Is this SOP at the IPCC?

[daveman]

The Strange Case of Sari Kovats

In 1994, Kovats was one of only 21 people in the entire world selected to work on the first IPCC chapter that examined how climate change might affect human health. She was 25 years old. Her first academic paper wouldn’t be published for another three years. It would be six years before she’d even begin her doctoral studies and 16 years before she’d graduate.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri says this about how IPCC authors are selected:

There is a very careful process of selection…These are people who have been chosen on the basis of their track record, on their record of publications, on the research that they have done…They are people who are at the top of their profession as far as research is concerned in a particular aspect of climate change…you can’t think of a better set of qualified people than what we have in the IPCC. [bold added]​

Academically speaking, Kovats was invisible back in 1994. That anyone connected to the IPCC could have considered her a scientific expert is astonishing.

I’m sorry to say that that was just the beginning. When it came time to write the next version of the climate bible, Kovats received a promotion. She was selected to be a lead author, again for the health chapter – despite the fact that her doctoral studies wouldn’t begin until the year the IPCC report was published.

What do we suppose happened with the next edition of the climate bible – the one that appeared in 2007, still three full years before Kovats earned her doctorate? Was she selected once again to be a health chapter lead author? You betcha.

But by then the IPCC, in its wisdom, had decided she was a scientific expert in other areas, as well. Kovats served as a contributing author for three additional chapters in Working Group 2:

Chapter 1 – Assessment of Observed Changes and Responses in Natural and Managed Systems
Chapter 6 – Coastal Systems and Low-lying Areas
Chapter 12 – Europe​

She was also an IPCC expert reviewer.

There’s no mystery as to why it took Kovats a decade to write her thesis. She’s had the equivalent of a full-time job just writing IPCC reports. As it turns out, the main assessments aren’t the only documents with which she has been involved.

The IPCC finds Kovats so enchanting it recruited her as an author for one of its smaller reports, published in 2008, about climate change and water. Soon after that, she was one of only eight members of the “core writing team” for a 2009 Good Practice Guidance Paper. The executive summary of that paper begins:

The reliable detection and attribution of changes in climate, and their effects, is fundamental to our understanding of the scientific basis of climate change…This paper…is intended as a guide for future IPCC Lead Authors. [bold added]​

We’re told the IPCC is a serious and rigorous body. We’re told its reports are the gold-standard and that it is comprised of the world’s top experts. We’re told we should trust the IPCC’s conclusions because of these facts. And then we discover that a woman who still hadn’t earned her own doctorate was recruited by the IPCC to write guidelines for other authors.

(In true IPCC tradition, a majority – 8 of 15 – of the papers appearing in the bibliography of the guidance paper were written by none other than the authors of the guidance themselves. But never mind.)

--

We’re told the IPCC is comprised of top scientists. In the case of Kovats, it appears that it was actually her IPCC participation that convinced the wider community that she’s an expert. This is totally improper. It represents a complete inversion of how things are supposed to work.

So when are Kovats, the IPCC, and the British government all going to admit that she is far from being a world-class scientific expert?

Will she resign her position as coordinating lead author – or will the new edition of the climate bible be irretrievably tainted by her participation?​

What kind of crap is this? Why was this woman hired as an expert? Is this garbage typical of the way the IPCC operates? Can anyone trust anything they publish?

[MENTION=43872]PMZ[/MENTION], I defy you to defend this with something besides your usual "The IPCC is infallible! We must blindly obey them!!"

 

[daveman]

Let's review some of the incompetence at the good ol' IPCC:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...tudent-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for 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.​

IPCC's Himalayan Glacier 'Mistake' No Accident - US News and World Report

A London newspaper reported yesterday that the unsubstantiated Himalayan-glacier melt figures contained in a supposedly authoritative 2007 report on climate warming were used intentionally, despite the report’s lead author knowing there were no data to back them up.

Until now, the organization that published the report – the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – had argued the exaggerated figures in that report were an accident: due to insufficient fact checking of the source material.

Uh, no. It now appears the incident wasn’t quite that innocent.

The Sunday Mail’s David Rose reached Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the 2007 IPCC report’s chapter on Asia. Lal told Rose that he knew there were no solid data to support the report’s claim that Himalayan glaciers – the source of drinking and irrigation water for downstream areas throughout Asia – could dry up by 2035. Said Lal: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” In other words, Rose says, Lal “last night admitted [the scary figure] was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”​

Baseless fear-mongering is NOT science. I'm sorry to have to be the one to break this to you, PMZ.

What else do we have?

Oh, cool -- this article has a summary of several scandals:

Latest IPCC Scandal: Exaggerated Sea Level Claims | Heartlander Magazine

A Dutch environmental agency has confirmed the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported overly alarmist sea level claims regarding the Netherlands in IPCC’s most recent report. The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NEAA) admitted IPCC relied on inflated numbers NEAA had supplied to IPCC, claiming 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level when the true number is only 26 percent.

NEAA now says it meant to say 55 percent of the country was prone to flooding.

“The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has accepted responsibility for a dramatic overstatement of the amount of Dutch land that is below sea level,” said Pat Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies for Cato Institute. “The general notion that the IPCC’s conclusions retain value, despite this and many other singular errors that have recently been uncovered, is itself subject to debate.”

Latest of Many Scandals
The scandal is just the latest in a series of important mistakes and deceptions that have surfaced in IPCC’s most recent report on climate change, released in 2007. Other important IPCC scandals include:

• IPCC claimed Himalayan glaciers were melting because of global warming and the Himalayas would be glacier-free by 2035. When the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests published a scientific study finding no evidence of global warming affecting Himalayan glaciers, IPCC chair Raj Pachauri publicly derided it as “voodoo science.” Soon thereafter, it was revealed IPCC did not rely on any scientific studies for its Himalayan glacier claims and instead used unsubstantiated speculation by an environmental activist group.

• IPCC claimed “up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation" and "it is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems . . . such as tropical savannas." That claim had no support in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Instead, IPCC based its prediction on an advocacy article produced by the World Wildlife Fund environmental activist group.

• Key scientists working with IPCC hid, manipulated, and destroyed scientific evidence that contradicted their alarmist claims. When the scientists learned they may be required to turn over email exchanges pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, they conspired to delete and destroy the incriminating emails. IPCC scientists additionally sought to get editors of peer-reviewed journals fired for publishing scientific studies that called IPCC alarmism into question.

More Errors, Bias Revealed
While confirming IPCC’s error regarding sea level claims, NEAA uncovered and reported other IPCC errors unrelated to NEAA.

For example, IPCC claimed anchovy productivity off Africa’s west coast will drop by 50-60 percent, but NEAA showed IPCC twisted the scientific literature in making its claim. According to NEAA, the peer-reviewed scientific literature cited by IPCC suggests a 50-60 percent decrease in “extreme wind and seawater turbulence”—which is generally considered a beneficial effect of global warming—“with some effects on the anchovy population that were not quantified.” Nowhere does the scientific literature claim anchovy production will decline to the same extent as extreme wind and seawater turbulence.

According to NEAA, IPCC has engaged in a pattern of trumpeting negative aspects of global warming, whether real or imagined, while ignoring positive impacts and uncertainties. NEAA argues future IPCC reports should discuss “the full range of climate-change impacts,” including uncertainties and positive impacts.

An NEAA press release explained, “Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency concluded that the summaries in the IPCC Working Group II Report put an emphasis on projections of the more serious, negative impacts of climate change. This selection was an obvious choice, and also had been approved by the governments that constitute the IPCC. However, this meant that the less severe impacts and any positive effects did not make it into the summaries for policymakers, which made the overall tenor of the summaries more negative than that of the underlying chapters.”

No Evidence for Imminent Disaster
If the IPCC wants to conclude carbon dioxide does somewhat warm the atmosphere and temperatures are higher than 100 years ago, “that’s fine,” Michaels said. “But if the general conclusion is that global warming is an imminent disaster, that’s not fine.”

Michaels said IPCC citations often come from biased sources, which leads to “publication bias” in the agency’s final and released findings.

Politics Trumping Science
Todd Myers, environmental director for the Washington Policy Center, says politics corrupts the IPCC process and casts doubt on any science cited by the panel.

“It is impossible to tell where politics stops and science begins with the IPCC,” Myers said. “The IPCC intentionally molded politics into the report, attempting to cloak the uncertainty and the fact that the science was not actually settled. With so little transparency about the separation of ideology and science, the IPCC’s reports are really useless beyond some very basic conclusions.”

The IPCC reports have created an atmosphere of confusion for those who make rules and regulations, he said.

“The problem for policymakers is that they are now trying to make decisions without a reliable scientific foundation and are simply substituting their own gut feeling and personal opinions for scientific rigor,” Myers said. “ really cannot overstate the bottom-line conclusion that the IPCC’s last report is unusable as a guide for policymakers.”​

 

[daveman]

Only an unmitigated moron would trust the IPCC.

Don't you, PMZ?

 

[daveman]

Prediction:

No one will be able to defend the IPCC against this evidence.

They'll attack me, the sources, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc, etc...

...but they won't be able to defend the IPCC.

 

[daveman]

48 views, and no responses besides mine.

What are you AGW cultists waiting for?

 

[PMZ]

In this corner, we have the little cowboy. Noted gunslinger.

In this corner we have Sari Kovats.

From Sari Kovats | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM

"Sari Kovats is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Environmental Research in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy. She has been actively researching the effects of weather and climate on human health for more than 15 years and has published widely on this topic; including 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 20 book chapters. Her particular areas of interest include health impact assessment of climate change and epidemiological studies of the effects of climate, weather and weather events in urban*and*rural*populations."

"Sari has been*employed by*LSHTM*since 1994 when she joined the Dept of Epidemiology and Population Health to work as a research assistant*on*one of the first comprehensive books on climate change and health: McMichael AJ, Haines A, Slooff R, and Kovats S, eds. Climate Change and Human Health: an assessment prepared by a Task Group on behalf of the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Geneva,*WHO, 1996 [WHO/EHG/96.7].* In 1997, Sari was promoted to Research Fellow and in 2003 to Lecturer, and in 2010 to Senior Lecturer. Sari has a Masters*Degree*in Social Policy from the SouthBank University in London and completed a part-time PhD in epidemiology in 2010 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

"Sari is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Environmental Change and Human Health Project of ESSP (Earth System Science Partnership) and on the management committee for the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health at LSHTM. Since 2010, Sari has been a Fellow of the*Collegium Ramazzini. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Global Environmental Change."

"Sari has*been involved extensively in the scientific assessment of the impacts of climate change on health for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is*currently*a co-Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Europe in the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, due to be published in 2014."

Now if you need a gunslinger, I'd go with the little cowboy.

As a scientist, he's a good cowboy. So for science, I'd go with Dr Kovats.

 

[PMZ]

The little cowboy wishes that everyone in the world was up to his heavenly standard of error free pontificating.

The IPCC that he criticizes, however, has admitted not being as perfect as he.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged today that it had erred in projecting the rate and impacts of retreating Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 report. The faulty information appears in one paragraph of a 900-plus page Working Group II report. “In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the group*explained in a prepared statement.

The paragraph in question had claimed that: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

In fact, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University said this afternoon, Himalayan glaciers are thinning and retreating at a rapid pace, but not at a demonstrably faster rate than in many other parts of the world.

In fact, he said, it’s hard to fully understand how the Himalayas are*responding to Earth’s warming because only about 600 of some 46,000 glaciers in that region are being monitored. Of those, 95 percent are in retreat. But it’s hard to understand how much mass the glaciers are losing, Thompson says,*without first knowing the depth of affected glaciers — a measure of how much water they hold. And currently,*such data are largely nonexistent.

Globally, he says, the glacial census is being rewritten at anything but the proverbial glacial pace. One Andean glacier that has been under study for more than 40 years was retreating at a pace of just 6 meters a year in the early decades. Its retreat has now accelerated to roughly 60 meters a year. Another mountain that used to host six glaciers retains just two remnant ice fields.

Among glaciers within the Brooks Range, which stretches across northern Alaska and Canada’s Yukon, “100 percent” are retreating, he notes. So too, he adds,*are 100 percent of glaciers in the tropics (like areas of Peru where Thompson has monitored ice fields for upwards of three decades), roughly 99 percent of the European Alps and more than 95 percent of glaciers in southeastern Alaska.

Overall, glaciers cap some 10 percent of the planet, Thompson observed during a press briefing this afternoon. And the majority of this cold cover appears to be experiencing not only a net loss of aerial extent, but also a drop in the depth of what remains.*“Many of these glaciers are now being decapitated,” he explains, since they are losing more snow each year from their tops than is falling down upon them.

From: IPCC admits Himalayan glacier error | Climate Change | Science News

 

[PMZ]

The little cowboy has instructions from headquarters to do everything possible to discredit the IPCC because big oil don't want no facts mucking up their business plan. Endless profits to the last drop of oil.

He tries hard, but what he's accomplished is merely to be ignored.

 

[PMZ]

The US conservative political cult, led by Rush Limbaugh and others, finds science in the way of the imposition of their politics on the rest of the country. Like the Catholic Church in the years leading up to the Dark Ages, it has become essential in their quest for power for conservatives to disparage education, and science, and science based progress, in order to fuel their world view of society as merely unorganized individuals, living only for themselves.

Fortunately their use of mass media has fallen short of their expectations and our democracy has limited their political influence.

Recovery from the Bush years when their influence peaked, is underway.

 

[asterism]

In this corner, we have the little cowboy. Noted gunslinger.

In this corner we have Sari Kovats.

From Sari Kovats | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM

"Sari Kovats is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Environmental Research in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy. She has been actively researching the effects of weather and climate on human health for more than 15 years and has published widely on this topic; including 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 20 book chapters. Her particular areas of interest include health impact assessment of climate change and epidemiological studies of the effects of climate, weather and weather events in urban*and*rural*populations."

"Sari has been*employed by*LSHTM*since 1994 when she joined the Dept of Epidemiology and Population Health to work as a research assistant*on*one of the first comprehensive books on climate change and health: McMichael AJ, Haines A, Slooff R, and Kovats S, eds. Climate Change and Human Health: an assessment prepared by a Task Group on behalf of the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Geneva,*WHO, 1996 [WHO/EHG/96.7].* In 1997, Sari was promoted to Research Fellow and in 2003 to Lecturer, and in 2010 to Senior Lecturer. Sari has a Masters*Degree*in Social Policy from the SouthBank University in London and completed a part-time PhD in epidemiology in 2010 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

"Sari is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Environmental Change and Human Health Project of ESSP (Earth System Science Partnership) and on the management committee for the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health at LSHTM. Since 2010, Sari has been a Fellow of the*Collegium Ramazzini. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Global Environmental Change."

"Sari has*been involved extensively in the scientific assessment of the impacts of climate change on health for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is*currently*a co-Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Europe in the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, due to be published in 2014."

Now if you need a gunslinger, I'd go with the little cowboy.

As a scientist, he's a good cowboy. So for science, I'd go with Dr Kovats.

What made Sari an expert in 1994, when she was first given a position of importance?

 

[asterism]

The little cowboy has instructions from headquarters to do everything possible to discredit the IPCC because big oil don't want no facts mucking up their business plan. Endless profits to the last drop of oil.

He tries hard, but what he's accomplished is merely to be ignored.

You'll note that I have not made any references to your character, your motivations, nor your worth as a person.

Now why is it that you have to walk downstairs to do so about someone that you obviously consider inferior? Is your argument that weak?

 

[asterism]

The US conservative political cult, led by Rush Limbaugh and others, finds science in the way of the imposition of their politics on the rest of the country. Like the Catholic Church in the years leading up to the Dark Ages, it has become essential in their quest for power for conservatives to disparage education, and science, and science based progress, in order to fuel their world view of society as merely unorganized individuals, living only for themselves.

Fortunately their use of mass media has fallen short of their expectations and our democracy has limited their political influence.

Recovery from the Bush years when their influence peaked, is underway.

By recovery do you mean the unraveling of the doom and gloom predictions of non-stop hurricanes? Or perhaps it's the measurable drop in CO2 emissions due to not natural gas, but alternative fuel technology? And where are all those green jobs that were promised?


I get it. You aren't a scientist, and you aren't even all that competent in the issues of today. You're not even an activist and you get your information from astroturfed sources. Reality plods on without regards to your efforts.


Oh and when you read about an inquiry into the raw data you supposedly said was available? I was one voice of thousands that demanded that it be released.

 

[daveman]

In this corner, we have the little cowboy. Noted gunslinger.

In this corner we have Sari Kovats.

From Sari Kovats | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM

"Sari Kovats is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Environmental Research in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy. She has been actively researching the effects of weather and climate on human health for more than 15 years and has published widely on this topic; including 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 20 book chapters. Her particular areas of interest include health impact assessment of climate change and epidemiological studies of the effects of climate, weather and weather events in urban*and*rural*populations."

"Sari has been*employed by*LSHTM*since 1994 when she joined the Dept of Epidemiology and Population Health to work as a research assistant*on*one of the first comprehensive books on climate change and health: McMichael AJ, Haines A, Slooff R, and Kovats S, eds. Climate Change and Human Health: an assessment prepared by a Task Group on behalf of the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Geneva,*WHO, 1996 [WHO/EHG/96.7].* In 1997, Sari was promoted to Research Fellow and in 2003 to Lecturer, and in 2010 to Senior Lecturer. Sari has a Masters*Degree*in Social Policy from the SouthBank University in London and completed a part-time PhD in epidemiology in 2010 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

"Sari is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Environmental Change and Human Health Project of ESSP (Earth System Science Partnership) and on the management committee for the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health at LSHTM. Since 2010, Sari has been a Fellow of the*Collegium Ramazzini. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Global Environmental Change."

"Sari has*been involved extensively in the scientific assessment of the impacts of climate change on health for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is*currently*a co-Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Europe in the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, due to be published in 2014."

Now if you need a gunslinger, I'd go with the little cowboy.

As a scientist, he's a good cowboy. So for science, I'd go with Dr Kovats.

Why was she hired before she received her doctorate? Why was she hired before she published any papers? Why was she given a position writing guidance documents before she received her doctorate? Why was she placed on so many committees where she has no background or training?

Until you can answer those questions, the conclusion remains that Sari was hired for the wrong reasons -- ideological purity.

 

[daveman]

The little cowboy wishes that everyone in the world was up to his heavenly standard of error free pontificating.

If they're as full of experts and world-class scientists as you claim, there wouldn't BE any errors on their part.

You're placing an inordinate amount of trust in people who put agenda before science, and demanding we do the same.

Not gonna happen.

The IPCC that he criticizes, however, has admitted not being as perfect as he.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged today that it had erred in projecting the rate and impacts of retreating Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 report. The faulty information appears in one paragraph of a 900-plus page Working Group II report. “In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the group*explained in a prepared statement.

The paragraph in question had claimed that: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

In fact, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University said this afternoon, Himalayan glaciers are thinning and retreating at a rapid pace, but not at a demonstrably faster rate than in many other parts of the world.

In fact, he said, it’s hard to fully understand how the Himalayas are*responding to Earth’s warming because only about 600 of some 46,000 glaciers in that region are being monitored. Of those, 95 percent are in retreat. But it’s hard to understand how much mass the glaciers are losing, Thompson says,*without first knowing the depth of affected glaciers — a measure of how much water they hold. And currently,*such data are largely nonexistent.

Globally, he says, the glacial census is being rewritten at anything but the proverbial glacial pace. One Andean glacier that has been under study for more than 40 years was retreating at a pace of just 6 meters a year in the early decades. Its retreat has now accelerated to roughly 60 meters a year. Another mountain that used to host six glaciers retains just two remnant ice fields.

Among glaciers within the Brooks Range, which stretches across northern Alaska and Canada’s Yukon, “100 percent” are retreating, he notes. So too, he adds,*are 100 percent of glaciers in the tropics (like areas of Peru where Thompson has monitored ice fields for upwards of three decades), roughly 99 percent of the European Alps and more than 95 percent of glaciers in southeastern Alaska.

Overall, glaciers cap some 10 percent of the planet, Thompson observed during a press briefing this afternoon. And the majority of this cold cover appears to be experiencing not only a net loss of aerial extent, but also a drop in the depth of what remains.*“Many of these glaciers are now being decapitated,” he explains, since they are losing more snow each year from their tops than is falling down upon them.

From: IPCC admits Himalayan glacier error | Climate Change | Science News

It's not a "mistake" if you know it's wrong and include it in the report anyway:

Glacier scientists says he knew data had not been verified | Mail Online

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’​

Fear-mongering. Including false data to sway policy.

This is NOT science. Period. End of story.

 

[daveman]

The little cowboy has instructions from headquarters to do everything possible to discredit the IPCC because big oil don't want no facts mucking up their business plan. Endless profits to the last drop of oil.

No, child. Just because you can't think for yourself doesn't mean everyone else needs their views handed to them.

He tries hard, but what he's accomplished is merely to be ignored.

People can make up their own minds. I know you'd love it if I were silenced, but too bad. I'm not going away just so your little feelings don't get hurt.

What's best for America -- and the entire world -- is for ALL facts to be presented, not just those that further your cause.

Let people see everything. Then they can decide what's best.

And if you have to lie and cheat and silence conflicting views, what you think is best is probably the worst thing possible.

 

[daveman]

The US conservative political cult, led by Rush Limbaugh and others, finds science in the way of the imposition of their politics on the rest of the country. Like the Catholic Church in the years leading up to the Dark Ages, it has become essential in their quest for power for conservatives to disparage education, and science, and science based progress, in order to fuel their world view of society as merely unorganized individuals, living only for themselves.

Fortunately their use of mass media has fallen short of their expectations and our democracy has limited their political influence.

Recovery from the Bush years when their influence peaked, is underway.

Are you going to bring anything original to the table, or is that asking too much?

You're a parrot, nothing more.

 

[asterism]

Sari has a Masters Degree in Social Policy from the SouthBank University in London and completed a part-time PhD in epidemiology in 2010 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Sari Kovats | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM

What makes this person an expert on climate issues?

 

[PMZ]

In this corner, we have the little cowboy. Noted gunslinger.

In this corner we have Sari Kovats.

From Sari Kovats | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM

"Sari Kovats is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Environmental Research in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy. She has been actively researching the effects of weather and climate on human health for more than 15 years and has published widely on this topic; including 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 20 book chapters. Her particular areas of interest include health impact assessment of climate change and epidemiological studies of the effects of climate, weather and weather events in urban*and*rural*populations."

"Sari has been*employed by*LSHTM*since 1994 when she joined the Dept of Epidemiology and Population Health to work as a research assistant*on*one of the first comprehensive books on climate change and health: McMichael AJ, Haines A, Slooff R, and Kovats S, eds. Climate Change and Human Health: an assessment prepared by a Task Group on behalf of the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Geneva,*WHO, 1996 [WHO/EHG/96.7].* In 1997, Sari was promoted to Research Fellow and in 2003 to Lecturer, and in 2010 to Senior Lecturer. Sari has a Masters*Degree*in Social Policy from the SouthBank University in London and completed a part-time PhD in epidemiology in 2010 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

"Sari is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Environmental Change and Human Health Project of ESSP (Earth System Science Partnership) and on the management committee for the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health at LSHTM. Since 2010, Sari has been a Fellow of the*Collegium Ramazzini. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Global Environmental Change."

"Sari has*been involved extensively in the scientific assessment of the impacts of climate change on health for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is*currently*a co-Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Europe in the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, due to be published in 2014."

Now if you need a gunslinger, I'd go with the little cowboy.

As a scientist, he's a good cowboy. So for science, I'd go with Dr Kovats.

What made Sari an expert in 1994, when she was first given a position of importance?

Neither I nor you have any idea why she was hired. She certainly was very educated. She could have been hired as a gifted writer. Maybe she was the only applicant.

Your paranoia that anything that you don't know is a conspiracy is the issue. Not her qualifications.

If you always suspect a conspiracy, you'll always find one.

The IPCC has turned out some amazing science on their mission. Their political foes have accomplished precisely and absolutely nothing.

You must be so proud.

You simply are not going to impose your politics on the world. No matter how low you go.

 

[asterism]

In this corner, we have the little cowboy. Noted gunslinger.

In this corner we have Sari Kovats.

From Sari Kovats | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM

"Sari Kovats is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social and Environmental Research in the Faculty of Public Health and Policy. She has been actively researching the effects of weather and climate on human health for more than 15 years and has published widely on this topic; including 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and more than 20 book chapters. Her particular areas of interest include health impact assessment of climate change and epidemiological studies of the effects of climate, weather and weather events in urban*and*rural*populations."

"Sari has been*employed by*LSHTM*since 1994 when she joined the Dept of Epidemiology and Population Health to work as a research assistant*on*one of the first comprehensive books on climate change and health: McMichael AJ, Haines A, Slooff R, and Kovats S, eds. Climate Change and Human Health: an assessment prepared by a Task Group on behalf of the World Health Organization, the World Meteorological Organization, and the United Nations Environment Programme. Geneva,*WHO, 1996 [WHO/EHG/96.7].* In 1997, Sari was promoted to Research Fellow and in 2003 to Lecturer, and in 2010 to Senior Lecturer. Sari has a Masters*Degree*in Social Policy from the SouthBank University in London and completed a part-time PhD in epidemiology in 2010 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

"Sari is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Environmental Change and Human Health Project of ESSP (Earth System Science Partnership) and on the management committee for the WHO Collaborating Centre on Global Change and Health at LSHTM. Since 2010, Sari has been a Fellow of the*Collegium Ramazzini. She is also on the editorial board of the journal Global Environmental Change."

"Sari has*been involved extensively in the scientific assessment of the impacts of climate change on health for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is*currently*a co-Coordinating Lead Author for the chapter on Europe in the forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report, due to be published in 2014."

Now if you need a gunslinger, I'd go with the little cowboy.

As a scientist, he's a good cowboy. So for science, I'd go with Dr Kovats.

What made Sari an expert in 1994, when she was first given a position of importance?

Neither I nor you have any idea why she was hired. She certainly was very educated. She could have been hired as a gifted writer. Maybe she was the only applicant.

Your paranoia that anything that you don't know is a conspiracy is the issue. Not her qualifications.

If you always suspect a conspiracy, you'll always find one.

The IPCC has turned out some amazing science on their mission. Their political foes have accomplished precisely and absolutely nothing.

You must be so proud.

You simply are not going to impose your politics on the world. No matter how low you go.

I can tell by your response that this is embarrassing, that's why you are attacking me personally instead of discussing my point. I have never said that there is any conspiracy here. I have said that there is rampant incompetence.

She was not "very educated" when she was hired almost 20 years ago, she hadn't even published yet (here's a link to her first paper). She wasn't even a Scientist, she had a degree in Social Policy.

There's more examples of not so elite "experts" on the IPCC here:

Rajendra Pachauri ? The Little Man Who Told Big Whoppers | NoFrakkingConsensus

 

[PMZ]

What made Sari an expert in 1994, when she was first given a position of importance?

Neither I nor you have any idea why she was hired. She certainly was very educated. She could have been hired as a gifted writer. Maybe she was the only applicant.

Your paranoia that anything that you don't know is a conspiracy is the issue. Not her qualifications.

If you always suspect a conspiracy, you'll always find one.

The IPCC has turned out some amazing science on their mission. Their political foes have accomplished precisely and absolutely nothing.

You must be so proud.

You simply are not going to impose your politics on the world. No matter how low you go.

I can tell by your response that this is embarrassing, that's why you are attacking me personally instead of discussing my point. I have never said that there is any conspiracy here. I have said that there is rampant incompetence.

She was not "very educated" when she was hired almost 20 years ago, she hadn't even published yet (here's a link to her first paper). She wasn't even a Scientist, she had a degree in Social Policy.

There's more examples of not so elite "experts" on the IPCC here:

Rajendra Pachauri ? The Little Man Who Told Big Whoppers | NoFrakkingConsensus

You have no point.