Thursday, February 11, 2010

Global warming: IPCC's 'Pic and Pac' techniques lead them to another disastrous error

Many here in the West were shocked when African leaders almost demanded $100 billion in climate reparations. Today we learn why they felt justified in making those claims.

The story is very well and thoroughly told by Richard North at the weblog EU Referendum and echoed in a parallel story by Jonathan Leake in the UK's Sunday Times. Readers will want to see both stories. A lot of good investigative journalism was used in both stories, so go there--I don't want to steal their thunder.
The IPCC has widely reported that African agriculture would decline by 50% by 2020 due to global warming. As Western emissions have caused whatever manmade global warming has occurred, African farmers would seem justified in feeling put upon.
But the IPCC, again, using the same serial exaggeration techniques as they did for melting glaciers in the Himalayas, disappearing ice in the Andes, doomed rainforests in the Amazon and skyrocketing damages from hurricanes and floods, have managed to take a poorly sourced report about one country, multiply its estimates ten times, assume that Africa will all have the same climate effects as Morocco, and then tell the world that African agriculture is doomed.
It's very clear what is happening. The IPCC decides on a political point they wish to make. They search for an iconic illustration and decide that that will be the example the world sees. They then search for data to show the icon in danger. If the data doesn't suffice, it is laundered through successive paraphrasing with more distant sourcing until it is in effect sanitised. They pick the subject and pack the data. And it just doesn't matter what quality of data is used or if the claim is even true. Read more.

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