Pachauri's law - by Richard... Thursday, February 11, 2010

Pachauri's law - by Richard... Thursday, February 11, 2010

A fine piece of writing from Dipankar Gupta in yesterday's Indian Mail Today. Unfortunately, it is not on line, but if you click the pic above, it is readable. Says Gupta:

On the other hand, to get an admission from Pachauri is like dragging a pet to the vet. When confronted with the errors, he shifted the blame to his researchers and to the probability theory that with so many facts it's alright to go wrong on a couple.

and ...

What really matters is the emergence of Pachauri's law. It says "good science drives out bad science with the speed of melting ice cream".

Not sure about that last bit – it seems to contradict the headline, which is more to the point. But, overall, there are some delicious barbs, and some serious points, not least that the paranoia over climate change is diverting attention from real pollution.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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Off Beebing - by Richard...

Doing a Radio 5 live phone-in for an hour on the CRU "Climategate" review announcement, starting 12 midday, so blogging slightly interrupted. Meanwhile, this caught my eye:

"French feminist warns green movement forcing women to stay at home - Elisabeth Badinter, a leading French feminist, has warned the green movement is threatening decades of improvements in gender equality by forcing women to give up their jobs and become earth mothers."

That's science, for you, I suppose – for every action, there is a equal and opposite reaction. You have to laugh ... only if to stop yourself crying.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

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New voices - by Richard...

... urge IPCC chief to step down. To Hartmut Grassl, any conflicts of interest, real or perceived, could still undermine the credibility of the panel. The former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg told Deutsche Welle that this "mixing of duties makes [Pachauri] vulnerable."

The Discover magazine writer Chris Mooney sees it as a guerrilla war.

... what I and many others failed to anticipate was that a kind of guerilla war on science–and especially climate science–would take its place, driven by blogs like Climate Depot and Watts Up With That. This war springs from the same politics, but it is coming from those who are out in the wilderness, rather than running the government.

As a result, this war hits harder, and is much more personal—aimed at discrediting individual researchers, by sifting through their emails and accusing them of scandalous wrongdoing. And it is draws its momentum from the vast numbers of online commenters who closely follow the climate "scandal" stories and then show up at this blog, and other ones, to leave comments attacking scientists like Mann, and institutions like the IPCC.

After trying to ignore the issue, even Richard Black of the BBC is wobbling. On the back of "Climategate", it's nearly two months since this started and it's showing no signs of abating. I think it's got to the stage where only a blood sacrifice is going to resolve it.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD