I’ve been through a decent part of chapter 11 of AR6 (extreme weather). If there’s bad news it makes it to the summary. If there’s good news it doesn’t make it to the summary, or is obscured:
Long term decline in severe tropical cyclones - **good news** - doesn’t get a mention (caveat that we don’t have global data, but this doesn’t prevent bad news getting in where there isn’t global data). A 30-40 decline in accumulated cyclone energy - **good news** - makes it in as "intensifying tropical cyclones". See the article for details.
We don’t have data on global trends in floods - that doesn’t make it in. You’d think that would be important to stress.
We do have trends in heavy rainfall - up in some places, down in others, overall up - **bad news**. This makes it into the summary as "increasing heavy rainfall".
We do have trends in peak streamflow (think, risk of floods from rivers and waterways) - down in some places, up in others, overall down - ** good news**. This only makes it into the summary as "increasing in many places, decreasing in others". So no one learns about the good news unless they read the detail of the chapter.
The executive summary for chapter 11 says "Significant trends in peak streamflow have been observed in some regions over the past decades".
So, preliminary conclusion: safe pairs of hands are appointed to guide the flow of the report.
One of the more depressing things I observe here is that in many respects you could have written this post a decade or more ago and it would still be accurate. Obviously there are newer papers such as those by Grinsted and Kossin but the IPCC makes the same basic errors over and over again: cherry picking papers and data and then playing telephone so that the SPM says confidently that something is happening while the relevant detailed WG chapter says something slightly different may be happening but that it is a low confidence observation
I suppose it shouldn't really be too surprising, the incentives are stacked such that if the IPCC says "global warming is no big deal" then all the contributors are out of a job
Dr. Pielke, I wanted to point out a few things wrt Dr. Kossin and his papers that are mentioned above. Kossin was a lead author of AR6 WG1 Chapter 11, so the IPCC report was very much aware of the correction to Kossin et al 2020. To clarify, the primary claim of that paper was a statistically significant increase globally in the proportion of "major" hurricane fixes to all hurricane-force fixes. At a basin level, the paper only claimed statistical significance for the North Atlantic. The paper acknowledged that there was no statistically significant increase in the Pacific basins, for example. The yellow highlights in the original vs. corrected charts shown above aren't any different. The original paper reported statistical significance less than 90% (e.g., not significant) for 4 basins, and the correction used the n/s symbol to indicate the same thing for those same 4 basins. There's no problem there.
What is questionable is whether Kossin's global metric for the corrected dataset is actually significant at the 95% confidence level. Despite the fact that the global increase declined from 15% in the original paper to only 10% in the correction, Kossin still claims statistical significance for the corrected dataset, but only by playing games with significant figures. Notice that the correction reports the proportion out to 4 decimal places rather than the 2 decimal places in the original paper. If you check the confidence intervals reported for the global data, you can see the two time periods almost overlap: [0.3243,0.3555] vs. [0.3559,0.3891]. If Kossin had stuck to the same number of significant figures as was originally used, then the confidence intervals would have overlapped and his results would not have been significant. Of course, this would have negated the primary claim of the paper and forced a full retraction. Ooops. To avoid that problem, Kossin added some extra digits, although it is hard to justify such a level of precision with the dataset that was used. Although I'm not much for statistics, it may be worse than that. I recalculated the confidence intervals for Kossin's correction and came up with different numbers. If I'm correct, then the CIs do in fact overlap and and the global results aren't (yet) significant for data up through 2017. See https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/34364/. This would mean that Kossin jumped the gun and claimed global statistical significance for his proportion a few years before the data will actually support that claim... Until the AMO switches to the cold phase and the Atlantic basin settles down.
Switching gears to the IPCC's claims wrt disaster losses for hurricanes wrt Grinsted et al 2019, I think it's significant that the IPCC refers to Kossin 2019. That paper found a significant decrease in TC translation speed in the CONUS over the last 120 years. It would seem that that IPCC was implying that slower-moving storms could be the physical cause of the supposed increased damage. Since the IPCC acknowledged that there has been no increase in the number of landfalling storms, it seems necessary to find some other plausible physical cause for Grinsted's claim of increased damage. On its face, slower moving storms could fit that bill -- e.g., slower moving storms subject coastal areas to winds and surges for longer periods of time and could lead to more damage. It seems to me that this was the point that the IPCC was trying to make, however ineptly. Perhaps the language was rather awkward because they couldn't make this claim too directly because it is utter conjecture. Perhaps the IPCC reasoned it was better to awkwardly offer an unsupported claim of a plausible physical cause for Grinsted's increased damage rather than have no physical cause at all. At any rate, even a casual investigation of Kossin 2019 shows that is doesn't help Grinsted's claim very much. The correlation between annual translation speed and Grinsted's ATD-normalized hurricane damage is quite poor.
Some of the years with highest normalized losses per Grinsted had higher-than-average translation speeds, and some of the years with very slow moving storms had very low losses. Moreover, the timing of the changes don't align well. Kossin 2019 shows a downward trend in speeds over the last 120 years only because storms were very fast in the 1920s and 1950s and then collapsed. Since reaching a low point in 1970, however, 10-year average translation speed has steadily increased over the last 50 years. Grinsted's "normalized" losses have increased most significantly over the last 40 years, when storms were regaining speed. Faster-moving storms, of course, cannot possibly the cause of the increased damage that Grinsted claimed to find. All of that to say that citing Kossin 2019 was a red herring, and Grinsted's alleged increase in normalized damage is left without a physical cause.
Apparently, I misspoke when I asked about forcings. What I really find confusing are feedback effects. Regarding feedback effects, I have seen suggestions ranging from that these are powerfully negative to claims that they don’t exist. Help! I could probably use a basic lesson in forcing versus feedback as well as whatever insight you can provide on the controversy regarding the effects of feedback. Thank you!
I was thinking of forcing in the sense of feedback effects that may flow from a change in CO2 and positively or negatively affect the climate. As I understand it (help me, Roger!), 'forcings' are how scientists derive some (or many?) of the effects CO2 is supposed to have on the climate. Happy to hear from anyone who can explain these forces to this non-scientist.
David H. Jackson,MD Please:more simplification is needed for us who are simple-who are not climatologists-statisticians! I get your overall conclusions(I think) but a conclusion paragraph or two in simple language would be much appreciated. Otherwise I fear you are "preaching to the choir"! Last of all,it appears that Summaries for Policymakers(SPMs) and Synthesis Report are often in error so how can non-climatologists get accurate information? Are we to read the several thousand pages of AR6(which appear to be misleading as well)?
If they REALLY cared about emissions (hint: they don't), they would institute the Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend. The CF&D penalizes the energy hog rich and rewards the energy frugal middle class & poor. While carbon trading grants government guaranteed giant profits for the wealthy. Really just another devious wealth transfer scheme from the Middle Class to the Rich. Very important, that you must also eliminate all the preferential subsidies, mandates and exemptions given to the political favorites wind & solar. They are favorites because they cost $trillions but do zip to reduce fossil consumption, apart from causing energy poverty --> reduced emissions. The Net Zero, carbon credits trading operation is just a giant greenwashing scam, almost entirely worthless:
EXPOSED: The Biggest Green SCAM In ESG | Breaking Points, Krystal breaks down the corporate scam of ESG and carbon offset programs in the USA:
Newbie question here. I'm probably misunderstanding the concept but what I think I read was that there is no increase in damage associated with cyclones. If that's right it makes no sense when you consider that there has been a great deal of development in the last 100 years, especially in the tropics, and hence more stuff for cyclones to mess up, even if there is no change to the frequency of storms.
Great post. Once again, there is that mention of forcing, a concept that I still struggle to understand. Consider this a nudge not to leave us hanging with a lack of understanding of what forcings are, written in your wonderfully clear style. And I have one more item to add to my ever-growing list of questions: is there really such a thing as global climate and, if so, why does it matter if the effects are local and "global" just means the averaging of a lot of local numbers?
I am with Mark here. I once worked in a government management lab that did QA/QC on our lab work. An academic doing related work did not. Sh said her research budget did not allow for it. I told her I wouldn’t be allowing research without QA/QC to influence our management. Of course it ultimately did, but should it have?
Let’s dream of an optimal IPCC .. 1. Pay people to work on it so they are sure to be careful. 2. Assign responsibility and accountability for sections to specific individuals. 3. Have formal reviewed QA/QC processes. 4. Allow scientists outside the group to review the draft in an open forum.5. If disputes arise, keep a third party panel in place to resolve them, and make the discussions of that group transparent.
Roger, about a year or so ago I commented that the IPCC process for developing the SPM's was hopelessly politicized and biased and that whatever "good science" that was being done was subject to misrepresentation and exploitation by this process. You replied back to me that you didn't pay much attention to the SPM's (I think you even said that you didn't read them). Unfortunately I am unable to find my comment and your response. As a big part of the problems you are discussing here are associated with the SPM's, it appears that you may have reevaluated your position.
In addition, to call out the IPCC for having quality control problems, while true, misses the larger problem afflicting the IPCC and in fact the entire UN.
The problems with the IPCC go way beyond mere quality control. I assume that you know the difference between QC (Quality Control) and QA (Quality Assurance). I am not a QA/QC expert but as a reminder I offer the following: "Quality assurance is a process based approach while quality control is a product based approach. Quality assurance involves processes managing quality, and quality control is used to verify the quality of the product. Quality audit is an example of quality assurance."
Does the IPCC have a QA plan including objectives, procedures, audits etc.? I doubt it. If I am wrong please point me to it. It is typical in any modern significant undertaking such as software development, engineering and construction of buildings, bridges, pipelines, offshore platforms etc. to have such a plan. In fact, it is virtually impossible in today's world to undertake a major project without one. Simplistically, QC procedures are typically mandated by the QA plan and must meet objectives of the QA plan.
While both of the issues you discuss in today's post are examples of sloppy checking, writing and editing which fall under the rubric of QC, the problems go way beyond simply sloppy work and checking.
In the first case "cherry picking", were the authors truly not familiar with the relevant literature, did they not know of your work. Did they make honest mistakes that should have been picked up by straight forward peer review? Why were you not asked to review this work? I think the answers to these questions are obvious.
In the second example on TC trends you do a yeoman's job of digging through which report says what etc. However calling the mischaracterization at the higher levels an oversight is like saying that an IRS agent showing up at Matt Taibbi's house on the day he testified before Congress is just a coincidence. Let's back off from all of the digging through reports to find who said what when. I think the main question is when there is "low confidence" in something like TC trends why does the IPCC highlight it in the most alarmist way possible? Should "findings" that they have low confidence in even be distinguished from the inverse trend? How man low confidence "findings" that go against the preferred UN narrative can you find? I think that all of us here know the answers to these questions.
Improving QC (checking) will not solve IPCC's problems and they'll never write a QA plan because it would have to be so obviously biased and political.
Once again my head is spinning because of my lack of education in climate science. While the details of your takedown of IPCC are confusing, your conclusion is crystal clear. I'm working on finding a way to express these propagandist reports from IPCC for any letters to the editors, etc. that I may decide to try to write.
In particular, I really like the last quotation offered below by Jerome Ravetz: "... If you simply go to history with a thesis and you look up the documents to try to prove it, then you are not really being a historian, you are being a propagandist "
It's a travesty that the IPCC has been allowed to produce such bad science, for so long.
And these misrepresentations are just the tip of the iceberg. The same thing is happening with the IPCC flawed science involving other key topics, such as natural warming impacts (including solar influences), surface temperature adjustments, error prone climate models, and past warming/cooling climate events.
This essay by Bjorn Lomborg, written for National Review, keeps things fairly simple and straight forward.
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/04/17/life-after-climate-change/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=top-of-nav&utm_content=hero-module
This OPED by Judith Curry sums it up very well:
https://judithcurry.com/2023/03/28/uns-climate-panic-is-more-politics-than-science/#more-29950
I’ve been through a decent part of chapter 11 of AR6 (extreme weather). If there’s bad news it makes it to the summary. If there’s good news it doesn’t make it to the summary, or is obscured:
https://scienceofdoom.substack.com/p/summary-on-trends-in-tropical-cyclones
Long term decline in severe tropical cyclones - **good news** - doesn’t get a mention (caveat that we don’t have global data, but this doesn’t prevent bad news getting in where there isn’t global data). A 30-40 decline in accumulated cyclone energy - **good news** - makes it in as "intensifying tropical cyclones". See the article for details.
https://scienceofdoom.substack.com/p/summary-on-trends-in-extreme-rainfall
We don’t have data on global trends in floods - that doesn’t make it in. You’d think that would be important to stress.
We do have trends in heavy rainfall - up in some places, down in others, overall up - **bad news**. This makes it into the summary as "increasing heavy rainfall".
We do have trends in peak streamflow (think, risk of floods from rivers and waterways) - down in some places, up in others, overall down - ** good news**. This only makes it into the summary as "increasing in many places, decreasing in others". So no one learns about the good news unless they read the detail of the chapter.
The executive summary for chapter 11 says "Significant trends in peak streamflow have been observed in some regions over the past decades".
So, preliminary conclusion: safe pairs of hands are appointed to guide the flow of the report.
One of the more depressing things I observe here is that in many respects you could have written this post a decade or more ago and it would still be accurate. Obviously there are newer papers such as those by Grinsted and Kossin but the IPCC makes the same basic errors over and over again: cherry picking papers and data and then playing telephone so that the SPM says confidently that something is happening while the relevant detailed WG chapter says something slightly different may be happening but that it is a low confidence observation
I suppose it shouldn't really be too surprising, the incentives are stacked such that if the IPCC says "global warming is no big deal" then all the contributors are out of a job
Dr. Pielke, I wanted to point out a few things wrt Dr. Kossin and his papers that are mentioned above. Kossin was a lead author of AR6 WG1 Chapter 11, so the IPCC report was very much aware of the correction to Kossin et al 2020. To clarify, the primary claim of that paper was a statistically significant increase globally in the proportion of "major" hurricane fixes to all hurricane-force fixes. At a basin level, the paper only claimed statistical significance for the North Atlantic. The paper acknowledged that there was no statistically significant increase in the Pacific basins, for example. The yellow highlights in the original vs. corrected charts shown above aren't any different. The original paper reported statistical significance less than 90% (e.g., not significant) for 4 basins, and the correction used the n/s symbol to indicate the same thing for those same 4 basins. There's no problem there.
What is questionable is whether Kossin's global metric for the corrected dataset is actually significant at the 95% confidence level. Despite the fact that the global increase declined from 15% in the original paper to only 10% in the correction, Kossin still claims statistical significance for the corrected dataset, but only by playing games with significant figures. Notice that the correction reports the proportion out to 4 decimal places rather than the 2 decimal places in the original paper. If you check the confidence intervals reported for the global data, you can see the two time periods almost overlap: [0.3243,0.3555] vs. [0.3559,0.3891]. If Kossin had stuck to the same number of significant figures as was originally used, then the confidence intervals would have overlapped and his results would not have been significant. Of course, this would have negated the primary claim of the paper and forced a full retraction. Ooops. To avoid that problem, Kossin added some extra digits, although it is hard to justify such a level of precision with the dataset that was used. Although I'm not much for statistics, it may be worse than that. I recalculated the confidence intervals for Kossin's correction and came up with different numbers. If I'm correct, then the CIs do in fact overlap and and the global results aren't (yet) significant for data up through 2017. See https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/34364/. This would mean that Kossin jumped the gun and claimed global statistical significance for his proportion a few years before the data will actually support that claim... Until the AMO switches to the cold phase and the Atlantic basin settles down.
Switching gears to the IPCC's claims wrt disaster losses for hurricanes wrt Grinsted et al 2019, I think it's significant that the IPCC refers to Kossin 2019. That paper found a significant decrease in TC translation speed in the CONUS over the last 120 years. It would seem that that IPCC was implying that slower-moving storms could be the physical cause of the supposed increased damage. Since the IPCC acknowledged that there has been no increase in the number of landfalling storms, it seems necessary to find some other plausible physical cause for Grinsted's claim of increased damage. On its face, slower moving storms could fit that bill -- e.g., slower moving storms subject coastal areas to winds and surges for longer periods of time and could lead to more damage. It seems to me that this was the point that the IPCC was trying to make, however ineptly. Perhaps the language was rather awkward because they couldn't make this claim too directly because it is utter conjecture. Perhaps the IPCC reasoned it was better to awkwardly offer an unsupported claim of a plausible physical cause for Grinsted's increased damage rather than have no physical cause at all. At any rate, even a casual investigation of Kossin 2019 shows that is doesn't help Grinsted's claim very much. The correlation between annual translation speed and Grinsted's ATD-normalized hurricane damage is quite poor.
Some of the years with highest normalized losses per Grinsted had higher-than-average translation speeds, and some of the years with very slow moving storms had very low losses. Moreover, the timing of the changes don't align well. Kossin 2019 shows a downward trend in speeds over the last 120 years only because storms were very fast in the 1920s and 1950s and then collapsed. Since reaching a low point in 1970, however, 10-year average translation speed has steadily increased over the last 50 years. Grinsted's "normalized" losses have increased most significantly over the last 40 years, when storms were regaining speed. Faster-moving storms, of course, cannot possibly the cause of the increased damage that Grinsted claimed to find. All of that to say that citing Kossin 2019 was a red herring, and Grinsted's alleged increase in normalized damage is left without a physical cause.
Apparently, I misspoke when I asked about forcings. What I really find confusing are feedback effects. Regarding feedback effects, I have seen suggestions ranging from that these are powerfully negative to claims that they don’t exist. Help! I could probably use a basic lesson in forcing versus feedback as well as whatever insight you can provide on the controversy regarding the effects of feedback. Thank you!
I was thinking of forcing in the sense of feedback effects that may flow from a change in CO2 and positively or negatively affect the climate. As I understand it (help me, Roger!), 'forcings' are how scientists derive some (or many?) of the effects CO2 is supposed to have on the climate. Happy to hear from anyone who can explain these forces to this non-scientist.
David H. Jackson,MD Please:more simplification is needed for us who are simple-who are not climatologists-statisticians! I get your overall conclusions(I think) but a conclusion paragraph or two in simple language would be much appreciated. Otherwise I fear you are "preaching to the choir"! Last of all,it appears that Summaries for Policymakers(SPMs) and Synthesis Report are often in error so how can non-climatologists get accurate information? Are we to read the several thousand pages of AR6(which appear to be misleading as well)?
If they REALLY cared about emissions (hint: they don't), they would institute the Revenue Neutral Carbon Fee & Dividend. The CF&D penalizes the energy hog rich and rewards the energy frugal middle class & poor. While carbon trading grants government guaranteed giant profits for the wealthy. Really just another devious wealth transfer scheme from the Middle Class to the Rich. Very important, that you must also eliminate all the preferential subsidies, mandates and exemptions given to the political favorites wind & solar. They are favorites because they cost $trillions but do zip to reduce fossil consumption, apart from causing energy poverty --> reduced emissions. The Net Zero, carbon credits trading operation is just a giant greenwashing scam, almost entirely worthless:
EXPOSED: The Biggest Green SCAM In ESG | Breaking Points, Krystal breaks down the corporate scam of ESG and carbon offset programs in the USA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXxqjjgH0Ec&t=2s
Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
Newbie question here. I'm probably misunderstanding the concept but what I think I read was that there is no increase in damage associated with cyclones. If that's right it makes no sense when you consider that there has been a great deal of development in the last 100 years, especially in the tropics, and hence more stuff for cyclones to mess up, even if there is no change to the frequency of storms.
Great post. Once again, there is that mention of forcing, a concept that I still struggle to understand. Consider this a nudge not to leave us hanging with a lack of understanding of what forcings are, written in your wonderfully clear style. And I have one more item to add to my ever-growing list of questions: is there really such a thing as global climate and, if so, why does it matter if the effects are local and "global" just means the averaging of a lot of local numbers?
I absolutely love your approach. Thank you so much for your fact based analysis. It is so refreshing.
I am with Mark here. I once worked in a government management lab that did QA/QC on our lab work. An academic doing related work did not. Sh said her research budget did not allow for it. I told her I wouldn’t be allowing research without QA/QC to influence our management. Of course it ultimately did, but should it have?
Let’s dream of an optimal IPCC .. 1. Pay people to work on it so they are sure to be careful. 2. Assign responsibility and accountability for sections to specific individuals. 3. Have formal reviewed QA/QC processes. 4. Allow scientists outside the group to review the draft in an open forum.5. If disputes arise, keep a third party panel in place to resolve them, and make the discussions of that group transparent.
Roger, about a year or so ago I commented that the IPCC process for developing the SPM's was hopelessly politicized and biased and that whatever "good science" that was being done was subject to misrepresentation and exploitation by this process. You replied back to me that you didn't pay much attention to the SPM's (I think you even said that you didn't read them). Unfortunately I am unable to find my comment and your response. As a big part of the problems you are discussing here are associated with the SPM's, it appears that you may have reevaluated your position.
In addition, to call out the IPCC for having quality control problems, while true, misses the larger problem afflicting the IPCC and in fact the entire UN.
The problems with the IPCC go way beyond mere quality control. I assume that you know the difference between QC (Quality Control) and QA (Quality Assurance). I am not a QA/QC expert but as a reminder I offer the following: "Quality assurance is a process based approach while quality control is a product based approach. Quality assurance involves processes managing quality, and quality control is used to verify the quality of the product. Quality audit is an example of quality assurance."
Does the IPCC have a QA plan including objectives, procedures, audits etc.? I doubt it. If I am wrong please point me to it. It is typical in any modern significant undertaking such as software development, engineering and construction of buildings, bridges, pipelines, offshore platforms etc. to have such a plan. In fact, it is virtually impossible in today's world to undertake a major project without one. Simplistically, QC procedures are typically mandated by the QA plan and must meet objectives of the QA plan.
While both of the issues you discuss in today's post are examples of sloppy checking, writing and editing which fall under the rubric of QC, the problems go way beyond simply sloppy work and checking.
In the first case "cherry picking", were the authors truly not familiar with the relevant literature, did they not know of your work. Did they make honest mistakes that should have been picked up by straight forward peer review? Why were you not asked to review this work? I think the answers to these questions are obvious.
In the second example on TC trends you do a yeoman's job of digging through which report says what etc. However calling the mischaracterization at the higher levels an oversight is like saying that an IRS agent showing up at Matt Taibbi's house on the day he testified before Congress is just a coincidence. Let's back off from all of the digging through reports to find who said what when. I think the main question is when there is "low confidence" in something like TC trends why does the IPCC highlight it in the most alarmist way possible? Should "findings" that they have low confidence in even be distinguished from the inverse trend? How man low confidence "findings" that go against the preferred UN narrative can you find? I think that all of us here know the answers to these questions.
Improving QC (checking) will not solve IPCC's problems and they'll never write a QA plan because it would have to be so obviously biased and political.
Once again my head is spinning because of my lack of education in climate science. While the details of your takedown of IPCC are confusing, your conclusion is crystal clear. I'm working on finding a way to express these propagandist reports from IPCC for any letters to the editors, etc. that I may decide to try to write.
In particular, I really like the last quotation offered below by Jerome Ravetz: "... If you simply go to history with a thesis and you look up the documents to try to prove it, then you are not really being a historian, you are being a propagandist "
It's a travesty that the IPCC has been allowed to produce such bad science, for so long.
And these misrepresentations are just the tip of the iceberg. The same thing is happening with the IPCC flawed science involving other key topics, such as natural warming impacts (including solar influences), surface temperature adjustments, error prone climate models, and past warming/cooling climate events.