IPCC breaks its own rules
Another day, another ‘new’ climate report. This one is something about oceans and ice. There’s nothing new in this report (see commentary from Roger Pielke here, here and here) so what’s the point? The answer is, of course, that the constant stream of climate reports is an attempt to keep the climate scare at the top of the news. So it’s amusing that the IPCC faied on this occasion, thanks to the big news stories of Bumbling Boris being forced to come back to Parliament, and the attempt to impeach Donald Trump. Even the BBC, which would normally be expected to make an IPCC report the top news story, only had a short half-hearted piece way down the order on the Ten O’clock News, with David Shukman going to Hull to worry about sea level rise.
But what I noticed with today’s report was this, from the IPCC’s co-chair, Valerie Masson-Delmotte:
The full final paragraph of the approved SPM is as follows:
This assessment of the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate reveals the benefits of ambitious mitigation and effective adaptation for sustainable development and, conversely, the escalating costs and risks of delayed action. The potential to chart Climate Resilient Development Pathways varies within and among ocean, high mountain and polar land regions. Realising this potential depends on transformative change. This highlights the urgency of prioritising timely, ambitious, coordinated and enduring action. (very high confidence)
This struck me as odd, since, as any fule kno, the IPCC reports are supposed to be policy neutral. The 2-page document on the Principles Governing IPCC Work states that
IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy
So either the IPCC is unaware of its own guiding principles, or it has quietly decided to abandon them. I’ve asked Masson-Delmotte and the official IPCC twitter account what’s going on here. Needless to say, they haven’t replied.
Another piece of breaking news that is embarrassing for ocean alarmists is that a notorious “It’s worse than we thought” paper in Nature has been retracted today. Congratulations to Nic Lewis who repeatedly pointed out errors in the paper.
Climate Scepticism 
It all makes one wonder what air conditioners are for…
LikeLike
Reading the report shows it to be circular, tautological and filled with pseudo religious claptrap. In other words, aimed at the new policy makers, immature fear-filled children.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Re. Nature retraction: unfortunately this alarmist turkey has been running around for the best part of a year before being rounded up.
LikeLike
I noticed that BBC Radio 4 6pm news the other day was in full Climate Alarmist flood…..glaciers and seas rising (“worse than we thought”) the other day. (It would be good if it related to the retracted paper, but I haven’t checked). There was of course no questioning of what we were being told.
LikeLike
The Bish reports on twitter that the retracted Resplandy et al paper was cited in yesterday’s IPCC report!
Edit: Bish now says he thinks they cited the retracted paper erroneously! See this conversation.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Paul, when I noted that, if it were not for Nic Lewis, Resplandy et al would still be being cited by the “climate community”, little did I realise that the most recent example would be in the SROCC report itself! Unreal. Whatever they said in relation to Resplandy et al will now have to be removed from the report.
LikeLike
The Con has an article by Mark Brandon trying to spin the IPCC report as even worse than catastrophe.
Somebody pointed an erroneous figure caption
“Arctic sea ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, contributing to sea level rise.”
So they’ve now changed it to
“Ise sheets are being lost at an unprecedented rate, contributing to sea level rise.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Bish has withdrawn his tweet stating that SROCC cited Resplandy et al. Apparently, it was another Resplandy paper, but it seems they made a typo (how unusual) by printing Resplandy et al 2018.
LikeLike
Ise [International Securities Exchange] sheets are being lost at an unprecedented rate, contributing to sea level rise. This must be it, because no ice sheets have been lost, let alone at an unprecedented rate. The Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets were still there, the last time I looked at satellite images.
LikeLike
Off-topic I’m afraid, (although it’s still about media b*****ks): the Guardian has just spammed me with some guff about “open fire cooking in Sweden”. In the 1st picture in the linked article, the chef is cooking what looks suspiciously like a huge chunk of meat (how dare he! hey, I’ll bet it’s reindeer. He’s cooking Bambi!). Isn’t there a danger of forest fire? Isn’t it producing CO2? What would Greta think?
This is actually a plug for Guardian Travel. I presume that you have to travel there by yacht; it’s important to be carbon-neutral, you see.
In passing, a young woman on the checkout at Waitrose today was wearing her blond hair in long, tightly interlaced plaits. Goodness me; is this going to be a trend? Are we soon going to be surrounded by Greta Longstocking clones? Every community is going to feel like Village of the Damned.
At least she didn’t glare at me.
LikeLike
Greek mythology warned of seductive songs luring sailors to crash their ships upon the rocks. Currently the climate sirens are singing loudly, filling the ears of captains of industries as well as ships of state. Be forewarned of the latest example of disintormation coming again from IPCC. Their fourth special report this year will be a 900-page missive entitled, Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, targeted for release to the general public for commentary on September 25.
Resist: https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2019/09/12/beware-the-climate-sirens-song/
LikeLike
Ivan Oransky at Retraction watch picks up on the bungled citation of the retracted paper:
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/09/27/did-the-ipccs-new-oceans-report-mean-to-cite-a-now-retracted-paper/
LikeLike
your post/comments lead me for some reason to –
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/08/the-antarctic-ice-sheet-is-melting-and-yeah-its-probably-our-fault/
yeah Steig’s back
LikeLike
Paul:
Amusing indeed. And for Steve McIntyre fans, it’s even more amusing that our versatile hero, now in Twitter mode, seems to have found a strange anomaly in the origins of Ukraine-gate, the purported basis for the attempt to impeach Trump. At least Steve’s been getting an unprecedented level of interest:
Other climate sceptics may want to echo these comments of appreciation:
It all began here:
Sorry for the diversion about the diversion from serious climate crisis catastrophising.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Actually, it’s worse than we thought. Not only did the IPCC SROCC bungle the citation of Resplandy et al but, by relying upon Cheng et al, 2019, which in turn cites Resplandy et al on OHC, their text still derives false authority from a now retracted paper. Oh dear. As Pielke Jr. says, that’s what happens when a journal like Nature takes months to withdraw a paper from publication. There must be numerous papers out there which cite the now retracted Resplandy et al. Nature has no excuse. Nic Lewis was on the case very quickly after publication.
https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1177716115260108800
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think we may have a new grammatical term here for reviewing climate papers. “The paper is resplandent with inaccuracies…”
LikeLiked by 1 person
dfhunter,
That “Real”Climate piece has it all:
The grandiose apocalyptic claptrap, the assumption of the inevitable “tipping point”, the deliberate historical ignorance, etc.
It’s all there in a relatively short article filled with concentrated bs. And the fawning, echo chamber comments, rich with sanctimonious righteousness.
Perfect. All the article needed was for St. Greta to stomp her feet, eyes tear filled, and render her scientific judgement that we have robbed her of the Antarctic.
LikeLike
Tamsin writing about our Barry
1. How climate sceptics are not all angry or selfish (or wrong)
The phone rang. Sitting at my desk in the University of Bristol, eight years ago, I picked up. “Hello – may I speak to Dr Edwards, please?”. “Speaking,” I replied. “This is Barry,” he said.
Damn. I knew I should have taken my phone number off the university public website after starting to comment about climate science online. Barry was a climate sceptic, what some would call a ‘denier’
.. continued
LikeLiked by 1 person
I used to feel that Tamsin might genuinely bridge the gap between sceptics and AGW-convinced scientists, permitting a positive interchange of ideas. Alas, that was not to be. Any time spent in academia studying climate change appears to harden even the most open minds against even the suggestion that sceptics of ‘dangerous’ man-made climate change might have a point. Tamsin’s genuine openness appears to have evolved into mild-mannered tolerance and subtle condescension towards those who question that we might not be responsible for much of the changes which are currently happening and/or have happened, that the future may not be as nearly as bleak as viewed through the lens of the climate models. And all the while, she is killing science softly, with her words, killing it softly, with her words . . . .
LikeLike
Jaime. I don’t know the situation today, but at UEA (when I was there) there were many academic staff who were sceptics or unconvinced about CAGW, but would not stand up to be counted. I suspect little has changed except the intensity of opposition to expressions of difference. There used to be a great deal of difference between what the uncommitted would discuss privately or in public. Thus I would not be surprised if support for a sceptical position is not greater than it might first appear.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Jaime:
“we might not be responsible for much of the changes which are currently happening and/or have happened”
We are told all the time about “current climate change”, but I am not sure what changes we have actually seen, and since when? In the UK autumn has trended a little warmer, winters not quite so desperately cold, Summers no hotter, spring about the same. There is a casual not a causal link with CO2 and emissions. Do we go back to the LIA to define a change in climate?
LikeLike
Dennis, the world has almost certainly warmed since the early 70s, some glaciers have melted and receded, Arctic sea-ice has declined noticeably in summer (since 1979), weather patterns have changed, sea surface temperatures have increased (though not uniformly), ENSO activity picked up and appeared to peak in 2016, causing much higher than normal sea temperatures around the globe and we’ve had some notable heatwaves on land during the 21st century. ‘Climate scientists’ say this is very likely all our fault. Sceptics say you don’t know enough about natural forcings (internal and external) and natural drivers of atmospheric and oceanic circulation to attribute most of these changes to GHGs. Scientists say, “we’re the experts” – the polite ones do, anyway.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s probably worse now Alan. Any academics sceptical of (C)AGW dare not speak against their colleagues for the very real fear of being sacked. It’s also probably impossible to be a scientist studying climate change who is openly sceptical about the attribution of most or all of recent changes to GHGs. I think Judith Curry’s experience probably proves that point.
LikeLike
@hunterson7
not to put the wind up you, but at least he adds –
“Now, a couple of caveats:
First of all, our finding are “simply” the result of looking at climate model simulations. We don’t know exactly what happened in the Amundsen Sea in the last century”
LikeLike
Ref.. “deferential”.. gosh, different perspectives.. I wad just being polite and cautious because calling a total stranger on a contentious issue, who may have had some bad experience with other people. (Wierdly, I didn’t even remember making the call, such a long time ago) At the time, I would have thought i was being very patient with someone who lived in a science bubble and was perhaps a bit naive. sorry no..Anyone that knows me, I think.would chuckle at that description (including a certain Theresa May, our meeting was an ‘experience’ I also tried and obviously failed to get her deselected) [Tamsin did give me a private heads up about her blog post]
LikeLike
Interresting self twitter bio :
Caroline Hic kman@Carolinehickma
University of Bath Climate Psychology Alliance Climate Catastrophe
or Transformation Eco Anxiety Social Collapse Climate Change/Crisis
LikeLike
from Tasmins blog post –
“And the tick tock, tick tock of the orbital cycles continues. But we have now prevented the next ice age we were due, with our unintended increase of the global thermostat”
she sounds like we all really wanted an “ice age” but have deprived ourselves of this beneficial event by our unintended CO2 increase to the globe keeping the place nice & warm!!!
not sure how many ciders it takes to get to that conclusion.
LikeLike
DFHUNTER,
“But we have now prevented the next ice age we were due . . . . ”
As far as I can tell, this statement of absolute certainty derives from one scientific paper co-authored by Ganopolsky and Schellnhuber. No doubt there are others which imply that CO2 is the principal control mechanism behind glacial inception. But this is the study which ‘confirmed’ that humans have broken the Pleistocene cycle of ice ages. Now consensus climate scientists merely repeat it as ‘fact’.
https://cliscep.com/2018/01/11/global-cooling-not-worth-shivering-about-but-is-a-broken-ice-age-cycle-worth-sweating-about/
LikeLike
STEWGREEN,
Caroline Hickman forgot to add ‘globetrotter’ to her interesting Twitter bio. She flew to the Maldives in August to spend a few days asking children if they are worried about climate change (they said yes) and she likes to boast about how much time she has spent diving in the Red Sea.
So yet another climactivist hypocrite.
An unusually self-deprecating one, though. Here she is making fun of herself for delivering a lecture about climate change to a man she bumped into while walking her dogs on a wet and windy summer day:
(Best watched at 1.25 or 1.5 times the normal speed. She’s a very slow speaker.)
If you want to see more of her (!), live within bicycling distance of London and have £150 to spare, later this month she’ll be at the Royal Society of Medicine talking about the climate crisis with Tree Staunton, a body psychotherapist from Stroud, centre of the XR universe.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sleepwalking-into-the-anthropocene-the-new-age-of-anxiety-tickets-59886939448
Others on the bill: Jem Bendell, globetrotting professor of gloom; Emma Marris, globetrotting eco-optimist; Audrey de Nazelle, globetrotting anti-travel lecturer at the Grantham Institute; Mary-Jayne Rust, globetrotting eco-psychologist, art therapist and teacher of eldering at a country house near Totnes, centre of Britain’s woo universe; and Neil Jennings, formerly an eco-entrepreneur (mentoring from Ben & Jerry’s Climate Change College helped him charge students £1.50 for a chance to win a prize for switching their lights off) and expert on debunking alarmism about the Gulf Stream and now head of greenwashing (or summat) at the thoroughly alarmist Grantham Institute.
If you are a member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy, attendance will cost only £99 and will count as four or five hours of the 250 hours of Continuing Professional Development you must accumulate every five years in order to maintain your accreditation as a psychotherapist or psychotherapeutic counsellor.
Gotta be a winner! Book before 16th Oct.
LikeLike
On dfhunter’s comment “she sounds like we all really wanted an “ice age” but have deprived ourselves of this beneficial event by our unintended CO2 increase to the globe keeping the place nice & warm!!!”, I’ve noticed for a few years that contemporary climate scientists have a strangely complacent attitude to the idea of a future Ice Age. Maybe another “Little Ice Age” could be tolerated, but a full-blown Ice Age would be catastrophic. It could be argued that anybody who has contributed to the avoidance of a future Ice Age deserves a share in a Nobel Peace Prize.
In Nigel Calder’s 1974 book about global cooling, “The Weather Machine and the threat of ice” (published by the BBC, the book accompanied his 1974 TV documentary), he gives some useful lists of countries that would be impacted by a future Ice Age (some countries in the list may no longer exist or have been re-named since the early 1970s):
Countries in danger of obliteration (complete or almost complete) by ice sheets : Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Irish Republic, United Kingdom, Norway, sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, New Zealand
Countries in danger of extensive glaciation : USA, USSR (with danger of obliteration of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belorussia, Kirgizia, Tadzhikistan and large areas of RSFSR), Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Netherlands, Germany (FDR and DDR), Poland, Austria, Afghanistan, China, Australia
Countries in danger of severe drought during the onset of an ice age : Mexico, Guatemala, Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana, Brazil,Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Upper Volta, Ghana, Togo, Dahomey, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Congo, Zaire, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Namibia, Zambia, Rhodesia, South Africa, Botswana, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Indo-China, Australia
LikeLike
Vinny,
Thanks for the heads up on the upcoming meeting! I was hoping to listen in on it via Skype or some other sharing technology (say u-tube). I assume that Cliff Mass’s recent experience is going to be discussed-
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-university-of-washington-should-not.html
LikeLike
Here is a better view of the pathetic vandal phonies, XR, finding out just how little they know of the practical world:
LikeLike
Notice that the narrator is not from the UK at all, and that while their attempt to vanadalize the UK Treasury is a failure, no one seems to wonder about the type of chemical the red dye is composed of. .
And no police to secure a major public building from vandalization?
Crush the XR.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can someone tell me why this isn’t terrorism? it’s the
very definition of it IMO.
The traditional route is to form a party, write a manifesto and then
get democratically elected to implement it. Why do XR think
they know better?
LikeLike
KAKATOA, we have both wandered a long way from the subject of this post, so I’ll just say that I’m baffled by how a photo of pigs at a trough can be deemed racist.
Plus here’s a link to Stoat saying he wholly agrees with Mass’s position on the two carbon tax proposals, if not with his use of the photo:
http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2018/12/laffaire-cliff-mass.html
LikeLike
“Big man, pig man
Haha, charade you are
Wooh!
You well-heeled big wheel
Haha, charade you are
And when your hand is on your heart
You’re nearly a good laugh, almost a joker
With your head down in the pig bin
Sayin’, “Keep on digging”
Pig stain on your fat chin
What do you hope to find
Down in the pig mine?”
Definite racist lyrics by Waters there.
What happened to Cliff Mass is deeply disturbing, one of the most horrifying stories of academic censorship I have come across so far, worse even than Curry, Ridd and Pielke.
LikeLike