Jonathan Leake at the UK Sunday Times has been swift to hail another supposedly damaging inaccuracy in the IPCC report. Africagate, the headline calls it. It occurs in the Working Group II report, which deals with the question of impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. I’ve looked up the section, which is in chapter 9 of the report, looking at possible impacts in Africa. The section is headed Agriculture (page 447-448 of the chapter). It opens with this sentence:
Results from various assessments of impacts of climate change on agriculture based on various climate models and SRES emissions scenarios indicate certain agricultural areas that may undergo negative changes.
[now read on…]
The campaign by the NZ Climate “Science” Coalition and Richard Treadgold’s “Climate Conversation Group” to cast doubt on the NZ temperature record and to smear the scientists who have worked on it has stepped up a notch or two in recent days, following a response by NIWA to an Official Information Act request from NZ C”S”C secretary Terry Dunleavy. It seems Dunleavy and Treadgold didn’t like the answers they were given, because they immediately jumped on one small part of the response, and rushed out a press release throwing up their hands in in horror. Here’s Dunleavy:
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has been urged by the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) to abandon all of its in-house adjustments to temperature records. This follows an admission by NIWA that it no longer holds the records that would support its in-house manipulation of official temperature readings. [my emphasis]
In December, NZCSC issued a formal request for the schedule of adjustments under the Official Information Act 1982, specifically seeking copies of “the original worksheets and/or computer records used for the calculations”. On 29 January, NIWA responded that they no longer held any internal records, and merely referred to the scientific literature.
“Merely” referred to the scientific literature? That’s where scientific knowledge is to be found, not in worksheets or computer records. Treadgold developed the theme at his blog, under the heading FARCE: NIWA don’t have the changes:
Heads must roll – Turning into farce
In an astounding admission of ineptitude, after their former arm-waving and expostulations of injustice, NIWA have finally confessed that they cannot provide the adjustments they made to the original temperature readings in the official NZ temperature record.
Luckily for us, Treadgold later posted pdf copies of NIWA’s response, as well as Dunleavy’s original request, and so we can see for ourselves what NIWA said. Funnily enough, things are not quite as Dunleavy and Treadgold would wish us to believe.
[now read on…]
When I was writing the post on the Herald’s acceptance of journalistic say-so in its editorial on the IPCC Gareth drew my attention to the fact that the Dominion Post had also produced an editorial claiming that the ethics and integrity of climate scientists is being called into question. I was too engaged with the Herald to consider including the Dominion Post in the ambit of my attention at the same time, but now that I’ve had a closer look I rather wish I had. The editorial is four days old, but still deserves taking apart.
The evidence the editorial draws attention to is first the publication of the stolen emails, suggesting, it claims, a conspiracy to hide data and play down information which didn’t fit the theories of the scientists concerned. Then the Himalayan glacier error. Nothing new here and comment familiar and predictable.
But the editorial had a revelation (a different one from those offered by the Herald):
[now read on…]
Morten Morland, TimesOnline: click the image for a gallery of fine cartoons. Meanwhile: I wonder who provided the model for this fine example of a “sceptic”? [H/T Ian]
Plimer’s bronzed body arced through the brutal Brisbane air and knifed into the pool with a barely perceptible splash — no belly flops for the silver-haired Adonis of climate scepticism. Monckton, in solar topee and camouflage Army & Navy shorts, clutched his glass of gin & tonic and tried to repress boarding school thoughts. He glanced over at Lady Monckton, deep in her Jilly Cooper and even deeper into a bottle of Queensland chardonnay, oblivious. It was a Hockney scene, the Laird thought, bar the gaudy birds screeching loudly in the trees. Or was that the other guests? He shuddered. Australia really was a fatal shore.
Old Scrotum, Monckton’s wrinkled retainer, sat under an umbrella with a drinks trolley at his side, ready to deliver refills and ice as required. After the first hectic days of the Laird’s great Australian adventure a little peace and quiet was welcome. Plimer was cavorting in the sun, demonstrating that Australian knack for healthy activity that had bred a nation of Shane Warnes. As his august head popped out of the water, Plimer shook his lengthy silver locks, scattering water like a labrador in a paddling pool, his large brown eyes focussed firmly on the Laird. Scrotum was watching the dynamic developing between the two new stars of the denialist southern cross. On stage they were undeniably effective, Plimer galloping Gish-like through a hundred objections to climate science, while Monckton invented polar bear statistics, miscalculated climate sensitivity, and preened in the adoring attention of the elderly audiences. Was there something emerging from the laird’s past, something Scrotum had never seen? He scratched his ear, sipped at his water, and furrowed his brow.
[now read on…]
In the current open journalistic season on IPCC sniping the NZ Herald has joined in with an editorial taking up new accusations made by the UK’s Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times.
The editorial begins with the Himalayan glacier error, which the IPCC itself has accepted and expressed regret for. But the Herald has the scent of blood and moves on to take up the claims of the UK newspapers with uncritical enthusiasm.
[now read on…]
