Climate change predictions from the United Nations were not based on...

[EarthCalling]

...solid evidence- Is the game up? The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was slammed by scientists around the world for not basing their predictions on solid evidence. It recommended an overhaul of the management of the UN panel, which has been led since 2002 by Rajendra Pachauri.

Like the IPCC fiindings, the above news item has been selectively sexed-up.

The edited item-
'...global warming report had exaggerated the pace of Himalayan glaciers melting.and the errors dented the credibility of the process and its response to the mistakes was slow and inadequate.' said Professor Harold Shapiro, of America's Princeton University.

 

[david]

Since the standard Gorebot rebuttal seems to be, "It was just the Himalayn glaciers thingy!"...

"Glaciergate" is nothing less than an act of criminal fraud. The IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report asserted that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by the year 2035.

Well… It turns out that this assertion was not drawn from any scientific study. It was drawn from a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report. The WWF had simply made it up.

The lead author of the section which cited the WWF fabrication, Dr Murari Lal, knew that the claim was baseless; yet included anyway “to put political pressure on world leaders" to take action against global warming to save the glaciers.

How many glaciers are there in the world?

How many are advancing?

How many are retreating?

How many sit still?

The answers to the first three questions are: No one knows for sure. There are at least 400,000 glaciers on this planet. Less than a few hundred (maybe less than 100) have been subjected to mass balance studies over extended periods of time.

The answer to the last question is zero. Glaciers are always advancing or retreating.

How much would humans have to cut back on CO2 emissions to alter alter the rate at which some glaciers are retreating?

At what cost?

If someone is trying to talk you into spending your money on their pet project and they fabricate a horror story to encourage you to go along… They have committed fraud.

On top of all of that... There is clear evidence that glacier mass balance has been growing since 2003.

Glacier Mass Balance
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/?ts=glacier&del[]=cogley_arithmetic&del[]=wgms_all_glaciers

 

[PaulB]

Talk about misrepresentation! Not "sexing up", in your case, but flat-out lying.

Your chosen quote, not from the report, but from one outside comment on it, wrenched out of context:

"global warming report had exaggerated the pace of Himalayan glaciers melting"; yes; there was a mistake regarding this one detail of the report

"and the errors dented the credibility of the process"; yes, spot a mistake and you'll be more sceptical

"and its response to the mistakes was slow and inadequate"; yes, a public relations disaster in fact.

But how do you get from that to "Climate change predictions from the United Nations were not based on solid evidence"? I have made mistakes in my own scientific work (who hasn't?), but that's completely different from saying that my scientific work as a whole is "not based on solid evidence".

But I suppose we'll just have to get used to people claiming that the report discredited the IPCC, just like people continuing to claim that Mann and Jones had been discredited by the six separate enquiries that actually exonerated them.

 

[FacilePrinceps]

Climate change can have a dramatic effect on our lives in my case it makes me yawn and fall asleep

 

[bucket22]

Is that a Fox News headline?

Here's what the actual report says:

"The overall structure of the IPCC assessment process appears to be sound, although significant improvements are both possible and necessary for the fifth assessment and beyond."

"The Committee concludes that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall and has served society well. The commitment of many thousands of the world’s leading scientists and
other experts to the assessment process and to the communication of the nature of our
understanding of the changing climate, its impacts, and possible adaptation and mitigation
strategies is a considerable achievement in its own right. Similarly, the sustained commitment of
governments to the process and their buy-in to the results is a mark of a successful assessment.
Through its unique partnership between scientists and governments, the IPCC has heightened
public awareness of climate change, raised the level of scientific debate, and influenced the
science agendas of many nations. However, despite these successes, some fundamental changes
to the process and the management structure are essential, as discussed in this report and
summarized below."

The IPCC is always evolving and improving procedures.

"Maintaining flexibility. To its credit, the IPCC has shown that it is an adaptive organization,
applying lessons learned from one assessment to the next and improving its processes to address
new policy needs. For example, the IPCC adjusted the scope of Working Groups II and III after
the first and second assessments (IPCC, 1992; Watson, 1997); substantially revised its principles
and procedures after the second assessment (IPCC, 1998; 1999); and introduced a revised set of
scenarios of socio-economic, climate and environmental conditions after the fourth assessment
(IPCC, 2008). The Committee urges the IPCC to use the recommendations of this report to
continue to adapt its process and structures to accommodate future advances in scientific
understanding and evolving needs of policy makers."