IPCC Continues To Fail In Its Bid For Accuracy

At the start of September 2010 yet another blunder was discovered about the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report. This blunder involved Plagiarism of a book written in 1993 titled Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species. The book was authored by an Australian epidemiology professor named Anthony McMichael.

Professor McMichael is a known believer in AGW and is not above releasing alarmist statements to support his beliefs(my emphasis added): "As climate change advances we must realise that it endangers more than the economy, infrastructure and valued species. Climate change, ominously, is disrupting and weakening Earth's life-supporting capacity. This poses a profound, and growing, risk to human wellbeing, health and survival."

In her post The Book the IPCC Plagiarized author Donna Laframboise examines this closely:

Some people think early editions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report were scrupulously science-based, but that the process became more politicized in recent years. A look at the first appearance of the health chapter – in the 1995 edition – challenges this view. [29-page PDF of the chapter]

The person who headed that effort was an Australian epidemiology professor named Anthony McMichael. According to a 2001 bio, his early research interests included mental health, occupational diseases, the link between diet and cancer, and environmental epidemiology (diseases). In the late 1980s he co-authored a “bestselling guide to a healthier lifestyle” that discussed nutrition and physical fitness.

The bio tells us it was only “during the 1990s” that McMichael developed “a strong interest” in the risks associated with global environmental change. So in the early 1990s, out of all the experts in the entire world the IPCC might have chosen to oversee the writing of a section dealing with climate change and human health, why was McMichael selected?

Stacking the Deck I suspect it had a great deal to do with another book he wrote – the one that appeared in 1993 titled Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species. This book’s central theme is that human activity is undermining the planet’s ecosystem. Its tone, language, and analysis are similar to hundreds of other environmental treatises published in recent decades.

McMichael declares that “humans cannot live apart from nature, remote from the great web of life.” He frets that we are too distant “from the rhythms of natural systems.” He speaks of environmental degradation as “an unprecedented moral problem” and says people in rich countries live a wasteful, “ecologically distorted lifestyle.”

His language is not the tentative sort used by dispassionate scientists. Back in 1993 he didn’t say there was concern that carbon dioxide might eventually “disrupt various of the biosphere’s natural cycles,” he confidently proclaimed that it would. Like a long line of other eco thinkers, he believes environmental challenges require a wholesale “reordering of social values.”

McMichael’s Planetary Overload arguments rely on a Greenpeace report about global warming. His book frequently cites articles in non-peer-reviewed publications such as New Scientist and Scientific American. McMichael is, in other words, an environmentalist whose day job happens to involve the study of public health. He has no expertise in most of the topics his book discusses.

He is, of course, entitled to his personal opinions. But was he the best choice to lead an IPCC chapter? Let’s rephrase that: if one wished to deliberately stack the deck, to ensure that a certain perspective would dominate the climate bible’s first health chapter, would someone who had expressed views similar to McMichael’s not have seemed like the perfect candidate?

There is a straight line between what the UN’s 1995 climate bible told the world about health issues and what McMichael had already written in his 1993 book. Although Planetary Overload isn’t included among the 182 references listed at the end of the health chapter, entire passages of the climate bible were lifted directly from it. A selection appears below:

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 150:
Sandstorms in Kansas (USA) and in the Sudan have been accompanied by increased illness and death from bronchitis and asthma.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 578:
Sandstorms in Kansas (USA) and the Sudan have been accompanied by increases in bronchitis and asthma.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 155:
In Egypt, for example, the water snails tend to lose their schistosome infections during the winter months (January-March). However, if temperatures increase, snails may spread schistosomiasis throughout the year, thus increasing the already heavy parasite burden in rural Egypt.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 574:
In Egypt, for example, water snails tend to lose their schistosome infections during winter, but if temperatures increase, snails may mediate schistosomiasis transmission throughout the year.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 155:
Arboviral infections span a wide clinical spectrum, from those that cause mild feverish illness or subclinical infections to those causing severe and often fatal encephalitis (brain inflammation) or hemorrhagic fever. Under favourable environmental conditions, an arboviral disease can become epidemic (population-wide), from a local endemic base – in much the same way that cholera has recently broken out…

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 575:
Arboviral infections span a wide clinical spectrum, from those that cause mild feverish illness or subclinical inflections to those causing severe and often fatal encephalitis (brain inflammation) or hemorrhagic fever. Under favorable environmental conditions, an arboviral disease can become epidemic (population-wide), from a local endemic base or by its introduction to a previously unaffected area.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 154:
In eastern Africa, a relatively small increase in winter temperature would enable the malarial zone to extend ‘upwards’ to engulf the large urban highland populations that are currently off-limits to the mosquito because of the cooler temperatures at higher altitudes – e.g. Nairobi (Kenya) and Harare (Zimbabwe). Indeed, such populations around the world, currently just outside the margins of endemic malaria, would provide early evidence of climate-related shifts in the distribution of this disease.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 574:
Hence, it is a reasonable prediction that, in eastern Africa, a relatively small increase in winter temperature could extend the mosquito habitat and thus enable faciparum malaria to reach beyond the usual altitude limit of around 2,500 m to the large, malaria-free, urban highland populations, e.g. Nairobi in Kenya and Harare in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the monitoring of such populations around the world, currently just beyond the boundaries of stable endemic malaria, could provide early evidence of climate-related shifts in malaria distribution.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 165:
Already in Africa, there are over 100 million people who are ‘food insecure’, many of them in the arid Sahel region, home to approximately 35 million people.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 577:
Already in Africa, more than 100 million people are “food insecure,” many of them in the arid Sahel region.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 166:
A rise in temperature could also have significant effects on the growth and health of farm animals. Young animals are less tolerant of a wide range of temperature than are adult animals.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 577:
An increase in temperature and temperature extremes could also affect the growth and health of farm animals; young animals are much less tolerant of temperature variation than are adult animals.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 166:
With respect to adverse effects on livestock, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified several infectious diseases – such as the horn fly in beef and dairy cattle and insect-borne anaplasmosis infection in sheep and cattle – which might well increase in response to climate changes.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 577:
For example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified several infectious diseases – such as the horn fly in beef and dairy cattle and insect-borne anaplasmosis infection in sheep and cattle – that could increase in prevalence in response to climate changes.

McMichael’s 1993 book, page 187:
UNEP predicts that an average 10% loss of ozone (such has become established at middle-to-high latitudes in recent years), if sustained globally over three-four decades, would cause at least 300,000 additional cases of non-melanocytic skin cancer worldwide each year and 4,500 extra cases of malignant melanoma – and possibly double that figure.

Climate Bible’s 1995 Working Group 2 report, page 578:
The UN environment Programme predicts that an average 10% loss of ozone (such as occurred at middle-to-high latitudes over the past decade), if sustained globally over several decades, would cause approximately 250,000 additional cases of [nonmelanocytic skin cancers] worldwide each year.

It appears unlikely that a good faith, bona fide review of the scientific literature took place prior to the writing of significant sections of the IPCC’s first health chapter. Instead, the climate bible surreptitiously incorporated numerous opinions expressed a few years earlier by the activist-oriented person in charge of writing this chapter.

Then the media told the world that the IPCC’s proclamations regarding global warming and diseases such as malaria were the considered, consensus view of thousands of experts.

Then the following day we find out via Dr. Jo Nova that Dr. Pachauri admits the IPCC just guesses the numbers. She writes:

Such is the pressure finally beginning to bear on the IPCC that Pachauri has been forced into the ridiculous position of trying to rescue credibility by contradicting most of their past PR campaign. He’s taken the extraordinary step of admitting they don’t have hard numbers, hey, but it’s all OK because the IPCC is really a government agency to make policy, not to write scientific reports “that don’t see the light of day”.

So he’s admitting that the IPCC was all about policy prescriptions all along? And the science was just fudged-up window dressing to provide an excuse? Well, who would have guessed.

Hidden beside Pachauri’s declaration that he’s happy about the IAC report, he let slip a corker of a line:

Times of India asks: Anything in the UN probe report you completely or partly disagree with?

They have talked about quantifying uncertainties. To some extent, we are doing that, though not perfectly. But the issue is that in some cases, you really don’t have a quantitative base by which you can attach a probability or a level of uncertainty that defines things in quantitative terms. And there, let’s not take away the importance of expert judgment. And that is something the report has missed or at least not pointed out.

So if you can’t quantify uncertainties (like is climate sensitivity say 0.5 degrees or 6.5 degrees, and with what probabilities) just go with your best guess, call it expert opinion (especially if you only pick and pay the “right” experts) and say that there is a 90% certainty, even if there are no numbers you can add up to get that.

Then after all these years of saying the IPCC is a scientific body, now that they’re exposed as being unscientific, suddenly the excuse is that really they’re policy driven. Watch how far away from science Pachauri is trying to position the IPCC:

Times of India: Stifling politics out of science, does that make it devoid of its real social purpose?

Let’s face it, we are an intergovernmental body and our strength and acceptability of what we produce is largely because we are owned by governments.

(And here was me thinking their strength was their “2500 scientists” and their rigorous review?)

If that was not the case, then we would be like any other scientific body that maybe producing first-rate reports but don’t see the light of the day because they don’t matter in policy-making. Now clearly, if it’s an inter-governmental body and we want governments’ ownership of what we produce, obviously they will give us guidance of what direction to follow, what are the questions they want answered. Unfortunately, people have completely missed the original resolution by which IPCC was set up. It clearly says that our assessment should include realistic response strategies. If that is not an assessment of policies, then what does it represent? And I am afraid, we have been, in my view, defensive in coming out with a whole range of policies and I am not saying we prescribe policy A or B or C but on the basis of science, we are looking at realistic response strategies.

But that is exactly what this committee has recommended that we get out of — policy prescriptions. It is for this reason that I brought out that this what is written in the IPCC mandate. This is a misperception on the part of some people in the scientific community. And I hope I can correct it.

The IPCC can’t be both the last word on impartially declaring the science AND the last word declaring the policy. Either the search for truth runs this agency or the need to push policy does, they can’t answer to both without a conflict.

He’s declaring that their first priority is NOT to figure out exactly what drives our climate.