Over the top?

Among the mounting criticisms of the IPCC is the question of knowledge sources. Some attacks on the IPCC are dismissive of the findings because local knowledge was used to make a claim. I think this is problematic.

The Fickle Science? (Hyperbole or Toilet Bowl)

Typically: When you are 18 years old you want to rearrange the world to suit your vision of utopia. Thirty or forty years later you are content to rearrange the furniture so you don’t fall over the table on your way to the toilet. Does this hypothesis hold in climate science? Does the task of saving the world from immanent climate related catastrophe have an inverse relationship to age?

Beyond Climate Science: State of the Union

It is interesting to note what President Obama has to say about climate change, especially when he addresses the skeptical Republicans:

'I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -- because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.'

Of course, good science is important. But climate policies, be it mitigation or adaptation, do not exclusively depend on 100 % scientific evidence. There are other arguments for both mitigation and adaptation, and there are other powerful mechanisms at work - such as nationalist interests. Climate policies don't stand or fall with IPCC reports or other scientific evidence; there are many cultural, economic and political reasons for adaptation and mitigation.  Of course, the conflicts about manipulated data and conflicts of interest have to be solved; but the future of the world does not depend on these mostly inner-scientific conflicts, nor do climate policies.

Guest post: How could the IPCC foster social learning?

by Falk Schützenmeister

The fact that relative small scientific mistakes, public misperceptions of the scientific method, and maybe the misconduct of a few can shake up a major field of international policy indicates that the institutional coupling between science and policy is too tight. The reputation of Harvard would never be at stake only because a few alumni became felons. In climate research, the outcome of international negotiations depends on a level of moral integrity among IPCC scientists that is unlikely to be found in priesthood.

UEA guilty but no punishment

The Guardian today reports that UEA violated FOI rules but it was too late to prosecute:

In case anyone just woke up

This is a re-posting of  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ piece titled 'Science chief John Beddington calls for honesty on climate change'.  The article can be found at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece  The article begins: 'The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser.'

2nd reader survey on KLIMAZWIEBEL

We have again used the opportunity to survey our readers; no claims are made that this survey would lead to representative or even consistent results. Instead it is just a snapshot. Anyway, it turns out that really many of our readers are scientists - mostly natural scientist. A few decision makers and journalists are among our readers, but hardly any NGO members. And our readers read other blogs as well, in particular Climate Audit, but also Real Climate.

Who agrees with the IPCC?

With the current fiasco concerning the IPCC reports perhaps it is appropriate to see what the climate science community thought about the reports before the report hit the fan. Using the data from the 2008 (after The Report) survey of climate scientists, it seems that most climate scientists (at least those in the survey sample) tended to agree with the IPCC conclusions. There was even a significant minority that claimed the IPCC tended to under estimate things.

An inquiry by a reader

Recently there has been discussion of exaggerations and possibly misleading documents. In November RealClimate posted the Copenhagen document for discussion. I raised the following questions, which were posted but got no reply.

Sea level hyperbole Copenhagen report/IPCC
Executive Summary
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/executive_summary.html

Kommentar zuTol-Pielke-Storch in SPIEGEL online

Ich bekam diesen Kommentar, von dem ich glaube, dass manch anderer ähnliche Überlegungen macht. Mit Einverständnis des Kommentators veröffentliche ich den Kommentar hier:

Ich finde nicht, dass es eine gute Idee ist, Patchauri und IPCC in der Presse zu attackieren.