The IPCC Working Group II report is due out next week. As is the way, the summary is leaked in advance so the media can slaver over the ghastly possibilities, while the irksome details and accountability are held back so they don’t get in the way of the media pump. But alas, like Paul Reiter, and Christopher Landsea, another lead author wants his name removed from the IPCC document.
UK professor refuses to put his name to ‘apocalyptic’ UN climate change survey that he claims is exaggerating the effects
- Prof Richard Tol said UN academics were exaggerating climate change
- Comes as a blow to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Panel to publish its first update in seven years on the impacts of climate change
By Ben Spencer, Daily Mail
Professor Richard Tol, an economist at the University of Sussex, said fellow UN academics were exaggerating climate change and comparing it to the ‘apocalypse’.
Prof Tol, the lead co-ordinating author of the report’s chapter on economics, was involved in drafting the summary for policymakers – the key document that goes to governments and scientists. But he has now asked for his name to be removed from the document.
He said: ‘The message in the first draft was that through adaptation and clever development these were manageable risks, but it did require we get our act together.
‘This has completely disappeared from the draft now, which is all about the impacts of climate change and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. This is a missed opportunity.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
“Working group I (the physical sciences) doesn’t want to sound alarmist. In working group II, they don’t want to chance not having spotted a particular risk so they have a bias in the other direction,” he said.
So it’s not the job of the IPCC to give accurate risk assessments, and an economist is not expected to do an economic cost-benefit analysis. The real aim is to make sure they have the complete list of all disasters (and not so many of the benefits).
Once again national policy is reduced to a YES-or-NO question, not a numerate one. Who needs climate numbers? The only numbers that matter are the gravy train type.
“In this report, they are more honest and open that they have a risk orientation because they do focus more on the risks than the opportunities.”
And the two bias’s cancel each other out, right — making it a balanced neutral report? Is that how it works: We were too cool and calm in Part I so forgive us for being over-excited in Part II? If only.