Energy Probe

February 13, 2009

A ‘gross’ distortion

National Post

The spirited debate over the validity of the fabled hockey-stick graph on climate change continues.

The hockey-stick graph, an icon of global warming doomsayers that purported to show temperatures on Earth at record levels, in 2006 became the subject of investigations by two high-level scientific panels commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. House of Representatives. The former, chaired by Gerald North of Texas A&M, seemingly vindicated the controversial graph and its creator, scientist Michael Mann; the latter, chaired by Edward Wegman, ironically the National Academy of Sciences’s own Chair of its Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, unequivocally determined the hockey stick to be based on shoddy science. North this week re-enters the debate in a letter to the Post, supporting the views of singer-songwriter Dave Clarke. They are both commenting on an exchange that appeared on this page last Saturday between Mann and Post columnist Lawrence Solomon. The hockey-stick debate continues below with comments by Clarke and North, followed by a response from Mr. Solomon.

Comment by Dave Clarke, Guitarist, Singer-Song-writer, Victoria
Solomon misrepresented Mann

I am writing you concerning the piece, “Manns conclusions not to be believed,” by Lawrence Solomon.

Regarding the conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel concerning the Mann et al. study, Solomon writes:

“The NAS did find some of Mann’s work ‘plausible’ — that’s the closest that it comes to actually supporting Mann’s findings but then it immediately states there are so many scientific uncertainties attached to Mann’s work that it doesn’t have great confidence in it. The committee then proceeds to further downgrade its view of Mann’s work: “Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that ‘the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium.’ ” This is a gross misrepresentation of the NAS panel’s findings. The executive summary states: “Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.”

Clearly, if the committee found it “plausible” that the last “last few decades of the 20th century [were warmer] than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium,” then Mann’s conclusion that “the ’90s are likely the warmest decade” of the past millennium is also plausible, albeit with less statistical confidence than in the post-1600 case, or when analyzing multi-decade periods.

Solomon is also wrong when he says, that this is the “closest” the committee comes to “actually supporting Manns findings.”

Consider this statement:

“The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th-century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.”

The report also refers to the “high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming.”

Moreover, proceedings of the National Academy of Science recently published the latest Mann et. al paleoclimate study, which builds on the previous pioneering work. This is obviously at odds with Solomon’s characterization of at best lukewarm NAS support for Mann’s research and conclusions.

Of course, I object to many other aspects of Solomon’s disgraceful piece, particularly his characterization of Mann’s work as a “statistical sham.” And I do not mean to suggest that the above are the only errors or misrepresentations to be found in Solomon’s diatribe.

But I do urge you to correct the errors concerning the NAS report as soon as possible. In this connection, you may wish to correspond with the chairman of the NAS panel, Gerald North. For the convenience of all the parties I have copied Dr. North on this correspondence.

Photo: MCT

Comment by Gerald R. North, former chair, National Academy of Sciences

North concurs with Clarke

I have to agree with Mr. Clarke. Your article about the NAS reports is quite misleading — in fact, a shameful misrepresentation.

But I do not wish to engage in further discussion in your paper/blog.

Under oath, North faults Mann too

by Lawrence Solomon, National Post, February 16, 2009

Gerald North’s panel ruled that Michael Mann’s conclusion was right even if his study provided no basis for that conclusion, despite the response above.

Of all the scientists who have come to Michael Mann’s defence, none have more impressive credentials than those of Gerald North, a former Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. North, a physicist, has not only spent decades addressing the dangers of climate change, he has done so through his work in climate models and his knowledge of statistics, a suite of qualifications that make him particularly well qualified to comment on Michael Mann’s statistics-based work. Because of his background, and because Mann’s hockey-stick graph had become a source of great controversy, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) asked North to chair a panel to investigate the statistical validity of the hockey stick graph. The NAS, like most national academies, backs the man-made global warming thesis.

The North report for the NAS, published in June, 2006, was released at a press conference and with a press release entitled: “High Confidence’ That Planet Is Warmest in 400 Years; Less Confidence in Temperature Reconstructions Prior to 1600.”  Because the press release, the report, and North himself made many statements favourable to Mann, the worldwide press understandably reported that Mann had been vindicated.

“Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate,” read the New York Times headline. “Academy affirms hockey-stick graph” read that of Nature magazine. “Global warming is real, according to America’s top scientists, who say the earth is running its highest fever in hundreds of years,” stated NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.

But the story that North and other panel members relayed less than one month later, when they were required to testify under oath, showed the NAS report to be the opposite of what most had assumed. The setting was now not a press conference but formal hearings before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Because Mann had refused to provide other researchers with the computer code necessary to verify his work, because the credibility of the science surrounding the hockey stick had become a cause célèbre, and because federal government funds had financed the hockey stick study, the Energy and Commerce committee the previous summer had decided to hold hearings into the matter.

The committee then commissioned a study by Edward Wegman, arguably America’s top statistician, and arranged for him to testify in July, 2006. Meanwhile, the NAS decided to produce a competing study into the Mann controversy, with North as its chair. The Energy and Commerce committee then decided to have Wegman and North both testify before it.

Wegman’s testimony powerfully demonstrated that Mann’s work had no validity. Then North testified in Mann’s defence, also powerfully, by showing that Mann’s conclusions were valid.

Who was right and what was going on? The following exchange between the committee chairman, Joe Barton, and North establishes who was right.

CHAIRMAN BARTON  Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?

DR. NORTH  No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.

Barton then asked North’s colleague on the NAS panel, Peter Bloomfield, a similar question. Bloomfield’s reply: “Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.”

What was going on? North’s NAS panel confirmed, without stating so clearly, that Mann’s science was shoddy, and that Mann’s conclusions, on their own, could not be trusted. But that didn’t mean that Mann’s answer was wrong — North’s panel believed that man-made global warming exists and they had lots of evidence, by other scientists, to support their belief. Therefore, the NAS panel concluded, Mann was right in his ultimate conclusion that man causes global warming, even if Mann’s study provided no basis for that conclusion.

The press can be forgiven for believing that the National Academy of Sciences panel chaired by North had vindicated the science behind the hockey stick graph, and so can singer-songwriter David Clarke.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

Sources

Edward J. Wegman, C.V.

February 11, 2009

In recent weeks, a swell of Blogosphere interest has followed Michael Mann’s response to Lawrence Solomon’s National Post column, “Climate change’s Antarctic ruffle,” which critiques a study Mr. Mann had helped to author. In print form, a round-up of letters sparked by the Solomon-Mann commentaries was printed by the National Post on February 11:

Ad hominem attacks, faulty science and a state of denial

Re: Climate Change’s Antarctic Ruffle, Lawrence Solomon, Jan.31;
Tabloid Fossil-Fuel Shill, Michael E. Mann, Feb. 7; and Mann’s
Conclusions Not To Be Believed, Lawrence Solomon, Feb 7.

As
a member of the scientific community, Dr. Mann should realize that
scientific hypotheses — and his global climate-change model is just
that, a hypothesis — are evaluated based on the scientific method:
critical evaluation of the available evidence to determine whether it
supports the hypothesis or not. Using an ad hominem attack
as a response to critical evaluation, as he does in this article, does
not contribute to the factual debate. Rather, it only serves to weaken
his argument. An apt analogy from poker is that Dr. Mann has become so
heavily invested in this pot (hypothesis) that he has gone “all in” —
and been called.

Michael Weber, Biology lab co-ordinator, Carleton University, Ottawa. Continue reading →

Lawrence Solomon

February 7, 2009

Comment by Michael E. Mann, Director, Earth System Science Center, Penn State

In his latest piece in the tabloid the National Post, Mr. Lawrence Solomon, a widely recognized purveyor of fossil fuel-funded disinformation, continues to use the forum provided to him by the Post to spread lies about scientists and scientific research in the area of global climate change.

Doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry that financially supports his disinformation efforts, Mr. Lawrence  repeatedly lies about my work, the work of my colleagues, the findings of the scientific community, and even the judgments of the world’s leading scientific organizations and journals.Mr Lawrence full well knows, for example, that my own work on paleoclimate reconstructions from more than a decade ago has been reproduced by many groups, and vindicated in a report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and even more recently, in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (for a lay-person’s guide to this report, you might check out my recent book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming published by DK/Pearson). Mr. Lawrence disingenuously implies otherwise by citing a partisan attack several years ago by Joe Barton, the leading recipient of fossil fuel industry money in the U.S. House of Representatives (and who is often referred to as “smokey Joe Barton” for his support of industry’s right to pollute our environment).

Barton’s attacks were decried by newspapers editorials around the world, which likened it to a modern-day McCarthyism, using word’s like “witch hunt” and “inquisition.” The discredited Barton attacks were dismissed by organizations like the American Association of the Advancement of Science, which dismissed the attacks as an attempt to intimidate scientists whose findings may prove troublesome to industry special interests.

The National Academy of Sciences responded by performing a legitimate scientific review of my findings and similar work by others in the scientific community, and the academy endorsed or key findings, noting that a host of additional studies since have confirmed them. The media reported the NAS findings as “Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate” (New York Times), “Backing for Hockey Stick Graph (BBC), and so on.

Mr Solomon of course knows about all of this, but still chooses to mislead and lie to his readers. His statements about our current study in ‘Nature’ (which from his article you’d think I was the sole author — in fact, I was only the 4th in a team of 6 co-authors) which studies the long-term warming of Antarctica and its causes, are unusually disingenuous and specious.

As described in detail elsewhere (e.g. the website “RealClimate.org” which I co-founded), our latest study is not contradicted by weather records at all, despite Mr. Solomon’s dishonest attempt to imply otherwise by misrepresenting and cherry-picking anecdotal observations.

Our study reproduces the well known cooling of the Antarctic interior which took place during the 1970s through 1990s (and is believed to be, as confirmed by our study, due to stratospheric ozone depletion which was greatest over that particular time interval). However, by combining the available temperature observations, we show that the longer-term pattern for Antarctica on the whole is one of warming, and this is consistent with the expected response to the long-term increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. Finally, Mr Lawrence goes on to attack the journal Nature.

Gee, who should we trust here? The most dishonest industry advocate in the climate change debate, or the world’s most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal. You be the judge.

How ironic that Mr Lawrence uses the word “shame” in his disinformation piece. For he is perhaps the most shameful and dishonest actors in the climate change disinformation machine. Some people indeed have no shame. Nonetheless, in Mr Solomon’s case, the judgment of history will be his condemnation.

Google News
Continue reading →

Ed Hiserodt

February 2, 2009

The New American has joined as a cosponsor of the Second
International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland
Institute of Chicago. It will be held March 8-10 at the Marriott
Marquis in New York City. While the mainstream media continues to
parrot the claim of Al Gore and the UN’s IPCC that “the science is
settled” regarding global warming, the expected 1,000 attendees from
across the globe are living, visual proof that such a claim is merely
an excuse to avoid debate.

The keynote speakers for the three-day conference are:

• Arthur Robinson, Ph.D.  Professor of Chemistry at the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine.  Among many other duties, Dr.
Robinson directs the “Petition Project” that has obtained the
signatures of more than 31,000 scientists, including over 9,000 with
Ph.D.s, explicitly opposing the hypothesis of “human-caused global
warming.”

• Lawrence Solomon.  Canadian author, environmentalist, and columnist for the National Post.
Mr. Solomon interviewed many of the world’s most prominent scientists
who oppose global warming alarmism.  This evolved into his best selling
book, The Deniers.

• Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology at MIT. One of the
world’s most respected atmospheric physicists, Dr. Linzen’s specialties
are in climate, planetary waves, planetary atmospheres, and
hydrodynamic instability.  He is an outspoken critic of catastrophic
projections of global warming from anthropogenic sources.

• Lord Christopher Monckton. Third Viscount of Brenchley and adviser to
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Lord Monckton produced the
informative and entertaining DVD Apocalypse, No!  that was reviewed and
highly recommended in the November 24, 2008 issue of The New American (“Liberty From Global-warming Alarmism“).
An amateur mathematician, the Viscount found major errors in the IPCC
data that were “overlooked” by 2,000 IPCC “scientists“ and government
officials.

• Willie Soon, Ph.D. An astronomer at Mount Wilson Observatory and a
physicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center. Astrophysicist Dr. Soon is author of Maunder Minimum: And the Variable Sun-Earth Connection
and is a chief de-bunker of the myths of increased hurricane activity
and polar bear population declines associated with global warming.
(Polar bears numbers are increasing, not decreasing.)

Among the 30 other panelists/speakers are John Coleman, founder of the
Weather Channel, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, founder of the Science and
Environmental Policy Project and editor of the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change initiative.

This conference is being held at a critical time in the history of our
country. All “scientific advisers” to the Obama administration are
global-warming alarmists. A lack of even a single skeptic causes one to
suspect this may have been a litmus test for presidential
appointments.  Both Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi — who have a
stranglehold on Senate and House action — are ardent global warmers.
We can look for legislation pushed by them that would paralyze our
economy in the name of “saving the planet.”

On the bright side, the American electorate is increasingly skeptical of alarmists claims, with a January Rasmussen Poll showing that 51 percent of U.S. voters do not
believe that global warming is caused by human activity (most of this
group believe that long-term planetary trends are responsible),
compared to 41 percent who blame global warming on human activity (the
remainder are unsure). This large-scale disbelief is a real threat to
global-warming alarmists, whose messages have become more and more
shrill and calamitous in an attempt to sell their product.

One of the topics to be discussed at the 2009 conference is the future
of “cap and Trade” legislation. “Cap” means the government will put a
maximum on the amount of “greenhouse gas emissions” that the economy as
a whole will be allowed to produce. Then individuals and businesses
will be given their quotas — demanded by the environmental radicals to
be 30 percent less that what we are now producing.  How is your
business going to fair when its electricity and natural gas allotments
are whacked by 30 percent?  And where are you going to cut 30 percent
out of your home electrical usage?  How will your life be changed when
you won’t be able to make a third of the usual trips in your private
automobile?

And all because of a theory of global warming that is patently and
provably false, but has been foisted on a public by a mainstream media
using the Goebbels method of indoctrination:  “If you tell a lie big
enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe in
it.”  Most of us remember that part of the quotation, but we need to
re-familiarize ourselves with the rest of it:

The lie can be maintained only for such
time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic,
and/or military consequences of the lie.  It thus becomes vitally
important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent,
for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension,
the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

For more information about the conference, see the Heartland Institute’s webpage on the subject.

Lawrence Solmon
FP Comment
January 28, 2009

James Hansen of NASA’s GISS has been the single-most influential scientist in the world in promoting the view that global warming represents a catastrophic risk to the planet. His former supervisor at NASA, Dr. John S. Theon, now publicly disagrees with Hansen’s work. In the correspondence below from earlier this month, Theon dismisses the validity of Hansen’s work, charges that some scientists manipulated climate change data, and formally joined the ranks of the deniers. He expressed his views to the Minority Office at the U.S. Environment and Public Works Committee.

—–Original Message—–
From: Jtheon [mailto:jtheon@XXXXXXX]
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:05 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)

Subject: Climate models are useless

Marc, First, I sent several e-mails to you with an error in the address and they have been returned to me. So I’m resending them in one combined e-mail.

Yes, one could say that I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation. He was never muzzled even though he violated NASA’s official agency position on climate forecasting (i.e., we did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind’s effect on it). He thus embarrassed NASA by coming out with his claims of global warming in 1988 in his testimony before Congress.

My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit. Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

With best wishes, John

# #

From: Jtheon [mailto:jtheon@XXXXXX]
Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 12:50 PM
To: Morano, Marc (EPW)

Subject: Re: Nice seeing you

Marc, Indeed, it was a pleasure to see you again. I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that Global Warming is man made.  A brief bio follows. Use as much or as little of it as you wish.

John S. Theon Education: B.S. Aero. Engr. (1953-57); Aerodynamicist, Douglas Aircraft Co. (1957-58); As USAF Reserve Officer (1958-60),B.S. Meteorology (1959); Served as Weather Officer 1959-60; M.S, Meteorology (1960-62); NASA Research Scientist, Goddard Space Flight Ctr. (1962-74); Head Meteorology Branch, GSFC (1974-76); Asst. Chief, Lab. for Atmos. Sciences, GSFC (1977-78);  Program Scientist, NASA Global Weather Research Program, NASA Hq. (1978-82); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch NASA Hq., (1982-91); Ph.D.,  Engr. Science & Mech.: course of study and dissertation in atmos. science (1983-85); Chief, Atmospheric Dynamics, Radiation, & Hydrology Branch, NASA Hq. (1991-93); Chief, Climate Processes Research Program, NASA Hq. (1993-94); Senior Scientist, Mission to Planet Earth Office, NASA Hq. (1994-95); Science Consultant, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (1995-99); Science Consultant  Orbital Sciences Corp. (1996-97) and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab., (1997-99).

As Chief of several NASA Hq. Programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the  research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research. This required a thorough understanding of the state of the science. I have kept up with climate  science since retiring by reading books and journal articles. I hope that this is helpful.

Best wishes, John

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers.

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 20, 2009

Americans will have two messages for Barack Obama at his inauguration today: We love you but don’t blame us for climate change.

In a national survey released on the eve of Obama’s inauguration by Rasmussen Reports, the U.S. polling company, a majority of Americans – 51% – now believe that humans are not the predominant cause of climate change. Only 41% blame humans and 9% aren’t sure.  Just one month ago, the same pollster found that just 43% of Americans let us humans off the hook while 46% blamed humans and 11% were not sure. Last July, fully 50% blamed humans.

Of those who see natural causes at work in our ever-changing climate, the great majority see the Sun and other long-term planetary trends as the cause while a minority blame other natural factors, such as volcanic activity.

To make matters worse for the global warming doomsayers, the majority don’t view the global warming we have seen – whether its cause is natural or man-made – with great alarm, despite media depictions of rising oceans, melting polar caps, dying polar bears and accelerating hurricanes. One third dismiss global warming concerns altogether, saying they are not too serious or not at all serious, and another quarter find climate change only “somewhat serious.” Only four in 10 Americans do find climate change to be a “very serious” issue.

The Rasmussen Poll found Democrats to be isolated in their attitudes toward climate change. A decisive majority of both Republicans and independents absolve humans. Even among Democrats, however, only 59% still blame humans. Likewise, only 18% of Republicans and 33% of independents view global warming as a very serious problem while a majority of Democrats do.

The Rasmussen poll also provides guidance as to how a politically savvy President Obama will deal with climate change, given that he has put the current economic crisis at the top of his political agenda. In response to the question, “Is there a conflict between economic growth and environmental protection?,” 46% responded “yes” compared to only 32% who thought not. If President Obama is to get the broad-based support that he desires for the economic reforms that he will be proposing, he’ll need to respect the views of the large minority of Democrats, and the majority of Independents and Republicans that he now represents. His climate change agenda may need to wait, until the planets align themselves for him in a propitious manner.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers.

Author and Reviewer numbers are wrong
by John McLean, January 2009

How many times have you heard or read words to the effect that 4000 scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) supported the claims about a significant human influence on climate? I think we’ve seen it on television, radio and the Internet and I know that politicians at national levels have quoted such figures. There’s no question whatsoever. It’s utterly wrong.

In fact, once the duplicated names are removed that number falls below 2,900 and if we only want those who explicitly supported the claims it falls to only about 60. So how does 4,000 become 60? Let’s take a closer look at the real numbers.

Consider the statement “The IPCC report concluded that there is a human influence on climate. This was supported by almost 4,000 authors and reviewers.” The popular mythology – and one that IPCC never tries to correct – is that those 4,000 supported the findings but all they really supported, by their work, was the creation of the report. The IPCC is allowing, or perhaps even encouraging, an ambiguity be misinterpreted, and not for the first time either, but I digress.

But how many individuals were involved? Was it 4,000 or some other number?
The IPCC said in its flyer for its Fourth Assessment Report (4AR)
2500+ Scientific Expert Reviewers
800+ Contributing Authors
450+ Lead Authors…[note 1]

so immediately the figure drops from 4,000 to 3,750 – but a closer check shows that’s not correct either. Each of the three IPCC Working Groups (WGs) assembles its own lists of authors and reviewers, making six lists in all. Based on those lists of reviewers and on a previous list of authors that I had already extracted from the start of each chapter of the report (and each “Summary for Policy makers”and “Technical Summary”) the total number of authors and reviewers for each working group is as follows:

WG I – 595 authors, 624 reviewers
WG II – 400 authors, 1169 reviewers
WG III – 251 authors, 469 reviewers

Based on thee figures the total number of reviewers was 2262 and the number of authors is 1246. The former is well short of the IPCC’s 2500 but the latter is near enough to the claimed 1250.

Looking first at the number of authors we must take into account that an author for one working group can also be an author for another working group.

Anil Markandya of the UK was an author of WG II chapter 8 and WG III chapter 2, and Blair Fitzharris of New Zealand was an author of WG I chapter 4 and WG II chapter 11 and “summary for policymakers”. They, along with 39 other authors who contributed to more than one working group, have been counted twice in the IPCC’s total of 1250 authors.
Other authors who have been counted twice include those whose names are sometimes shown with accents, umlauts and other marks and sometimes shown without, and sometimes even with different spelling (e.g. the umlauted ‘u’ is sometimes shown as ‘ue’). After converting the variable spelling to a single form and removing the duplicates across working groups the number of authors falls to 1189 individuals.

In a similar fashion, reviewers can comment on chapters from more than one working group and their names might have the same variable spelling. After these issues are resolved the total number of reviewers falls to 2073.

With these corrections we’ve now lost almost 500 names from the 3750 that the IPCC claimed and we’re down to
3262.

But that’s the total of the number of authors and the number of reviewers. These roles are not independent and there was nothing to prevent authors also being reviewers, even of the chapters that they had contributed to.

IPCC policies say that each author receives the draft copies of any chapter they contributed to and elsewhere we find that virtually anyone with relevant knowledge can be a reviewer, and authors often meet that requirement even for chapters that they did not work on.

Take for example Anthony Broccoli of the USA. He was an author of WG I chapter 8 and a reviewer of WG I chapter 6. All up, 383 individuals acted both as reviewers and authors. After removing the duplicate names from the composite list the number of individuals falls to 2879, which is a long way short of the claimed 4,000 and even of the IPCC’s total of 3750, which of course could be understood as individuals rather than separate lists.

At this point a few issues need to be clarified about the accuracy of the above figures because I wouldn’t like to be like the IPCC and not be precise. The manual adjustment for accents and other marks (e.g. umlauts) might not be 100% accurate. Care has been taken with the resolving of duplicate names but the results can’t be guaranteed to be correct. I’ve taken great care with identifying duplicate names but it is possible that two individuals might share the same name. On the other hand the same individual might at different times be listed under different names (e.g. women who are listed both under their maiden-name and their married name). I also made corrections where the IPCC seems uncertain whether a Cuban individual was Juan Llanes-Requeiro or Juan Llanes-Requerio, or if a Swedish individual was Markku Rummukainen or Markku Rummu Ainen.

Perhaps I have failed to notice other instances of IPCC incompetence.

Another problem that I discovered was that an Australian author whose name was in the composite list in the appendix to the Working Group I contribution could not be found in the lists of authors at the start of each chapter. (This was another reason for using a list of authors extracted from each chapter rather than the composite list provided by each Working Group.) I haven’t bothered to determine whether other instances of this discrepancy occur for this working group or others. I don’t know and frankly don’t care, because it looks like just
another of the IPCC’s distortions and outright lies.

The IPCC’s claims of 2500+ reviewers and 1250 authors bears little relationship to the truth and its implied total of more than 3750 individuals is even worse. This is just another example of how the IPCC’s messages are ambiguous – deliberately so, in my opinion – and how the organization publishes a lobbyist’s message rather than a clear presentation of the facts.

But did the 2879 individuals all support the IPCC’s principal findings? There’s really no proof that any more than about 2% explicitly did so.

The key chapter in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report of 2007 is chapter 9 of the Working Group I contribution. No authors prior to that chapter were asked for their opinion, although perhaps we could say that some authors of two chapters, 1 and 8, gave it anyway. Authors of chapters 10 and 11 of the WG I contribution assumed the claims made in chapter 9 were correct, and so did the authors of all chapters of the contributions by Working Groups II and III.

Chapter 9 of Working Group I had 53 authors in total but more than 40 were part of a network of people who worked previously together. In direct contradiction to the IPCC’s statements that the team of authors should have a wide range of views and experiences, most were climate modellers and there were many instances where several authors were associated with the same establishment. In the latter case it was not uncommon for a contributing author to be a subordinate (academic or work) to author higher in the authoring hierarchy. [note 2]

It is impossible to say whether the findings were truly supported by all 53 authors of chapter 9 but let’s assume
that they did.

The second draft of chapter 9, the last draft available for review by individuals, received comments from 55 people and 7 governments. Of these 62 only 5 reviewers explicitly endorsed the overall chapter [note 3]. None of these supporting reviewers was particularly credible because of vested interests or because this was the only review comment they made for the entire report, but let’s not quibble.

Fifty-three authors and five reviewers are all that can be said to explicitly support the claim of a significant human influence on climate. The figure of 4,000 is a myth. Even the IPCC’s total of 3750 is a myth. Not even the 2879 individuals can be shown to support the claim. The true number is about 60, or maybe if we asked each of those privately, perhaps even fewer.

It can’t be denied that other reviewers may have supported the notion of significant man-made warming but failed to explicitly state this. If that’s the case them they only have themselves to blame for not being counted with the other “true believers”. We can however be sure that support among those other IPCC authors and reviewers was not unanimous. The lists of reviewers contain the names of many people who are known to be sceptical of a significant human influence on temperature, so any implication that they supported the IPCC’s findings are totally without merit. As mentioned earlier, the support to which the IPCC referred in its flyer was towards the creation of the entire report, not the findings of a small network of climate modellers, although the “sceptical reviewers” would probably argue that their support for the report was only in trying to curb the excesses of the IPCC’s authors.

This document has shown that yet another statement by the IPCC is unsupported by any solid evidence. Not only was the IPCC dishonest about the level of support for its primary claim, either deliberately or through allowing an ambiguity to be misinterpreted, but it couldn’t even get its number of authors and reviewers correct. If the IPCC cannot provide an accurate count of authors, reviewers and the people who acted in both roles for its report then we probably should be asking what, if any, of its statements can be believed.

NOTES

1 – http://www.probeinternational.org/ipcc-flyer-low%5B1%5D.pdf (IPCC flyer for 4AR)
2 – “Prejudiced Authors, Prejudiced Findings” at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/McLean_IPCC_bias.pdf
3 – “An Analysis of the Review of the IPCC 4AR WG I Report” at http://www.probeinternational.org/files/An%20Analysis%20of%20the%20Review%20of%20the%20IPCC%204AR%20WG%20I%20Report.pdf