Biased Policy Advice from Intergovermental Panel On climate Change
Name : Biased Policy Advice from Intergovermental Panel On climate Change.
Category : Energy & Environment
Files Source: www.mi.uni-hamburg.de
File Added : July 24, 2010
Size : 1 MB
Download : 242
This online pdf created by Richard S.J. Tol reprinted from energy & environment Volume 18 No. 7+8 2007. This paper talk about The ambiguity of some advice on climate change issues relating to the interpretation of statistics. At an early stage in their academic training, statisticians are confronted with the Disraeli-Twain notion that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. The point is not that statistics lie and statisticians are liars. The point is that any fact can be presented in different ways, and that such presentation affects the inference drawn. Statisticians are taught this so that they will not be lured into unsupported conclusions. However, statisticians do not take an Oath of Bernoulli, and some statisticians do use these skills to mislead their audience.
Content Summary :
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of Working Group 3 (WG3) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a case in point. Many things can be said about this. Having been involved in AR2 and AR3, and having watched AR4, I cannot escape the impression that WG3 has become more political and less academic, and that overall quality has declined. In some countries, political affiliation seemed to override academic standing as a selection criterion for authorship, while in WG3 the most influential positions went those who tend to support the environmentalists’ agenda. Such things are fiendishly hard to prove, and I will not attempt this here. The above is just a personal impression. I have read most of AR4, and by and large it is able but uninspiring. Climate policy may be one of greatest challenges of our time—it has been 20 years since the IPCC was formed, and 10 years since the Kyoto Protocol was signed, but climate policy has achieved close to nothing—and one would hope that AR4 would teem with intellectual energy in an attempt to solve the many questions that are still open. Instead, it is a rather dull read, with little news even in those areas that I do not follow on a daily basis.”………Download for more information!!
