Last-minute IPCC haggling

It’s a frenzy 9

Those of you waiting on the edge of your seat for the IPCC report -- which will be released in about 3.5 hours -- can kill time by reading Andy Revkin's account of the last-minute negotiations going on in Paris as we speak. Everybody from scientists to industry groups to enviros to governments are haggling over the exact wording of the summary for policy-makers. Sounds like there's a lot of frustration among the senior authors.

I imagine a lot of people will look at this messy, chaotic, politicized process and throw their hands in the air in disgust. We tend instinctually to want something cleaner and more definitive. But this is how collaboration and democracy look. They're messy and compromised. The only thing worse is all the alternatives.

Update [2007-2-1 21:27:20 by David Roberts]: Speaking of last-minute frenzy, looks like AEI (the think tank of "CO2: we call it life" fame) is offering people $10,000 to write articles questioning the validity of the IPCC. Bad enough, but then look at this egregious false-balance maneuver:

"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," [AEI's Kenneth Green] said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

All those thumb-sucking articles about the center in the climate debate seem to have given the forces of delay and obfuscation another talking point.

Update [2007-2-1 23:25:13 by David Roberts]: Andrew's right of course that it's CEI, not AEI, that did the carbon=life ads, as I myself wrote about. I've gone dippy.

AEI is less hackish than CEI, more sincere. But given some of the conclusions they reach, I'm not sure how much credit that gets them.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

Advertisement
Advertisement

  1. dotcommodity Posted 2:19 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    Disinformation on IPPC coming Feb 5Highly recommended reading: This very usefull site has a ton of very specific well researched details on the climate deniers being paid to misunderinform us on catastrophic climate change.
    http://www.desmogblog.com
    "Fraser Institute "Analysis" of IPCC Report Out of Date, Oil-Soaked and Incorrect
    An Canadian think tank's "independent" analysis of the upcoming IPCC report is based on out-of-date information and is specifically misleading about the nature of the scientific summary that it presumes to criticize."

    Permalink

  2. Andrew Dessler Posted 2:44 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    CEI, not AEIfyi, the Competitive Enterprise Institute did the "CO2 is life adds," not AEI.  I view AEI as significantly less odious than CEI.
    also (not to brag, but ...) I think that all of the press coverage on this AEI letter comes from one of my very first blog entries (here).  it's a great example about how blogs sometimes push real mainstream media.

    Permalink

  3. Phila Posted 3:07 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    Iain MurrayThe CEI hack Iain Murray has some great new talking points too, as I described here

    Permalink

  4. Steve Bloom Posted 3:55 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    AEINot long after Andrew outed them, one of the two signatories on the AEI offer letter happily volunteered to be part of Roger Pielke, Jr.'s merry band of "non-skeptic heretics."  He was joined by, IIRC, Benny Peiser and Indur Golklany.  Of course.  Oh, and how could I forget Mark Bahner.  A trifecta!
    I hadn't been aware until recently that the WG1 SPM would come out several months ahead of the scientific assessment, but my first thought upon flinding out was that it makes it hard for AEI to make much of a splash even if they do get any bites.  OTOH maybe the Fraser Institute fraud is the substitute effort.  We'll see how that one works out for them, but perhaps the internal disputes around the hurricane and sea level issues will crowd out any other controversial coverage.

    Permalink

  5. David Roberts's avatar

    David Roberts Posted 4:40 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    Andrew,I assumed that story was about AEI offering another $10,000, but looking back through now, it seems not. I didn't think anybody would still be writing about that $10K from your post. You started quite the meme there.

    www.grist.org

    Permalink

  6. Benny Big Eye Posted 5:40 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    IPCC stories in the pressNotice that only the AP report, which is focused on a U.S. audience, spends any time on the "controversy" about hurricanes. I guess it's only American readers that have had trouble grasping the idea that warmer sea surface temperatures might feed more energy into a hurricane system.
    From AP

    http://tinyurl.com/2ta42y
    Financial Times

    Permalink

  7. Benny Big Eye Posted 5:47 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    Continued from aboveDidn't post all the stories....
    From AP

    http://tinyurl.com/2ta42y

    Financial Times

    Permalink

  8. cieldumort Posted 5:47 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    Remember kids, "Teach the controversy"As long as the word "controversy" is used in any conjunction with this report it's all a lot of people in the U.S. need to hear to reaffirm their preconceived ideas of GW being eco-alarmist hype. I look around me - here, in this country - and wonder, WTF - all day long.
    A little O/T - Glenn Beck is going to be covering "Global Warming: Fact, or fiction?" or some such name of the upcoming show tonight...  I sent off an email to him after he started in on GW the other night, while bashing a bit on Dr. Cullen with the help of that brainiac TV met from Arkansas(?) who wrote the defamatory spin about her blog.
    In any event, I think we should all be watching this closely. It seems to me that he usually -only- has guests on that support his positions. And, really, what the hell is a Disc Jockey-gone TV personality doing talking out his neck on Global Warming?

    Permalink

  9. Benny Big Eye Posted 5:49 pm
    01 Feb 2007

    Continued from aboveDidn't post all the stories....

    BBC

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm?ls

    Permalink

Add a Comment

You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.

Hello, Visitor!    Why not register?

Viewed
More
Commented
More
Advertisement