Climategate 2: Follow the money to see who calls the shots.

Posted: December 12, 2011 by tallbloke in Incompetence, Politics

#1052.txt
date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 13:23:43 -0500
from: Robert Watson
subject: Synthesis Report (SYR): Summary for Policymakers
to: “Robert Watson” <REDACTED>, “Rajendra Pachauri” <REDACTED>, “Tomihiro Taniguchi” <REDACTED>, “John Houghton”… [And the Core Team….]

Dear core and extended team members of the IPCC Synthesis Report,

I truly appreciate all the effort that you are expending on preparing the IPCC
Synthesis Report.


I had planned to have a short SPM ready for your review by now but I decided
that I needed to better understand the key messages from each of the Working
groups before the 5-7 page report could be finished. Hence, I would greatly
appreciate it if you could review this material – big messages not fine tuning
the text.

I have taken the 100-page report and attempted to extract what I believe are the
key messages in a 26-page summary (14,000 words).

…..

When you redraft
the answers to the questions hopefully this will assist you in seeing what I
thought were the take-home messages.

I have also attached a shortened version of question 2, which is about the right
length for the SPM …..The key to success for the Synthesis Report and the SPM
will be punchy take home messages, and thoughtful tables and figures.

Would you please send me comments by Friday, February 2. I think that the key
to success will be a few well-crafted tables and figures. As soon as I receive
your comments, I will write a 5-7 page SPM.

Thanks in advance

Bob
_______________________________________________________________________
Robert T. Watson, Chief Scientist & Director, ESSD – The World Bank
1818 H Street, NW – MSN MC4-408, Washington, DC 20433 – USA

Comments
  1. US negotiators managed to eliminate language calling for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, according to Patricia Romero Lankao, a lead author from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The original draft read: “However, adaptation alone is not expected to cope with all the projected effects of climate change, and especially not over the long run as most impacts increase in magnitude. Mitigation measures will therefore also be required.” The second sentence does not appear in the final version of the report.

  2. Nick Stokes says:

    Well, Robert Watson was Chair of the IPCC in 2001. And Chief Scientist at the World Bank. You don’t need sleuths digging into people’s emails to find that out.

  3. tallbloke says:

    Hi Nick, and season’s greets.

    True, but the emails give a bit more context to the bare facts don’t you think. 😉

    Also, these aren’t just any people’s emails, they’re THE PEOPLE’S emails. Don’t forget who pays for all this stuff…

    The particular benefit of reading this one is that we’re left in no doubt as to who it is who not only sanctioned but actively solicited the production and inclusion of “well crafted figures” such as Mike Mann’s hockey stick. It was the then Chair of the IPCC.

    To the tune of ‘Modern Major General’
    By Gilbert and Sullivan (Pirates of Penzance)

    I am the very model of a modern climatologist
    I’m partly statistician, partly palaeo-phrenologist
    I’ve temperature readings from thermometers coniferous
    my data are the same (or not, well, maybe) as Keith Briffa has
    I bought them from a bloke who brought them hotfoot from Siberia
    and mixed them with some algae from the mud in Lake Superior.
    When counting different isotopes I’m really in my element
    and sucking up to journalists from Guardian Environment
    I know what makes the treerings from Siberia to the Rockies tick
    And I can make spaghetti and transform it to a hockeystick.
    My data’s got dark matter that would shatter a cosmologist
    I am the very model of a modern climatologist

    H/T Geoff Chambers
    http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/9/the-modern-climatologist.html

  4. Nick Stokes says:

    TB, yes Merry Christmas from down under. And I admire your skill with the patter verse.

    As to context, I think it is just the sort of email you’d expect the chair of an organisation charged with presenting a report to write. I was surprised (and encouraged) that he’s actually doing some of the writing himself. And of course he wants well-crafted diagrams etc. Wouldn’t you?

    The thing is, you folk invest these perfectly normal phrases with ill intent because you attribute that to the writer. Well, that’s your construct. It isn’t in the words, which are just the sort of thing you’d expect a person on that situation (in any activity) to write.

  5. adolfogiurfa says:

    Trouble is they FOUND the money…and we did not ! 🙂

  6. Roger Andrews says:

    Nick Stokes

    “It is just the sort of email you’d expect the chair of an organisation charged with presenting a report to write”. Well, it would be if the goal of the report was to sell something to somebody. But no self-respecting scientist charged with writing an objective scientific report would ask for “punchy take-home messages”. Only an advocate would.

  7. Nick Stokes says:

    Roger A,
    Everyone who is writing anything at all has a message. They are trying to say something. Do you want your tax pounds to be spent on production of something where you can’t work out what they are trying to say? Well, I guess so if you think they shouldn’t say it, but they do.

    And he’s getting together a summary for policymakers. Punchy take-home messages is exactly what they should want. It’s full of bullet points.

  8. tallbloke says:

    Nick, in my opinion, any responsible chief scientist would be saying this in the report:

    * The Earth’s climate systems are complex, poorly understood and cannot be reduced to bullet points.
    * In theory, additional carbon dioxide causes the temperature of the lower atmosphere to rise.
    * As yet we have no strong empirical evidence to show that the observed rise is so caused
    * Potentially important factors are not included in climate models because they haven’t been investigated sufficiently to develop algorithms to integrate them yet.
    * Long term cycles are evident in the paleo data, but we don’t know what causes them.

    etc etc…

  9. diogenes says:

    waits for J Bowers aka Norman Wisdom to show up and do his falling down the stairs routine….maybe he alternates with Nick Syokes to attempt to sow confusion…but why do they bother?

  10. P.G. Sharrow says:

    It appeared to me that the IPCC was charged with finding the science of CO2 caused AGW and develop methods for the UN to deal with that problem. If that is the case then they are just doing their job. Politics not science. Lawyers and politicians can be very “Creative” with the facts.

    No science here, just move along. pg

  11. Mydogsgotnonose says:

    This should be interpreted in the context of the IPCC claiming to be an FOI free zone and IPCC science being fraudulent since 1997.

    1. High CO2 climate sensitivity [positive feedback by atmospheric processes] was the logical outcome of data showing CO2 rose with T at the end of ice ages but when in 1997 it was found that CO2 rose after T, insiders switched to calibrating that sensitivity against modern warming. This is why we had the hockey stick and the falsification of past temperatures – blatant scientific fraud.

    Few realise it but there was also a search for the missing ice age amplification – it came up in 2005 when Hansen claimed it is the difference between the albedo of wet and dry ice: this explanation is lacking in credibility because in 2007 it was shown that end of the last ice age, warming of the Southern ocean deeps started 2000 years before any significant CO2 rise. That heat input was by regional warming over much of the Southern hemisphere. The same process explains why we’ve had recent Arctic warming now reversing.

    2. Aarhenius was wrong: there is no such beast as ‘back radiation’. Any process engineer knows this.. Climate science is unique amongst physics-based disciplines in teaching it and imagining it exists.

    3. The cooling by polluted clouds supposed to hide (2) is only true for thin clouds: as they get thicker it switches to substantial heating, the real GW/AGW.

    4. The claim of 33K present GHG warming is outrageous deception because it includes lapse rate warming. It’s really ~10K, easily proved.

    What the IPCC did was the opposite of science. That it intends to hide its processes from independent checks confirms that the organisation is political and anti-science. In reality the maximum possible CO2-AGW is ~15% of the level it claims. There is no problem and when you correct the IR science, which is also very bad, it is probably slightly negative.

    No IPCC climate model can predict climate. Journalists who support this fraud should examine their credentials as objective reporters. There should be independent assessment of undergraduate teaching at institutions like UEA to prevent students being indoctrinated by this new Lysenkoism.

  12. geoffchambers says:

    Congrats on the follow-up verses. You may like to add something to this to hum the next time Norfolk’s finest call:

    When the enterprising hacker’s not a-hacking
    (not a-hacking)
    When denialists aren’t spreading lies and doubt
    They love to give the scientists a smacking
    (give a smacking)
    And question what the hockeystick‘s about.

    When the model from the tem-per-ature differs
    (-ature differs)
    And sceptics mutter “what about the sun?”
    Taking Phil Jones’ declarations with Keith Briffa’s
    A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

    On Bob Watson’s call for well-crafted figures and tables, it may be something to do with his manifest difficulty in crafting sentences with subjects and verbs and the like. See his contribution to the Guardian debate, transcribed at
    https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20100714_gn

  13. Ken Harvey says:

    Abuse of process. If we had a real prime minister, or even a real Conservative Party, this would not be tolerated.

  14. BammBamm says:

    WE have these very same crazies here in New Zealand, and they are sucking at the public teat like it is going out of fashion.
    [snip] [There] is a classic example of a man who switched into climate science, and now controls the levers of funding for research. Anyone who Questions the wisdom of MMGW from CO2 is instantly a ‘Holocaust Denier’.

    If it wasn’t bad enough that our universities are overrun with these gluttonous sods – our government agencies are licking their lips at the prospect of carbon taxes, and then carbon trading – which will then be used for money laundering … on a huge scale.

    Any police officer, or intelligence officer that I know – would flatly refuse to become involved with such an issue.

    As for promoters like Monbiot. He’s just a writer, not a scientist, and he is already up to his neck in this.

    Let us all hope that they start arresting the people pushing this agenda, and not the brave souls who wish to investigate the criminality of ClimateGate. After all, when did taxation ever solve an issue like the one proposed? It can’t, and it won’t!

    This topic needs to be addressed by real politicians, and real government. Valdimir putin would be a good man to start with … not Cameron – he’s just a Pussy.
    Why investigate?

    Because, there is no greater crime be had than this.

    [Moderation note]
    Apologies for the edit, I’m sure you understand that in my current position I must be careful not to allow publication of anything which could be construed as libel.

  15. BammBamm says:

    Oh of course!
    But remember, it is libel on my part, not yours, and it is libel only if it is not true!og

    .
    [Reply] Sure, point taken. Still can’t risk permitting its publication here though. – Sorry. – Rog

  16. James Allison says:

    Craft (krft) n.
    1. Skill in doing or making something, as in the arts; proficiency. See Synonyms at art1.
    2. Skill in evasion or deception; guile.
    3.
    a. An occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity or skilled artistry.
    b. The membership of such an occupation or trade; guild.
    4. pl. craft A boat, ship, or aircraft.
    tr.v. craft·ed, craft·ing, crafts
    1. To make by hand.
    2. Usage Problem To make or construct (something) in a manner suggesting great care or ingenuity: “It was not the Chamber of Commerce that crafted the public policies that have resulted in a $26 billion annual subvention to the farmers” (William F. Buckley, Jr.)

    Wouldn’t have thought “well-crafted” graphs and tables was common jargon of working Climate Scientists but there we are.

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  19. […] and the public won’t tolerate having their intelligence insulted for much longer. “punchy take home messages, and a few well-crafted tables and figures” aren’t going to rebuild trust and confidence. 2) […]

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  21. […] now we know why world bank chief scientist Bob Watson instructed IPCC lead authors writing the Summary for Policy Makers to pack it with “punchy take home messages” and […]