Comments on: The IPCC Can’t Count – Author and Reviewer Numbers are Wrong

By: Paul C

Paul C — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:02:32 +0000

@MattB, January 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm: “So John you want me to believe somehow that of the 2879 individuals (your figures), 2819 of them disagree with the IPCC findings, yet remain silent on the issue?”

No. Lack of clear support does not equate with it’s opposite so stop trying to reduce the argument to your terms. It may mean that the 2,819 might agree with some findings but not overall conclusions. Or it may mean that they haven’t made a conclusion. If, as you observe, they are silent on the issue than they are neither agreeing nor disagreeing. They may prefer this ambiguity – allowing them to continue deriving their income from the IPCC while not putting their reputation on the line. A convenient ambiguity.

By: Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:48:53 +0000

John,

Thanks for clarifying that. Cherry picking? It’s on the front page of your website!

Thomas

By: davidc

davidc — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:56:56 +0000

thomas,

Your email to John was returned, therefore the IPCC numbers are correct? That’s your point? I can’t think of a better example of the quality of the arguments in support of the IPCC.

By: John McL

John McL — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:21:07 +0000

Thomas, I see that you’ve found an old email address on one of my webpages that has nothing to do with climate matters. If you had looked at my main page about global warming you’ll find the address under item 3 at the top of the page, and it’s the same email address as you’ll find on some of my latest documents.

You wouldn’t be practising the art of cherry-picking would you??

By: Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:45:45 +0000

John,

I did:

from Mail Delivery Subsystem
date Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:24 PM
subject Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

john@mclean.ch

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 … User unknown CRBL (state 14).

By: John McLean

John McLean — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:05:44 +0000

Ignore Nexus 6. Mr Brooks is only peeved because he made a big fuss about a list that showed me as having a PhD. As soon as I saw that list I contacted the person to correct it. Had “Nexus 6″ bothered to ask a simple question he would have received a simple answer, but no he had to make a big-budget production out of an error.

MattB, I’m not asking you to believe that all but 60 individuals disagreed with the IPCC but didn’t say so. I am simply pointing out that this is all that the explicit evidence supports and that to claim more than that number is to make assumptions.

Thomas, the email address that I provide on my web page is the one that other people use to contact me.

MattB (again) I only wrote the piece in the last few weeks and it was not published until this month. I wrote it after being told about PM Rudd citing the figure of 3750 in federal parliament back in August 2008 and after a question from a foreign journalist. As you can see from the references I mention I have been very interested in testing the veracity of the IPCC’s claims, so I thought I’d put some work in. It’s not easy to find the time when one has a full time job. You might also think that the IPCC’s claims would have been tested by the governments that rely on its statement but apparently not.

I know that scientific truth isn’t determined by a consensus but some people like to think that it is and since the “4,000 scientists” claim is pretty popular I thought it deserved some examination. I wasn’t terribly surprised to find that the number of individuals was more than 25% less. It’s typical of the IPCC to hide behind ambiguous statements. Its charter is to summarise the current knowledge vis-a-vis a possible human influence on climate but instead of ensuring that all its statements are very clear an unambiguous it seems to go to great pains to ensure that its work is likely to be misinterpreted in a manner most favourable to its continued existence.

By: MattB

MattB — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:50:37 +0000

Looking at John’s website, one wonders how Jennifer took more than a YEAR to get it on her blog, or why it took John a year to submit it. That is just slack in my books. I hope not many future blog entries will be BREAKING NEWS of year old articles.

Hmm actually on a closer look it seems the maybe the error is John’s, as he may well still think it is 2008.

This is like the “Can’t even get the weather” rebuttal. If he does not even know what year it is, how can we trust John McLean on the science;)

By: mondo45

mondo45 — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:21:44 +0000

I found John’s work very interesting, and certainly deserving of a question to ‘the team’ over at Real Climate. Given their policies on selective posting, the question may not get aired, but it certainly should. In the event that it does get censored, a fall back might be Open Mind.

By: hunter

hunter — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:27:35 +0000

The other point this makes regarding the AGW culture is this:
Why is the AGW community so dependent on hype, inflammatory rhetoric and mis-statement of fact?

By: hunter

hunter — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:53:32 +0000

The point that the AGW believers work so hard to ignore is that the basis of AGW credibility – the scientific consensus- is yet another area of misrepresentation and misleading assertions and predictions.
We already know that the confidence level of AGW predictions does not reach 95%.
We already know that specific AGW predictions about the climate and weather are not accurate.
Now we see how the IPCC- a self referential organization- has misrepresented its numbers.
The pattern is clear that AGW promoters are not limited by fact. This simply demonstrates that the pattern is pervasive in the AGW culture.