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Climategate III: The Search for Peer Review

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 17th, 2010 at 06:02 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Peer Review. Ha.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

….Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Peer Review. Heh heh.

The New Scientist report was apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report credited Hasnain’s 1999 interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review. Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise. Lal himself admits he knows little about glaciers. “I am not an expert on glaciers.and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about,” he said.

I’m sorry, I’m laughing so hard I can’t see the screen. I keep thinking of all the times I’ve been assured that the IPCC and related organizations use only the finest peer-reviewed research, and that we should trust its major publications because its work is by experts in the field. So forgive the lack of in-depth analysis here.

Peer Review: The new punchline.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://deweyfromdetroit.com deweyfromdetroit

    to use “peer review” as a punchline on my blog at least once a week until Algore becomes poet laureate.

    I just can’t understand why everyone isn’t as cynical as I am.

  • throwback59

    World Wrestling Federation

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    kinda like the Witch thing…. Strap the bad info to cement and toss it off a Pier, if it sinks – must’ve been good after all, but oh well, it’s gone (lost to the sea) now – and if it manages to float – must be Voodoo Witch data that is summarily killed.

  • http://xmmlbchat.blogspot.com katesmith

    5-4 decision declaring CO2 a dangerous pollutant, which allowed the EPA to do what it’s doing. Blind ‘referees’ (ie Mike Mann and others) have kept legitimate peer review unpublished. (Nature Magazine took 4 years to respond to the Hockey Stick correction and even then as just a footnote). All the money in the world has been allowed to grow unfettered in this scam, but it can be stopped. Many still will never know the Himalaya story is a fake-Time Magazine and the NY Times won’t showcase it. The Times reported in Nov, 2009 that man made melting in the Himalayas was causing the Maldives to sink. Maldive cabinet members held a meeting underwater to dramatize this. The Maldives case was often used by the UN and others to say US citizens were evil and must pay at least $100 billion a year to help green projects.

  • Tbone

    your glacier theory to India.

  • roscopico

    (nt).

  • http://www.ssce.net/Web-Articles/Web-articles-indexed-authors.html#authors-l JLenardDetroit

    ;-) lol …. can’t resist.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    Been saying it for years!

    To our resident (or occasionally visiting) Global Warming Hoax gospel shouters, my first and second points of argument were essentially this:

    (1) You do not get to start of with the premise that the earth is warming, before attempting to prove that supposed warming was caused by man. You have to make a valid and convincing case of that before you can use it.

    (2) You don’t get to use IPCC as evidence for anything. Outside, independent, repeatable evidence by scientists or groups not bought and paid for by known America-haters would be required.

    I am so right, and have been so right from the beginning, that I impress even myself. Of course my skepticism might have been born from the fact that I have a science degree in a relevant field, and I actually paid attention to the fundamentals of science, starting with something I remember from (at latest) the 7th grade, the scientific method.

    For which that bunch of quacks at IPCC, and Al Gore’s army of idiots, had never showed the merest scintilla of evidence that they had themselves ever mastered.

    So I say that any person in the civilized world that calls himself a scientist, and EVER, from day one, gave the least bit of credence to the Global Warming Hoax….

    is either NOT a qualified scientist, or is a crook and a fraud.

    Go suck it, if you are or were in either of those categories.

  • partyof1

    Keep chipping away at their mountain of lies.

  • http://vbushmills.blogtownhall.com/ vassar

    …the sort of thing take-backs are made of.

    Keep ‘em coming.
    Cheers

  • Warrior

    is that what gets published widespread and what gets all the attention is not the scientific reports of the IPCC. It’s the SUMMARY of the scientific reports. And the summary is concocted in a back room somewhere by a bunch of (usually socialist) POLITICIANS from around the world who are bent on robbing their rich neighbor — The U.S. of A. What a crock!

    (Not that actually publishing the science itself would improve things much, since, as you point out, the scientific method seems to not be of much concern to these “scientists.”)