Pielke Jr responds to the IPCC statement responding to Jonathan Leake’s Sunday Times article. Here. Roger described IPCC claims of balance on the issue in dispute as follows:
The only balance that was achieved was between misrepresentation and error.
Take a look.
Climate Audit 
72 Comments
Time for a tip jar at Pielke’s! 🙂
Sorry – just saw he is collecting for MSF – will hit that instead.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!
In an interview of Mike Hulme of the CRU along with Tony Juniper Green party activist.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8480000/8480314.stm
The interview was ref the IPCC 4 report, Tony went on to say the IPCC report was 3000 pages, so its expanded overnight from 1600 pages and so error rate per page will be halved in a flash.
When it comes to presenting or discussing anything remotely quantitative, the BBC has a woeful record.
Steve, thanks for this very short post, which alerted me not just to Pielke Jnr but the woeful IPCC response he takes apart. You should do a few more of these short bursts I think as the situation develops. But it must be hard to know. An embarrassment of riches.
Thanks to johnh for the link to the discussion this morning on Today (the premier radio news programme in the UK). John Humphreys is a pretty good barometer of the ‘zeitgeist’ over here. His sceptical tone said it all.
I have my biases. I’m nobody’s ‘fanboi’ but I listen.
Good sounds.
P.S.
Thank you for the glacier topic, Mr. McIntyre.
I tried to post the following over at Pielke, Jr’s, but couldn’t figure out the procedure:
Hu,
I can post that comment for you if you like. I’d just copy and paste. Pielke’s blog checks your login credentials against an account you have established at another site; google, facebook etc. This is a way to make sure people are who they say they are.
Thanks, Eric, but with Ian’s help (below), I’ve set up a Google Account and think I’ve successfully resubmitted it at Pielke’s. It’s pending approval at the moment, I think.
Re: Hu McCulloch (Jan 26 13:06),
Hu,
I can’t comment on the correlations referred to. Heck, I’ll take what you say as totally valid. My take on Pielke Jr.’s comment(s) wrt Muir Woods was, somehow, somebody, snagged a slide and used it out of context. Anyone can correct me if I’m wrong. Here, Here, Here, and Here is some back story to the current topic.
Hugh:
The reference in the table (which is in the Supplementary Materials to Chapter 1 of WGII), is:
Muir Wood [sic] et al., 2006
If I understand Roger’s point correctly, the source that was cited comes from a conference that he (Roger) was involved in organizing. Muir-Wood, at the time, signed off on a declaration at that conference stating there was, in fact, no discernible trend in disaster losses. The table in question involves a subset of data that Muir-Wood presented (so, Roger feels the IPCC misused it).
The paper was only subsequently published (Miller, S., R. Muir-Wood, and A. Boissonnade, 2008. An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses, Chapter 12, pp. 225-247, in Climate Extremes and Society, edited by H. F. Diaz and R. J. Murnane. Cambridge University Press.) and did not report this 2% trend.
See Roger’s more detailed post on the use of the Muir-Wood 2006 (unpublished) and comparison with the published (2008) version at:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/castles-built-on-sand.html
Re: Ian (Jan 26 14:09),
More specifically, the graph can be found on p.SM.1-4 of the Supplementary Materials to Chapter 1 of WGII with the description:
The reference itself is on on p.SM1-12:
I was able to track down what I believe to be the actual Workshop Report. (Note: The report is a large 8MB+ pdf). Curiously, the referenced section is on pp. 161-167 and does not contain the IPCC graph.
Fig. 1 could presumably be smoothed to create the “loss” curve, but the “normalized loss” data itself sure doesn’t resemble temperatures.
I posted on Roger’s site as well, but might add here:
The SOD of Chapter 1 originally had the graph included in the text, as figure 1.5. (http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR4/SOD/Ch01.pdf at p. 58).
The description reads:
“Figure 1.5: Normalized losses in US$ millions compared with global temperature anomalies (Miller et al., 2006)”
At that point, they were referring to the work as “Miller” rather than “Muir-Wood”.
In response to some criticisms from expert reviewers, the writing team noted as follows: (http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR4/SOD_COMMS/Ch01_SOD_Expert.pdf at p. 122)
“Figure moved to Supplementary Figure and employed a different plot that smoothes catastrophe losses and shows these alongside temperature. After smoothing (that thereby removes the peaks noted) the correlation remains. The text now provides a balanced commentary on this.”
So, it is clear that the graph seen in the supplementary materials to Chapter 1 of WGII, was the creation of “Writing Team”, though it might have been based on a graph in the original report.
Prof Pielke has shown that the correlation is spurious. The graph does not take into account changing population patterns that is the apparent rise is due to more people and more and more valuable property being in the way of the same number of extreme weatehr events.
I hope that this is not too great a distortion of Prof Pielke’s nuanced views.
Re: TAG (Jan 26 14:27), that’s what I understood too, plus the workshop concluded it was a spurious connection, plus Muir-Wood, when finally published, specifically said that a connection between temperature rise and extreme weather could not be established with the evidence they had. So IPCC had said something, from an unpublished paper, that Muir-Wood later specifically denied.
Check back with all Pielke’s pieces as Jimchip references.
Maybe someone here will comment (I know this chain is getting long & complex) – but if Muir-Wood was genuinely onside in terms of the conclusion that there is no proven causal link, why did he allow his work to be misrepresented as it was in WGII. As I noted on Roger’s blog, Muir-Wood is listed as a “Contributing Author” on the chapter in question. Shouldn’t he have spoken up?
I confess, however, that I’m not familiar with the hierarchy in the IPCC writing process; maybe this avenue wasn’t open to him.
Any thoughts would be welcome.
I don’t know but here’s a thought. Scientists want to have meetings and talk things out. One doesn’t want to have to ‘watch one’s own back’.
Like I said, just a thought.
Hu you need something like a “Blogger” account or Google account. What I did since I have a Google account is use that (there is a spot where you select the type of post and Google is one of them). From there Blogger wanted me to make my own blog, all I did was fill out the needed stuff and select “create a blog later” and then I could post there.
Professor Pielke Jnr. has stated quite clearly that the IPCC lied in its response to the Sunday Times article. “The latter included an outright lie” and “This statement is remarkable for its untruths”. These are very clear and strong accusations.
Professor Pielke Jnr. is neither a politician nor a journalist, whose remarks might be dismissed as exaggerated and of no consequence. He is a highly respected scientist. When someone of his stature publishes such accusations on the internet, which is available to a worldwide readership, the IPCC has only two alternatives. Either to ignore the accusation,thereby admitting their guilt or to take legal action for defamation. The courts in Europe, and particularly in England, have a much lower threshold for such cases, and the awards for malicous accusations are often very heavy.
My guess is that the IPCC will prefer to have been publicly exposed as liars. Sadly, that would taint the reputations of the very many honest scientists who contribute in one way or another to the IPCC.
Is it not, therefore, time for those scientists who contribute to the IPCC and who believe that science should be about truth not spin and propaganda to distance themselves from such a discredited body?
That’s correct.
At the risk of spoiling an article I’m working on ( which will probably never se the light of day anyways ) everybody need to remember what Hans Von Storch did
when it Climate Research published the Soon Paper. Anybody remember?
Anybody remember that the Soon paper made it into an EPA report?
Remember?
And what did Von Storch do? A man of character?
Read the whole mail including the WSJ editorial
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=348&filename=1060002347.txt
That was quite an interesting and worth while read Mr Mosher…thank you for pointing it out.
Re: Steven Mosher (Jan 26 15:11),
I have a hard copy of Nature|Vol 463|7 January 2010. (page 25), from a HansVS ‘Correspondence’
“Man’s mark is clear…”
“unequivocally”
“We and our colleagues have worked with the scientists at centre of this controversy”
—
A question I have is (fouled up memory), where did ‘kid-gloves’ show up?
no spoilers
did you ever read the editorial hans wrote before resigning? on his website he even says he resigned because they refused to publish it.
Click to access CR.editorial.pdf
his page on the incident:
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm
I have to say, that dichotomy – sue for libel or admit guilt – is a common myth. A reputable defamation lawyer will tell you that you’re almost always better off letting something drop than suing over it. Mud sticks, so you’re better off ignoring mud-flinging – right up until it’s so damaging that you can’t possibly make things worse.
Even in a situation like this, Pielke’s (admirable) reputation isn’t enough to make as much mud stick as would be sprayed by the muck-spreader that a court-case would be.
It has far less to do with the truth of the allegedly defamatory claims, and far more to do with the relative stature, reputation and credibility of the two parties.
That said, I’m not a lawyer.
I would have posted my remarks on Profesor Pielke’s site but I, too, was unable so to do.
OT but: if you want to post at Roger’s site, set up a “Google account”. Make sure you select a “Nickname” under which you want to post. You then sign in using your google account details (it’s in the drop-down box)
I’ve also found that it sometimes takes two tries to get the second layer of security – which involves inputting some letters.
Cheers.
Re: Ian (Jan 26 14:12),
Probably OT, too, but the site could’a been wiped out due to the traffic. Google’s not bad, they try to save (Store and forward). Steve “The Mongol Blogger”, got wiped out, one time. meh, just a thought.
Pielke’s book “The Honest Broker” (see his page) has been in print for thirty months and carries just two reviews at Amazon, then two days ago, it got a raving anti-review from Eli Rabett. Why this sudden interest? I cannot possibly imagine.
And its Eli’s one and only review, I have marked it as unhelpful.
I love the way the battle spreads across all possible interactive new media.
ah, my PC glitched, didn’t think this remark had gone through; hey, John I noticed the same as you did. So often the rubbish reviews are singletons; the good and sensitive ones are far more often done by reviewers of many books. Note further down: I found more…
Looks like at 35 of us have followed suit as of a few minutes ago. It might be useful for someone to post a gently negative review that can be marked helpful so that the rabbit’s one isn’t listed as “most helpful negative review” as it is now.
I know the reason for it Lucy and you can find it due to the dates involved. Eli went over to Roger’s site two days ago and tried to defend the “Consensus” on the Hurricane/damage projections that Stern and the IPCC uses as linkage to Climate Change. This is an area of expertise of Dr. Pielke Jnr’s and he refuted Eli. Eli’s comment is number 19 of this thread:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-tangled-web-we-weave.html#comments
Roger’s is comment is #20 and is capped with this:
That was on Jan 24th and then you go and see Eli’s “review” was on Jan 25th and you can see it is nothing more then a unmature act of revenge by him against Dr. Pielke.
Re: Lucy Skywalker, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:13pm —
Eli Rabbett isn’t shy about organizing a Two Minutes Symposia on the topic of Something Roger Pielke Wrote, example here. It seems that one of Pielke’s offenses is to comment in venues that Rabbett claims as his own, e.g. at the well-meaning if erratic blog Cruel Mistress.
Perhaps calm will return once Pielke concedes that amazon.com is in Rabbett’s part of the schoolyard.
…at the blog Cruel Mistress (link to a comment about Haiti).
No surprise there! “Eli Rabett”, aka Professor Halpern (I believe) is one of Grant Foster’s (aka “Tamino”) stooges.
Like Briffa’s response to the Yamal situation, the IPCC response is masterful in its lack of specifics.
These people are going to ground in a hurry.
Maybe we need a list of disaster — begore anyone can look at trends..
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/05/08/f-natural-disasters-history.html
Does that help?
Economic losses due to extreme weather in the US are more likely due to increased housing in the gulf states, in wild fire-prone areas of California and along major rivers. The population of Florida and other gulf states has grown dramatically since the 1930s. California has grown from next to nothing in 1850 to 30+ millions today. Homes are increasingly being built next to forests and national parks lands. This increased economic factor must be taken into consideration when trying to tie economic loss of natural disasters to warming.
In the past, everyone knew if you built on a florida beach you would eventually get wiped out. As a consequence, many such houses were cheapo throw-aways such as trailers, little wood houses, or cement block. Gone? No big deal. Now people want their million dollar house right on the beach, and they want insurance to cover it. This creates a huge bias in losses on top of the population question.
Steve: building in vulnerable areas was a subplot in many Travis McGee (John D MacDonald) novels of the 60s and 70s. If anyone can locate relevant quotes, I’d be interested.
Re John D’s Florida books, “Condominium” is the most obvious source. The Travis McGee books are full of such comments but they are scattered throughout the series and may be hard to pinpoint. But “Condominium” is a book bottomed on shoddy building on the beach.
Craig, you are correct.
Unfortunately, the insurance in many flood prone areas is paid for mostly by tax payers rather than by the people who own the multi-million dollar homes.
snip – speculating on motives
This was in the New York Times two weeks ago.
It all comes back to the good ol’ CRU. Makes one proud to be Brit … er, maybe not.
Fair enough on the snip. Can anyone inform on the nature of the Munich RE citations? Was it produced for the IPCC or was it from something else?
The Munich Re report was I believe prepared for a workshop. When the paper was finally published a year later, it stated very plainly that no statistically significant trend could be detected relating hurricane losses to climate change after accounting for population growth and income growth. Only by citing this draft report could IPCC get the answer they wanted because no peer review papers show such a correlation/trend. See Pielke jr blog for details.
Pielke’s book “The Honest Broker” (see his page) has been in print for thirty months and carries just two reviews at Amazon, then two days ago, it got a raving anti-review from Eli Rabett. Why this sudden interest? Rabett had been called out by Pielke on that date (24th), in the article “What a tangled web we weave”, as being rather less knowledgeable in the area of disasters and climate change than Pielke.
Added today to the comments there, are comments from Bob Ward, whose activities while at the Royal Society attracted my attention. And following Pielke’s article today, contributor Malcolm notes with more references:
Something feels strange here.
SRe: Lucy Skywalker (Jan 26 16:36),
Where’s Bob Woodward, -gate-wise?
Lucy:
You should post this information at Amazon, so people know that the review is not genuine.
It is also Eli’s first Amazon review under the his nom de guerre. I never trust one time reviews – the vast majority start with a point of view.
Of course, this may be another Eli Rabett. What an unpleasant thought!
Thanks Steve for the post, and all for the comments. I’m just now catching up and happy to answer any questions.
I have posted up replies to Bob Ward’s two bits today. On disasters he mostly appears to agree with the data, but wants it to go away.
The Figure in the IPCC report referenced above does not exist in Muir-Wood’s paper. In fact it does not appear to exist anywhere except the IPCC report. That is curious. The fact that it purports to show a relationship between temperature and disaster costs is curiouser still, since there is not study available anywhere then or since, to support such a claim.
Feel free to follow up with any questions. Thanks.
Roger
So in other words this is another clear example of them making claims in the 4AR that have not been subject to peer review. How very “robust” of the IPCC.
Ed
Roger,
By any chance would this analysis be confounded in a similar way to the earlier graphic that Al Gore used for a while… wherein there’s a demonstrated increase in disaster reporting entirely attributable to the increase in connectedness and global communication in the same time frame?
No it is not even that complicated. Once disaster data are adjusted for growth and development — everywhere that people have looked, US, Europe, Asia, Australia, Central America, India — there is no residual trend.
Societal factors explain 100% of the increase in losses.
There may indeed by a relationship between warming and disasters in the future — that is not what this is about. This is about the data record.
There is plenty of peer reviewed work here. It is not ambiguous.
Figure 1 in the paper in the report pretty much shows a lack of relationship between the temperatures and the losses but it goes back farther in time than 1970, the cutoff year ih the IPCC version. That cutoff was certainly an active choice of the individual(s) who created the latter graph.
I did not have the data (nor a simple way to digitize the graph) to check, but initially, I thought that the log of the losses in the later graphs in the Report paper might have been used in the IPCC version. Nice how a nine year smoothing can make things appear similar.
On the mystery figurem this is worth a look:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/hot-on-trail-of-ipcc-mystery-graph.html
Your hypothesis is worthy of quoting again here –
“Hypothesis: The IPCC created a graph that did not exist in the peer reviewed literature or in the grey literature to suggest a relationship between increasing temperatures and rising disaster costs”
If true, this represents the pits. It is worse than citing a non-refereed magazine article and WWF follow-up on glaciers. It least they existed.
Steve: we discussed Jones’ editorial comment against McKitrick and Michaels inserted in the final report as likewise not based on any published literature.
Steve: snip – no gloating at this blog
The UK Government’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, heavily criticises the IPCC in today’s Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece). Beddington says that “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.”
This got a mention in the UK R4 Today program this morning.
Coincidence, but the day before that Times article Plos Medicine editorialized on attempts to politicize the ‘IPCC’ of preventive medicine:
“If science is to offer anything over opinion polls, scientists must report unbiased observations in an objective fashion, whether or not the data are comforting, expected, or even easily understood. Scientists cannot selectively emphasize the aspects of their work that will meet with the widest approval, as politicians sometimes do. Nonetheless, scientists—particularly those invited by governments to provide expertise—bear responsibility for communicating their work with sensitivity to its context and anticipated impact.”
CA website technical issue.
Ever since the switch to WordPress, I find the left hand menu overwriting the main text. What can I do to stop this?
I don’t get this with any other website.
same problem here, on the box at the office but not at home.
This occurs with my work computer using an old version of IE. My home computer has a newer version and does not have the problem.
Try widening the window and clicking off “Favorites” or anything else encroaching on the sides of IE. This should help.
After reading parts of this I don’t even believe even in lukewarming anymore….
Click to access surface_temp.pdf
by Watts and D’Aleo
Only last week, we had a presenation at the Ins Inst of London where the Swiss Re chart showing catastrophe losses on an upward trend since the 1950s was shown.
No mention of the trends dissappering once losses are adjusted for growth, population and inflation. Plus the Tsunami/earthquakes are not man made.
Cheers
Paul
Re: Paul Maynard (Jan 28 03:57), Paul
That’s because they underestimate the effect of population shift to coastal areas and the increase in insurance coverage since the combined homeowners’ insurance policy was introduced in 1954. Like quite a few scientists, they see history as a soft subject so ignore the information it can offer. Just like MWP, really.
This came up in a comment on Bob Wards piece in the Guardian from commenter Vettefan.
He suggested that someone more eminent than Bob Ward may have written the article
I don’t know much about RSS, but this couldn’t be true. Could it?
This link was posted on Roger’s blog. I’ve not had the time to review all of the background material, but it does a very good job of analysing how Briffa handled the Mann hockey stick question in 4AR (and mishandled the issues raised by the likes of Messrs McIntyre & McKitrick). Again this goes to the (obvious) lack of balance in the IPCC process. Well worth a look.
Canada has a web site related to disasters
http://www.hazards.ca/intro-e.html
They EC is using this document to train people — it relies heavily on IPCC 2007 report
Click to access Understanding+Climate+Change+Risks+in+Ontario.pdf
Re: WillR (Jan 31 18:06),
The access has been pulled I think.
This google search should find the document somewhere.
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