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Update on Prior IPCC Snafu

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Last week we linked to a report that the IPCC had published unsubstantiated anecdotes masquerading as peer reviewed science.  In a stunningly candid admission, they now admit they included the false “science” in a conscious effort to move policy makers. 

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.’

HT: FT

Comments
Hi everyone, This looks like an interesting development: China has 'open mind' on cause of climate change (BBC news report).vjtorley
January 25, 2010
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O'Leary said: "Collin is right, of course. A successful field tends, over time, to attract mediocrities who make a living stifling creativity, dissent..." This is why I became a lawyer... haha.Collin
January 25, 2010
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Collin is right, of course. A successful field tends, over time, to attract mediocrities who make a living stifling creativity, dissent, uncomfortable data, etc., inventing reasons for concealing the truth, and preaching a stale dogma that supports its position - and going to the courts for support when all else fails. That is the reason that the term "creative destruction" was coined. Sometimes, stale institutions must be destroyed in order for fresh ones to emerge. If your local newspaper is still running columns by people nobody reads or should read, and you go on the 'Net to get your news, you are witnessing creative destruction. The worst thing government can do is to try to prop up such institutions, because the creativity has been drained out of them. This happens in all the fields I have ever looked into, and it may be a function of the second law of thermodynamics - for all I know. Public funding tends, I agree, to freeze outworn institutions in place, so considerable watchfulness is needed in such areas.O'Leary
January 25, 2010
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Wait a minute- It has been wicked cold in the Northeast and I had all the people in the area increase their burning of fossil fuels to increase the amount of atmospheric CO2 to warm us up. Today it is 50 degrees ABOVE zero! Am I now to believe that our actions didn't produce that effect? :)Joseph
January 25, 2010
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Public funding of science has led to a lot of really important discoveries. But I think it also adds perverse incentives.Collin
January 25, 2010
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Is there a way to bring up academic misconduct on these people? What is crazy is that, for global warming, the skeptics are the ones being labelled "anti-science" and "pursuing a political agenda" while the so-called "scientists" are the ones who are modifying the data to support their own political agenda. The only thing this does is to create a cynical population.johnnyb
January 25, 2010
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