38 el gordo
January 20, 2010

BJ: Point taken, but I’m still angry at the deceit and pomposity of Hasnain and Pachauri.
#39 Jeff Harvey
January 21, 2010

Longer Dave Andrews: *I do not know what the hell I am talking about but I will make a witless remark anyway. In fact, this is my style, since I never contribute anything of intellectual value here, anyway*.

Check the facts, Andrews: the think tanks and those affiliated with them ain’t exactly speaking from a scientific platform. And most of them are far to the right. Moreover, look at some of their key contemporary arguments of the denialati and the “it has not warmed since 1998″ canard is a constant theme.
#40 Jeff Harvey
January 21, 2010

El Lardo writes, *with so many journalist, politicians and scientists signed up to AGW it will take time to unravel*

Wrong on all counts. If this is so, why is it that virtually nothing has been done to deal with AGW since the alarm was first raised 20 years ago?

I will tell you why: because dealing with AGW involves the implementation of regulations that interfere with profit maximization of many powerful commerical elites. Given that many of our governments are utterly beholden to these elites (check out declassified government planning documents and the real, hidden agendas become apparent), then what government ministers say about AGW and do about it are radically different. But the anonymous planners behind the scenes, the ones actually formulating government policy, are the ones telling the truth.

As for the MSM, I find it quite remarkable that el Lardo claims to be an unemployed journalist and yet he can believe than many (do you mean most?!?!) journalists promote the argument of AGW. Really? What I see in the corporate-state MSM is denial by deception (much of the time) or out-and-out denial (no camouflage at all). In the former camp are those who do either or both of two things: first, they argue that ther evidence in support of AGW is large and growing, but rarely do they suggest why little or nothing is being done to deal with the problem, nor of the hugely well funded corporate backlash and propoaganda campaign that targets the general public and policymakers. The MSM, by and large, is owned by many of those commerical elites who are working tirelessly to stave off regulation, so this journalistic trick needs little explanation. The second strategy is to give the impression that the science is not settled and that there is a fairly evenly balanced split between climate scientists arguing in support of AGW on the one side and the so-called sceptics on the other.

Basically el Gordo you do not know what the hell you are talking about. Not now, not ever. No wonder your comments are routinely ridiculed here.
#41 dhogaza
January 21, 2010

“Army Ration Packs” and “Fashion watch” are ‘bots linking to what would appear to be commercial sites judging from the URL.
#42 P. Lewis
January 21, 2010

dhogaza said:

“Army Ration Packs” and “Fashion watch” are ‘bots linking to what would appear to be commercial sites judging from the URL.

Well, look on the bright side: their messages make more sense than the usual denialobots that frequent Deltoid and other such erudite places!
#43 ligne
January 21, 2010

dhogaza> yup, the spambots are out in force today. fashion watch’s posts is a direct copypaste of another up-thread, and something similarly out-of-context in the glacier at islandofdoubt.
#44 Dave Andrews
January 21, 2010

Even shorter jeff Harvey,

I am definitely right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and an idiot.
#45 Dave Andrews
January 21, 2010

Much shorter Jeff Harvey,

My world view is all there is.
#46 dhogaza
January 21, 2010

All-inclusive Dave Andrews:

I wouldn’t understand science if it bit me in the ass, so I’ll insult scientists.
#47 Vince Whirlwind
January 21, 2010

Dave, I’m absolutely certain that somebody could disagree with Jeff about something despite not being an idiot.
In *your* case, however, you *are* wrong, and you *are* an idiot.
#48 jakerman
January 21, 2010

Longer Dave Andrews:

>If anyone critques a denialist meme they are really saying *”I am definitely right and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and an idiot*”.

>In fact I’m so frustrated that I’d go as far as to say that if people say stuff that I don’t like then they are really saying “*My world view is all there is.*”

Shorter Dave Andrews:

>If you smackdown denialist memes, then you are intolerant.
#49 Fran Barlow
January 21, 2010

Dave Andrews above says:

Only my view of the world is correct. All who disagree with me, whatever their political persuasion, are wrong.

This is sub-intellectual nonsense. It’s an attempt to force a win not by substance by importing a rule.

Consider:

A says: P is true
B says: Not P is true
C Says: A says that anyone who disagrees with A is an idiot. Calling people idiots is wrong, so therefore B is correct and Not P is true

Here the imported rule — not calling people idiots — is given the status of a truth claim. Even if A had called those who disagreed “idiots” it would tell us nothing useful about the claims P is true/not true.

Dave advances no express rationale for importing such a rule nor any claim about its truth status. And of course, he doesn’t justify his claim that Jeff Harvey calls/regards anyone disagreeing with him idiots either.

In short, Dave Andrew’s tactics here qualify as misdirection, drawing upon spurious and specious reasoning. Even if the entire planet turned out to be composed of exclusively of idiots, this would continue to be true.
#50 Jeff Harvey
January 22, 2010

Dave Andrews, as I said, offers nothing here or anywhere else. He writes as if the points I made earlier are exceptional (e.g. not shared by many others or else lacking empirical support) when in fact there is a large amount of evidence which shows that the agenda of the bulk of the denialati (great word by the way BJ) is anything BUT scientific.

Again, if Dave Andrews could counter what I said in any way, shape or form I would be interested. But he offers no alternative, just vacuous, mindless quips in an attempt at denigration. To be honest, this is a tactic that is commonly used amongst those in ther anti-environmental camp. They do not attack the substance of one’s argument, but instead try and ridicule and belittle their opponents. As I said before, they are not interested in the science but in promoting a pre-determined worldview that backs up a very political agenda. This may explain why the same people in the anti-AGW camp are many of the same individuals and organizations who have downplayed biodiversity loss, downplayed the effects of acid rain and ozone depletion, and promote deregulation and other policies characteristic of the far right.

Dave Andrews, it is clear to me and most others here that you do not know very much about issues of substance. If you did, you would offer more than the usual crap you deposit here. I suppose it gives you your daily “high” to do so, am I correct? Or do you challenge any of the points I have made? Why not give it a try? I certainly do not expect anything to come from you that might be of interest, as your posts have a history of being intellectually bankrupt.
#51 lord_sidcup
January 22, 2010

I have picked up a rumour from a denialist goon that there will be another attempt at smearing Rajendra Pachauri in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend. Prepare yourselves.
#52 Hank Roberts
January 22, 2010

The picador and the rodeo clown go into the ring to distract the bull’s attention away from the matador or rodeo rider until the matador or rider can get back in position.

Dave is a really good picador. He’s not here to win arguments. He’s here to distract people from the arguments.

Be smarter than the bull.
#53 Hank Roberts
January 22, 2010

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=greenhouse-bananas
Non-Science Smear Campaigns
#54 Marion Delgado
January 22, 2010

When I did environmental journalism, a key concept was a plume of underground contamination – where a poison moves through the soil and the water in a branch-y way over time and at what concentration, and so on.

It’d be interesting to draw a diagram with contingency being 1 degree of separation and map where this error made it to before being corrected.
#55 Dano
January 23, 2010

I like the picador/rodeo clown analogy.

There are a lot of them here. And they are always engaged. And the clown wins, as they spoil the content of the thread. Ridicule them and move on. They only need to be exposed once.

Best,

D
#56 Douglas Watts
January 23, 2010

‘just one failure in an observation proves a theory wrong’ — el gordo.
–

So that means if I thought you had once made an intelligent statement … ?
#57 dhogaza
January 23, 2010

The picador and the rodeo clown go into the ring to distract the bull’s attention away from the matador or rodeo rider until the matador or rider can get back in position.

Well, the picador is named after the pike-like sharp thing they carry, their purpose is to weaken the bull before the matador goes to work.

That analogy doesn’t work well with DaveA, he’s more off a toothpicador.
#58 Gaz
January 23, 2010

So that means if I thought you had once made an intelligent statement … ?

…there would be something wrong with the data.
#59 Derecho64
January 23, 2010

“The Economist” has picked up on this non-story.

As per usual, the denialists land like flies on a pile of manure (in this instance, microscopic in size) and flit off to their blogs and make a big stink out of it.

Criminy, these guys need to be taken head-on. I recommend laying into them hard and fast.
#60 hankroberts
January 23, 2010

Don’t forget the analogy applies to anyone who mistakes the picador or the clown as worth attacking. Pay no attention.
#61 Mason Inman
January 24, 2010

I’ve seen these mistaken claims from the IPCC repeated in other peer-reviewed publications, written by scientists who it seems should have known better.

It’s annoying, since I’m a science journalist who covers climate change, and I’m trying to figure out what the actual facts are. It’s hard, when the IPCC report is so widely referred to.

To try to help set the record straight, I started a site NotIn2035.com (http://notin2035.com), where I’m collecting references to these mistakes in various peer-reviewed papers and other writings by scientists.

I’m not trying to shoot down the IPCC, or deny climate change. I’m really worried about the fate of the Himalayan glaciers and the billion+ people who would be affected by their disappearance, and just trying to get to the bottom of things.
#62 JasonW
January 24, 2010

Mason Inman, your intentions might be honourable, but in my opinion you’re blowing this out of all proportion. An entire blog dedicated to a minor mistake buried somewhere in the IPCC tome? That’s breaking the proverbial butterfly upon a wheel.

Having said that, I quite like your other blog “Failing gracefully” although the formatting takes some getting used to.
#63 hankroberts
January 24, 2010

> references to these mistakes in various peer-reviewed
> papers and other writings by scientists.

Have you talked to a reference librarian about this? It’s a good idea — chasing errata is a technical problem that comes up time and again. The original notion of hypertext — two-way links, which didn’t happen — could have handled this.

The several different citation services, and Google and other search engines, might be worth talking to about this problem; it would be good if they’d cooperate. Never waste a crisis.
#64 hankroberts
January 24, 2010

The Daily Mail discovers the same stuff Tim discovered days ago, about the draft comments (down at the bottom of this):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html#comments
#65 hankroberts
January 24, 2010

Oh, and watch this space:
“… an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.”
——–

Here’s another place to check routinely for journalists doing due diligence, when a name comes up in science –Business Week’s biography files:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=9089242
#66 David Duff
January 24, 2010

Defenders of the IPCC, please, please, stop digging! The hole is quite deep enough for Mr.Pachauri and all his deputies and deputy-deputies to be dropped in and then filled in – although, hang on – perhaps another few feet deeper if you can manage it so that we can also drop in all the rubbish they produced. Yes, yes, I know we could burn it but remember, global warming!
#67 hankroberts
January 24, 2010

Oh, my, they buried the punchline.

Look who’s in charge of Policy.
RPJr. must be jealous.

” the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson …. Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias …’.”
#68 Dave Andrews
January 24, 2010

Hank,

Murai Lal has admitted that the claim about the glaciers was included in an attempt to pressurise politicians to action.

How many more times has this been done and when will you open your eyes?
#69 hankroberts
January 24, 2010

> Dave Andrews
I’d guess you’re referring to this?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.htm

This is a _good_ argument for bringing the science volume out first, well before the regional and summary volumes, instead of releasing all at the same time.

The scientists should have time to finish the science for the fifth report, then time and support to watch more carefully as the regional and summary volumes are put together, and to criticize the drafts. They will be ready with sharpened knives next time around. Reputations get destroyed by things like this — and other reputations get made.

I commend Peter Watts’s post of some time back:
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=886

—excerpt follows—

Science doesn’t work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. Bickering and backstabbing are essential elements of the process. Haven’t any of these guys ever heard of “peer review”?

There’s this myth in wide circulation: rational, emotionless Vulcans in white coats, plumbing the secrets of the universe, their Scientific Methods unsullied by bias or emotionalism. Most people know it’s a myth, of course; they subscribe to a more nuanced view in which scientists are as petty and vain and human as anyone (and as egotistical as any therapist or financier), people who use scientific methodology to tamp down their human imperfections and manage some approximation of objectivity.

But that’s a myth too. The fact is, we are all humans; and humans come with dogma as standard equipment. We can no more shake off our biases than Liz Cheney could pay a compliment to Barack Obama. The best we can do— the best science can do— is make sure that at least, we get to choose among competing biases.

That’s how science works. It’s not a hippie love-in; it’s rugby. Every time you put out a paper, the guy you pissed off at last year’s Houston conference is gonna be laying in wait. Every time you think you’ve made a breakthrough, that asshole supervisor who told you you needed more data will be standing ready to shoot it down. You want to know how the Human Genome Project finished so far ahead of schedule? Because it was the Human Genome projects, two competing teams locked in bitter rivalry, one led by J. Craig Venter, one by Francis Collins — and from what I hear, those guys did not like each other at all.

This is how it works: you put your model out there in the coliseum, and a bunch of guys in white coats kick the shit out of it. If it’s still alive when the dust clears, your brainchild receives conditional acceptance. It does not get rejected. This time.

Yes, there are mafias. There are those spared the kicking because they have connections. There are established cliques who decide what appears in Science, who gets to give a spoken presentation and who gets kicked down to the poster sessions with the kiddies. I know a couple of people who will probably never get credit for the work they’ve done, for the insights they’ve produced. But the insights themselves prevail. Even if the establishment shoots the messenger, so long as the message is valid it will work its way into the heart of the enemy’s camp. First it will be ridiculed. Then it will be accepted as true, but irrelevant. Finally, it will be embraced as canon, and what’s more everyone will know that it was always so embraced, and it was Our Glorious Leader who had the idea. The credit may not go to those who deserve it; but the field will have moved forward.

Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones.

—-end excerpt—
#70 Mal Adapted
January 24, 2010

Hank, thanks for posting that Peter Watts excerpt. I’ve been wishing someone would put that into words, and I wouldn’t have known about it if you hadn’t posted.

My own tour on the battleground of science lasted through two years of doctoral study. Watts’s description matches my experience perfectly. In all humility, I didn’t have the stomach to make a career out of it, but I know that’s how science progresses.
#71 frankis
January 24, 2010

Yes that’s a beauty thanks Hank!
#72 Fran Barlow
January 24, 2010

The discussion above from Hank is apt and recalls a reasonably famous example of the process of scientific advancement — Louis father of microbiology Pasteur’s contribution to the contemporary grasp of pathogens. He was a dispassionate and unblemished scientist, right? Well not quite.

In France of 150 years ago a debate amongst the comparatively educated raged between those who applied the ex nihilo nil fit (nothing can home from nothing) principle to the life of micro-organisms and those who believed in spontaneous generation. Pasteur was from the first group. He tried to prove his hypothesis by placing sterilised yeast in flasks that were hermetically sealed. When no bacteria arose, it seemed he had made his case.

Along came a skeptic (who, unlike our so called climate skeptics, fancied it was on him to actually do some valid experimental work)– one Felix Pouchet. Pouchet deployed a similar flask to that used by Pasteur, using a heat-sterilised hay infusion rather than Pasteur’s yeast-water solution. Mould appeared almost immediately. It seemed that Pasteur had been debunked, because the method Pouchet used (now called, tellingly pasteurisation after the man himself) was seen as capable of destroying 100% of bacteria. What they didn’t know then was that some micro-organisms develop spores and so are not destroyed by pasteurisation as it was done at the time. Pasteur didn’t know this so he had no defence.

There were several good scientific responses for Pasteur –suggesting that heat sterilisation might not be 100% effective and trying to establish that experimentally would have been reasonable, or perhaps trying to find some technical flaw in Pouchet’s experiment.

Instead, he simply tried to bury Pouchet’s work by ignoring it. He was publicly supported by the largely catholic establishment who, appalled at the spread of Darwinism in Old Blighty, saw Pasteur’s account as being more consonant with the idea that life was created but once, ex nihilo nil fit than Pouchet’s which seemd to imply it might just arise anywhere, and thus open the door to Darwinism and atheism. It sounds laughable now, but the point was that their religious prejudice encouraged them to give Pasteur a free pass. With hindsight, we know Pasteur was right, but he was right on grounds that were scientifically unsound, and he had behaved reprehensibly in holding his ground.

It fell to later generations of researchers to retrace Pasteur’s steps and discover how, despite his flaws, he was right and why Pouchet’s challenge was specious. Few recall these days that Pasteur was counted amongst those who rejected Darwinism and made and sustained a scientific breakthrough through flawed methods.

I think it was Bismarck who said that nobody who liked sausage should ever visit a sausage factory. Equally, nobody who hopes to benefit from science should see scientists as being paragons of ethical virtue or dispassionate truth seekers. That’s why the best science, at least as far as public policy goes, is the science that emerges from collaboration, contest and conflict between our best trained scientific minds conducting their research in public view. That’s why scientific consensus is both a good thing and not at all antithetic to bona fide scientific dissent.

It’s also why scientific dissent is not at all the same thing as sub-scientific rock throwing and misdirection, such as one sees from our climate change agnotologists.
#73 hankroberts
January 24, 2010

Like the Peter Watts piece? So did other people; do visit his website followup:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1002
where he writes in part:
—-
“… I’ve just been informed by someone codenamed “SciCurious” that my Climategate posting has been chosen as one of the “50 Best Science Blogging Posts of the Year” …. these Top-50 are anthologised in dead-tree format for posterity, which is pretty cool.

Just to be clear: we’re talking about that rant in which I claimed that science depends at least partially on the pettiness and vindictiveness of scientists, and in which I proclaimed my fond desire to see the Pope immersed in nitric acid. One of the best science posts of the year, tube-wide.

I don’t understand it. I write about space vampires. I haven’t published a peer-reviewed technical paper in more than a decade. And yet, these troublesome vestiges of credibility continue to haunt me.

It is, of course, an honor (albeit an unexpected one; whoever put me up for this, thanks)….

—-

“Sausage and the law” — misattributed:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Godfrey_Saxe

“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”

And I agree with Fran — _that_ fits the IPCC process–the more open it gets, as it needs to, the less respect and more frantic opposition surface from the bystanders. That’s not because it’s the IPCC; it’s because it’s sausage, law, and science, all together.

Yes, there are people who can handle sausage, and law, and science even knowing how they are produced, without too many illusions.

It’s a paradox* — knowledge of how the world works interferes with many people’s ability to cope with reality.
________
*Fermi?
#74 JasonW
January 25, 2010

The German magazine DER SPIEGEL has an article on the Himalaya business and the IPCC in general. It is interesting to note that the English article is a lot milder than the German version – the latter quotes Roger Pielke Sr. and Hans von Storch and mixes up the Himalaya prognosis, Pachauri’s supoosed bias and the CRU hack. The English version is far more measured, and quotes Georg Kaser and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. See for yourselves:

[English article](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,672975,00.html)

[German article](http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,673779,00.html)
#75 Dave Andrews
January 25, 2010

Hank,

The Peter Watts article basically says scientists are human like everyone else, they have the same vices, the same saving graces, the same cliques etc.

But in the past you and many other pro AGWers have been quick to deny this when challenged by sceptics, for example over scientist following the money. Too often then your and others assertions have essentially been that science is a noble search for truth.

So which is it the later or the venal bear pit that Watts talks about?
#76 Dave Andrews
January 25, 2010

Hank,

How many more instances I asked you? Well it seems like there are now plenty coming out of the woodwork. WWF and IUCN have been used several times as sources even though their work was not peer reviewed.

You’re not going to be able to reference quote your way out of this one.
#77 jakerman
February 3, 2010

>*The Peter Watts article basically says scientists are human like everyone else, they have the same vices, the same saving graces, the same cliques etc.
But in the past you and many other pro AGWers have been quick to deny this when challenged by sceptics, for example over scientist following the money. Too often then your and others assertions have essentially been that science is a noble search for truth.*

Dave,

Being human does not mean that all humans are driven by the same values to the same degree. Scientist, by their life choices and demonstrated interests are disproportionately driven by knowledge and truth seeking. Bankers and big capitalist by theirs are show they are disproportionately driven by money.

Its not the same for every scientist nor every banker but it is for the weight of the their respective populations.