Can it get any worse for the credibility of the global warming scientific community? The IPCC based some of its recommendations on anecdotes in a student’s thesis and an article in a mountaineering magazine. From the story:
The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming. The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change. In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information. However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them. The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps. The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.
I’ll say! Many scientists are still defending the IPCC’s conclusions as “robust.” But these “minor” mistakes are really beginning to build up into a damning pattern of negligence, hype, and politics. That “scientific consensus” isn’t worth the paper it’s written on—at least not as a basis for making trillion dollar economic decisions.
What’s so bad about this is that good scientists are being dirtied along with the politicized hypesters. Where’s Mr. Wizard when you need him?
