Is the climate science of the IPCC in question?

Question

Is the climate science of the IPCC in question?

Answer 1

i think what bothers me most is that some scientists KNEW this was untrue.. but didn't go public with the fact that it was nonsense ...



i can' only think of two reasons they would do that...



1) lack of care...

2) Fear... that is the one that worries me.. the IPCC has become so powerful that honest scientist can't point out ludicrous ideas when they rear their head.

Answer 2

Certainly more and more data from them is becoming subject to inaccuracy.

Answer 3

it's also nasa under their climate change evidence which says they "MAY" be gone by 2030. but since it's under evidence they want to scare the masses into believing that they will disappear by 2030. these scaremongers always use the words if may could should but the jist is they are implying that these things will happen unless we act now and act fast

"Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030"

Answer 4

It’s been in question for a long time, and it will be in question until the source code and raw data is released. So that the math and assumptions can be checked out. But considering we’re still waiting for NASA to release data two years after a Freedom on Information request I’m not holding my breath that they will ever release the data but until it’s released and independently check by skeptics the science will be in question.



To Cameron



Wow, you wrote a program that’s only wrong 20% of the time in ten days. So in 20 days your program would be right about 64% of the time and in 30 days it would be right 51% of the time and if you went way out to 350 days it would be right 0.0406% of the time (assuming a 80% accuracy rate every 10 days). And you know MOST of the variables now compare that to the climate, where only a few of the variables are known. Just look at the weather reports and see how often they are wrong. Do you really believe there is any chance those models are correct? Even when you’ve never seen the source code?

Answer 5

Credibility has never been the IPCC's strong suit.



http://www.junkscience.com/news/wirth.html

Answer 6

Yes, it is.



The IPCC as well as many other so-called 'scientific organizations', politicians and business opportunists have been in such a hurry to jump onto the 'Man-did-it' global warming bandwagon, that they failed to challenge the data and 'sources' that supposedly support the cause. In some cases, there is a strong suspicion that supporting data and the 'scientific process' have been inappropriately manipulated.



Current and future investigations will expose such fraud if it does indeed exist.

Answer 7

The major problem I continually see in all liberal generated material is they ignore the two most potent variables in climate study, solar activity level and water vapor. As these two variables are 99% or better of climate it is little wonder that their predictions continually fail drastically. But then this has been the case since man first came down from the trees and conservatives began farming and hunting and liberals invented religion and politics so they would not have to work for a living.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:0Master_Past_20000yrs_temperatures_icecore_Vostok_150dpi.png

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/global_warming.html

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

http://reasonmclucus.tripod.com/CO2myth.html

http://mc-computing.com/qs/Global_Warming/Atmospheric_Analysis.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

Where the heat came from and why it was abnormally cold previously

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~dbunny/research/global/215.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_minimum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

Answer 8

Go down to your local college or university. Apply and enroll. Major in meteorology, climate science, physics, engineering, or applied mathematics. If you put your mind to it and work hard, you will be able to build your own data-driven mathematical models yourself. Then you will see how incredibly and shockingly predictive those models can be. I've worked with software that could predict bond rates to within a ten-thousandth of a percent going out ten days--and be correct on 8 out of those ten. I've worked with groups to build models that predicted optical diffraction gradients for new materials down to the micormeter. I saw a model that predicted necessary capital expenditures and maintenance costs for a billion-dollar semiconductor manufacturing plant that went out 18 years, to within a few thousands of dollars. It had been in use for 9 years because it was so accurate.



When I see an educated, non-anecdotal, macro-data driven alternate to the current conclusions of climate change modeling, I will take it into account. No such alternative exists at this time.

Answer 9

Bob: I agree that global warming is an issue as is pollution and the rapid use of the world's resources. I tend to be a skeptic of skeptics and these organizations are not necessarily working in our best interest. I think regardless of whatever evidence (either pro or con) we should try to do our best to consume less and pollute less. Also, I believe that there should be population control (by what means, I do not know. Nothing violent... encourage ppl to have only one or no children and pay them for this agreement). It is quite possible that the earth's heating and cooling cycles are not in correlation with our actions. However, we all can argue that human activity has caused desertification and pollution. We need to win the environmental argument based on what we can prove, and not focus so strongly on this "global warming" topic. There has to be some sort of behavioral shift where ppl want to recycle, live more simply, and find alternative energy solutions because it's the right thing to do. When anyone figures out how to accomplish this, please let me know. I cannot even influence the culture in my company to stop using Styrofoam in the cafeteria. Sorry! Another topic!

Answer 10

It cracks me up that some of the zealots are still defending the IPCC over this one. You know how sniffy they get if a sceptic references a newspaper or magazine, and yet when the supposedly top body advising governments on climate change does it, they can't wait to rush in and defend it.



Just be straight, and admit it was flat-out wrong for the IPCC (under its own guidelines even) to do this and move on. How hard can that be? I can only think of one or two of the warmists on YA that have had the intellectual integrity to callit like it is.

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EDIT - @ Cameron



Your faith in computer modelling is touching at a time when so many millions of people are suffering hardship caused by the inability of very large and expensive models to predict the collapse of the derivatives market.



But perhaps you believe that nature in all its complexity and chaos is easier to model than the transactions between a few traders?

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Whilst we're at it, let's address the "wrong, but not by much" argument. No serious scientific study has them disapearing in the next few decades or even this century.



As Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich puts it:



""From a present state of knowledge it is not plausible that Himalayan glaciers are disappearing completely within the next few decades. I do not know of any scientific study that does support a complete vanishing of glaciers in the Himalayas within this century."""



Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8387737.stm



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"But the glaciers are melting" - yes and they have been melting since the end of the "Little Ice Age" around 1850.



J Oerlemans, "Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records" Science 29 April 2005: Vol. 308. no. 5722, pp. 675 - 677



""I constructed a temperature history for different parts of the world from 169 glacier length records. Using a first-order theory of glacier dynamics, I related changes in glacier length to changes in temperature. The derived temperature histories are fully independent of proxy and instrumental data used in earlier reconstructions. *****Moderate global warming started in the middle of the 19th century.**** The reconstructed warming in the first half of the 20th century is 0.5 kelvin. This warming was notably coherent over the globe. The warming signals from glaciers at low and high elevations appear to be very similar.""





Note the key phrase there "Moderate global warming started in the middle of the 19th century" - not the middle of the twentieth century as per standard AGW theory.

Answer 11

Hardly. This is very old news. The state of Himalayan glaciers is hardly make or break for global warming science. and recent data shows the seriousness of the Himalayan glacier problem, regardless. In science data trumps rhetoric, every time.



The IPCC report used a newspaper report from 1999 of the scientists peer reviewed work, where the scientist HIMSELF admittedly made that speculation. The IPCC didn't make it up. Not best practice, but somewhat understandable. Possibly just a simple mistake.



But, the thing is, it's proven to be substantially true, even if the "2035" part was pulled out of the scientists ear, and may be too soon (but not by much). DATA from scientific sites in the cites below as opposed to emotional denier rhetoric in the newspaper cites in this question, and the denier answers.



"Himalayan Glacier Melting Observed From Space" (2007)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070327113346.htm



"On Thinner Ice: New photography project provides stark proof of melting glaciers on the roof of the world." (2009)

http://novascience.wordpress.com/category/climate-change/cryosphere/glaciers/glaciers-melting/page/2/



And, even if the glaciers don't totally melt by 2035, the effects on the water supply will surely be evident by then. Here's one underlying study:



Kehrwald, N. M., L. G. Thompson, Y. Tandong, E. Mosley-Thompson, U. Schotterer, V. Alfimov, J. Beer, J. Eikenberg, and M. E. Davis (2008), Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L22503



Key phrase from the Times Online article quoted in the question.



""The reality, that the glaciers are wasting away, is bad enough."



This is true of many of the things posted here by "skeptics". The fact that someone exaggerates a problem, doesn't mean that the problem is not serious, and serious enough to demand action. That's certainly true about Himalayan glaciers. In fact, it's the serious problems that lend themselves to exaggeration.



In basketball the rule is "no harm, no foul". That would seem to apply here.



The bottom line. For denier websites to be making such a big deal about this small point is simply a sign of their desperation, as a mountain of data proves them wrong, and the opinion of most of the serious professionals is dead against them.. The denier websites don't try to claim that the melting Himalayan glaciers are NOT a serious problem; for the data says they are.



Note than someone felt the emotional need to post this TWICE, and that after other deniers had posted it also. This is CLEARLY being overblown. But, the deniers have little left to cling to.

Answer 12

Didier writes <>, and then cites the website junkscience.com, as if that website has credibility. The site was started by the Philip Morris tobacco company to discredit valid studies on secondhand smoke.



http://prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.html

Answer 13

That is a good question! I'm going to watch this one because I want to see how everyone answers! :o)