Talk:Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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Unsourced text in 'Physical modeling debate' section

I've noticed that the section 'Physical modeling debate' seems to contain original research (in bold):

MIT professor Richard Lindzen, one of the scientists in IPCC Working Group I, has expressed disagreement with the IPCC reports. He expressed his unhappiness about those portions in the Executive Summary based on his contributions in May 2001 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation:

The summary does not reflect the full document... For example, I worked on Chapter 7, Physical Processes. This chapter dealt with the nature of the basic processes which determine the response of climate, and found numerous problems with model treatments – including those of clouds and water vapor. The chapter was summarized with the following sentence: 'Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapor, sea-ice dynamics, and ocean heat transport.'

The Summary for Policymakers of the WG1 reports does include caveats on model treatments: Such models cannot yet simulate all aspects of climate (e.g., they still cannot account fully for the observed trend in the surface-troposphere temperature difference since 1979) and there are particular uncertainties associated with clouds and their interaction with radiation and aerosols. Nevertheless, confidence in the ability of these models to provide useful projections of future climate has improved due to their demonstrated performance on a range of space and time-scales.

These statements are in turn supported by the executive summary of chapter 8 of the report, which includes:

* Coupled models can provide credible simulations of both the present annual mean climate and the climatological seasonal cycle over broad continental scales for most variables of interest for climate change. Clouds and humidity remain sources of significant uncertainty but there have been incremental improvements in simulations of these quantities.

* Confidence in the ability of models to project future climates is increased by the ability of several models to reproduce the warming trend in 20th century surface air temperature when driven by radiative forcing due to increasing greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols. However, only idealised scenarios of only sulphate aerosols have been used.

In my view, this is an unsourced commentary on Lindzen's viewpoint, and should be deleted. If someone wants to comment on Lindzen's viewpoint, then they should provide a source. For example, Sir John Houghton has given evidence to the House of Lords on Lindzen's views. Alternatively, you could simply refer to supporters of the IPCC, e.g., other climate scientists, statements made by national science academies, etc. and let readers make up their own mind.Enescot (talk) 18:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Looks like somebody has taken care of the problem by removing the lengthy excerpts and just using a quote from Sir John. Definitely an improvement. Thanks.--CurtisSwain (talk) 23:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Broken Ref

Link 98 "NRC Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions p. 11" is broken202.78.240.67 (talk) 22:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Please add new topics at the end (you can use the "New section" button). Thanks. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:40, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

We need discussion & resolution of the self described "Scientific" vs. "Advocacy" characterization

The problem relates to the first sentence of the article as it appears as of 12-12-09 emphasis added:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body[1][2] tasked with evaluating the risk of climate change caused by human activity.

Should the term scientific be used to describe the IPCC, notwithstanding the fact that the IPCC itself goes to great length to characterize themselves as such: "The IPCC is a scientific body."[1] But we find what appears contradictory in the same article:

The IPCC does not carry out its own original research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself. A main activity of the IPCC is publishing special reports on topics relevant to the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),[4] an international treaty that acknowledges the possibility of harmful climate change.

and

The IPCC is only open to member states of the WMO and UNEP.

It doesn't seem right to call the IPCC, a United Nations body, a self described intergovernmental body, as a scientific body. It also seems wrong to deny the central purpose of the UN, influencing policy and conduct of its member nations. Let's consider by analogy, the publishing arm of University is not a scientific body. The credit union which provides banking services to members of a University is not a scientific body. Perhaps they are regulators, or a policy think tank. I don't dispute that they are commenting on the scientific reports and data of some scientists, academics, & researches. Clearly the operation of the IPCC has had affects on politics, policy, and perhaps legislation around the globe. I would like to suggest that the word scientific be removed and inserting "policy influencing" or "advocacy" at the same location. Obviously this particular issue has had some attention with less than a perfect record of civil discourse. So Please let's discuss this in a civil manner. The issue to discuss in this role is not Global Warming, but how to accurately characterize the IPCC. These are two separate questions one for the deletion of an adjective, one for the inclusion of an adjective. 1) Is it a scientific body? 2) Is it a body for policy influence or advocacy? This article needs some sort of organized resolution of these two questions perhaps with the assistance of some experienced editors / administrators. -- Knowsetfree (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes. 2. It is a body whose results are used for political purposes, just like lots of other scientific research, but which is itself largely non-political William M. Connolley (talk) 08:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes, since it's composed of scientists. There are interests behind almost every scientific study. They're payed for by governments, companies and advocacy groups. They will always get their money from a particular group of people with particular interests. That doesn't mean they won't follow scientific principles and methods. 2. It's a scientific body whose results are used for policy influence.--camr ^nag 16:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Sure. Al-Jazeera, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC, Guardian, Royal Society, ... --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

1. No. Some of the lead authors are economists, not scientists e.g. Kenneth Arrow. 2. Judging by the contents of its public reports, it is focussed on advocacy - note for instance http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/10th-anniversary/anniversary-brochure.pdf - the summary of each IPCC report has a followup section advertising what impact that report had on the government COP meetings that followed. The IPCC clearly measures its performance against its influence on those meetings. Cadae (talk) 09:45, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

So, economy is not a science? Also, any scientific body that discovers that X is bad, would not cease to be scientific if they actually say "hey, X is bad". If doctors discover that smoking is bad for your health and recommend their patients to stop, then their licences should be revoked?--camr ^nag 14:52, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Correct - economy is not a science. Scientific bodies don't use the word or concept of 'bad' as that is a value judgement which is distinctly not science. 'bad' is, however, liberally used in the realms of politics and advocacy. Cadae (talk) 19:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

ok, you've said it all.--camr ^nag 19:42, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Yes. This complaint seems very partisan against the IPCC. The contributing authors for the Assessment Reports bring in most of the top scientists in the field - highly cited, widely published, many elected Fellows of learned societies including the AGU, AAAS, National Academy of Sciences, etc. 2. Yes, the IPCC sets out the basis for concern and the need for a broad response to the implications of their findings. The whole point of forming the IPCC was to have a forum where leaders could inquire of scientists what the science tells us, and what the implications are - what is the problem and what would we have to do to address it. Do you want to argue that no scientist can ever discover facts that compel us to respond? Is all science only ivory tower, irrelevant theory? Birdbrainscan (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

RfC: What does WP:DUE indicate regarding errors in an IPCC report?

A 2007 synthesis report by the IPCC (main article, sometimes referred to as AR4) included inaccurate statements on the rapidity of glacial melting in the Himalayas. This was based on literature that had not been peer reviewed, in contravention of IPCC's stated process. Choose just about any diff here to see the proposed text. Is it WP:DUE weight to include a section along these lines? Does it give WP:UNDUE weight to one aspect of the topic Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? What is the WP:PROMINENCE of criticisms of one report to the topic of the article on the Panel? For background discussion, see #Re Himalaya Glaciers and #Use of Non-Peer Reviewed Sources and the Himalayan Glaciers. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

RfC text fixed for neutral presentation here. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Section for comments from uninvolved editors only

• I've looked around this and as far as I can tell the only purpose of including the text is to try to portray IPCC as unreliable, which in general they are not. It's not a criticism that makes the mainstream reviews of the subject I've read and seems to be considered massively important by the global warming denial community and nobody else. As such it looks very much like undue weight to me, something considered significantly only y a fringe minority (there are analogues in the debate around the big bang theory, some people seek to exploit minor debates around tiny facets of what amounts to an overwhelming consensus in order to overstate the extent of the dispute and the solidity of the evidence base). I guess I am reminded of the infamous hockey stick, criticism of which is used to deny the late 20th century temperature uptick which appears in so many different models that those using the hockey stick critique give a very strong impression of deliberately choosing the thing they can criticise in order to avoid answering an unanswerable case. Guy (Help!) 21:55, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
• No idea what the current status of the RfC is, but. The "Himalayan Glaciers" section seems to be about a rather small issue that is given too much weight/space. But the same can be said about all sub-section in the "Criticism of IPCC" section. I think it is important to present the criticism, but it is also important to inform the un-informed reader that there are also many scientists who agree with the finding (and all of these have not gotten their own 10-line description in the article). I also miss a description of the possibly-unfair criticism from politicians and others. To summarize, I think the criticism should be included but it is necessary to have a meta-description about what the general consensus in the scientific, and political, community is. Labongo (talk) 08:49, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
• I've looked at the edit history, and it looks as if the material relating to the apparent use of non peer-reviewed data is a clear case of undue weight. A neutral source suggesting that this might be a noteworthy problem for the report would be required, at least. What we appear to have is some decidedly non-neutral criticism coupled with an admission that the sourcing could have been better. I long for the day when Wikipedia subscribes to the standards of the IPCC. --FormerIP (talk) 01:34, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
• The place where this is really important is wrt the WPII reportEli Rabett (talk) 02:45, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
• From what I've gathered around here (talk page, edit history, some outside reading), this particular tempest focuses on a relatively minor error in one IPCC report...this article is about the entire IPCC, its goals, methods and impact. Therefore, the scale of this issue in proportion to the scope of this topic doesn't justify much, if any, coverage in this article. Given that there is a Criticism of the IPCC AR4 article, anything more than a brief allusion to said error (and its associated controversy)seems hardly necessary. Anything fleshed out in the 'criticisms' section of this article should focus on issues of broader relevance (e.g., systemic concerns on the evaluation process). — Scientizzle 19:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
• The Himalayan glaciers are the water sources for a huge chunk of Asia. In addition, Pachauri is being told to resign in major newspaper editorials. If the subject is a resignation issue for the leadership, it probably merits some discussion in the page about the body. Slowjoe17 (talk) 08:01, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Section for comments from involved editors

• Include - The IPCC is not immune from controversy or criticism. The sources provided are clearly reliable for this material. --GoRight (talk) 02:38, 28 December 2009 (UTC) Disclosure: I am not sure what "field of articles" refers to but in this case I am suitably independent of this article and it's talk page. My only contributions to this page were to place a {{fact}} on the claim that the IPCC is a scientific organization, to correct a broken reference, and to add a link to the see also section. I have now become an active participant.

• Too new / minor - on including some mention: this is a minor point in the WGII report, not in the more-known WGI report. It is also too new - wait a month, the view amongst WP:RS about this may settle. On including the text proposed [2]: it clearly violates WP:UNDUE and fails to understand the issue William M. Connolley (talk) 09:58, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

• It's an extreme case of WP:UNDUE and WP:COATRACK. The cause is one error in the WG2 report. The effect is (nearly) as long as the whole section on the AR4 so far. Moreover, it mixes criticism of process with criticism of results, and significant parts of the later seem to be unsourced. And on the Meta-level: The RfC is horribly spun. You are supposed to at least try to make it look neutral. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:47, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Please focus on civil and productive discussion. See WP:Dispute resolution for alternative venues. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Google glacial melt 2035 and see how many hits you get. Look above for the rest of my arguments mark nutley (talk) 23:03, 27 December 2009 (UTC) You are hardly uninvolved with this article Stephen. Oh, and TS, why'd you remove the list of those for/against? Was it because the talk pages show a clear case for inclusion? You also removed my editting to make my post look ugly. TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:07, 27 December 2009 (UTC) Additionally, you are quoting WP:COATRACK which is NOT wikipedia policy, and indeed, the talk pages show the vast majority of involved wikipedians voted AGAINST making it policy due to, among other things, its potential abuse for keeping relevent info out of articles. TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:17, 27 December 2009 (UTC) As for "spin" I can only present the counterarguments that your side has made - like your quoting of non-policy. It isn't my fault that it looks bad. TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:19, 27 December 2009 (UTC) We don't use votes for this kind of thing (hence I guess people are commenting not voting) we use arguments here WP:UNDUE is a heavy argument against including this, given how much coverage IPCC gets and how little this one has got. OTOH is is hardly something to get worked up about. --BozMo talk 19:57, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

And again, not only has this gotten a lot of coverage, but an expert on the subject, as quoted and sourced in the inclusion, has said that the IPCC has caused "major confusion" - if it is "major" then it certainly isn't undue. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:06, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Expert meaning the red link above? Do we know anything about him? --BozMo talk 20:35, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Note after refocusing discussion: the red link above refers to Michael Zemp. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

He works for the World Glacier Monitoring service and is a doctor - here is a list of his publications. He is certainly far better qualified to determine how important this is than any of us. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

This mistake was still being cited by the ipcc on on third of november.

(Jean-Pascal van Ypersele IPCC Vice-chair, said at UNFCCC, Barcelona, on 3 November, 2009):

ImpactsGlacial retreat in the Himalaya

receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be attributed primarily to the global warming; in addition, high population density near these glaciers and consequent deforestation and land-use changeshave adversely affected these glaciers

the total glacial area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2(or disappear entirely) by the year 2035

Bearing in mind if the himalayan glaciers melt to 100k`s2 then it actually no loss at all is that is their current estimated size :) So it`s impact is still ongoing, google glacial melt and you would think that this was an accurate date.mark nutley (talk) 20:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Mark, Please assume that some of us are actually trying to understand you in good faith and don't use all these shorthands. --BozMo talk 20:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorry bozmo, what do you mean by shorthands? mark nutley (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The last couple of paras here is written assuming the reader is deep in conversation with you and knows what you are talking about. What in this last couple of paragraphs is the quote and how does it fit with the point you are making (which is that some IPCC data used was not peer reviewed prior to use, I think)? Whose figures are which etc. What's the significance of the date you would think was accurate by googling glacial melt etc. All this is on the road to proving sufficient weight for inclusion I take it?--BozMo talk 20:33, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Ya sorry about that, the last part is a copy and paste. the google search is to show just how far this mistake has reached. mark nutley (talk) 22:21, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

In response to William M. Connolley @ 09:58, 1 January 2010, once again i see the words "minor point", you fail to address the fact that this 2035 date was widely published and reported as fact by both the IPCC and the MSM. This failure of the IPCC to follow their own guidlines in no using non-peer reviewed literature has lead to a massive belief that 2035 is correct and not 2350. I also fail to see how balance can be achieved in this article if a section "Praise for the IPCC" can be viewed as ok and not be WP:UNDUE but a proposed section to point out major mistakes is called WP:UNDUE ? Sorry makes no sense. I would also like to point out from one of the conversations which has been collapsed, User:Stephan Schulz cites WP:COATRACK as a reason against inclusion, this is not actually WP policy at this moment in time. --mark nutley (talk) 10:36, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

That glaciers are melting is major. That Himalayan glaciers would melt by a given date isn't. The idea that all Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 is ludicrous. I agree that date is in the PDF you've linked above; I disagree that anyone took it seriously (though that is hard to pin down; [3] (twice)) William M. Connolley (talk) 10:51, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry william i strongly disagree with your statement I disagree that anyone took it seriously

• Jean-Pascal van Ypersele IPCC Vice-chair took it seriously.
• The Telegraph took it seriously.
• The hindustan times reported on the indian government releasing a statement to help quell panic.

I can get plenty more examples from reliable sources which show that it was most certainly taken seriously. --mark nutley (talk) 11:09, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I think we all know you disagree. But you need better sources. Your Telegraph link sources the statement to "Indian climate experts", not IPCC. The third example is very weak too William M. Connolley (talk) 11:36, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, how about

• CNN
• The Guardianon 9 Nov 2009 (good one this as Pachauri slaps down india's environment minister and says, "his report is not Peer Reviewed", bit of a cheek that really :). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marknutley (talk • contribs) 11:53, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Grossly biased

Fixed. Discussion collapsed for readability. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This RFC is so grossly biased that it will inevitably accomplish nothing. The first argument "WP:UNDUE Specifically is stated to apply to viewpoints - the proposed section contains facts." is so amusingly incorrect that it makes the cases against the authors viewpoint quite effectively. This discussion should be at the AR4 page - as TS has said. The text is clearly UNDUE; it is inaccurate (it speaks of the report instead of one of several); I don't believe the 3 sources stuff; etc etc William M. Connolley (talk) 21:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC) Everyone is well aware of your bias Connolley. If there are any facts that need correcting then you are free to point them out. Anyway, you are welcome not to "believe" anything you like, but the sources we have say otherwise. TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC) Just my 2c: The error isn't a mere typo, it's a gross error on a topic that's used as one of the main examples of climate change in the media. If it was a mere typo, I'd agree, it'd just be nitpicking. But there is more going on here, it's a mistake that's the result of sloppy work done by the IPCC and it also happens to have been reproduced frequently in the media; both the number being used incorrectly (as is mentioned above) as well as by media pointing out the mistake. The FIRST hit I get on google is a big player, CNN: "The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report." and another editor mentioned a BBC article that pointed out the error, so it's not just obscure climate change bloggers writing about these things. So yeah, this perhaps little mistake has had considerable consequence and has been picked up by the big players in the media, so it's well worth including. Considering the article even has a praise section for the IPCC, I think it's not throwing the article off from a NPOV either.BabyNuke (talk) 21:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC) You are aware that all that this shows is confirmation bias - right? If you look for something that you know is there, then when you find it, it shouldn't come as a surprise.... Yes, it is an error - No, it isn't important in this context. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:22, 28 December 2009 (UTC) Removed per undue wt. and full of errors. Should be in AR4 if anywhere. Vsmith (talk) 22:05, 28 December 2009 (UTC) If there are errors then list them and source them. The undue weight complaints are completely without merit. Also, the cry to put some information into satellite articles, where less people are likely to see the information and even fewer people are likely to discuss it seems like a tactic to keep it out of the encyclopedia. TheGoodLocust (talk) 22:18, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Saying it should be in the ar4 article is pointless as those who oppose it here also oppose it`s inclusion there mark nutley (talk) 22:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Lets take it again this is: one error in one paragraph in chapter 10 (of 20) section 6 subsection 2 in the WGII report which is 1 of 3 main reports in the AR4 (which is the 4th report) from the IPCC - the proposed text presented above is larger than the paragraph with the error. => Grossly undue weight. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:25, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Completely irrelevant. The weight comes not from the number of words in the paragraph but in where the paragraph resides and the significance that it carries. The mere fact that it is an error in the IPCC report gives it far more than enough weight for inclusion. --GoRight (talk) 03:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Refuting errors often takes more work than simply making them - in the same way that deletion/destruction is easier than the creative impulse (the difference between destroying books and writing them). Also, the section explains the impact as well - and there are many areas on wikipedia that expand. Additionally, their error has been cited so many times in the mainstream media which increases its "size." TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:53, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, and those warring to include can't even take time to correct obvious errors in the proposed text. Vsmith (talk) 23:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I've already asked you to tell me what the errors are and to source them - be specific. You can't just say there are errors without explaining yourself. TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:51, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm by no means convinced that we yet have consensus or policy reasons sufficient for giving this proposed addition the kind of prominence it gets here. I have reverted pending a justification for the amount of weight, and the presentation. What happened to the idea of seeing if it can go into AR4? --TS 23:54, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

They won`t have it there either. @Kim, it does not matter if it is one small part of the main report. They used non peer reviewed papers and made statements based on them. Sorry but if a group like the IPCC make statements like "all glaciers will be gone in 2035" in will cause widespread alarm. This should be in here, they messed up and you guys seem to want to hide it mark nutley (talk) 23:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Please avoid even oblique personal attacks. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
This article gets more traffic, and therefore more outside opinions (as shown by the number of people who keep restoring the section). Anyway, we don't need policy to keep it in, we need policy to keep it out - and a reliable source has stated that the IPCC has caused "major confusion" - obviously it can't be undue if an outside expert thinks it is important (plus the other reasons against the UNDUE charge). TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC) Oh no, you're wrong there. We do need to establish whether there is consensus and policy support. I don't think the case has been adequately made yet. Edit warring to get it in won't work unless we establish consensus. --TS 00:04, 29 December 2009 (UTC) From a dictionary con⋅sen⋅sus  [kuhn-sen-suhs] 1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month. 2. general agreement or concord; harmony. Currently the majority want this in, therefore a consensus has been reached. mark nutley (talk) 00:15, 29 December 2009 (UTC) The policy support is trivial. Please review WP:V and WP:RS. --GoRight (talk) 03:20, 29 December 2009 (UTC) We probably don't have consensus, else you wouldn't be having such a devil of a time getting it to stay. Vsmith, I, Kim, William, and Stephan have removed it. Some of those inserting it are scibaby socks (certainly Jong-C having now been permanently blocked as a scibaby sock). So it doesn't look like consensus at all. --TS 00:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC) And yet there are still more just on this talk page who want inclusion - and even more, obviously not socks, who've restored the text, but not gotten involved in the talk page. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:05, 29 December 2009 (UTC) Who? I see Nutley, Bluefield and Goodlocust doing the reverts. All voted above. Please name the (non-sock) others and be very careful with such claims. There is such a thing as reputation. --BozMo talk 08:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC) I guess you missed GoRight, VegasProf's edits - also, Cadea and BabyNuke, said they want this included. TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:50, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

The main case against inclusion of the error has been assertion of UNDUE. The main proof presented that the error is UNDUE is that the amount of text it takes up in AR4 is relatively small! This is not a logical argument for exclusion. There are multiple reasons highlighted on this talk page why the error is important, none of which have had reasonable counter arguments presented. A majority of the editors want it in. Those opposed have used a set of technical tools to thwart its inclusion - and it's getting rather tiresome. Cadae (talk) 03:07, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Oh I do think errata that have been published and criticised by acknowledged experts should probably be included in relevant articles. The problem I have here is that those people editing the article on IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)--the report which contains these apparent errata--don't yet seem to have reached consensus to mention it at all there, and we have no consensus to do so here. I'd like to see editors make an honest case to include a description of their errata and their significance in the AR4 article, rather than this tiresome edit warring.

Another problem I have here is that the question of the significance of the errata doesn't seem to be treat seriously. Do these items mean global warming isn't happening? Obviously not, because the report in question is by Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability). Perhaps the errata mean that we don't have to worry about the Himalayan glaciers melting in our lifetime, or perhaps they mean something different. We need to approach this correctly or it just looks like we're saying "this paragraph on page X is wrong" and the next question is "so what?" We need to make sure the answer is clearly given from reliable sources.

But as I have said, I think the correct place, in the first instance, is the talk page of the AR4 article. That's where one might at least find people have more than a cursory acquaintance with the material.

Now I won't edit war on this because if we continued along that path we could easily end up making the atmosphere here very bad. Please respect this. Let's discuss the possibility of adding the item to AR4, at the relevant talk page. --TS 03:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

My take on this is similar to Tony Sidaway's. If the appropriate way to describe this error (in whatever level of detail) has not been established at our article on the report which contains it, it seems a bit excessive to include a detailed description in this much broader, higher-level article. Specific errata (particularly if they represent very small portions of the report in question) don't warrant extensive, detailed description in this overview.

The bulk of the criticisms included in this article seem to focus on more general, structural concerns (plus the ever-popular and very high-profile hockey stick controversy). The glacier error doesn't appear to be anywhere near that high in profile, and certainly shouldn't make up a large part of an article on the IPCC as a whole. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:11, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

The topic at hand is improvements to the article Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Discussions of the organization itself should be conducted in other venues. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:33, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Meh. This bit is a clear example of a breach in the much ballyhooed IPCC process. As such it is appropriate to list it here rather than bury it in the report. The weight of the issue comes from this fact alone. It derives it's weight from the weight of the IPCC process and the importance and the claims thereof. --GoRight (talk) 22:53, 29 December 2009 (UTC) Exactly, the IPCC and its proponents have always loudly shouted that they use peer-reviewed literature to make their assessments - this has now been categorically shown to be false. TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:53, 31 December 2009 (UTC) Shall we produce a tally from the opinions above to make an orderly assessment of the state of consensus? Or will that be viewed as pointy and controversial? --GoRight (talk) 22:59, 29 December 2009 (UTC) Thing is we don't decide things by vote. Anyway, didn't you do that further up the page, but not including ones who made a change either way with edit comments? If you do a list please exclude socks, include article editors and mark me down clearly as "unable to generate a flicker of interest from anywhere deep within my soul on this issue". And if you get anything other than "no consensus" stand in the corner until you can recount straight. :-) --BozMo talk 23:17, 29 December 2009 (UTC) Why included article editors? The initial criticism was that the source wasn't good enough, but that criticism no longer applies. Also, some people appeared to just be reverting the edits of the sock. If someone wants to put their name on the list then they are welcome to do it, but we shouldn't count article editors who are unwilling to state and defend their reasons for reversion and who may have changed their mind.TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Progress of this RFC

In over 8 days the RFC has gathered four comments from editors previously uninvolved. They appear to me to be unanimous in rejecting the case for inclusion of the section on errors in the IPCC AR4 report in this article, though one or two suggest thatit might be appropriate for the article on the report itself. Accordingly I assess consensus to be against inclusion at this stage. Discussion should continue, but I am removing the section for now. I encourage those wishing to see encyclopedic coverage of these errors to gain consensus for coverage in that other article, which is called IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. --TS 10:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

i want to add this image to the 2001 report section

for me it looks like there are relatively few images helping the reader to get a picture of the activities and result the IPCC does deploy. the image below seems to add up nicely with the already existing text and thus supports the purpose of easing the access to information contained in the paragraph. i think it further makes clear where the IPCC published predictions do significantly differ from what a simple statistical analysis of world climate would produce from climate date humans recorded out in the wild.

earth surface temperature change up to 2000 with predictions up to 2100

i ask for your support for this addition. (2010 - the year i started asking for other peoples support before editing something in wikipedia.)) --Alexander.stohr (talk) 15:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Does this have any reliable source? As far as I can tell it's statistical nonsense. Obtaining a 42 year "period of oscillation" from 120 years of measurement? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:36, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Oscillation is everything for cliatology, see this article on US-Today. If you doubt that 42 years cycle, you might want to apply the mathematical method of fourier analysis to the publically available original data. Having some 120 dots should allow you to extract aplitude, frequency and phase value of the included frequencys up to some few percents precision. You might be even in state of add 10 more years of measurement to that. (BTW wikipedia explicitely allows you to mathematically process data, e.g. for calcuating the age or birth date of a person from public data, but that rule is not limited to that.) --Alexander.stohr (talk) 16:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

WIkipedia allows "routine calculations". A Fourier analysis hardly is routine. Moreover, the choice of a linear increase with cyclic variation as the underlying model is pure original research. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

It looks like pure WP:OR to me. The sources cited on the image page include only other WP images, and so on up the chain. There are no error bars and no source for the numeric data, let alone whatever smoothing functions may have been added to the numeric series, least of all for the fourier analysis or its extrapolation into the coming decades. Total fantasy, from what I can see. It must be a very attractive fantasy for anyone who just bought a new coal-fired power station, or Hummer, though! --Nigelj (talk) 20:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Whats wrong? Any sort of trend analysis (advanced math: FFT, standard math: mean value & slope & average deviation & max deviation calculation; you will find the wikipedia articles on that on your own, i am sure) is routine for making such data more meaningful for the human eye. Those toolset is in fact not a part of a 16 button pocket calculator, but it is e.g. for MathLab, Mathematica, free Octave and a bunch of other programs that are the standard programs for preparing and visualizing such data. In most computer languages bind the matching library (like GNU scientific math library) and call one function for getting the values. Its routine for that sort for data. BTW, your human ear pair all the time does this - convert a signal into its frequency (by a few hundreds of selectively tuned cells) and phase (by probing the form of the incoming edges) components. It even can do acoustic localisation with that. And be assured I truly did not built that curves in any way my selves. The only thing I "added" was taking the frequency out of the diagram with sort of a ruler and writing it down in numbers to that legend object. You can do that as well - nothing complex because that data is already there. Just load it in an SVG viewer and check the temperatures periodicity. And even if it would not be periodic, the max deviations around the averaging linear approximation would make the very same long term perspective - for the pure climate data so that the IPCC specific prognosis (based upon their theoretical models) is as outstanding different as it is with any other standard prediction method. By the way, the mathematical determined increase trend is some 0,7-0,8°C/100 years. Read this for a comparison: But the warming trend in 1909-2008 (the fastest “modern” 100-year trend) was +0.87 °C per century. (source article) The value in the diagram is probably a little bit lower since the additional few years are a "high" and thus damper the slope. A very clear diagram for the missing years from 2000 compared with the IPCC data can be found here in this article. The data is out there. And if you even don't trust that - print it out in A4 and then take a ruler for determining your own linear approximation, even if chances arent that high that you will get to something that different. Its all just about to create a diagram out of it that combines it in an evident way to show whats needed. --Alexander.stohr (talk) 21:21, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, it's sourced to two private blogs, is it? A person with a ruler can disprove all the combined decades of work by thousands of climate scientists? And get it published for the world to see on Wikipedia? It's amazing what people can do these days. I'm amazed that none of those scientists saw it coming - if only some of them had paid attention in fourier analysis lectures when they were younger. --Nigelj (talk) 22:08, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I believe the graph was made by Akasofu [4] as a critique stripping down the discussion to the bare essentials. I do think this method and graph merit further discussion. 85.77.176.39 (talk) 11:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but not acceptable for many reasons. It's either OR (and bad OR at that) or traceable to a non RS. I wouldn't mind seeing a graph of IPCC projections versus actual observations, but IPCC projections versus some guy's naive and uninformed alternative projections has no place here.SPhilbrickT 23:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Time to readd himalaya glacier info?

Re-added summary of existing text on Criticism of the IPCC AR4

Previously there was an RfC on this and the conclusion was that there wasn't enough coverage in reliable sources to mention it here. As William Connolley said at the time, "It is also too new - wait a month, the view amongst WP:RS about this may settle." A few weeks later, this story has been picked up by many reliable sources as apparently the IPCC is set to retract this claim: [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. I believe that the WP:WEIGHT here is clear, as many items appearing in this article don't have nearly this much coverage in reliable sources. It may be worth waiting until this retraction is made official, but when/if this happens as reported I'd like to be ready to go with an addition to this article. Oren0 (talk) 02:40, 18 January 2010 (UTC) If the IPCC is really about to retract the claim, why don't we just wait a few days until they do so, rather then risk another potentially pointless argument which is soon superceded by new developments? Edit: Actually I see you did acknowledge it was a good idea to wait. However I don't agree we should be ready to go. What we add will depend on what the IPCC says when/if they retract and what other sources say. There are too many possibilities for us to guess precisely what will happen, so trying to come up with something now is pretty pointless and likely to lead to arguments which will be redundant if/once it actually happens. Instead, let's just wait. Nil Einne (talk) 06:28, 18 January 2010 (UTC) First, I said wait a month - I can't see any reason to rush this in in less. Are you in a hurry? Second, not only was the inclusion of anything disputed, the text to be used was disputed - that put in was grossly wrong, as I pointed out more than once. So you might want to consider getting the text right. Thirdly, the best thing to do would be to thrash this out where it belongs, over at crit of AR4. As I said above, I added a section to that article describing the true situation, but because it was a sub-article rather than a sexy main article no-one cared William M. Connolley (talk) 08:34, 18 January 2010 (UTC) Well, IPCC has retract the claim officially [11] [12]. Any other reason for not including it now? EngineerFromVega (talk) 16:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Hmm, the IPCC has not even updated the report to show the correct date have they Still 2035 ? I think i will head on over the AR4 and add this in there. --mark nutley (talk) 09:50, 18 January 2010 (UTC) Looking at the RFC, I see that all of the uninvolved commentators said they thought this item was being accorded undue weight, and most of them said they thought it didn't belong in this article at all. I do not see how the passage of a couple of weeks could change that. --TS 13:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC) The passage of time doesn't change anything, but the addition of sources sure lends weight to the story (distinct from those linked above): [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]. Major news outlets are now reporting that the IPCC is reviewing the glacier claim. This doesn't belong only in AR4 IMO because there is a new investigation happening, which obviously won't be published in AR4. Also, the news sources are saying that the IPCC is being criticized for this, not AR4. Most of these sources don't explicitly mention AR4 at all. Oren0 (talk) 08:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC) Which is a general indication that the sources are clueless William M. Connolley (talk) 08:50, 19 January 2010 (UTC) So I looked at a couple. The key to your first is In November, Ramesh backed a study by Indian scientists which supported his view, prompting Pachauri to label his support "arrogant." - the article is just politicking (the real dispute there is the one described in [19], if you're interested). #2 is better, but Research by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggesting Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035 needs to be investigated anew following a report in the London-based Times newspaper that flawed data may have been used is wrong, obviously - they haven't understood the issue. #3 - [20] - is much better and is usable William M. Connolley (talk) 08:59, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I'm inclined to agree that many of the sources are of exceptionally low quality. This is very small beer and if we don't even yet cover it in the AR4 article there's little point putting it in this one especially with an RFC result broadly against doing so. Thanks, WMC, for the clarifying clued-up sources. --TS 14:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC) The RfC was before this became a major news story. There weren't sources then. We're not talking about some small town gazettes here, these sources are news articles from ABC News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the AP, Bloomberg, The Sunday Times, etc etc. "I think these sources don't know what they're talking about" doesn't cut it. Again, this has way more source coverage than almost every 'criticism' item on this page, the only likely exception being the hockey stick section. Maybe another RfC is in order, but I don't see how one that reached a conclusion based on weight can still be considered valid after dozens of reliable sources report on an issue and the IPCC opens up some sort of investigation. Oren0 (talk) 18:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC) That would be a mistaken interpretation of the arguments made in the RfC - the major objection was that the critique is about a (very very) small part of the WGII report, and thus that including it here would be undue weight. This is not general critique (overall problem), it is micro-critique (error in small part of whole). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC) It isn't a major news story, most of the sources we have found don't even get it right (and yes,that absolutely does matter, we do not use unreliable sources) and it still isn't in the AR4 article. --TS 21:30, 19 January 2010 (UTC) It is in the Criticism of IPCC AR4 article, where it belongs. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:59, 19 January 2010 (UTC) I am currently working on a section to include here about the entire Himalayan glacier fiasco. Given the IPCC has now had to issue a statement saying they were woefully wrong on this, it does belong here as it is a criticism of the IPCC and not Ar4 Once i have written the section and gotten the links ready i`ll post it here. mark nutley (talk) 21:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Since such a section already exists in the crit article, it is unclear why you want to reinvent the wheel. Still, we must all have our won wheels I suppose William M. Connolley (talk) 21:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Because as i said, it is a criticism of the IPCC not of AR4, which part of this don`t you get? mark nutley (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Err, so what? If you disagree which article it should be in, that doesn't mean you need new text. Let me make the obvious plain, because you seem to be having some trouble: we should not have the same text in two places. We should not describe this controversy differently (especially incompatibly) in different places. We should describe it in one place, and put brief summary links to that one place in other places that need it William M. Connolley (talk) 22:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC) So basically, the bar has been moved again - color me shocked. It was claimed not to meet WP:WEIGHT, but many major newspapers have now covered it (even more than Oren listed). Sorry but having our esteemed fellow editors declare sources like the New York Times to be worthless and wrong because they find their original research to be a superior source doesn't cut it - not if anyone is being honest with themselves. Cheers. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I still don't get why people are so worked up about this. If you genuinely believe the IPCC is going to revise this claim, then why don't you just wait until they do? Nil Einne (talk) 04:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC) They've already made a correction. The thing that annoys me is that the IPCC's statements says what my section said - that the IPCC didn't follow their own procedure. This was the language used in the news sources that I used, but no, that wasn't good enough, the above editors did their original research, claimed the section was wrong, and finally deleted the entire thing. There is one standard for AGW flagbearers and then there is one for those who are trying to insert a little bit of truth in here. Hell, just go look at the conversation if you want to wade through it. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I'm a bit confused about what you're talking about. The source is date 20th January. I see no edit to the article since 15th January. Most of the discussion above was also from before the 20th January and the source was available and all of it was from before anyone linked to the source; and as I said from the beginning and seems especially to me now somewhat pointless IMHO. Now that we actually have the official position of the IPCC and confirmation from them they did not follow their procedures (in this single minor issue in a detail reported), we can discuss whether it warrants mention in the article. Complaining about the exclusion of speculation from the article, particularly when several people said, let's just wait and see what happens isn't helping matters. I would also point out while it's been included in the Criticism of the IPCC AR4 article it hasn't yet been included in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report nor any discussion in the talk page, where I would argue it belongs albeit only as a brief mention. P.S. I should add that there appears to be some mistaken belief that we've somehow committed the ultimate sin if we we decide against including something because it's initially too speculatory or considered undue weight or recentism but then later blows up or is proven correct. In fact, there's usually nothing wrong with that. We should proceed not preceed sources and proceeding them by a fair stretch of time when necessary is no biggie. While we tend to be updated much faster then a traditional encylopaedias including traditional electronic ones, we aren't a news source (try wikinews:Main Page) and don't aim to be one and neither readers nor editors should expect we need to be up to the minute. There's nothing wrong with being conservative, particularly when living people are involved (which I acknowledge is not the case here) and with waiting a few days and sometimes even a few weeks to see what happens rather then pointlessly arguing over something soon supercedeed. And just to repeat what I said from the beginning in a different way, when it turns out the information people are trying to include is later backed up by more substanial sources it doesn't mean we were wrong or should be embarassed by the fact we waited, in fact often we should be proud Nil Einne (talk) 14:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Can you please break up your text more? It is not pleasant to read. Anyway, the complaint has several facets, for one, this story has far more coverage than a lot of the IPCC criticism in this article - much of which isn't really criticism in any real sense. It is like asking someone what their greatest fault is in a job interview and they say they are a workaholic or too nice - that doesn't cut it. Also, the initial reports weren't too speculatory, they had good sources, but while they may have gotten a few things wrong they weren't nearly as bad as some people tried to make them out to be. To make the point even clearer, their criticisms have now been flat out shown to be wrong by the IPCC themselves, which should hardly be considered a trusted source when criticizing themselves. Honestly, look at it, they did original research, pointed to a small section of the IPCC rules and said, "Look! It isn't in there! They didn't break the rules!" My retort was that showing that something is not in one section does not prove it isn't in another section - and they have a LOT of text. This was ignored, wiki-policy was ignored, the facts were removed, but some people got what they want - just like they always do. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Here is a relevant, unimpeachable source. The failure of the article to even include the term "glacier" is a bright line violation of NPOV and makes Wikipedia look silly and biased to the disinterested reader. We saw something similar with John Edwards extramarital affair. How'd that one turn out? Ronnotel (talk) 14:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC) I think we're being criticised for not being a newspaper. We're not a newspaper and that's a good thing. At the moment we cover the glacier thing, but not perhaps in the place some people are arguing for it to be covered. Our priorities and standards are considerably different from those of the IPCC and those of the press. And as has already been noted, we have no deadline. --TS 15:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC) The TR piece you quote is interesting, because it includes a number of rather relevant quotes that were not available from previous poor quality sources. For example, "I don't think it ought to affect the credibility of the edifice as a whole," says J. Graham Cogley, and The error has been traced to the fact that the IPCC permits the citation of non-peer-reviewed sources, called "grey literature," in cases where peer-reviewed data is not available. - so much for all those who were so stridently crying on this page that the IPCC had broken all its own rules. This is an excellent arguement for *not* rushing material into wiki William M. Connolley (talk) 19:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC) The IPCC's own statement said they didn't follow their procedures. I said wrote this down based on my sources and you used your own original research magic wand to make it go away. You've flat out said the New York Times is "clueless" compared to your amazing intellect - is your original research going to trump the IPCC's own admission of fault as well? TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC) The truth: any statement either way was original research. Remember: there is no deadline. It's fruitless to argue over who was more prescient because we're not writing next week's Wikipedia but today's, based on reliable sources available now, not next week. --TS 00:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Don't rewrite history. The statement I included in the article wasn't even my own - it was from a reliable source, a newspaper - the only original research that was done is for all to see on this talk page. Connolley showed a tiny section of the IPCC rules and said they didn't break their rules. I said showing one section of a rulebook says nothing about what is in the rest of the rulebook. The only thing that has changed is that you can't claim the IPCC is an unreliable source about its own policy - calling the New York Times clueless because you don't like what they write isn't acceptable. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC) "It was from a reliable source, a newspaper." Where on earth did this toxic idea that newspapers are reliable sources on science come from? Certainly not any of Wikipedia's policies. --TS 01:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC) It wasn't about science and you know it. You guys claimed they were unreliable in their claims about following IPCC policy. Why do you keep on trying to rewrite history? Everyone can see it. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Please be specific. Explain how your comments of 00:21 and 04:31 yesterday, and 00:44, 00:51, 00:55 and 01:57 are intended to improve the article. It just isn't on to maintain blithely that this article isn't about science or that the claim about the glaciers wasn't science, or whatever you really intend to say. How can we use the information you are putting on this page to improve the article? Or are you using this talk page for some other purpose? --TS 02:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC) The purpose is to persuade the lot of you to actually follow the rules instead of making them up on the fly. If you like we can take this to arbitration instead. The fact of the matter is that I added content which improved the article and you guys had an agenda to remove the content because you didn't like it. WMC and the lot of you have no problem painting skeptics as believers in "martians" on their wikipedia pages though. I just want standards to be followed fairly and justly. TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC) <outdent> You still haven't explained how your comments are related to improving this article. If you have a conduct issue with these chaps you refer to as "you" (plural, presumably), then follow dispute resolution or raise an enforcement case at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement and stop cluttering up this page with your grievances. If you have a suggestion as to how we will improve the article, nake it without expecting us to indulge your propensity for personal attacks indefinitely. --TS 02:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I thought it was obvious - I'm trying to improve this article by adding content. The content can't be added until we can agree on the rules. I try to follow the rules that I read, but I can't follow the rules that you make up or that suddenly get changed in interpretation in order to keep the content out. That isn't a personal attack - that's a matter of record from this very talk page. Thanks for the suggestion about Climate Change Probation. I may follow your advice. TheGoodLocust (talk) 02:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC) <outdent> @TS: The dispute here isn't about science. I don't think anyone argues that the 2035 date is correct scientifically. This is about politics and IPCC procedures, so the sources to quote would be (primarily) newspapers and (secondarily) the IPCC. Also, there is no WP rule that newspapers aren't reliable sources for scientific matters, only that peer reviewed science is preferable where available. There isn't any on this topic, so newspapers are the best sources we have. Oren0 (talk) 02:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Obviously newspapers are not the best sources we have on this subject. --TS 02:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC) @WMC: It's hard to argue that the IPCC followed its own rules when the IPCC statement on the subject disagrees: "In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly." Of course, the article could say that the IPCC says it's procedures weren't followed but that Technology Review disagrees, but that would be a bit silly don't you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Oren0 (talk • contribs) I agree with Oren. WP goes by notability and verifiability. If something is in news about IPCC and IPCC itself has retracted officially [21] [22], it should be mentioned in this article. (edit: typo) EngineerFromVega (talk) 05:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC) If no one objects, I'll go ahead and add this information to the criticism section of this article. Thanks. EngineerFromVega (talk) 16:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Object, per the above, of course. Please stop playing silly games William M. Connolley (talk) 17:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Of course this is a misrepresentation of both WMC's comments, the RfC and the IPCC statement. The issue that has been raised here was one of (lack of) peer-review in the cited source, which isn't the problem at hand. Of course there are those who will try to blow this out of proportion, but that doesn't mean that WP will (unless a significant proportion of RS's state that it is a general IPCC problem and not just one with the AR4 and one paragraph). Its an error in a single paragraph in a 900+ page document, it's been corrected, and we describe it in Criticism of the IPCC AR4. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC) WMC, please define 'silly games' first and I request you to familiarize yourself with WP:NPA before responding. I'm trying to include an information which is being covered by major news sources and is notable and verifiable enough. KDM: though I agree that only one paragraph is being criticized in a 900+ pages, the main issue here is that this one page is being discussed and analyzed more than the other 899 pages in mainstream news papers. It is notable, verifiable and surely not OR. It is also not WP:UNDUE because this one paragraph has forced IPCC to retract officially. While I'm not criticizing IPCC in general, I strongly believe that we are not doing proper justification by avoiding this information completely. Why shouldn't we include a summary and a link to criticism of AR4 in this article? Will that not make Criticism of AR4 an orphan article? EngineerFromVega (talk) 17:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Kim says: WP can't cover this here "unless a significant proportion of RS's state that it is a general IPCC problem and not just one with the AR4 and one paragraph" Sunday Times: "Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise...Last week the IPCC refused to comment so it has yet to explain how someone who admits to little expertise on glaciers was overseeing such a report." [23] New Zealand Herald: "The incident is an embarrassment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...The story has immediately made international headlines." [24] Daily Mail: "Claims by the world's leading climate scientists that most of the Himalayan glaciers will vanish within 25 years were last night exposed as nonsense...The revelation is a major blow to the credibility of the IPCC which was set up to provide political leaders with clear, independent advice on climate change." [25] Hindustan Times: "A United Nations body is expected to retract its oft-repeated prediction that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035." [26] (Note 'oft-repeated', which contradicts the notion that this is a minor error in a minor paragraph) The Australian: "The peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports - that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming - was based on a "speculative" claim by an obscure Indian scientist." [27] Canada.com: (Quoting an IPCC lead author): "This is a source of a lot of misunderstandings, misconceptions or failures," Kaser said, noting that some regions lacked a broad spectrum of expertise. "It is a kind of amateurism from the regional chapter lead authors. They may have been good hydrologists or botanists, but they were without any knowledge in glaciology."...The IPCC's Fifth Assessment, scheduled for release in 2013, will probably be adjusted to avoid such problems, said Kaser. "All the responsible people are aware of this weakness in the Fourth Assessment. All are aware of the mistakes made," he said. "If it had not been the focus of so much public opinion, we would have said 'we will do better next time.' It is clear now that Working Group II has to be restructured," he said. There will still be regional chapters, but the review process will be modified, he added. [28] (If this will lead to a restructure of IPCC reporting, it's clearly bigger in scope than AR4). The above sources clearly indicate that this is further-reaching than one paragraph in AR4. Oren0 (talk) 19:26, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Now I don't see any problem for not including this information in the article. Oren0 has fairly addressed all the concerns of KDP in this post. KDP: Do you still have a problem against consesus? I can put up a poll here if you want. EngineerFromVega (talk) 20:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC) A new source and some choice quotes from it From the Times: "But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999." "But Syed Hasnain, the Indian glaciologist erroneously quoted as making the 2035 prediction, said that responsibility had to lie with them. “It is the lead authors — blame goes to them,” he told The Times. “There are many mistakes in it. It is a very poorly made report.” He and other leading glaciologists pointed out at least five glaring errors in the relevant section. " He goes into detail about the 5 major errors in that section of the IPCC report. I suppose at this point we may even need an article about this incident - a lot of the errors are pretty bad. "Dr Pachauri also said he did not learn about the mistakes until they were reported in the media about 10 days ago, at which time he contacted other IPCC members. He denied keeping quiet about the errors to avoid disrupting the UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen, or discouraging funding for TERI’s own glacier programme." That is really pretty interesting since back in November Dr. Pachauri called the Indian government "arrogant" for claiming the IPCC was wrong about the Himalayan glaciers. He also amusingly says that the Indian report wasn't "peer-reviewed." "But he too admitted that it was “really odd” that none of the world’s leading glaciologists had pointed out the mistakes to him earlier. “Frankly, it was a stupid error,” he said. “But no one brought it to my attention.”" (Pachauri) Well, at least he admits it was a stupid error and I too am curious why not a single glaciologist would point out this stupid error. Who is funding these people if they don't notice or report such things? Well, these are the best quotes out of the article. I'm sure we can distill the essence out of a few of them. TheGoodLocust (talk) 01:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC) KDP writes: "Of course there are those who will try to blow this out of proportion, but that doesn't mean that WP will". We are not here to speculate whether this is being blown out of proportion or not. We are here to report that 'This has been blown out of proportion'. Your statement clearly sounds OR to me. It will be helpful for us if you can provide verifiable sources that confirms your statement. Unless you do so, this is OR and I'll go ahead with adding this to the article. (Edit: indention)EngineerFromVega (talk) 05:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Nothing new or of interest here. You've misrepresented some of it, but that is hardly new William M. Connolley (talk) 08:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC) WMC: your comment doesn't add anything to this discussion. I reiterate, unless KDP can come up with a source that this is being blown out of proportion, there is a fair case to add this information to the article. If you have a dispute, please put your thoughts forward and donn't just say 'there is nothing new' as per WP:CCC. See the above sources from Oren0 please. KDP: Do you personally think that this is blown out of proportion or you have a source for it? The criterion to include information in WP is verifiabiltiy, not truth or speculation. EngineerFromVega (talk) 19:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Sorry EfV, but you forgot to quote my parenthesis as well, which said "(unless a significant proportion of RS's state that it is a general IPCC problem and not just one with the AR4 and one paragraph)", thus you are presenting only half of the picture. The onus is on you to demonstrate that an error in a single paragraph in the 900+ pages WGII document, is sufficiently important to merit inclusion on an article that is about the IPCC in generic. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:05, 23 January 2010 (UTC) KDM: please check sources provided by Oren0 above. He has fairly addressed your concerns. Now please provide sources that this problem is being blown out of proportion and it is not your OR or speculation. Why should we discuss your 'being blown out of proportion' theory, unless it is covered by RS? EngineerFromVega (talk) 20:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Except of course that these describe the error in the AR4 in specific, and do not speak about the IPCC in general. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC) @EfV: au contraire, "this is nothing new" is indeed an argument. It means, none of the prior conclusions are affected by this "new" stuff you've introduced. When you've got something new, do come back William M. Connolley (talk) 21:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC) <outdent> The criticism section in the IPCC article already contains comments that are specific to certain IPCC reports - your refusal to allow this well-documented and widespread criticism is not consistent with the article as it now stands. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC) But we *do* allow this crit - its in Criticism of the IPCC AR4 report. So we might as well provide a summary of that, here. I got rid of Landsea - he is so last year - in favour of this sexy new stuff William M. Connolley (talk) 21:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC) lol, so I point out the obvious inconsistency and you use that as an excuse to delete some criticism while putting in your own extremely tame version? Why didn't you delete the Hockey Stick Graph criticism while you were at it? TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC) I've provided a fair summary of what is on the Criticism of the IPCC AR4 page, which itself is (IMO) an accurate summary of the facts of the matter. I've advertised the existence of the text on that page quite frequently, and invited people to comment there. Few have. The correct way of handling this kind of material is to thrash it out on the sub-page, then once we're happy, include the material on the main page. Since you were being so insistent, I judged that the time was now ripe to include the matter here. If you (well, not you personally, I mean a weight of contributing editors) disagree, then we can remove the new stuff and discuss further on the sub-page. Meanwhile, Landsea: he is last years (or the year before that's) stale pie. It was never notable, but pushed in by the septics at the time. It was long time for removal; now is a good time William M. Connolley (talk) 21:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC) Wrong, Landsea is mentioned with a fair amount of regularity on skeptics blogs. Even today he was mentioned at WUWT, which was voted the best science blog in 2008. This isn't a "give and take" situation - this is an improve an article situation. If you want input on the process then fine, but summarilly deleting things with the edit summary that they aren't sexy enough isn't acceptable. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC) WUWT is trash; if that is the best you can do, you're lost William M. Connolley (talk) 09:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

More IPCC blunders, per Times of London

"UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters", by Jonathan Leake, Science and Environment Editor, January 24, 2010. Arguably more serious blunders than the Himalayan glacier fiasco. The Times is doing some interesting investigative reporting on the IPCC. --Pete Tillman (talk) 04:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep, it all goes back to them using inadequate sources to make incredible claims. TheGoodLocust (talk) 05:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• The IPCC has responded to the Times article here, and Roger Pielke, Jr. comments on the IPCC statement here: "This press release from the IPCC would have been a fine opportunity to set the scientific and procedural record straight and admit to what are obvious and major errors in content and process. Instead, it has decided to defend the indefensible... Not a good showing by the IPCC." Pete Tillman (talk) 18:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Glaciergate

From the Telegraph, is apparently the title of this business now. There is so much info I think we may have to write a new article about the entire affair. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh and from here, the lead author admits the info wasn't verified and knew it was "grey literature." The author then goes on to say that they put it in there to influence policy-makers in the region. Additionally, there is criticism in the article about how the IPCC tends to be rather alarmist in there predictions, which is why I laugh when I read the wikipedia article since it says they are criticized for being conservative. TheGoodLocust (talk) 06:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Or as Newsbusters accurately describes it, "IPCC Scientist: Fake Data Used To Put Pressure On World Leaders."TheGoodLocust (talk) 07:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

And from Fox News: The IPCC "made a clear and obvious error when it stated that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035," added Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, in an interview.

"The absurdity was obvious to anyone who had studied the scientific literature. This was not an honest mistake. IPCC had been warned about it for a year by many scientists."TheGoodLocust (talk) 07:11, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me all this should be in this article as it is a crit of the IPCC and not of AR4 as it was to begin with. I was writing up a section for here but you seem to be ahead of me, why not write up what you have and we can go from there mark nutley (talk) 08:00, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

This error was one of five "glaring" errors

I reverted TGL's [29], for the obvious reasons: it is wildly controversial stuff which he has made no attempt to gain consensus for on talk.

There are any number of problems with that text; lets start with the most obvious: if this error is so "glaring", how come a mistake in a 2007 report (which was publically available as draft in 2006) wasn't spotted until late 2009? William M. Connolley (talk) 09:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

It is hardly wildly controversial now is it. It is well sourced and pertinent to this article. You have broken the 1R rule on this article btw i left you a message on your talkspace --mark nutley (talk) 11:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

More news on this, Interview with Dr Lal--mark nutley (talk) 11:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Wrong about AGW being linked to natural disasters Wow thats three massive errors found already in a few minutes, what exactly was your issue with this WMC? --mark nutley (talk) 11:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

First of all, he wasn't "misquoted" (by the IPCC) - since we know the IPCC quoted the text from the WWF report. Secondly the 5 errors are in the same paragraph as before. It is still only one paragraph that is in error, the error comes from the WWF report. Third, Dr. Hasnain according to the Times certainly has a lot of the blame by not pointing out the error, despite acknowledging that he knew about it. And the whole "glaring" thing is simply POV. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 12:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• 1 - WWF got it from new scientist who got it from a short phone call so yes the IPCC have misquoted him by using material they should not have.
• 2 - AGW being linked to natural disasters This is more than one paragraph in error. The entire report should be in doubt along with the IPCC when such obvious lies are told.
• 3- The people to blame are those who wrote and released this report by using material they should not have, which would be the IPCC. Dr Lal says that they knew it should not have been in but they used it to promote an alarmist agenda. So failing to see an issue with this inclusion --mark nutley (talk) 12:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but do you consider Newsbusters a reliable source? I'm going to make you aware here that BLP rules do apply to talk-pages as well, and that your statement that Dr. Lal "lied" is a breach. You are inferring here, and you aren't basing it on reliable sources but instead on your own personal POV. (Nowhere is it said that Dr. Lal "lied" sorry). There is nothing wrong with the IPCC using "grey literature", it is in fact (as pointed out earlier) stated clearly that they can do so. When the IPCC are quoting from the WWF report, they cannot be "misquoting" something when they state the same thing as the WWF report. If anyone is misquoting - it is the WWF (and they didn't do so either - since they also quote a reference where the same information is located). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 13:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Were in the above statement did i write "Dr Lal lied"? mark nutley (talk) 13:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No, WWF didn't get it from NS, they got it from ICSI, as they said. Your #2 looks like speculation. Dunno what you're on about in #3. Try to avoid mud-flinging; concentrate on one secure thing at a time instead of multiple poorly supported ideas William M. Connolley (talk) 12:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

what exactly was your issue with this - well, I've already provided one clear objection that you have failed to answer. Have another go William M. Connolley (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

WWF got it from ICSI? Source please, and a reliable one not a self published one from WWF as all sources to date say it came from NS. #2 How can you say it`s speculation? read the article and of course Chris Landsea Leaves IPCCkinda verify`s it. 3 i was responding to kim saying that Dr Hasnain had to shoulder a lot of the blame, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the IPCC for wishing to push their alarmist agenda. mark nutley (talk) 13:10, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of "reliable" sources out there that have been hopelessly wrong on this; you're clinging to them because they support your POV. As to how we know, how much spoon feeding do you need? Its already written down in the Criticism of the IPCC AR4 article: and I quote, from the WWF report, quoted there: In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood [sic] of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”. [p. 38] I think you'll agree that does rather suggest that they got it from ICSI, no? William M. Connolley (talk) 13:33, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry man, once again it is you who need spoon feeding,

"In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated `glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood[sic] of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high."

This statement was used in good faith but it is now clear that this was erroneous and should be disregarded.

Yes. There is no dispute about that William M. Connolley (talk) 17:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The essence of this quote is also used on page 3 in the Executive summary where it states: The New Scientist magazine carried the article "Flooded Out - Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities" in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice's (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region "will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming" See that part there about It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain now were do you think that quote came from? The NS of course. Even the WWF says it came from there. --mark nutley (talk) 16:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Well no. The material on p3 (p3? I thought it was p2) doesn't mention 2035. Also, it is quite clear from the material quoted that the WWF text has come from the ICSI text, not the NS text. You've got this wrong; stop digging; you just make yourself ridiculous William M. Connolley (talk) 17:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm right, and you're wrong: it is on p2. Did you read the report, or are you just parroting someone else's error? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Seriously man, do not chop my posts up again. Now what part of this are you confused about? The New Scientist magazine carried the article "Flooded Out - Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities" in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice's (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region "will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming Why is it so hard for you to comprehend the WWF`s own words? The 2035 quote came from NS, from an interview with Hasnain, Hasnain has said it was speculation. The only link to the ICSI is the fact that hasnain was working for them then. Any further questions? --mark nutley (talk) 19:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I've explained it above. [30] may also help William M. Connolley (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

BTW - we should not be using that interview with Lal as a RS: Lal has an enormous COI over this issue. As I read it, Lal was the guy responsible for putting 2035 in, and he knew at the time, cos Kaser told him, that it was wrong. *Now* he has been caught out, and he needs a good excuse for why it isn't all his fault, so is desperately trying to spray blame around William M. Connolley (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Not page two of the wwf report, page 12. The New Scientist magazine carried the article “Flooded Out – Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities” in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice’s (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region “will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming”. The article also predicted that freshwater flow in rivers across South Asia will “eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages There ya go, any further proof required? Are you seriously saying that only lal knew of this? How many people helped write that report and missed this? Come on man. And perhaps you should not be accusing people of stuff, i got a bollocking from TS for just that today. --mark nutley (talk) 19:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Hold on. What are you on about? Just up above you said it was on p3 William M. Connolley (talk) 19:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you should hold of on the beer, you said page 3 i never said a page number until my last post mate :) mark nutley (talk) 20:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, a New Scientist editorial, 16th Jan, says that they believe that they are the primary source for '2035': "The claim later appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report - and it turns out that our article is the primary published source".[31] --Nigelj (talk) 20:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we agree on the opinion that the '2035' is the result of the "interview alike" contact between New Scientist and Hasnain (being in a leading position of ICSI at this time) - if you really need it more precisely you might need to ask all involved parties from that time. That statement as it looks today is far away from anything like the outcome of a peer reviewed study. IPCC should in theory have a footnote for each claim it reproduces during their document creation process and probably marker for the scientific quality of each such statement. How else would they be in state of deciding between plain white and greyish sources when it comes to the final document assembly? providing the footnotes to their reviewers and even to the rest of the world is something i would expect to be the normal case for scientific standard work procedures. any note on just an interview (might it be 8 years old as in this case) for such thrilling news would lead any serious reviewer to ask how reliable this projection is and if there was an update on the insights in the insights in the time in between. A simple call between colleges would have unveiled the truth about that not at all that serious statement. no one would blame you if you dont check that much on already reviewed materials but not reviewing ans unreviewed statements with that magnitude is a hoax for the whole process. listen to the IPCC critics on the India research - they were told having ignore most other sources around them whilst performing a mostly solid authentic and original research. so the IPCC told them "we have alternate insights" (did they? they have not yet provided any replacement, if i heared right), more knowledge and whatever - but it looks like they did not show them to anyone, else it should have popped up rapidly that those '2035' prognosis was far beyond any expectation area of what anybody else sees as the future development. picking the most thrilling statement and ignoring any other stocked insights does not lead you to anywhere but shipwrecking your works. having a best-/worst-/standard-case estimation is a recommended normal doing. with that you can open up your mind for any case and prepare for that up to some degree. hey, if i wanted to read some main stream science media then i go for NS directly. sometimes i might go for such an offer, but often i would rather like to abstain that. lets see if i'd now like to read any of the past or future IPCC reports. --Alexander.stohr (talk) 22:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Alexander, the IPCC does footnote it, to the WWF report, which itself sources it to an ICSI report, which again sources it to Kotlyakov (who says 2350 not 2035), the WWF made the mistake, the IPCC ate the mistake raw (which was their mistake). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No kim, look above please you will see what i copied and pasted from the WWF report. It came from that interview in the NS. I have also read that the WWF has been used extensively by the IPCC in the preparation of AR4 Check out this list in see also. Still waiting on WMC`s reply to the above [32]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marknutley (talk • contribs) 07:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Full protection

Seeing the dispute is flaring up again, I've fully protected the article until disputes are resolved. --JForget 15:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

2035/2350?

I have noticed that both this article and Criticism of the IPCC AR4 have subject headings saying that the date used is 2035 and that it should be 2350. This makes the whole incident seem like a typo. Do we have a source for this claim? The only supposed cite for 2350 in Criticism of the IPCC AR4 is this, which doesn't mention the date 2350. None of the sources I have seen mention this date. Does anyone object to removing the 2350 date from the subject headings or can we get a reasonable source for it? Oren0 (talk) 19:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

It was not a typo. [Interview with Dr Lal] As i point out above even the wwf has admited the 2035 date came from an interview in new scientist, which they have admitted to in fact in the updated report linked from the crit of ar4 article. WMC seems to be having trouble grasping this concept though. --mark nutley (talk) 19:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Sigh. I've patiently explained to MN the truth above. You can read it for yourself, too. As for 2350: how did you miss: The degradation of the extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be apparent in rising ocean level already by the year 2050, and there will be a drastic rise of the ocean thereafter caused by the deglaciation-derived runoff (see Table 11 ). This period will last from 200 to 300 years. The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates—its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km² by the year 2350. Glaciers will survive only in the mountains of inner Alaska, on some Arctic archipelagos, within Patagonian ice sheets, in the Karakoram Mountains, in the Himalayas, in some regions of Tibet and on the highest mountain peaks in the temperature latitudes [p 66] which is a direct quote from the ICSI report? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

This is original research/synthesis. Who is to say that this is the date they meant? Do you have a reliable source that says they merely substituted one date for another? This isn't the way I've seen the story reported in sources. Oren0 (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of people getting this badly wrong. That doesn't mean we should copy them. This really isn't that hard if you pay close attention. the WWF report says "In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated: “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood [sic] of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”. [p. 38]". That is a direct statement from the source itself that they got the date 2035 from ICSI. Yes? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there any reliable source that, by your definition, is "getting it right"? You can't say "all of the sources are wrong therefore I'll make up my own interpretation." The IPCC cited the WWF source. To claim that they really meant to cite the ICSI or that they checked that source and made a mistake is unfounded speculation. All the sources say is that the IPCC cited an erroneous figure in a non-peer-reviewed source. To pick a primary source that the IPCC didn't even cite and to use that to justify a claim about what the IPCC authors may or may not have read or meant is synthesis without a source making that connection, which I still haven't seen. Oren0 (talk) 06:22, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Syed Hasnain, the guy who's the source of the 2035 claims, publicly admitted they were unsubstantiated. Now Connolley is trying to make it all look like a typo. This just keeps getting funnier.

interesting read, ICSI says 2350 whilst WWF and their sources say 2035. its just about where you put the zero in. i took the link in first AR4 chapter discussion pointing out that the IPCC was unable to update their web sites (inlcuding this up to my current writing). there i found that interesting quote:

The 30.2 km long Gangotri glacier has been receding alarmingly in recent years (Figure 10.6). Between 1842 and 1935, the glacier was receding at an average of 7.3 m every year; the average rate of recession between 1985 and 2001 is about 23 m per year (Hasnain, 2002).

using just the last rate given with 23 m/year a glacier of 30.2 km length will have vanished in about 1313 years. thats enough time for a warming period and a little ice age together or even more of them. but wait, other mini(!) glaciers are only 4 km long - so if the suffer the same shrinkage rate (but i doubt that is good science to do so) they will vanish in nearly 174 years. added to the publication date will make the first glacier vanish in the year 2176, provided that the decrease rates are roughly constant for that already long period. truely critical peer review pays out. dont ask me how they did it at the IPCC with their helpers out ther in the world. --Alexander.stohr (talk) 23:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Nasa took a different quote - vanishing of glaciers at about 2030. found in an article underneath an image illustration for the Gangotri glacier. interesting how science and journalism can be done by hear-say with an ever changing (closer) final date. but the WP article about that glacier tells of a decreased shrinking speed in 1996 to 1999. for what i would call sad - i have not seen any measurement data for the time in between 2000 and 2010. maybe the glacier was growing for the first time in about 250 years? --Alexander.stohr (talk) 00:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Note that I have posted about this at the No original research noticeboard. Oren0 (talk) 06:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

We really should be allowed to use blogs, those guys put the msm to shame :) More WWF ShenanigansThe WWF are all over AR4, how the IPCC can have used them so much is beyond me :) Waiting for this one the hit the papers in a few days :) --mark nutley (talk) 12:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The problem I have is that Connolley's interpretation of events runs completely counter to what the sources are saying, which is that the date came from an interview in 99. Or even, as the Daily Mail reports, "the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air." It's OK to say that these sources are wrong provided you have a better source, the problem is the current 2350 thing isn't sourced to any reliable secondary sources. Oren0 (talk) 06:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

WMC is very wrong on this one. Page twelve of the wwf report, The New Scientist magazine carried the article “Flooded Out – Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities” in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice’s (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region “will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming The source for this quote is in the report itself, The only link to the ICSI is the fact that Hasnain was working there at the time he gave the interview. This is something WMC appears to have overlooked. --mark nutley (talk) 09:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

We really should be allowed to use blogs - sounds good to me. I recommend http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/ipcc_use_of_non-peer_reviewed.php William M. Connolley (talk) 21:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

New criticism - from Indian government

[33][34]

India says it may pull out of the IPCC and will form its own organization to study the climate:

"There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report ... [the] IPCC doesn't do the original research which is one of the weaknesses ... they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.

"I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA)," he said."

-Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister

Cheers. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, but the bit about pulling out looks like tory newsspin. Jairam Ramesh was complaining about those westerners in the IPCC back in November, so now he wants to set up research in India, while correctly noting that the IPCC doesn't do its own research (but cites peer reviewed publications or currently grey material subject to procedures), and saying he respects the IPCC. Wonder if he'll invite the eminent Indian scientist Syed Hasnain to join the team. . . dave souza, talk 22:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I was actually being a bit kind too, the yahoo news article contains far more biting criticism. TheGoodLocust (talk) 22:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Read it, he's still going on about November's discussion paper. Maybe the new body will produce useful peer reviewed publications instead of inadequate talking points that jump from describing a few glaciers to making unexplained claims about global warming. Not that it was wrong, but it was inadequate to shift the scientific consensus which remains right – its unstated target was the famous paragraph which didn't reflect the science but was a bodged repeat of an Indian news report. Somehow I suspect there will be a big crackdown on using any grey material, and about time too. . . . dave souza, talk 23:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, he is obviously right about the activism/science being mixed (e.g. Hansen) - is this mentioned somewhere in the article? TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

An interesting development. I would say, at a minimum, the bare facts need to be included, such as: "The mistake made by the IPCC, and the way in which the IPCC initially handled the mistake has led India to establish its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri.Sirwells (talk) 02:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

How remarkable. The Daily Getsalaugh, living up to its nickname, has suddenly changed its article title, and noted that Ramesh said that the Indian Network on Climate Change Assessment is not a rival to the IPCC. See Dean Nelson (4 February 2010). "India forms new climate change body". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2010-02-05.. For all Ramesh's politicking about the glacier issue, the network had already been announced as part of the implementation of the Copenhagen Agreement. So, the bare facts are that Ramesh made some complaints about the IPCC when giving out further details of the previously announced Indian Network on Climate Change Assessment. . dave souza, talk 10:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I believe it was in November, before Copenhagen, that Pachauri called the Indian's work on glaciers "voodoo science." TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

The Indian PM seems to disagree with his minister: India has full confidence in the IPCC process and its leadership and will support it in every way [35]. RKP didn't call India's work on glaciers voodoo: he called a particularly bad report they wrote voodoo (haven't we done this before? [36] is your ref William M. Connolley (talk) 20:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Voodoo? Ah said Voodoo? Ah said who do you think you're foolin? TGL has it roughly right, as far as I've found it was back in November that P was harsh about the review paper by the retired Vijay Kumar Raina. Apparently P called it "voodoo science" and had to retract that . Lonnie Thompson said "First and foremost this is not a peer reviewed report and nothing scientific can be claimed based on 25 glaciers out of over 15,000 glaciers in the Himalayas.... if Jairam Ramesh can write up these results showing just how he came to his conclusion for a quality peer reviewed journal then he should do so. Otherwise the report certainly does not challenge the conventional wisdom." See Talk:Rajendra K. Pachauri#New text to be added to article here for a bit more on it, WMC's blog gives links to the main sources. . dave souza, talk 21:27, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, considering the IPCC had 5 "glaring" errors, as pointed out by the IPCC author of the section, about glaciers (you can ask Connolley why he removed that info), I think it is fair to say that the Indian report's "voodoo science" may be a bit more scientific :). TheGoodLocust (talk) 22:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Africagate!

Uh oh Scooby looks like the IPCC's claims about a 50% reduction in rainfall in Africa are unsupported. I'm still waiting for that IPCC error that isn't alarmist. TheGoodLocust (talk) 05:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh my. Without any opinion on the Times article, how does "In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020" get morphed into "50% reduction in rainfall in Africa"? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Too bad the IPCC wasn't so nitpicky - then they might not have had so many grossly incompetent errors in their reports. :) TheGoodLocust (talk) 07:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

In this particular case, the grossly incompetent act was yours, in completely mangling the given source. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:15, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Why thank you Stephan, since you seem to think my minor omission is so very notable I guess we can skip the usual dance where ya'll claim this isn't notable and just include it! :) After all, when I make a small error I get lambasted, but when the IPCC makes errors like this they are scaring entire countries and costing billions of dollars. TheGoodLocust (talk) 10:46, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

One (Murdoch owned) source? Please remember why WP:NOTNEWS. . . dave souza, talk 12:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes Dave, you've made it clear how you feel about "tories" (is that the plural form?), but honestly, it doesn't really matter what you think of who owns certain news outlets. Anyway, this is a developing story, and remember they also put this in their synthesis report and has been used as a PR tool by Ban Ki Moon and Pachauri (I think Gore too). 9[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dont-trust-the-weathermans-forecasts/story-e6frg6zo-1225824634542 another source). This little "mistake" of the IPCC's is likely why African nations were demanding 100 billion bucks in Copenhagen. TheGoodLocust (talk) 19:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I`ve not looked at the times yet but the full story by Dr North is on his blog [[37]Template:10:09, 7 February 2010

Please sign your posts, Mark. Ah, so the Euroskeptics are on the trail, but not a RS. The Times story is making more hoopla out of WGII reports not being peer reviewed, when that still complies with the rules. Undoubtedly the rules will be tightened, this issue is something to clarify in the criticism article. . . dave souza, talk 12:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually they probably did break their rules. A history lesson for you Dave, when we were trying to include the glaciergate information and all the sources said they broke the rules - your "side" said they didn't and pointed to a small section of the rules that allowed grey literature. The problem is that the IPCC later said they DID break their own rules and I'll tell you why - grey literature is discouraged and should only be used in certain circumstances, but they did not follow those standards. TheGoodLocust (talk) 19:45, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Please learn to be more sceptical, especially about FoxNews and Co., and read more carefully. Using non peer-reviewed material isn't against the current rules, though that may change. As the criticism article has shown for some time now, there are procedures which were not followed properly, leading to an unacceptable lapse in standards. Probably not the only instance in WGII, expect IndiaGate next, but because something wasn't peer reviewed doesn't automatically mean it was against the rules. . . dave souza, talk 20:12, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm a very skeptical person. I used to sort-of buy into that "Fox is evil" nonsense but when I actually looked into it I found it to be largely without merit. Every single time I've looked at a "Media Matters" interpretation of them I've found it to be extremely dishonest and, in fact, I've seen far more dishonest crap from places like MSNBC. Anyway, as I said, there are specific rules for using grey literature, which the IPCC did not follow - those are the rules they broke. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, you don't seem to have noticed what jumped out at me from what you call "Uh oh Scooby" above – the article says "The paper was not peer-reviewed", but doesn't touch on the real issue, that non-peer reviewed papers can be used on the basis that "Authors who wish to include information from a non-published/non-peer-reviewed source are requested to: a. Critically assess any source that they wish to include......" etc. All under "1. Responsibilities of Coordinating, Lead and Contributing Authors." Rather wishy-washy phrasing, in my opinion, that should be toughened up considerably. The Sunday Times is attacking with overstated headlines at the same time as missing the target. Of course with all newspapers you have to read the detail, and be very sceptical about the headline which in many cases isn't written by the journalist. . dave souza, talk 23:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course their rules should be tightened up, but the problem is that the IPCC authors are volunteers - and that will inevitably attract activists with all the biases that one can expect from such people. Rules are irrelevant when nobody is willing to follow or enforce them. TheGoodLocust (talk) 23:49, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Not an accurate diagnosis. . . dave souza, talk 09:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Article still claims AR4 is based on peer-reviewed literature

"Scope and preparation of the reports The IPCC reports are a compendium of peer reviewed and published science"

I think the IPCC has admitted that this statement is not true. That is, "published science" is not the only kind of published information repeated in the report. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DaveCrane (talk • contribs) 19:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

There's an ambiguity about the phrase, which may come from their mandate but the link gives a 404 Not Found. It's based on published science in a broad sense, and the WGI hard science section is very much based on peer reviewed publications, but the effects section from WGII makes great use of "grey" material which isn't peer reviewed, and we should show that. dave souza, talk 19:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

We've discussed this before. The sentence above is deliberately ambiguous (is the ref not found? It was there when we last argued this amonth or so back). The reports are indeed based on research that is peer-reviewed, and research that is published. the WWF report, of the "2035" fame, was published. It may even have been peer-reviewed. But it wasn't a journal pub William M. Connolley (talk) 20:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Need link to Expert Review Comments

The mention of "Expert Review Comments on First-Order Draft (16 November 2005) IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment Report" is in dire need of a link to those published comments, preferably for all Working Groups. And preferably a link to an easily searchable text rather than the messy method used at Harvard.DaveCrane (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Why is this link needed? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Rv: why

I took out the letter to Nature [38]. Its too new (as usual), it isn't clearly notable, and it is (maybe) in the wrong article William M. Connolley (talk) 09:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Right article, well sourced, pertains to this article, too new is not a policy. I restored it for those reasons. --mark nutley (talk) 09:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Mark. This is the right article and it is clearly notable. RonCram (talk) 13:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the inclusion of the material. I read about it this morning on the front page of the Japan Times in an article by AFP-Jiji. Cla68 (talk) 23:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Just because you read about it in the news doesn't mean it has real long-term importance for the topic; see WP:RECENTISM. These scientists are just five out of thousands who worked with the IPCC, and out of millions who have an opinion on it. There is no reason why their opinion on it deserves so much weight in the article. — DroEsperanto (talk) 01:04, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:RECENTISM is an essay. Also, it doesn't preclude something just because it's recent. Many sources have picked up on this: [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] just to name a few. Certainly more notable than, for example, the puffery above it regarding "praise for the IPCC". It's clearly covered enough to be covered on WP, and there is no better place to put it than here (though it should be under the criticism section). Oren0 (talk) 03:44, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

These five are not the management of the IPCC. This is an isolated suggestion in a letter to the editor. It's not only recentism but it's the extreme WP:N non-notability that discounts it from this overview article of the organisation and its history. When a body with any authority starts publishing plans for altering the organisation's set-up, that'll be something to report. This is just noise, chatter and personal opinion. Putting it in would give huge undue WP:WEIGHT to the personal opinions of these five individuals. --Nigelj (talk) 14:22, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

WO:WEIGHT leads to a foreign language wp? However given these five are main contributers to the IPCC means their word carrys a lot of weight, plus it is well covered and is wp:notable mark nutley (talk) 14:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have a copy of the article, that they can send me? I'm rather wondering if Hans von Storch really was an author (lead or otherwise) to the AR4.. (goes for one other as well). Does the Nature source state this? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:55, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Rv: why

The Booker book is a polemic by a non-scientist and has no place here William M. Connolley (talk) 12:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted the anon's edit as simple vandlaism [44] William M. Connolley (talk) 15:49, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

It`s not vandalism though, please self revert. You are on a 1r restriction and so is this article mark nutley (talk) 15:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

You VIOLATED 1 revert rule (for this page) and you made offensive remarks agains me. Your bias is very transparent. Shame on you Mr Connolley! Please self revert.

On the contrary, it most certainly is vandalism. Who is Mr Connolley? Perhaps you should address yourself to him William M. Connolley (talk) 16:01, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I did not know you are a lord. I am sorry Sir Connoley! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.1.141.167 (talk) 16:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Your probation says, obvious vandalism, someone disagreeing with you is not vandalism, you are breaking your parole and the 1r on this article. Self revert now or i will do it for you mark nutley (talk) 16:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

MN please explain first why the book needs to be mentioned about something that seems to me to be a summary of the hockey stick controversy article, because that article does not mention the book nor the author at all. To me it would make sense to only include it in here, if it takes a prominent place in the hockey stick article. The bit should not be in this article and so reverting WMC because you feel he violated his sanction seems to me just bureaucratic. Unless you feel it should be added, but then please explain first why. Also to 108.1.141.167 you only use the title mister when someone has no other title, including academic ones. WMC holds the title of Dr so if you want to use last name with title, use the correct one so it should be Dr Connolley 83.86.0.82 (talk) 16:28, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thinking it over, it's clear the Dr. Connolley has violated his probation and the 1RR restriction on this article; however, it's not at all clear that the book should be mentioned here, rather than only in the hockey stick article, so I'm not reinstating the edit. (Signed, Dr. Rubin). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Well if *you* really think so, OK. I've self-reverted back to the broken anon version. Since you self-reverted, you're now free to use *your* revert to restore the article to a sensible version. However, I repeat my assertion that this looks like simpla anon vandalism to me William M. Connolley (talk) 16:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Pertinent question: Are secondary reliable sources in agreement with the text as written? Ie. Is it the general view in RS's about the graph that Booker provides a good overview? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I have copy-edited the section, and in the process tried to place the book citation into a better context with regard to its global importance and notability. If more details about its coverage of the 'hockey stick controversy' are actually required, of course the right place would be in that section's {main} article, not here in the summary of that article. I hope this meets everyone's requirements. --Nigelj (talk) 17:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

My question goes more towards WP:WEIGHT. Is Booker generally considered an authority on this topic? Is he often mentioned by secondary reliable sources in connection with this topic? Has the book generally received good critique? Does any of the critique mention his coverage of the HS? In effect: Why are we citing Booker, and why the book? The copy-edit you made was good, but i'm still wondering...--Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

No-one has a good word to say for Bookers book. Why have you left it in? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I`d imagine those who read it have a good word or two about it. It is an excellent critique of the hockey stick, and as the hockey stick was the poster boy for the ipcc for a good long while then a few pointers to it`s critics is a good thing. mark nutley (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

You didn't answer my questions. I'm not interested in your opinion (which is irrelevant (just as mine)), i'm asking what secondary reliable sources say - which is the only thing that WP is interested in. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:47, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

It would be helpful if Misters (or Doctors) Connolley, Petersen and Schultz were little less partizan and accepted possibility that not everything in AGW theory is true. Also if they accepted possibility that people who see the issue of climate change differently are not always ignorant or malicious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.1.141.167 (talk) 17:52, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

You may want to read WP:NPA. You may also want to consider that no one here is actually arguing for removal of the critique of the HS. We are contemplating a single source and its merit. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

@ kim the answers you seek are here [45] mark nutley (talk) 17:57, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually Mark, that doesn't answer my questions. It reinforces them. None of the reviews regard Booker as an authority, and reviews are sporadic. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The Booker reference and the IPCC's Third Assessment Report

Booker's book deals at great length (one whole chapter, chapter 4, 'The Hottest Year Ever') and lists at the end 50 fully reputable sources specifically dealing with the Hockey Stick and its history/relationship with the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. If this is indeed an article on the IPCC and this is indeed a criticism section of which the Hockey stick is a major part then the reference seems not only fully justified but important. My wording seems fair and fully neutral, thus:

In his 2009 book The Real Global Warming Disaster, Christopher Booker gives a detailed account of how the graph came to prominently feature in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report.

If the problem is that Booker is not a scientist then this may have to be revisited, as the sources above are almost exclusively scientists and scientific journals. I would appreciate input from other editors regarding this question -- perhaps different wordings of the above? Jprw (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Why would you need to be a scientist to write about the hockey stick? It is a full critique of the hockey stick based on the 50 sources you mention above. Seems open and shut to me, your wording is fair and neutral and i agree this reference should stay in this article mark nutley (talk) 18:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Booker is neither a scientist nor even vaguely neutral - he is a far right wing columnist. Try reading our article on him. OR indeed, read the article on the book. lists at the end 50 fully reputable sources sounds very much like the arguments made for State of Fear - that it had references, so obviously must be scholarly. Having references means nothing - it is what you do with the references that matters. So, in partilcular, who says he "gives a detailed account" - him? You? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Sigh, once again you allow your pov to cloud your judgement. He is not far right , why would you link him to nazi`s? Perhaps you should redact it? Your statement is pointless, all it shows is your dislike of the man. mark nutley (talk) 19:24, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Re: So, in partilcular, who says he "gives a detailed account" - him? You?

We are talking about 30 pages containing 50 fully reputable scientific sources. Do you know of a more detailed account of how the graph came to be a major feature of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report? Does one exist? I also have to say that the speed at which you are willing to resort to ad hominem is a cause for concernJprw (talk) 06:54, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know - there's little to suggest that Booker should be taken at face value. If the reliability of his work has been questioned in the past, and he appears to have no specific expertise on the subject, why should we use his work? Are there third-part sources that attest to the reliability of this book? Guettarda (talk) 19:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Not that I know of - other than its publishers. --Nigelj (talk) 20:04, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)As before, the pertinent question here is: Who says that Booker "gives a detailed account"? Does any sources consider Booker authoritative on this? Has any review commented on the books coverage of the HS? Is Booker generally considered a reliable source on such information? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:08, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

This is from the Guardian review which was the most negative review I could find when researching the article:

"Another of Booker's techniques is to latch on to genuine flaws in the science or its dissemination with the tenacity of a bulldog. Predictably, he attacks the infamous "hockey stick" graph, a plot of global mean temperatures over the past 1,000 years produced by two scientists in 1998 which shows little change for the entire period until suddenly soaring in the 20th century. It is now mostly accepted that the analysis that produced these data was wrong".

And the references ARE scholarly and well assembled -- so I repeat: given that this is a critical section on the hockey stick graph/IPCC the Booker quote seems not only justified but important and a useful source for intersted readers wishing to find out more about the subject.Jprw (talk) 06:47, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The review you quote makes it quite clear that Booker is an unreliable source. To begin with, what do you mean when you say "scholarly and well assembled"? "Scholarly" is a comment on the sources, not on whether they are appropriately interpreted. The denialists use scholarly publications all the time. They just pick and choose the one or two they like, and ignore the rest. Or they misrepresent what they say - either intentionally or simply because they don't understand the subject matter. "Tenacity of a bulldog" says nothing about understanding - on the contrary, a bulldog does its job purely through the strength of its jaw. Bulldogs are not known to skilfully interpret and dissect problems. Nor does this tell use whether Booker's selection of papers represents the state of the science. The creationists quote "scholarly" sources all the time - sadly, they pretend that ideas can't change and that science does not progress. So saying that someone has 50 "scholarly and well assembled" refs doesn't tell me anything I need to know as to whether that person's analysis is useful. Guettarda (talk) 07:22, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

In the context of the whole (very negative) review, the impression I have is that The Guardian is begrudgingly admitting that Booker did a good job re: the hockey stick graph/IPCC and that his analysis on this particular subject stands up. The chapter in his book (chapter 4, 'The Hottest Year Ever') specifically dealing with this subject may therefore also stand up as a reliable source for this section, and therefore improve the article. Perhaps the only solution is for you and other detractors to actually read the chapter objectively and look at the sources.Jprw (talk) 07:53, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of whether Booker is reliable, it doesn't belong in this article if that is the material to be sourced, it may be appropriate for hockey stick controversy, even if not reliable, as a notable example of the controversy. (I'm not weighing it, at this time, as to the question of whether it's reliable.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't see anything in the review that Booker "did a good job". Guettarda (talk) 15:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

It is not for us to decide if he is a qualified person to write about this. It is for us to present the options to our readers. Reliable third party sources say this book is both notable and a good critique of the hockey stick and that is all we should be discussing here. mark nutley (talk) 07:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

No, that's not true. It's very important to figure out whether a source provides useful information. In this case, there are several problems. Arthur Rubin identified the most important one - this isn't an article about the hockey stick, so why should be care about a "notable and good critique" of the hockey stick? Secondly, of course, is the idea that Booker's is a "notable and good critique". Who says this, and where? Guettarda (talk) 15:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

As I point out above, this is the hockey stick controversy sub-section of the Criticism of the IPCC section of this article. That's why the Booker reference is fully appropriate here. Jprw (talk) 17:04, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The reason I originally posted it here and not at the Hockey Stick controversy article is that the chapter outlines how the hockey stick controversy was inextricably linked to the IPCC. It therefore seems to fit best here.Jprw (talk) 07:55, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you using bolding a bit more sparingly? Thanks. Guettarda (talk) 16:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The Booker statement can be attributed with the few sources presented here. Please folks, lets avoid the orginal research and work to have balanced text that matches the sources. Trust that Wikipedia will be better for it. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:55, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

While it may be useful in describing his fringe views, we should be cautious about giving undue weight to such non-expert fringe positions. . . dave souza, talk 20:13, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Not at all dave, fringe says if it is notable then it can be allowed, the book is obviously notable given the publicity it got so not problems there mark nutley (talk) 21:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

We can't take Booker's opinion as anything more than Booker's opinion. So, why is his opinion notable enough to be included in this article? Guettarda (talk) 20:38, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Dave, you seem to think it is up to us to decide on bookers opinion? This is not the case, it is the book as a source which must be decided upon. And the book has achieved wp:notable has it not? Nor is it self published, it meets all the criteria for a source and for inclusion mark nutley (talk) 21:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I've taken out Booker. Its a polemic by a non-scientist nad has no value, per discussion above. Don't add controversial stuff like this without prior discussion William M. Connolley (talk) 22:04, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

You may have missed where is says "detailed account" in bold above (from this source [46]). That is new an beneficial information. Booker provides greater value because it presents unique and reliable sourced information not included in this article. see [47] for ref. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:39, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Ah, you've been reading the Daily Mail. They're so wrong they're not even fringe. . . dave souza, talk 21:39, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Booker and "non-expert fringe positions"

Editor opinions on Booker

Whatever Booker's past sins might have been, chapter 4 in his book is an exhaustive and detailed account of how the graph came to play a central role in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. At the risk of repeating myself, he quotes at length from the report itself, Mann, Science and Nature magazines, McIntyre, Greenpeace press releases, etc. etc. I wish that I had the time to write the complete list of references (there are fifty in all, covering a 30 page chapter) or that another editor who has also viewed this chapter, the references, and how Booker put the whole thing together, would corroborate what I am saying: it certainly does not come across as the work of a lunatic maverick operating on the fringe but an excellent well-sourced account of this particular controversy that would be appropriate to reference in the section (i.e., the hockey stick controversy sub-section of the Criticism of the IPCC section) of the article in which it originally appeared but was deleted.Jprw (talk) 09:55, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Given his track record, there's every reason to doubt Booker. The number of refs doesn't really help, since the past accusations against him include that he misrepresented sources. So at the very least, we'd need an expert source that attests to the reliability of his reporting in this case. Guettarda (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

This is not the case, I refer you to my awnser above. mark nutley (talk) 21:47, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

If he had made a hash of analysing the Hockey Stick controversy The Guardian, in what was an extremely negative review, would have picked up on it (since it is one of the cornerstones of the book). At this time, chapter 4 of his book may be the best reference we have for this section.Jprw (talk) 08:37, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

It was The Observer, not The Guardian, and it describes the book as uncritically stating all the one-sided criticisms ever made opposing the scientific majority view on global warming (I paraphrase). It hardly needed to list all the fringe allegations in the book, which might also be "cornerstones". . . dave souza, talk 10:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Except that re: the hockey stick, isn't it now the scientific majority view that it was misleading/flawed, and all Booker did was provide a thorough account of the incident? The antipathy towards Booker is in my view clouding certain editors' judegemt re: this issue.Jprw (talk) 12:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

After carefully perusing the discussion in the section above, I'm seeing a lot of attacks on Booker's credibility, but no links to any RS which support those attacks with any evidence. Booker's book qualifies as a reliable source, but we can take it to the reliable sources noticeboard if we need to. The guys at that board were apparently a little peeved when some of the AGW editors rejected the NYTimes as a reliable source awhile back, but this is a book, not a newspaper. Anyway, a short section with the author's criticism of the IPCC's involvement with the famous hockey stick graph seems fine to me. The text should make clear, however, that it is Mr. Booker's opinion that is being given. Cla68 (talk) 08:25, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll also check Infotrac and NewsStand next chance I get to see if anyone else has criticized the IPCC over the hockey stick graph. If so, then attribution may not be necessary. Cla68 (talk) 08:36, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thats a nice reversion of WP:BURDEN. The onus is on those who want to include it, to demonstrate weight and notability - not the other way around. Booker is not considered an expert on the subject, and the book hasn't been described as a good description of the topic by secondary reliable sources. The book is less notable than a whole slew of other popular science books written by political commentators (ie. An Inconvenient Truth and other books of that character), we wouldn't want to include those either, since they aren't A) expert sources B) are partisan political commentaries C) aren't considered authoritative/notable on the topic by secondary sources. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 11:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

If anyone complains that there are no reliable sources impeaching Booker's credibility as a scholar, and particularly on proper treatment of sources, he has only to look at our own article on the man. The main reason not to include a link to that book no this article, however, is that he is a quite open, self-declared, partisan. We must not represent his polemic as a useful source of information, because it is irretrievably compromised by its author's bias towards a fringe position. --Tasty monster 12:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Except that criticising the hockey stick isn't a fringe position. Jprw (talk) 12:12, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

No? "Upwards of a dozen studies, using different statistical techniques or different combinations of proxy records, have produced reconstructions broadly similar to the original hockey stick. These reconstructions all have a hockey stick shaft and blade. While the shaft is not always as flat as Mann's version, it is present. Almost all support the main claim in the IPCC summary: that the 1990s was then probably the warmest decade for 1000 years. A decade on, Mann's original work emerges remarkably unscathed."[48] . . .dave souza, talk 12:25, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Then why is there a controversy at all?Jprw (talk) 12:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps because those denying human influence on climate change, like Booker, write one-sided polemics which are widely publicised. Perhaps, as the source states, because "Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who calls global warming a "hoax", repeatedly attacked the Penn State University professor's hockey stick graph." It's a political controversy based on fringe views and to some extent on minority scientific views, and so should not be given undue weight in this article. . . dave souza, talk 12:35, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Then why did Ball say in his review "It is now mostly accepted that the analysis that produced these data was wrong", and, while we're at it, why don't we delete the entire section?Jprw (talk) 12:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

As the article says, the NAS "agreed that there were statistical failings of the kind highlighted by M&M, but like von Storch it found that they had little effect on the overall result." Your second sentence looks rather pointy. . . dave souza, talk 13:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

• I think someone just deleted the link to the book article from the "see also" list as "non-notable", which is an interesting take since the book appears to have enough notability to justify its own article in Wikipedia. Fortunately, however, we don't have to decide who is right and who is wrong. We just report what the sources say, in a fair and neutral manner. As I said previously, I'll do some searching around in the library and see what I find about this hockey stick graph controversy and we can take it from there. Cla68 (talk) 13:07, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Cla, you should remember that little thing about not giving undue weight to minority views. . . dave souza, talk 13:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Notability doesn't inherit.... A book on a particular subject might be notable enough to merit an article, but that doesn't translate into the book being notable in the article on the subject. An Inconvenient Truth (the book) or Hell and High Water (book) are other examples that aren't useful either in the See also section. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 13:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The undue weight point is valid. This isn't the only time Booker has taken the contrarian position. It is a position of long and even respectable lineage amongst English intellectuals of the right. But it is, always, a conscious and knowing effort to expose minority objections to mainstream thinking. It is not a mainstream analysis and should not be linked uncritically into this article. --Tasty monster 13:28, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

wp:undue Took a while for that to get wheeled out :) From undue Neutrality requires that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each Fail to see a weight issue here. mark nutley (talk) 14:48, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

What a shame you stopped reading there, mark. Next sentence: "Now an important qualification: In general, articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more widely held views; generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all." Note that non expert political support does not affect the majority expert view. dave souza, talk 14:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I fail to see why you do not see the weight issue. Booker openly adheres to a fringe conspiracy theory that even mainstream skeptics spurn. Due weight means we should use more balanced sources than this. Edit warring in these circumstances can only make things worse. Including Booker here is rather like including a history of evolutionary thought by Ken Ham in the article on Evolution. --Tasty monster 15:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

This book is getting far too much coverage on WP, since someone here decided to read it, and then create a whole article just on it. How many books have been published on climate change in the last few years? A quick search on Amazon just got me '36,926 results'. For some people buying a book and reading it right through to the end may seem like a big event that needs its own Wikipedia article, but in the light of the sheer bulk of sensible publications out there, this concentration on one book is extraordinary and inherently wrong. --Nigelj (talk) 15:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

@ dave, since when was being sceptical of AGW a minority view? @ tony, there is no fringe conspiracy theory here, just the facts of the hockey stick usage by the ipcc, this book covers it very well. @ Nigel, how many of those books are sceptical of the AGW theory? Also this concentration on one book is extraordinary and inherently wrong is a point of view i`m afraid. mark nutley (talk) 15:31, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

@ mark, if you mean being sceptical like all good scientists, the overwhelming majority of those scientist consider AGW to be significant and worth trying to reduce. If you mean being "skeptical" like AGW deniers, that's a fringe view in scientific terms. Of course, like creationism, it has considerable political support in some countries. There's probably a scientific minority view that AGW is contributing to global warming to an extent that is not well proven, but the most vocal opponents of action are not scientists. Since they seem to be arguing that the CRU analysis is wrong, perhaps you'd prefer the GISS analyisis? See how they compare.[49] . dave souza, talk 18:57, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

@ Nigel: how many of those are bestsellers; how many have upwards of 75 4.5 positive reviews on Amazon; and how many have been reviewed by the vast majority of the country's leading media? How many have been cited as a book of the year by a prominent environmentalist, or a "definitive manual" in the field by a detracting voice? This is a very prominent book in the UK, perhaps the most high profile book from the sceptics' camp. It would also help if some of the editors here were to get hold of a copy and look at chapter 4 and the fifty references at the end, instead of automatically assuming bad faith. On this particular issue, it does not remotely to me seem to be a case of "Booker openly adhering to a fringe conspiracy theory that even mainstream skeptics spurn" (to quote TS above.) As long as it is not included, the article will be missing an excellent source for the HS sub section; In his 2009 book The Real Global Warming Disaster, Christopher Booker gives a detailed account of how the graph came to prominently feature in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report looks pretty innocuous to me. Jprw (talk) 15:45, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

@ Jprw: Not according to the mainstream review in The Observer which describes it as showing all the anti-action claims without showing the majority scientific views on each claim. It may be a good source for fringe views, but these have to be shown in context and don't need to be shown in the main article. Better accounts are available, and properly belong in the detailed article on the graph. . . dave souza, talk 19:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

@ dave, link please to the observer, thanks. In the meantime lets see what other reviewers have to say The Spectator Christopher Booker narrates this story with the journalist’s pace and eye for telling detail and the historian’s forensic thoroughness which have made him a formidable opponent The Herald For all its ubiquity, the “hockey stick” is bogus, a politically inspired gumbo of suspect data and dud methodology; Mann’s software was set up to mine for the desired result. So the speccie says he is a very good researcher and author, the herald mentions the hockey stick. These papers are mainstream as is the Observer mark nutley (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

@ mark, thought you'd have seen The Observer's review, the right wing Spectator is unsurprising, claiming it's a left wing plot. Bit disappointed with the Herald's uncritically regurgitating the views of "Christopher Booker, Britain’s most vocal sceptic". Certainly doesn't give any indication that these views are scientifically accepted, on the contrary it makes the bizarre assertion that "The only answer is to free science of political control. At that point, the global warming “consensus” will evaporate and the world cool down again." Oh, so NASA has been under political control over the last decade, and the world is cooling down when it reports that the last decade was the warmest, with 2005 the warmest year and 2009 the second warmest. . . dave souza, talk 20:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I have faith that wp:rs and the RS notice board will simply clear up all the prejudiced original research presented here on this issue so we can avoid the secondary drama. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS/N doesn't comment on WP:UNDUE which is the issue here. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Content_noticeboard could be a solution to the weight obstruction. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

It's unsurprising that right wing sources that think the UN is a left wing plot like the book, but this is a scientific issue and the views of reputable journals and scientific societies should be taken into account in determining weight. Back to scientific consensus. . . dave souza, talk 20:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The answer is here: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ#Lack_of_neutrality_as_an_excuse_to_delete. Additional sourced material should be added to balance the POV, its really simple for folks that want to build NPOV content without OR opinionated fights. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:24, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Take it up on the main article on the issue, and keep undue weight and giving "equal validity" in mind. . . dave souza, talk 21:38, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Sources about Booker's book

• Refs referring to Booker and his book:
  • "The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?" Publishers Weekly, 256.47 (2009): 50- "Much of the book will be familiar to readers of climate-change-hoax literature: climate change research relies on flawed computer models; the "hockey stick" graph of temperature rise, made famous by Al Gore, is based on inaccuracies; the costs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be huge, the political difficulties of realizing them untenable, and the results inadequate. Booker's stated purpose is to put all the "complex arguments" on both sides of the debate into chronological context, but his treatment is anything but balanced, and his credibility may be undermined by previous controversial claims, such as that white asbestos is identical to talc and secondhand smoke does not cause cancer."
  • Delingpole, James. "The global warming lobby, and the terrier who won't let go." Spectator 31 Oct. 2009: 31.- Long, positive review. [I wasn't aware of the British global scientists' antics at the 2004 Moscow conference. That episode might be worth its own article].
  • Steve Connor. The Independent. London (UK): Feb 10, 2010. pg. 6.- Discusses Booker's book in relation to Sir John Houghton and his views on warming.
  • The Scotsman. Edinburgh (UK): Dec 5, 2009. pg. 1. List of recommended reading from books published in 2009. "Whether you agree with Booker or not, this is an important, brave book making and explaining many valid points."
  • Christopher Booker. The Sunday Telegraph. London (UK): Nov 8, 2009. pg. 35. Booker references his book in his column.

Sources about hockey stick graph controversy

• Infotrac refs about hockey stick graph:
  • Brumfiel, Geoff. "Academy affirms hockey-stick graph." Nature 441.7097 (2006): 1032+.
  • "Leaked emails mark dangerous shift in climate denial strategy." Europe Intelligence Wire 23 Nov. 2009
  • "Media Release: Australian Climate Science Coalition." MediaNet Press Release Wire 29 June 2009.- "The government used data from the widely discredited 'hockey stick' graph that even the IPCC no longer uses" said Professor Bob Carter, science advisor to the Australian Climate Science Coalition."
  • "'HOCKEY STICK' GRAPH CORRECT." World Entertainment News Network 2 Sept. 2008
  • "Hockey stick in play again.(Perspectives)." Business and the Environment Sept. 2006: 4+
  • "Statisticians blast Hockey Stick." America's Intelligence Wire 23 Aug. 2006
  • "Climate changed." Australasian Business Intelligence 4 July 2006
  • "Hockey sticks." Global Markets 3 July 2006: 1
  • "Cooling the hot air." St. Louis Post-Dispatch [St. Louis, MO] 29 June 2006
  • "The Hockey Stick Controversy: New Analysis Reproduces Graph of Late 20th Century Temperature Rise; NCAR Paleoclimatologist Available to Comment." AScribe Science News Service 11 May 2005
  • "Too stormy for hockey?" Global Environmental Change Report Dec. 2003: 6
• In addition to the above, I found 177 references to the hockey stick graph in NewsStand, and decided not to list them all out of space and time consdierations. I think it's clear that there is sufficient controversy and supporting sources about this graph to merit a discussion in this article, if not its own, stand alone article. I think that enough reliable sources have established Booker as a legitimate source for opinion on the controversy, but it can be noted in the article that he is a skeptic. Discussion welcome. Cla68 (talk) 00:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the Hockey stick controversy is certainly notable, which is why we have an article, and are summerizing it here. But that doesn't have much to do with Booker - does it?

As for the refs to Booker: #1 negative review, casts doubt on veracity. #2 Op-Ed by political partisan (and collegue at the Telegraph). #3 negative review, points out directly false information in book[50] (fabricated info) #4 casts doubt on varacity ("barely credible in places") #5 is by Booker himself, and can't be used to verify anything about notability or veracity of book. And all of these aren't about the hockey-stick or relevance to the IPCC. These may be of interest in the Christopher Booker article or the one about the book though. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 11:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Your references on Booker as any kind of authority are far short of convincing--I think even you would hardly claim that James Delingpole is in any position to judge his expertise, for instance. The article on the book also considers some of the references you cite above in more detail, but I'll spare you the embarrassment here.

On the Hockey Stick, of course its methodolgy is flawed and its implications controversial. However its shape has been independently corroborated so many times that only a tiny amount of mileage can be wrung out of it. The fact that the IPCC depends on all those corroborations--which lack the flaws identified by McIntyre--makes it bomb proof, but I would be surprised if Booker's analysis admitted that. Finally, there's still the problem that Christopher Booker is well out on the fringe. There are plenty of non-fringy writers whose books we can write up and pop into the "See also".

We'd have to be pretty desperate to pick Booker, whose propensity for perpetrating the most basic schoolboy howlers in the course of his vendetta against mainstream science has made him notorious. White asbestos ""chemically identical to talcum powder" (no of course it isn't). It poses "no medical risk" (not true). Then there's "scientific evidence to support [the] belief that inhaling other people's smoke causes cancer simply does not exist" and Modern evolutionary biologists "rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions" (to say nothing of a wealth of independently corroborating evidence). Not to mention his endorsement of a charlatan he described as "the world's foremost authority on asbestos science," until aforesaid expert was convicted under the Trade Descriptions Act for lying about his professional qualifications. --TS 01:14, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

From howler: (Especially in British English, a howler is a mistake so egregious that the person catching it howls with laughter.) --TS 01:16, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

There's a lot of personal opinion in your statement, but some of it does appear to be supported by sources, which is our bar for relevancy:

• I think you mean that the references to Booker's books are mainly book reviews. This is a valid point, but see my final point below.
• You admit that the hockey stick graph is controversial but has been affirmed by scientists. That is a valid point, and that, of course, would be included in an article about the hockey stick controversy.
• All the rest of your statement is unsupported personal opinion. If you know of other books that criticize the hockey stick graph but which you find more credible than Booker's book, please list them here along with the RS's that support their credibility. Cla68 (talk) 01:29, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Booker's notability as a journalist and if his book is a RS

Sources

• While Tony compiles his list, I'll walk the walk by adding some more sources to verify the notability and credibility of Christopher Booker as a journalist:
  • Ivereigh, Austen. "Summer Reading." Commonweal 132.12 (2005): 29+.
  • Gilbert, Mark. "The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union." The Historian 67.4 (2005): 787+.
  • Bennett, James C. "Dreaming Europe in a wide-awake world." The National Interest 78 (2004): 119+.
  • Berry, Ralph. "The great euro deception." Contemporary Review 285.1665 (2004): 239+.
  • Booker, Christopher. "Mind over matter." Spectator 31 Jan. 2009: 35+. [Plus several more articles and columns by Booker for this journal].
  • "Scared to death; from BSE to global warming--how scares are costing us the earth. (reprint, 2007)." Reference & Research Book News (2008)
  • Stewart, Graham. "Too much zeal." Spectator 5 Jan. 2008: 23.
  • "The great deception; can the European Union survive? 2d ed." Reference & Research Book News (2006).
  • Walsh, Felicity D. "Booker, Christopher. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories." Library Journal 130.2 (2005): 78
  • "Vaccination 'could have prevented FMD crisis'." Agra Europe (2001): N/2
  • "Nice and Beyond: the parting of the ways?" New Statesman [1996] 20 Nov. 2000: 29
  • Bilefsky, Daniel. "A one-man debunking band." New Statesman [1996] 2 Jan. 1998: 26+
  • Adonis, Andrew. "The Castle of Lies: Why Britain Must Get Out of Europe." New Statesman [1996] 29 Nov. 1996: 42+.
  • "The End of the New.(Books)." Time 6 July 1970: 73
• This is only a partial list from Academic One File (one half of Infotrac). I'll add more later. Cla68 (talk) 03:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Dorsey, Erica. "Scared to Death: from BSE to global warming: how scares are costing us the Earth." Reviewer's Bookwatch Dec. 2009
  • "Here are my four columns of wisdom; Notebook." Times [London, England] 14 July 2008: 22.- "There may be more than a billion books in the Library of Congress but there are only seven basic plots. Or so Christopher Booker argues in a fantastically entertaining book of the same name."

Discussion on Booker

Constantly bringing up his past errors is beginning to look like a non-sequitur. Can we just focus on the work he did in relation to this issue? People didn't dismiss Principia Mathematica because the author had dabbled in alchemy, did they?Jprw (talk) 06:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

No, they dismiss Booker's book because it's one sided and inaccurate, as above. . .dave souza, talk 09:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you or they read it? Jprw (talk) 10:53, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't need to: I looked him up in Wikipedia and found his track record: Dangerously wrong on asbestos, dangerously wrong on tobacco smoke, dangerously wrong on BSE and CJD, quoting nonsense from a later-convicted scientific fraudster, wrong on intelligent design and evolution... It's amazing what you can learn from Wikipedia. There's no need to to give him uncritical airtime elsewhere, especially not in this article as he is no kind of respected expert source in this area. --Nigelj (talk) 11:35, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

His previous alleged errors are a non-sequitur here. Let's deal with this particular point and how it may relate to this particular sub-section. What you are in fact saying is that you feel authorised to dismiss a well researched and referenced book without having read it, and that Booker is guilty until proven innocent – this would appear to clearly be in contravention of WP: NPV. Also "It's amazing what you can learn from Wikipedia" is clearly sarcastic and in contravention of WP:CIVIL. This page is turning into a swirling cloud of poison and antipathy directed at Booker and Wikipedia in my opinion deserves better.Jprw (talk) 12:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I feel free to dismiss the polemic of an author who has been proved non-expert, irrelevant, unhelpful and wrong on several other important topics in the past, and has shown no particular previous knowledge or expertise in this area of science either. That's how a critical reader chooses what is worth the time and effort when a simple search shows more than 30,000 current books on Amazon that have an input to this debate (far more than anyone would read). "It's amazing what you can learn from Wikipedia" is clearly a reminder to us all that when we state facts or connections in this website, other people, when exploring outside the limits of their own expertise, will expect to learn from what we write, not be fed biassed or ill-informed opinion. There are no notable connections between what this author may think and any significant aspect of the actual history or work of the IPCC unless other reliable sources tell us that the IPCC have decided to take his analyses and advice to heart. --Nigelj (talk) 14:24, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for compiling that list, Cla. I do hope you've read them all to check whether each one supports the significance of Booker's work or dismisses it as fringe nonsense. I don't see that you've shown the book to be particularly significant in relation to this article, but do think you support the general point that arguments over the "hockey stick graph" have some relevance to the IPCC, which is what this article is about. You'll be delighted to find that there's already a subsection dealing with the limited relevance it has for the IPCC. Hopefully your research can contribute to the main article on the hockey stick topic. . . dave souza, talk 09:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the list ... seems like time to work on proposed wording to add appropriate IPCC related content form these sources, and others. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:39, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

What you are in fact saying is that you feel authorised to dismiss a well researched and referenced book without having read it, and that Booker is guilty until proven innocent - no; the book is a polemic by a polemicist, and has no place in this article. Stop pushing it William M. Connolley (talk) 22:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

William, your opinion is noted, but Booker's book meets our standards of RS. Fortunately, we're in a position in which we don't have to decide who is right and who is wrong, we just, neutrally, report what the RS are saying. All we need to do is attribute his opinion, "In Christopher Booker's opinion, the hockey stick graph..." and let the reader decide on its veracity and credibility. As I add more references supporting Booker's credentials as a journalist, perhaps you can help Tony out in finding and posting a list of sources that contain criticism of the hockey stick graph that you feel are better than Booker's book? Cla68 (talk) 22:43, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Your opinion is also noted, but your arguments are wrong. Booker is a RS for his own opinions, but his opinions are of no interest to this article - try global warming controversy or other misc stuff instead. There are plenty of other people with opinions on the IPCC, including you, and their opinions are of no interest or value either William M. Connolley (talk) 22:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I established above that the hockey stick graph controversy is significant with a mention of it in almost 200 RS. Booker's book is relevant here because he, apparently, extensively discusses the history and use of the graph by the IPCC. Again, William, please list sources that criticize the hockey stick graph that you feel are more credible than Booker. Sources, please, we need sources. Cla68 (talk) 22:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes, and again the HSC is already summarized here. But Booker strangely enough isn't mentioned in that article, for rather the same reason that we've turned around here again and again: Booker's opinion is not notable in that context. You are making a classic fallacy here: HSC is notable; Booker is notable; Booker writes about the HSC; Ergo Bookers opinion the HSC is notable...... Sorry but we would need substantial secondary reliable sources that state that Bookers opinion on the HSC is notable, and it does need to be rather substantial, since as you've shown (and we already knew) there are thousands of references on the HSC. (and hundreds of notable people who've stated things about it). Do please try not to reverse WP:BURDEN --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I just checked WP:RS, and nothing you just said is contained in that policy. Please go check my FA articles on Guadalcanal Campaign. I suspect that if I looked up most of the author names of the sources I used for those articles, I wouldn't find anything that proves that they have particular expertise on World War II, the Pacific campaign, or the Battle of Guadalcanal. Their books, however, do meet the definition of a RS, becuase they were published by reputable publishing houses, as is Booker's book. In summary, WP's policies allow the use of Booker's opinion because his book is an RS. Cla68 (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Why would you check WP:RS, when this is about due weight? Again: What secondary reliable sources consider Booker's book and opinion on the HSC interesting and notable? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:35, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you saying that Booker's opinion is a fringe or significantly minority viewpoint? If so, we can debate whether that is true or not, and, if true, whether that necessarily disqualifies his view from being discussed in this article. Cla68 (talk) 23:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The trouble is Cla, that we haven't got any secondary reliable sources to guide us, any which way. It doesn't matter what we think, that is the whole point... On the other hand we have loads of reliable sources on opinons on the HSC, that have been weighted in secondary reliable sources. Bookers has not - thus is a non-notable source. Simple as that. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Booker's book "isn't notable?" I see nothing in WP:RS that says that a RS has to be "notable" before it can be used. Where did you get that? Cla68 (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Notable on the topic. Notable here used in the regular english sense. And for a description of that, we turn to WP:WEIGHT. Which tells us that when we have to chose between references/opinions/whatever we have to be guided by what secondary reliable sources tell us are the notable mainstream, minority or fringe opinions on the topic. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, will you summarize for me what Booker's opinion is on the HSC and why that is a fringe theory? Cla68 (talk) 23:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Mu. (try reading what i'm writing). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:04, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Kim, I'm going to go out on a limb here and take a wild guess. In your opinion, is Booker's opinion incredible, not because of what his opinion is, but because Booker is not a notable climate scientist? Cla68 (talk) 00:13, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)When you have to chose between loads of scholarly references, several academic assessments, books and articles written by expert (or inside) sources to the controversy - where do you think that opinion books by political pundits come in, with regards to weight? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, judging by the sheer number of articles that I'm finding about Booker and his work, he is a notable journalist. What makes his opinion more notable, IMO, is that he is not a career climate change debunker. He writes on a number of different subjects, therefore giving him the status of an independent observer. It sounds like you're saying that the elements of his opinion aren't fringe, but that he is unqualified to give an opinion in the first place. Am I correct that that's what you're saying? Cla68 (talk) 23:45, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but you are back to the same fallacy as before. Had you been talking about Bookers opinion on various Euroscepticism subjects, then you may have had a point. (since that is one topic, where Bookers opinion is considered interesting). But on this particular topic, where a multitude of scientists and other notable sources have written about the topic - it gets down to weight. And thus we must turn to what secondary RS's tell us is notable on the topic. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Again, are you saying that Booker's opinion is fringe (WP:V) or non-reliable (WP:RS)? Which one? Cla68 (talk) 23:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Do i have to repeat myself? I just answered that question above, not 10 minutes ago. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:57, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, will you summarize for me what Booker's opinion is on the HSC and why that is a fringe theory? Is his opinion on the HSC significantly different from other critics who you, apparently, find more reliable but which you have not yet named? Cla68 (talk) 00:00, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyone? Can anyone summarize Booker's opinion on the HSC and it's relation to the IPCC and why that opinion is so fringe that it doesn't merit any mention in this article? Cla68 (talk) 00:10, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• Okay, if I can summarize where we're at right now. The objections to Booker appear to be, not that he isn't a notable journalist, or that his book doesn't meet the definition of a reliable source, but that his opinion isn't notable because no other sources support the contention that his opinion on the subject is notable and his opinion is therefore undue weight. As I see it, there are several problems with this position:
  • Wikipedia policy does not require that level of stringency in allowing information or opinion from a reliable source. If the book is an RS, it is allowed, subject to WP:Fringe, but see below.
  • There is definitely a controversy about the hockey graph, as we have a separate article on it, and the graph, as the sources show, is related to the IPCC since that organization has used the graph in their publications. So, the contention that the controversy surrounding the graph doesn't belong in this article doesn't seem to carry much weight.
  • WP:Fringe states that singular or outlandish theories must be supported by stronger sourcing. No one has been able to demonstrate here that Booker's opinions on this subject meets this definition. In fact, when asked, none of the editors who were objecting to Booker's opinion could even summarize what it is.
  • So, since the controversy is real and notable, and Booker is a notable journalist and has written a RS on the subject, and no evidence has been presented that his opinion is singularly incredible, his opinion can be used. Cla68 (talk) 01:12, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'm confused by this whole debate. What does any of this have to do with this article? This isn't an article about the hockey stick. So why is Booker's chapter about the hockey stick a notable source for this article? Guettarda (talk) 01:23, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

From what I understand, Booker goes into extensive detail about the history of the graph and its development and use by the IPCC in its publications. Could someone with the book confirm what I'm saying or not? I guess I need to buy this book. Cla68 (talk) 01:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

(a) Does that belong in this article? Doesn't an extensive discussion of the hockey stick create undue weight issues? And, (b) umm, isn't that the sort of thing you establish first, before debating all this stuff? Guettarda (talk) 01:40, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, did this book really have a notable impact on the hockey-stick controversy itself, one that would require mention in a one-paragraph summary of the topic? (Note that this is different from just being a notable book on the topic.) If not, then why bother mentioning the book at all? Lots of books have been written about lots of things; that doesn't mean they merit name-dropping in a Wikipedia article.— DroEsperanto (talk) 01:52, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

So, what do we have - and 80-100,000 bytes discussing adding an opinion of dubious merit to a 179 word, 1151-character section of the article. Guettarda (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the dramatic nature of source supression, not even moving forward on productive content to honor to the sources. There is bad faith going on around these sources and we are all suffering the extrema view to discard them based on the POV a few editors hold dearly. Simply attributing the text could work wonders here in a collaborative environment, absent that, attribute the long discussion to the negative obstructions denying reasonable sources. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Well that's the thing I've been trying to figure out. Where does anyone make the case that this source is in any way relevant to this article? It seems to be an extremely long-winded attempt to make the case for an irrelevant source. Guettarda (talk) 02:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the argument from irrelevance is particularly persuasive. Why is the view of Booker, a fringe critic known for his extraordinary, quite perverse and frequently contrafactual statements on science including climate science, relevant to this article?

If people want to know the opinions of cranks on this subject or any other, they can choose from thousands of blog sites. --Tasty monster 08:45, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Cla68 for clarifying above where we are at. The basic point I have tried to make above is that Chapter 4 of The Real Global Warming Disaster (which is a prominent publication in the UK) contains a blow by blow, extremely well sourced, chronological account of how the hockey stick graph came to feature prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report. On this particular point Booker carried out an exhaustive and well researched work that would IMO merit a reference (one very short sentence). What has been happening on this page is that editors have been so blinded by their prejudice towards Booker (based it seems on his alleged past errors) that they cannot countenance anything of his appearing. This despite the fact that, as a founder (and contributing editor for nearly fifty years) of the magazine Private Eye (in the UK this is a very high profile current affairs magazine, see the Wikipedia article on it) Booker perhaps may have been well qualified to expose and carry out an investigation into any wrongdoing and dubious activity that led to the Hockey Stick controversy in the first place.Jprw (talk) 08:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

a blow by blow, extremely well sourced - no: this is only your assertion. And you're forgetting "hopelessly biased" as a further part. exhaustive and well researched work - no; again, this is only your assertion, and it is false. Bookers association with Private Eye obviously doesn't qualify him to write about science; expose and carry out an investigation into any wrongdoing and dubious activity - ah, at last we come to your actual motives in this; which is to impune the professional honesty of MBH et al.. Now that is clear, your argument collapses William M. Connolley (talk) 10:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Was the hockey stick controversy about science or reporting methods? If it was the latter, then Booker is perfectly qualified to investigate it. "at last we come to your actual motives" is just paranoid nonsense please retract it.Jprw (talk) 10:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

About science: Yes. About reporting methods: No. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 11:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

As for your "wrongdoing and dubious activity" i have no idea where you get that from, especially since there have been two thorough investigations, and subsequent senate hearings, into MBH98 with no hint at all at any "wrongdoings" (or for that matter "dubious activity"). The controversy was about statistical methodology, which by now is rather irrelevant, since all later reconstructions (by a have given basically the same results. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 12:00, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Instead of "wrongdoings" and "dubious activity" I should have written "flawed methods/inaccuracies in reporting" or whatever it was that led to the controversy in the first place. I am willing to retract my choice of words -- is William M. Connolley willing to retract his vicious and repeated ad hominem attacks on Christopher Booker?Jprw (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

What "inaccuracies in reporting" are you talking about? The Hockey stick controversy has nothing to do with such. Do please explain. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:02, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Questionable source with a bad reputation for fact-checking and accuracy

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. In accordance with WP:V#Questionable source, Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, [including] publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves... Questionable sources are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties.

• Press Complaints Commission >> Adjudicated Complaints >> Mr Bob Ward – complaint that an article by Christopher Booker headlined "Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told'" published in The Sunday Telegraph on 29 March 2009 was inaccurate and misleading. Booker's article contained a number of inaccurate and misleading statements, including that sea levels had dropped around Tuvalu in recent decades, when the scientific evidence indicated that they had, in fact, risen (this was repeated in a second article published on 25 July 2009). His article had also inaccurately stated that the satellite-based evidence of the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) had been altered to show a global sea-level rise based on the findings of a single tidal gauge in Hong Kong. In fact, this alteration had been scientifically justified, and the final conclusion on the global sea-level rise was based on multiple measurements from satellite altimetry and tidal gauges based around the world. The Commission stated that have the right to publish controversial or minority opinions, but they are obliged to distinguish between comment, conjecture and fact. The article was presented as a comment piece, but did not make clear the basis for the statement that sea levels been falling around Tuvalu in recent years. It appeared to be the case that the claim relied upon a particular piece of research from 2001, which has since been updated (to suggest that sea levels were, in fact, rising between 1993 and 2003). The Sunday Telegraph initially refused to publish a letter correcting these errors, but at a late stage offered to publish such a letter, and this offer was held to be sufficient.
• Robin McKie on Scared to Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North | Books | The Observer – the book claims that the entire solar system is warming intensely due to solar warming, on the basis of a few news stories. It repeated misquotation of Cambridge astrophysicist Nigel Weiss sourced to Canada's Financial Post, which had already posted a retraction and an apology, under legal threat from Weiss. Booker and North also allege passive smoking is safe, speed cameras cost lives, and BSE was never a threat to UK health. They misrepresent a National Academy report, and "say the 'hockey stick' graph commonly used to show Earth's rapidly rising temperatures has been discredited and dropped from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's last assessment report. In fact, it appears on page 467."
• Booker's Notebook article claimed that white asbestos "poses no risk to human health and is chemically identical to talcum powder." Timothy Walker, Director General, Health & Safety Executive, responded Booker's claims are irresponsible - Telegraph saying "White asbestos, particularly in the commercial chrysotile form most commonly found in buildings, is accepted by most worldwide scientific opinion to be a proven carcinogen." Booker continued to claim it was safe, and was rebutted by the HSE.
• George Monbiot: The Guardian – "The Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker has published 38 articles about asbestos - and every one is wrong". Booker promoted the claims of John Bridle, who fraudulently claimed qualifications. Booker said that white asbestos cement "poses no measurable risk to health", and misrepresented a HSE paper to support the claim. When the BBC reported on the issue, Booker called it "a concerted move by the powerful 'anti-asbestos lobby' to silence Bridle". Booker also made an incorrect claim about Mann's 2008 study showing support for the 'hockey stick' graph, and in February 2008 wrote a piece titled "So it appears that Arctic ice isn't vanishing after all" saying that September 2007, he reported, "sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings" which showed that, having shrunk in the summer, the ice cover had increased again. He did not seem to realise that it had increased in the winter.

Booker's work clearly lacks a good reputation for fact checking and accuracy, and is questionable. It is acceptable only as a source on his own views, to be put in the context of reliable third party views. . . dave souza, talk 12:28, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Superb work by Dave Souza. I think we've established convincingly that Mr Booker's expression of fringe views is tainted even further by his reputation for exceptionally poor scholarship on the subject at and as well as in other science-related subjects. Piere are plenty of reliable works on this subject, none of them written by Christopher Booker. --Tasty monster 12:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

We are going around in circles. All those cases listed above have nothing to do with the subject under discussion, as discussed above. Jprw (talk) 13:28, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Did you even look at WP:V#Questionable sources? WP:V is a fundamental policy and if Booker is renowned for anything it is for being a questionable source: "Questionable sources are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties". Not a circle; the end. Please don't try to restart the same discussion over and over, enough time and effort has been wasted on it here already. Try getting your thoughts included into the Christopher Booker article, where they may be more relevant. --Nigelj (talk) 14:03, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Dave, looks like this work would be beneficial elsewhere. Jprw is correct, the issue specifically at hand is the IPCC citations. Perhaps actual content would help make this issue real and have less circular motions. Then maybe other sources could arrive on point. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:43, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that i really can't make heads or tails of your comment here. Could you please explain what you mean by "IPCC citations", "make this issue real" as well as "arrive on point"? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps what he means is that the issue at hand is being skirted around by focusing on non-sequiturs. I intend writing a synopsis of chapter 4 on this page at the weekend and then we might be able to more accurately judge if it represents the work of a "lunatic maverick operating on the fringe".Jprw (talk) 16:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes thank you, focusing on working specific content will be the best path here. We must have faith there may be other sources to corroborate Booker's IPCC points, which appear to be "likely" right now. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 17:40, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought, at first, the section subtitle referred to the IPCC report itself. It certainly doesn't have a reputation for fact-checking (2350 / 2035), but it may still have a record for accuracy. The scientific judgment is not yet in.

Still, IPCC's criticism of Booker is self-serving opinion, and should be ignored. His errors in other scientific matters seem relevant; however, if he is criticizing IPCC methodology, rather than results, the relevance seems only marginal. It still doesn't belong in this article, if not in the hockey stick article, itself. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:27, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Still, IPCC's criticism of Booker - pardon? IPCC has never heard of Booker. What crit are you talking about? William M. Connolley (talk) 18:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I misread one of the criticisms as coming from IPCC; apparently it was from you. Still, a criticism from one of the scientists criticized has minimal weight, even if notable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:57, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Again - why is this being discussed here? Booker's chapter appears to discuss the hockey stick. How is that relevant here? 1151 characters. Here. No indication of how the source could possibly be used here without creating major problems of undue weight. Guettarda (talk) 18:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

This question can be better answered by examining proposed content. As for IPPC hockey stick relevance, this Booker source may help [51] I am certain the IPCC hockey stick issue can be substantiated beyond Booker, then this thread won't just be about Booker, but about the IPCC content for this article. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:04, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Booker is shown by independent sources to have a reputation for inaccurate reporting, and you quote him in support of himself? As for his claims about the Amazon and his credulous reporting of "Dr. North", note that the BBC reports expert opinion that "The IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced", and if anything it understated the dangers, shown by massive tree mortality in 2005. More on the issue from someone well qualified in Media and Communications. . . dave souza, talk 19:38, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

ZP5: (a) that's not an article about the book, so it says nothing about how you propose the book be used here, (b) that's not a proposed addition, and (c) once again, how do you propose to add material, sourced to the book, to this article, without creating undue weight problems? Guettarda (talk) 19:59, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to fix any perceived problems with WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV as a guide. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:27, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Content Again

Restarting on content discussion to property meet Wikipedia:ATTRIBUTEPOV. Please propose appropriate changes to meet this guideline for inclusion here [52].

"A detailed account of how the graph came to be prominently featured in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report was presented in The Real Global Warming Disaster, a 2009 book by Christopher Booker." [53], [54]

Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:22, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

We've already determined that he advocates a fringe position, is famous for intemperate attacks on mainstream science, and was found to misrepresent sources by the PCC. Tasty monster 19:40, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a source specific to the "graphs" discussed here that the IPCC included? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:43, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, in the above, when I refer to the PCC of course I mean the Press Complaints Commission. Tasty monster 19:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Once again, "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." per WP:V. Zulu Papa 5 is quoting two articles by Booker to support the significance of Booker. Epic fail. . . dave souza, talk 19:45, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Zulu Papa 5, I do hope you're not going to argue that this follow notorious for getting the facts wrong even on matters of schoolboy chemistry may be treated as a reliable source on scientific matters. Tasty monster 19:48, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I hope this thread stays focused on the producing content with sources, start another one or contribute else where OR is an appreciated distraction. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure. Find reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and remember that Booker doesn't meet that standard. . . dave souza, talk 21:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this IPCC article will be based on a reliable, third-party, published source. Booker meets that, attempting to redefine it to exclude the source won't look good, it will be transparent Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

See above, and note that undue weight should not be given to Booker's writing as it is an unreliable fringe source. If you want similar views included in any articles, find reliable sources not written by Booker. . . dave souza, talk 00:12, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

You know this prejudice will no stand appeal given the source and Booker's existing status in Wikipedia. (Unlike the IPCC, Wikipedia has an appeal process for source suppression or improper attribution issues.) You have my permission to escalate this dispute to the appropriate notice board. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

"A detailed account of how the graph came to be prominently featured in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report was presented in The Real Global Warming Disaster, a 2009 book by Christopher Booker". That's your choice of text? How is a plug for Booker's book notable? Why don't we add a plug for Schneider's book? Or any of dozens of other books? And how does dedicating 15% of the section to a plug for Booker's book not give undue weight to this? Guettarda (talk) 03:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for focusing on content, as said above, the sentence intended to Wikipedia:ATTRIBUTEPOV please feel free to do a better job on it. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems fine to me as it is ZP5, slap it in :) mark nutley (talk) 15:29, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

This source will make it better [55] with specific Hockey Stick info. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:44, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

So, several reputable sources listed above show that Booker has no reputation for fact checking and honesty, and the source you find to support him is the similarly contrarian James Delingpole, noted more for his blog than for his weekly column in The Spectator which you cite. It's a political magazine, a very questionable source for science. He does share a reputation with Booker, as "Prolific climate deniers such as Ian Plimer, James Delingpole and Christopher Booker who deliberately spread untruths on climate change",[56] and indeed has uncritically promoted Plimer's disreputable claims about climate science.[57][58] Very dubious support. . . dave souza, talk 18:22, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Should I take a try at updating the proposed content's attribution with your findings? I am still having trouble with the specific hockey stick relevance, but have faith it can be worked in. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:30, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

It's now blatantly obvious from the above (to some of which I contributed from my Tasty monster account via cellphone) that there will never be consensus for inclusion of the proposed content as it stands. The chosen source, Christopher Booker, is far too prone to opinionated excess and to embarrassing errors of fact, to be widely accepted as a serioua scholar of science. To cap it all, he represents a fringe opinion. Please select an analyst with a better track record of scholarship. --TS 18:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

This is ridiculous, this book meets all wp requirements for use as a source, plus this is not about "climate science" this is about the controversy and how the ipcc used the hs. This is a wp:rs weather you guys like it or not, end of. mark nutley (talk) 18:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

It's becoming obvious this article has a double standard, while the source is accepted in other articles, there are some editors who would denigh a relevant (carefully attributed) passage in this article. This is a serious cause for concern. I am considering Probationary Enforcement request on "good faith" to Wikipedia WP:RS; however pursuing the reliable source notice board would seem to be first in order after a content addition. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Let me know which other articles it's accepted in. I'd like to review the appropriateness of those references. Any article on Booker himself, and the book, would be fine. Beyond that I'm not so sure. Also, anything in any Wikipedia article that represents Booker as a widely accepted scholar of science would be cause for concern. --TS 18:42, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Once again the attributed content says "A detailed account of how the graph came to be prominently featured in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report was presented in The Real Global Warming Disaster, a 2009 book by Christopher Booker" QUESTION, what source did you get " Booker as a widely accepted scholar of science" from? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Why else would we want to include a reference to a work by a highly opinionated person with fringe views in this article? If you have another reason that isn't negated by WP:UNDUE, I don't believe you've used it above. --TS 19:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

That proposed text reads like, and is, nothing more than an artificially inserted advertising link for the book. If I found anything like that in any normal article I would remove it as WP:BOOKSPAM. --Nigelj (talk) 19:25, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for sounding like a brokenr record ... fix it if you like with your sources. It is intended to attribute the POV which would not included and editors OR. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:35, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I often don't understand what people mean when they use lots of jargon. What does the following phrase mean? "It is intended to Wikipedia:ATTRIBUTEPOV which would not included and editors OR." --TS 00:45, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What does it mean to you? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:10, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

IPCC errors ... Addressing Undue

Obviously, I've attempted to have folks provide content to balance the POV in the above proposed text to their liking. Regarding undue weight, which can also be addressed with attribution, best I can tell Booker holds the "majority opinion" on the IPCC hockey stick errors issue. Don't see any what could be fringe about attributing the errors in the text under proposal? Really, are folks trying to dispute the many reliable sources that claim these errors exist? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The dispute is over poor sourcing, over which thousands of words have been written--some of them by you. Go back to your sources, select an unimpeachably reliable one, and move on from there. You cannot require other editors to support your poorly sourced content by providing sourcing that you cannot be bothered to provide. --TS 00:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

There is duplicity about this, some say sources, some say undue (others say anything they want and show little faith in our duty to work on content). I've pointed to three relevant sources from folks with an editorial process. They consistently publish on this topic, they may have a few errors, but then so does the IPCC, would you discredit the IPCC and ignore them for their errors? I have faith any errors can be corrected with future sources. Besides, no one sought to correct errors in the proposed content but me. Would you agree that its time to take the source issue to then next level outside of this talk page? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 01:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to make whatever edit you want from reliable sources with attention to due weight. But you mention three sources, whereas I thought we were just discussing the attempt to get a particular unreliable source into the article, firstly in "See also" and then in a reference that read like a rather blatant advert for a book. If you have some other edit to make, make it.

Perhaps a distinct new section should be opened on this page to discuss these new sources.

Please don't use words like "duplicity" unless you know what they mean. I assume you do not know what the word means, else you would not have used it. --TS 01:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC) (and sorry, yet another reminder that I am the same editor who uses the monicker "Tasty monster". I'm going to fix the sig of that user.)

Here this content proposal "A detailed account of how the graph came to be prominently featured in the IPCC's Third Assessment Report was presented in The Real Global Warming Disaster, a 2009 book by Christopher Booker." [59], [60], [61]. In plain language, you may attribute the sources to address your undue concerns. For clarity, I am attempting to have relevant, notable and reliable sources included while facing accusation of two offenses (RS and Undue). Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Two things. First, the first two sources were written by the author himself, and are therefore unreliable, and the third is a columnist for a right-wing publication, also not particularly qualified to judge the factual content of the book. Second, I still don't see what the purpose of the proposed content is, other than a plug for a book.— DroEsperanto (talk) 02:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

So the "three relevant sources from folks with an editorial process" you are referring to, Zulu Papa 5, are Booker, Booker, and Delingpole? Is DroEsperanto correct? I do hope you realise there is a distinction between verifiability and this watered down version..."folks with an editorial process" rubbish. These chaps are opinion columnists. They're entitled to their opinion and the newspapers that employ them are entitled to pay them for broadcasting it. Their expressed opinions are reliable sources for those very opinions. In that they are mere pundits, that doesn't go very far. --TS 02:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Again, the content purpose serves wiki, with new and valuable IPCC information that is relevant to the article, and can not be found elsewhere, while reinforcing the majority opinion on the IPCC hockey stick errors with multiple reliable sources without attributing editors original research or systematic source bias/prejudice. What's the purpose of not moving this dispute forward, off this talk page now ... can we agree on that next resolution step without distractions? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 05:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Tony, I'll say it again, your personal opinions on the authors of the sources are irrelevant. We don't do that. Wikipedia policy does not support that. We just report what the sources say..e.g. "Booker says that IPCC erred in its use of the hockey stick graph by [whatever he says], but Paucheri has countered by stating that the basic science behind the hockey stick is sound." or something along those lines. We give a neutral presentation of what the sources are saying. Anything else is contra policy. Now, I think I asked you before, if you have better sources of hockey stick graph criticism than Booker, please list them here. We don't need more personal opinion on Booker or anyone else, it's not getting us anywhere. Cla68 (talk) 09:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but WP:WEIGHT hasn't suddenly been turned off. At all points in any editorial process on Wikipedia we must weight which sources that represent mainstream/minority/fringe viewpoints and chose accordingly. You can check Hockey stick controversy for various references - which is the section that is summarized here per WP:SUMMARY. Booker's book is relatively unknown, it is not written by a subject matter expert, in fact it is written by a political pundit, who (even according to Delingpole) has a conspiracy outlook on the subject. And we have good references to show that Booker has an abysmal grasp on science (see above). That very much indicates that the reference belongs in the tiny minority/fringe category. So adding it here (even attributed) is a gross violation of WP:UNDUE (not to mention a break of WP:SUMMARY) - and do notice that weight is a central concept of WP:NPOV. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 12:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Again, more personal opinion on Booker, which is inappropriate and probably a violation of our BLP rules. Actually, however, I'm coming to agree with you that if Booker's book is used anywhere on this topic, it probably needs to be used in the Hockey stick controversy article first. I'm going to purchase the book, and in due time you may start seeing citations to that book starting to appear in various AGW articles. The book meets our definition as a reliable source and it sounds like it has a lot of good information on several of the controversies surrounding the AGW theories. Cla68 (talk) 23:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Cla, your personal opinion that Booker's book is a reliable source even though evidence clearly shows him as a #Questionable source with a bad reputation for fact-checking and accuracy is noted, as is your determination to insert his fringe views into various articles. Please take care to comply fully with relevant policies regarding the weight to be given to such questionable sources, and the presentation of fringe views. . . dave souza, talk 10:42, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Dave, but remember that: (1) no one has been able to show that Booker's opinion on the hockey stick controversy are fringe, in fact, no one here has been able or willing to even summarize what his actual opinion is, and (2) it's not my personal opinion that the book is a reliable source. Please read the policy again. The book is published by a reputable publishing house. That's all that is required. In this case, moreover, we also have it established that Booker is a notable journalist, having his own entry here in the 'pedia, thereby making the source even more qualified as reliable. Cheers! Cla68 (talk) 11:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Don't you see the fallacies? Climate change is not a matter of 'opinion'. It really doesn't matter what a notable journalist's 'opinion' of a 1,000-year temperature graph is. If he was a notable scientist, then the results of his research, calculations and analysis may be important, but where did people get the idea that climate science is so easy that we can all have a go at improving it? Journalists and political pundits do not contribute to scientific research, and their opinions should not be put into a context where it appears that they do. --Nigelj (talk) 11:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you saying that only scientists can be involved in controversial scientific issues? Please read this article, including the footnotes. In that incident, US Navy scientists determined that a gun turret explosion was caused by a man-made chemical or electrical detonator. Investigative journalists (such as Booker seems to be in this case) helped expose some inconsistencies in their investigations and methods. Other scientists from Sandia National Laboratories got involved and their investigation produced a different conclusion. The Navy then tried to bury the whole thing, but another investigative journalist wrote about what had happened in a book that was published by a reputable publisher, providing some much needed transparency into what had taken place. Science and investigative journalism definitely do mix, and that is one reason why our reliable sourcing guidelines probably read like they do. Remember, we just report what the sources say and leave it up to the reader to check the sources and decide on their own what amount of credibility to give to them. We don't care who is right and who is wrong, we're neutral. Right? Cla68 (talk) 11:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

<- Having scanned through that other article, it appears that the rebuttal of the Navy's initial position resulted from "50 hours exploring the ramifications on a Cray supercomputer" and various experimental investigations that concluded in May 1990. The book you talk about was published in 1999. So a similar timeline here would be (a) IPCC publish rubbish, (b) media (inc Booker) question the rubbish (c) IPCC withdraw all previous statements and Booker is proclaimed investigative hero (d) Someone else writes a book describing how Booker overthrew Communist plot. (d) is the book that we would cover in the same way as Glimpse of Hell. Of course this is all fantasy, and we are not at (a) yet, let alone (d). --Nigelj (talk) 12:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I just ordered Booker's book (along with a Robyn Hitchcock and a Pixies CDs). After I read it I'll decide if it has any useful information to add to any of Wikipedia's articles. If it does, I'll add the information, in compliance, of course, with WP:NPOV. If that occurs you'll be able to see what I mean by investigative journalism being a useful source of information on a controversy, whether it's science-related or not. Cla68 (talk) 12:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

May I congratulate you on your choice. Of course, Surfer Rosa remains their great masterpiece. Jprw (talk) 17:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Booker's sources

At the risk of repeating myself, chapter 4 of Booker's book specifically deals with how the HSC came to be an integral part of the IPCC's 3rd Assessment Report. All chapter 4 is is a chronological, very well-sourced account of the controversy which I found to be meticulous, impressively put together and extremely informative. It certainly did not strike me as a fringe piece of work that was extreme or in any sense 'wacky'. The various comments above (ad hominem attacks that in my view are extremely unhelpful and gross violations of WP: BLP; and the exclusive focus of only criticisms of Booker in the media – no mention at all of the investigative journalism he has done; for example, for Private Eye, for close on 50 years, or the positive reviews that TRGWD received – must call into question the neutrality of editors) re: Booker therefore would not only seem to be misplaced in the present case but a deflection from the work that he did in this chapter that could serve as a useful, relevant, and valuable reference in the relevant sub-section of the article. (Does any other editor know of a 30 page account with 50 references on this particular controversy? Anyone?) Of course, the author is coming at it from the point of view of climate change skepticism (we all know that) but the overriding impression that I have is that it is a thorough and competent piece of investigative journalism. I invite editors to assume good faith (on my part) when I say that all the chapter is is a chronological, very well researched account of the controversy that is written from the point of view of someone who is skeptical of the real extent of man made global warming. Anyway, I've decided to list below verbatim Booker's sources for this chapter. I also invite editors to again assume good faith and say honestly whether they believe the list of sources below, which support a 30 page chronological account of this controversy, strike them as being the types of references used in the work of a fringe lunatic – or do these sources strike them as being scholarly, authoratative, exhaustive, and wholly relevant to the topic? Here are the sources:

List of sources

1. Ross McKitrick, 'What is the "hockey stick" debate about?', APEC Study Group, Australia, 4 April 2005. 2. Ross McKitrick, op. cit. 3. Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch (1999), '1996 survey of climate change scientists on attitudes to global warming and related matters', Bulletin of the Meteorological Society, 80, March 1999. 4. 'Survey of State Experts casts doubts on link between human activity and global warming'. Press Release, 1997, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Washington DC. 5. BOOKER COMMENTS: Although the graphic in the 1990 FAR report had been credited, inter alia, to Houghton, it appeared to be largely based on the work in the 50s and 60s of Professor Hubert Lamb, a distinguished British paleoclimatolgist. See Lamb's 'The Early Mediaeval Warm Epoch and its Sequel', Paleogeography, Palaeoclimatogy, Palaeoecology 1, 1965 (available through Climate Audit website), Lamb's later 1967 paper enlarging on the first book Climate, History, and the Future, 1977. Although much of Lamb’s study was based on data from Central England, he was clearly convinced that his 'Medieval Warm Epoch' was a much wider, probably worldwide phenomenon. Houghton et al said nothing in 1990 to contradict this. 6. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, p.66 7. This was the point argued by Schnedier and Rasool, op.cit, as early as 1971. 8. The third IPCC report (TAR, 2001) accepted that between 1900 and 1940 the world had warmed by 0.4 degrees C, that between 1940 and 1975 it had cooled by 0.2 degrees C (the little cooling) and that from 1975 onwards it had warmed again by 0.4 degrees, thus giving an overall warming trend for the 20th century of 0.6 degrees. 9. David Deming, 'Climate warming in North America: analysis of borehole temperatures', Science, 268, 1576-1577, see also McKitrick, op. cit 10. Quoted in McKitrick, op. cit 11. Shapoeng Huang, et al., (1997), 'Late Quaternary temperature changes seen in worldwide continental heat flow measurements', Geophysical Research Letters, 24, 1947-1950. See also McKitrick, op. cit. 12. Mann M.E., et al. (1998), 'Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the last six centuries', Nature, 392, 779-787. 13. Mann M.E., et al. (1999), 'Northern hemisphere temperatures during the last millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations', Geography Research Letters, 26. 14. BOOKER COMMENTS: SAR (1996) had predicted a rise of between 0.9 degrees C and 3.5 degrees. TAR (2001) gave a range between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees. FAR (1990) had predicted a rise between 1.5 degrees and 4.5 degrees. Thus, despite tens of billions of dollars spent on research funding, the range of uncertainty had widened on each occasion. 15. Holland, op.cit 16. Robert Foster, 'The Third IPCC Report: An Imagination Block', supplementary submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Inquiry into the Kyoto Protocol, April 2001. 17. R. Watson, 'Report to the Sixth Conference of the Parties, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 20 November 2001'. 18. Testimony of Rochard S. Lindzen before the Senate Commerce Committee, 1 May 2001. 19. BOOKER COMMENTS: At a press conference in April after the report had been published, Robert Watson denied that there had been any substantial disagreement among the scientists on the IPCC, or that there was any split within the scientific community as a whole over the human role in global warming. 'It’s not even 80:20 or 90:10', he said, 'I personally believe that it's something like 98:2 or 99:1'. Houghton on the same occasion claimed that there were not 'more than 10 scientists' in the world, versed in the arguments, who 'disagreed with the notion of human induced climate change' (UN expert: climate change skeptics a 'tiny minority', Reuters, 5 April, 2001, quoted by McKitrick, op. cit). 20. Schneider, S.H., 2001. 'What is "dangerous" climate change', Nature, 411, 17-19. These 'scenarios' had originally been published in 2000 as a 'Special Report on Emissions Scenarios' (SRES). 21. 'Bush kills global warming treaty', The Guardian, 29 March 2001. 22. 'Bush firm over Kyoto stance', CNN, 29 March 2001. 23. 'Bush secedes from Kyoto, establishes rogue state’, TheGully.com 24. ‘Bush's Kyoto stance angers UK scientists', THE, 6 April, 2001. 25. 'Presidency conclusions'. Goteborg European Council, 15-16 June 2001. 26. Greenpeace press release, 16 June 2001. 27. Directive 2002/91/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2002 on the energy performance of buildings (Official Journal L 182, 16/07/1999 P. 0001-0019). 28. Council Directive 1999/31/EC of 26 April 1999 on the landfill of waste (Official Journal L 182, 16/07/1999 P. 0001-0019) 29. 'Climate Scientist Ousted', BBC News, 12 April 2002. BOOKER COMMENTS: Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and other environmental groups claimed that the Bush administration had only campaigned to get rid of Watson in response to pressure from ExxonMobil (see Greenpeace press release, 22 April, 2002). 30. Directive 2001/77/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 September 2001 'On the promotion of electricity from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market' (Official Journal L 283 of 27 October 2001). 31. BOOKER COMMENTS: Apart from a handful of countries such as Switzerland and Norway that had mountains large enough to allow extensive use of hydroelectric power. 32. Large Combustion Plants Directive, 2001/80/EC, OJ. L 309/2, 27 November 2001. 33. 'Our Energy Future: Creating a Low Carbon Economy', presented to parliament by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, February 2003. Cm 5761. 34. E.g Professor Ian Fells of Newcastle University, who dismisses the White Paper as 'reckless' ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2795073.stm BBC News website). 35. Ross McKitrick, op.cit 36. D.A. Graybill and S.B. Idso (1993, 'Detecting the aerial fertilization effect of atmospheric co2 enrichment in tree-ring chronologies', Global Biochemical Cycles, 7. See also Singer and Avery, op. cit., chapter 5 37. BOOKER COMMENTS: Mann and his colleagues did seem to acknowledge this when, in their second paper, 'Global-scale temperature patterns' was changed to 'Northern hemisphere temperatures'. 38. National Research Council (2000), 'Reconciling observations of global temperature change' (National Academy Press). 39. Roy Spencer, 'When Science meets politics on global warming', Washington Times, 3 September 1998. BOOKER COMMENTS: Spencer's skepticism over the IPCC's reluctance to refer to satellite temperature data was to be abundantly confirmed on pp. 28-29 of its Technical Summary, where a small graph based on his satellite data was dwarfed by yet another large colour reproduction of the 'hockey stick', covering more than half the page opposite. 'Like a magician misdirecting the audience's attention’, as McKitrick was to comment, this 'sleight of hand' was obviously designed to draw attention towards Mann's graph and away from the graph of satellite temperatures which told such a different story (McKitrick, op. cit, Fig.1). 40. W. Soon and S. Baliunas, 'Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1,000 years', Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 31 January 2003. BOOKER COMMENTS: The journal's decision to publish their paper so enraged the advocates of the global warming lobby that this provoked a major internal row, resulting in half the ten editors resigning. An account of this episode by one of them, Claire Goodess of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, is published on the website of SGR (Scientists for Global Responsibility). 41. S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick, 2003, 'Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) proxy database and northern hemispheric average temperature series', Energy and Environment, 14, 752-771. BOOKER COMMENTS: In the analysis of McKintyre and McKitrick's work which follows, reference will also be made to their later paper, McKintyre and McKitrick, 2005b, 'The M & M critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere climate index, Update and applications', Energy and Environemt,16, 69-99, and also to McKitrick (2005), 'What is the "Hockey Stick" debate about?', op. cit. 42. BOOKER COMMENTS: This account of the 'hockey stick' saga is based on several sources, in particular Ross McKitrick's paper already cited 'What is the "Hockey Stick" debate about?' (2005), and his evidence to the House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs, 'The Economics of Climate Change', Vol. II, Evidence, 2005. See also David Holland, 'Bias and concealment in the IPCC Process: the Hockey Stick affair and its implications' (2007), op. cit. 43. McKitrick, House of Lords evidence, op. cit 44. Ibid. 45. McKitrick (2005), 'What is the "Hockey Stick" debate about?' op. cit. 46. Ibid. 47. McKitrick, House of Lords evidence, op. cit 48. Holland, op. cit., p. 957. 49. McKitrick (2005), 'What is the "Hockey Stick" debate about?', op. cit. p. 11 50. Nature, Vol. 430, p. 105.

Might it just be possible that the article is missing an excellently sourced reference for this controversy?Jprw (talk) 14:40, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

You are indeed repeating yourself, but your sources are revealing: McK as the first two? And so many more refs to McK? McK isn't even the competent one - that is McI. And are you pretending this is balanced? Incidentally ref 5 is very revealing - see MWP and LIA in IPCC reports for a more accurate version William M. Connolley (talk) 18:28, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

It turns out that Booker has been using fabricated quotes in his book [62] William M. Connolley (talk) 22:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh yes, the made-up John T. Houghton quote. Amazingly, I actually did a tidy-up on that article after somebody wrote about Houghton's debunking, but somehow it escaped me that a major deployment of this false quotation was in Booker's own book. --TS 22:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

As usual you are both wrong, Read This mark nutley (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Err no. As usual TS and I are right, and you're on the other side of the fence. Booker has been using fabricated quotes, and your source doesn't address the problem. Even Booker admits this: Like many others, I was misled by the internet into assuming the quote, attributed to a book written by Sir John in 1994, was genuine, and that it must have been removed from the later edition I used when compiling my own account of the global warming story. Naturally, in the face of Sir John's insistence that he never said it, we shall all in due course take steps to correct the record, as I shall do in the next edition of my book. [63]. Even Booker has accepted reality - when will you? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:48, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Even that blog piece stops short of claiming that Booker's attribution was correct. I leave the arguing over whether Houghton's own words are similar enough to those attributed to him to those who enjoy that kind of thing. Booker got it wrong. Houghton did not say what Booker says he said in the book to which Booker attributes those words. Booker's scholarship, once again, is impeached. And less of the personal attacks, please. This isn't a free-for-all on a forum. --TS 22:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Good work guys. If Booker has repudiated the use of a quote in his book, then that particular quote shouldn't be used in this article. Cla68 (talk) 23:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, Bookers comment on the Hockey-stick in the same opinion column[64], does tell us that Bookers opinion on the HSC is WP:FRINGE. He is directly contradicting the NAS panel (as well as all other subsequent independent research on paleoclimate) that examined the graph and its validity. So much for Booker being able to provide an "accurate" account of the HSC. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:33, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Anyone who disagrees with the NAS panel is "fringe"? Is that what you're asserting? Cla68 (talk) 00:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Cla68, you're no longer reading what people are writing (I've remarked on this on your talk page). Kim adds "as well as all other subsequent independent research on paleoclimate". At least read the arguments being put, so you will know what you are supposed to be responding to. --TS 00:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)On the science? Absolutely. There were two independent reviews of the HS, one of these only looked at the MBH (Wegman), and the other at all reconstructions available (NAS), both concluded that there were methodological flaws in the MBH paper, but the NAS panel confirmed that the results were consistent, across all reconstructions. As far as i know - there has been no scientific contradiction of the NAS panels result. That means that there isn't even a tiny minority scientific basis for Bookers claim. Which makes his statements fringe.... Sorry. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:49, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, could you please list sources of criticism of the hockey stick graph that you don't consider to be "fringe"? I've asked Tony to do so a couple of times, and hasn't been able or willing so far. Cla68 (talk) 01:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

We have a whole article about this: Hockey stick controversy. But the basics is this: MBH had some methodological flaws, these had no real impact on the result/graph, which has been confirmed by subsequent research and reconstructions. Ie. all subsequent reconstructions have found the same basic features, some with a bit more amplitude, but all within the error-envelope of the MBH study. This resulted in the Sphaghetti graph (which you can find at File:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png), which is the current state of paleoclimate temperature reconstructions over the last 1K years. The HCS article is a blow by blow and detailed description of the controversy. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 01:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I didn't respond to Cla68's request because it seemed to be irrelevant to the question of whether Booker's work is an adequate source. As he has himself referred to one such,the NAS study, my impression that it was not a serious question is confirmed. --TS 02:26, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for comfirming Booker as a reliable, third-party, published source and the accurate fact-checking reputation. You may have spared the notice boards a unnecessary disruption on this obvious issue for a single sentence. The IPCC should be less likely to make errors than Booker, however they still both do. We can have faith that Wikipedia's interests for content creation will be served well above an exclusionary POV to let the reader decide on the attributing errors. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 23:49, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Er Zulu Papa 5, this person you say has been confirmed as a "reliable, third-party, published source and the accurate fact-checking reputation" has just admitted that he read some nonsense on the internet that contradicted what he could see with his own eyes in his own edition of Houghton's book, and went with the nonsense he read on the internet. And that's after he was given a good ticking off by the Press Complaints Commission for another bit of bad research on climate change. This is hopeless. Give up. --TS 00:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks .. it's confirmed he checks his facts for accuracy. The quality process is not perfect but it exists for continous improvement. We can have faith in it to be reliable. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm reading a book and I find that, try as I might, I cannot personally confirm a claim I read about its contents on the internet. Of course I reject the evidence of my own eyes and assume that the internet is right. Months later somebody else notices that the claim, which I reproduced, is false, and so of course, I blame the internet for tricking me. And that's me checking my facts for accuracy, is it? --TS 02:30, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Happens all the time here in Wikipedia with WP:V. Fortunately, wiki can change quicker than the IPCC or Booker, and Wiki has no vested interests in their missionary work, like those other POVs. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 02:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

We're not going to use as a scholarly source somebody who has been ticked off by the Press Complaints Commission for publishing nonsense, and who openly admits getting other nonsense from the internet. --TS 02:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Tony, your opinion is not supported by our policies. Booker's book remains a RS according to our policy. Again, we don't decide who is right and who is wrong. We're neutral, right? We just report what the RS say. Remember, the IPCC's 4th report was found to contain nonsense, videlicet, the Himalayan meltdown prediction and the amount of land in the Netherlands that is below sea level. Will you now go on record as rejecting that document? Cla68 (talk) 04:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

You keep coming up with arguments like this. On what basis do you claim that the Booker work is a reliable source? On what basis do you write off the many independent impeachments of Booker's scholarship as my opinion? On what basis do you propose we ignore the fact that Booker espouses a tiny fringe minority opinion in the book? And don't try to side-track this onto a discussion of the WGII errors. Being neutral does not mean that we misrepresent sources. Our policies absolutely require us to use only the best sources, which Booker's work certainly is not. --TS 05:18, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

"Our policies require us to use only the best sources?" Where does it say that, because I'm not seeing it in the policy. All that is required of a book is that it be published by a reputable publishing house and that the citation be complete. That's the reason that we cite sources, so that the reader can check the source for themselved and make their own opinion on the veracity and credibility of the information. We are not allowed to do that for them when it comes to RSs, except for BLPs. It's verifiability, not truth, that we seek. The reader decides if its true or not. If there are reliable sources that dispute what Booker says in his book, go add them to his article, it doesn't bother me any as long as they're presented in an NPOV manner. Then, when we cite his book, the reader can click on the book article and read more about it. If someone disputes Booker's opinion on the graph in question, we give the other opinion as well. We don't care who is wrong and who right, right? And you didn't answer my question about the errors in the IPCC report. Do you agree or not that they discredit the entire IPCC report? Cla68 (talk) 05:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Alarmist subsection

The following subsection, added by an IP, is both one-sided and inaccurate, so I've moved it here. See Criticism of the IPCC AR4#Proportion of Netherlands below sea level for a balanced view of the % Netherlands below sea level. . . dave souza, talk 06:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Alarmist Nature of IPCC Reports===

Several groups including the nation of The Netherlands and the Petition Project as well as former IPCC chairman Robert Watson have criticized the current IPCC for overly alarminst predictions and errors. The errors include the claim the Netherlands would be severely affected by accelerated melting of polar ice pack beacuse "more than half" of The Netherlands is below sea level. In actuality, only 26% of The Netherlands is below sea level.ref>UN must investigate warming ‘bias’, says former climate chief</ref

It's one of many minor claims – the covarage on this main page might be worth reviewing to provide a concise summary of the revised "criticisms" article. . . dave souza, talk 06:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I modified the section to make it read more, hopefully, neutral. It is criticism of the IPCC but I think it could be classified as constructive criticism. Cla68 (talk) 07:25, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I took out the bit about below-sea-level, because it is wrong. I agree that Watson is notable thought. Dubious about NOTNEWs but no-one seems to care much about that William M. Connolley (talk) 10:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The sea-level bit is covered in the "criticisms" article, I'm sure the Dutch are greatly reassured that only 26% of their country is below mean sea level, while 60% is vulnerable to high tides and storms. They actually have very extensive flood defences which seem well prepared for projected sea rise. I've added Parry describing the IPCC investigation that Watson has said is needed. . . dave souza, talk 10:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

How many staff members does the IPCC have?

I thought that they were a large organization with (at least) hundreds of staff members until I read this:

The IPCC is not, as many people seem to think, a large organization. In fact, it has only 10 full-time staff in its secretariat at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, plus a few staff in four technical support units that help the chairs of the three IPCC working groups and the national greenhouse gas inventories group. The actual work of the IPCC is done by unpaid volunteers – thousands of scientists at universities and research institutes around the world who contribute as authors or reviewers to the completion of the IPCC reports. IPCC errors: facts and spin (RealClimate 14 February 2010 )

How are these 10 full-time staff persons spread around among the working groups and the national green house gas inventories group. Do we know the names and qualifications of these staff and the process through which reports are finalized?

Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 23:03, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean "we"? William M. Connolley (talk) 23:33, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry! I was using the "royal we". I mean, are the names and credentials of 10 full-time staff persons published somewhere? And is their spread around among the working groups and the national green house gas inventories group published somewhere? Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 00:38, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Go to the IPCC homepage (www.ipcc.ch). Click on "organisation". Click on "secretariat". There is one fun bit there I hadn't noticed before The government of the developed country Co-Chair assumes the primary responsibility for funding the TSU... William M. Connolley (talk) 10:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)