The Great IPCC Meltdown Continues.

It’s not just the threat of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035.

Now another headline grabbing IPCC scare story is melting away. A report in Sunday’s London Times highlights new humiliations for the IPCC.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

There is however one teensy-weensy little problem. As Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team has now told reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report.

There’s more. When the glacier story broke, IPCC apologists returned over and over again to a saving grace. The bogus glacier report appeared in the body of the IPCC document, but not in the much more carefully vetted Synthesis Report, in which the IPCC’s senior leadership made its specific recommendations to world leaders. So it didn’t matter that much, the apologists told us, and we can still trust the rigorously checked and reviewed Synthesis Report.

But that’s where the African rain crisis prediction is found — in the supposedly sacrosanct Synthesis Report.

So: the Synthesis Report contains a major scare prediction — 50% shortfall in North African food production just ten years from now — and there is no serious, peer-reviewed evidence that the prediction is true.

But there’s more. Much, much more…

The most excrutiating train wreck in the history of science. What an irony that the man in charge is a railway engineer.

Isn’t the head of the IPCC a railway engineer?

Yes, Steve, they are from the School of Engineering. They also happen to be hydrologists. Here are the research profiles of Kavetski and Franks:

http://www.newcastle.edu.au/research/expertise/139118.html

and

http://www.newcastle.edu.au/research/expertise/136652.html

Your initial response suggest you’ve learnt nothing from the last three months.

I don’t like an ETS either, but it is being pushed by many, many economists and Turnbull’s acceptance of their advice is not unreasonable. It is far more principled than Abbott’s rejection of it.

But, in fact, I would like this political impasse might result in a price on carbon without a full blown ETS via a compromise with the Greens.

Blame the ALP for that mindless sloganeering. What goes around comes around is my thinking.` Let Rudd get himself out of this mess now.

In any event, I have no idea why you’re so worried. If the big guys don’t do anything there’s no reason why we ought to wear a crown of thorns to assuage the Greens.

If you’re really that concerned you ought to be pushing hard for nuclear power over the next 20 years.

The ETS was an unworkable sludge. Coal plant owners aren’t doing shit in terms of upkeep and have basically written a great portion of the plants off. We could end up with serious blackouts over this sludge of a policy.

If the ETS was a policy to push for lower emissions without nuke in the suite of options then there’s no reason to have an ETS.

Furthermore both Rudd and Tanner admitted that they were using the ETS as a redistribution scheme to get money to their voting blocs.

I just don’t hope the ETS is dead. I hope it has terminal cancer.

My take is that a bunch of lefties took this science over and started all the bullshiting turning the thing into a money grabathon and upping the scare stories in a sort of ponzi scheme.

To his discredit I reckon Doc. Pach was caught with his hands in the cookie jar because he isn’t as sophisticated as the others in terms of getting the loot and the fucker was as greedy as hell. He also thought that guru status in India and the cast system would sorta work elsewhere. However he’s ignorant of the fact that there is a large amount of disrespect for anyone in authority in the west. He just didn’t quite know the ropes.

I still maintain there is science there that ought to concern us in terms of dumping all this shit in the atmosphere and there is a reason to be careful.

However I think the days of the wild west in climate science are well and truly over.

I notice Gore hasn’t shown his face these days. A low profile is the best profile it seems.

The sad thing is that we may have to start again.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2813351.htm

Note the frequent references back to what was recommended to the Howard government, and how those reasons apply just as much now as then.

I think it’s a very fine speech that does him much credit.

By contract, from legs-astride-the-barbed-wire-fence Tony Abbott, we’ll just get “big new tax, big new tax” for the next 8 months. I really hated that sloganeering style of politics that Rudd and Labor used so much in the run up to the last election. But it looks like the Libs have decided to join the tactic, as it’s easier than having a logical and consistent position for 2 years at a time.