Monday, February 08, 2010

IPCC's dodgy citations

As we all remain thoroughly amused at the barrage of attacks on the IPCC's rapidly waning credibility, it's all too easy to miss a dodgy citation or two.

As such, and via Climate Sceptic, I am happy to point you towards a rapidly expanding compendium of all of the dodgy citations in the IPCC's AR3 and AR4 reports, hosted by the informative

In other news—just in case you missed it—55% of the Netherlands is not below sea level, as claimed by IPCC AR4: the figure is more like 20%. This may sound like nit-picking, but it's annoyed the Dutch; apart from anything else, the report made outrageous claims about the effect on the Netherlands's productivity should the sea rise a couple of inches.

The worrying thing about the sudden outrage by the Dutch is worrying—as my peripatetic Greek friend pointed out...
Now, anyone can make a simple blooper like this, even if it's the sort of howler you would expect any Dutch schoolboy to spot. No, my question is this: did anyone in the Dutch government actually read the fucking report before signing the Netherlands up to slashing their carbon emissions?

More to the point, have any of our ministers read the IPCC report? I think we should be told. I think they should be asked.

I sincerely doubt that any of our moronic, lazy fucking politicos have read any of the reports—or even the bastard summaries. They are too busy helping themselves to our money and posturing like pricks on the world stage.

Oh, and just to throw yet more thrills at you all, thinks that they have found yet another dodgy citation.
In AR4, WGIII, section 8.4.5 Potential implications of mitigation options for sustainable development:
"Agriculture contributes 4% of global GDP (World Bank, 2003) and provides employment to 1.3 billion people (Dean, 2000)."

That is a fairly specific number, 1.3 billion. What census, survey, or study did they cite that came up with this number? Dean, 2000 is referenced as:
Dean, T., 2000: Development: agriculture workers too poor to buy food. UN IPS, New York, 36 pp.

The UN IPS is the United Nations Inter Press Service. They cited a news article.

Interestingly enough, the actual title of the article is different than the IPCC's reference. The title is "Agriculture Workers Too Poor to Buy Food, Say Unions". Here it is also referenced with the 'say unions' ending. But the IPCC's reference drops the 'say unions' from the end. If you search for this article on IPS' site, you get to see a link to the article with the title. It includes 'say unions'. Is this an intentional omission of a reference to unions, or just sloppy work? Here is the article, see for yourself...

The article only mentions the 1.3 billion number in passing:

Currently, 1.3 billion people (out of a world population of about 6 billion) work in agriculture-related jobs, 450 million of whom are waged agricultural workers.

The rest of the article is about how the workers are too poor to buy food. The magazine does not cite any source for its 1.3 billion number.

Well, what a fucking surprise, eh? This, my friends, is the UN's IPCC: the gold standard of scientific research. Actually, it's just a shoddy collection of half-truths and skewed bollocks of the sort written by some dishonest and thoroughly second-rate blogger.

It's a massive con—just like the UN itself.

1 comment:

Mark Brentano said...

When the Sino-Muslim historians of the future pick over our epoch, I suspect they will laugh at our slavish belief in AGW the way we chortle at the transfusion of blood from sheep to humans, geocentricity and pop stars as ideologues.

