Remember this game you played as a kid: The first player whispers a sentence to the next player and each player successively whispers what that player believes they heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group, which invariably has changed in a quite amusing ways from the original. When kids play this game it’s called “Telephone”; when climate scientist play this game it’s called “peer-reviewed research.”
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: “If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”
The IPCC’s reliance on Hasnain’s 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: “Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.
“Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif.”
[ . . .]
Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise. Lal himself admits he knows little about glaciers. “I am not an expert on glaciers.and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about,” he said.
Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as “voodoo science”.
Read the whole thing, for the entire article is stunning. The fact that this type of mistake could be made in the first place is disconcerting. But for the IPCC chairman—who obviously knew nothing about the veracity of the claim about the Himalayan glacier—to say that any criticism is “voodoo science” is a level of hubris that can only come from a bureaucrat. If the IPCC can’t even be trusted on the simple issues how are we to trust them when they make claims about complex, controversial matters?
(Via: The Corner)
January 18th, 2010 | 4:40 pm
How much would you be willing to bet that Syed Hasnain’s Speculation was based on the 1998 IPCC report?
Making for full Recursion of the Climate Science, or as I prefer to call it the incestuous relationship that these people seem to have.
jd
January 18th, 2010 | 5:31 pm
” the entire article is stunning”? Not to those who have listened to the voices of scientists who served on the IPCC and who have described this mess. Read some of them on the Senate Minority Report.
An even bigger problem is that some leading evangelicals, from editors at Christianity Today to the president of the NAE have been playing the same game of telephone. That is why the NAE, once a voice for the poor, is entirely silent on the catastrophic consequences of the ‘cap and trade’ scam on the poor of this world, here and abroad.
Thankfully, others have spoken out long ago, like the late Michael Crichton, as seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzTPPl05Wok
January 18th, 2010 | 5:44 pm
And this IPCC mess is much worse than the telephone game. The claim about the glaciers was used by the chairman of the IPCC to lobby for funds for his own organization.
See this by Roger Pielke Jr., Professor of Environmental Studies, U. of Colorado.:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/sorry-but-this-stinks.html
January 18th, 2010 | 5:50 pm
Dr . Pachuri was any way arrogant enough to
talk ill off Enviroment Minister in indian press
January 18th, 2010 | 7:36 pm
Joe,
Anyone who has ever been misquoted in a newspaper article can attest that the “telephone” phenomenon is widespread.
Anyway, none of this will matter because, as those of us who saw the trailers for “2012″ can attest, the Himalayas will be overwhelmed by huge ocean waves well before 2035 ;)
Oh, by the way, in your first paragraph, I believe you mean to say “it’s” not “its”.
January 18th, 2010 | 8:07 pm
Don’t you understand? The debate is over!
January 19th, 2010 | 2:16 am
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by ROFTERS: Climate Science as a Game of Telephone http://bit.ly/4RxvHm...
January 19th, 2010 | 2:47 am
It should be pointed out that the “New Scientist” is not a journal, it is a magazine.
Journals are academic publications where researchers in the field report their results to their colleagues.
A magazine employs journalists to write about newsworthy items for the general public. Some journalists have qualifications, others do not.
What counts as newsworthy in a magazine is decided by the editor(s) or owner(s) and may have little relevance to its academic worth.
January 19th, 2010 | 6:40 am
[...] Carter First Things Tuesday, January 19th, [...]
January 19th, 2010 | 8:04 am
That the whole global warming affair is a hoax was evident enough long ago.
One commenter is sorry that evangelicals have been drawn in, such that they lose sight of the great need to protect the poor from cap and trade (and I would say any other “solutions” to this non-problem). As a Catholic, I’m sorry to see prominent Catholic leaders, and even the Vatican, taken in as well.
In “1984″ Orwell identified a phenomenon called “groupthink.” In the demotivation series there is one wonderful poster which reads “All of us are dumber than any of us.”
January 19th, 2010 | 12:29 pm
[...] Click here for the full report [...]
January 19th, 2010 | 4:56 pm
No abstruse scientific or technical expertise is needed to avoid such typically foolish errors. If Himalayan glaciers referred to are in valleys 1,000 feet deep, then melting over thirty years to 2035 would require disappearance at a rate of 33 feet each three-month summer season.
A child could tell Rajendra Pachauri that this hypothesis is simply garbage… but as a railroad engineer “fully employed” by Tata Energy Research Institute (what, merely part-time on a recreational basis for Ban Ki-moon’s doofus IPCC?), Rajendra-baba is “on track” for Green Gang payoffs which his kind will do or say anything whatever to pocket unannounced.
Anyone who acts surprised at this has no business mouthing pejoratives at those who call this con-man’s scam for what it is.
January 19th, 2010 | 8:15 pm
“future ipcc reports”?????? good one….
January 20th, 2010 | 12:25 pm
I’d like to point a couple of things out about this article.
“…the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist … [who] has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: “If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.””
First, take Prof. Lal’s statement, which is appalling. On the face of it he means to say that as long as Hasnain stands by the statement, he would be quite happy for an isolated statement by an obscure scientist, not published except as a piece of hearsay in a telephone interview for a popular science magazine, should remain a fixture in a document meant to inform world leaders with “the best possible science” as they make the most radical economic changes in history?
I like your comparison to telephone tag, and it is not restricted, by any means, to this one example.
The other bit I’d like to take issue with is this: “…it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research.” Really? By what measure. To those of us following this business of the Himalaya glaciers is an amusing side-issue that only serves to illustrate the much larger failures:
Dying polar bears? Actually they are multiplying and becoming a nuicance in Northern Canadian communities. Population biologists tell us that worldwide polar bear numbers are currently about twice what they were 50 years ago.
They keep talking about “global warming” when satellite measurements show the average global temperature slowly cooling over the last decade.
Temperatures, both in the last century and in the geological record, correlate very well with solar cycles … and NOT very well with CO2 levels.
Yes, CO2 goes up and down with temperature in the geological and ice records, but LAGS temperature by about 800 years. So if there’s a cause-effect relationship, all that can be said is that warming causes CO2, not the other way around.
Loss of polar ice caps? Actually the worldwide polar ice area has been pretty constant for several decades — when the arctic melts a bit, the antarctic grows to compensate, and vice versa. More importantly, the antarctic ice sheet, which is KILOMETERS thick (verses the arctic, which is a couple of meters) contains the vast majority of ice in the world and is clearly the most significant part of our crysophere, is steadily thickening.
The CO2 greenhouse effect is perfectly real, and perfectly tiny compared to other greenhouse gases such as — atmospheric water!
And don’t get me started on Climategate, and the Australian temperature adjustments scandal, and the abuse of Russian temperature data, and NOAA’s dropping of 5000 of the 6000 temperature records in its 20th century global temperature constructions, keeping those that show warming and dropping those that don’t. Or the atrocious state of U.S. temperature recording stations, as meticulously recorded by Anthony Watt and friends.
The Himalayan glaciers business is a lovely, entertaining FAIL, but by no means “one of the most serious failures” of the climate scammers. In fact, it’s pretty small potatos next to those above.
January 20th, 2010 | 12:45 pm
While I’m listing “climate science” FAILs I might as well mention the EPA’s recent classification of CO2 as a pollutant — in spite of the fact that it is enormously beneficial to the environment (as amply documented here). Far from being harmful, it is the most valuable nutrient in the biosphere.
Overwhelming scientific evidence from thousands of studies show that plants benefit from increased CO2 and that crop increases can be attributed to higher levels of the trace gas. Fortunately it is unlikely that any of the proposed measures will significantly affect levels, but if these misguided control-freaks managed to return CO2 levels to what they were 100 years ago, the world would starve — on existing agricultural ground we could not sustain enough crop yield to feed the present population. A doubling of CO2 from current values, on the other hand, would harm no one, but would increase most crops by at least 50%.
Current levels are LOW compared to the optimum level as gauged by plant health. 100 years ago the biosphere was in crisis, as CO2 levels, in geological terms at their lowest ever, placed plants under severe stress. If we define “Normal” CO2 levels by those which encourage best plant health and growth characteristics, OR by average levels over the history of the biosphere, then our current level is about 1/3 to 1/2 of Normal. Why, with demonstrably sub-normal CO2, are these idiots talking about sequestration and reducing emissions? They should be talking about cleaning up emissions so that they minimize the REAL poisons, but permitting beneficial CO2 and H20, which is a reachable goal, and nowhere near as expensive as CO2 “remediation”.
That, my friends, is the BIG failure of contemporary “climate science”.
January 25th, 2010 | 9:02 am
[...] wrote about how a key claim in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report resembled a game of telephone rather than on carefully scrutinized research. Now another apocalyptic statement in the report turns out to be based on a report that was not [...]
February 2nd, 2010 | 9:10 pm
[...] FIRST THINGS– Climate Science as a Game of Telephone …. [...]
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