Reasic.org

Unfortunately, the scientists who have devoted their lives’ work to understanding the various aspects of our planet’s climate system have the added displeasure of dealing with a group of people who have devoted themselves to spinning and distorting everything imaginable, when it comes to climate change. This phenomenon, known in some circles as climate denialism, has existed for many years. However, it seems to have picked up steam recently, with the help of a few biased “journalists” (and I use that term extremely loosely) at certain papers in the UK.

In one instance, we have a journalist blowing a couple of small discrepancies in the IPCC reports out of proportion in an effort to discredit the entire body of work. Fortunately, in this case, climate scientists have reacted as swiftly as one could expect, in providing substantial rebuttals, and putting the issue in its place:

Overall then, the IPCC assessment reports reflect the state of scientific knowledge very well. There have been a few isolated errors, and these have been acknowledged and corrected. What is seriously amiss is something else: the public perception of the IPCC, and of climate science in general, has been massively distorted by the recent media storm. All of these various “gates” – Climategate, Amazongate, Seagate, Africagate, etc., do not represent scandals of the IPCC or of climate science. Rather, they are the embarrassing battle-cries of a media scandal, in which a few journalists have misled the public with grossly overblown or entirely fabricated pseudogates, and many others have naively and willingly followed along without seeing through the scam.

This is actually a very good source for accurate information on the many misconceptions that have developed based on this misinformation. I highly recommend that it be bookmarked for anyone who is interested climate change.

Another recent development has been a series of misquotes by yet another “journalist”. In this case, several scientists have been interviewed, only to find out later that something entirely different than what they said was printed in the paper.

A great source of information on this has been Tim Lambert at Deltoid:

Deltoid can reveal that as well as misrepresenting Murari Lal and Mojib Latif, David Rose did the same thing to Roger Pielke Jr. Just as with Lal and Latif, no correction has been made.

Andrew Revkin at the New York Times has also been on top of this, and has even obtained an email from one of the misquoted scientists:

I am not a Glaciologist but a Climatologist and the statement attributed to me in “Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified” By David Rose in UK Daily Mail on 24th January 2010 has been wrongly placed. I never said this story at any time and strongly condemn the writer for attributing this to me.

More specifically, I never said during my conversation with Rose the following statements being attributed to me:

(a) ‘it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.’

(b) ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.’

(c) ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’, and

(d) ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’.

Contrary to the claim by Rose that “Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly,” the Asia Chapter does include this finding under section 10.2.4.2 on page 477.

What I said was “As authors, we had to report only the best available science (inclusive of a select few grey literatures as per the rules of procedure) which is “policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral” and that’s what we collectively did while writing the Asia Chapter. None of the authors in Asia Chapter were Glaciologist and we entirely trusted the findings reported in the WWF 2005 Report and the underlying references as scientifically sound and relevant in the context of climate change impacts in the region.

Regards,

Dr. Murari Lal

1006, Osimo Bldg., Mahagun Mansion-II
1/4 Vaibhavkhand, Indirapuram
Ghaziabad – 201014
Uttar Pradesh, INDIA]

Above all, it’s most disappointing to me to see how many people have whole-heartedly accepted this misinformation, without any attempt at thinking critically about any of it for a minute first. It’s unfortunate, but it’s par for the course these days.