IPCC’s Thomas Stocker’s new, improved math

“Basically, the value of this process was that a few simple key messages [about climate change] are now approved, for the first time, by all the governments participating in the United Nations.”

Thomas Stocker, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Working Group I, September 27, 2013 [emphasis added -hro]

Yes, Stocker really did say this:

Did you catch what these “few simple key messages” are? Just in case you missed ’em:

“We know it’s happening”

“We know who’s responsible”

“And we have a choice”

Stocker follows this with the hallmark ‘we’re the IPCC and we can have anything both ways’ qualifier:

“Of course it’s not that simple, but that’s the essence”.

Small wonder, indeed, that when issuing his marching orders to the IPCC delegates a few days earlier, Stocker had declared:

We are not here to discuss what we have heard or read in the news recently … we are here to successfully complete [the assessment process which began four years ago] … Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time … [IPCC assessment reports provide an] unprecedented and unbiased view of the climate system.

I haven’t watched/listened to the rest of Stocker’s Sept. 27 peroration to the audience in attendance at this performance, courtesy of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP).

Co-sponsors of this event included: the IPCC, the Nobel Museum (where they sell “The chocolate medal traditionally served at the nobel banquet”.**) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI – which just happens to be the current home of “silent observer“, Richard Klein).

[Sidebar: ** Perhaps IPCC Chair, Rajendra Pachauri would have done better to purchase a limited number of these chocolate medals to bestow upon those he foolishly declared could call themselves Nobel Laureates (including himself!)]

I mention Klein because he and Stocker seem to be equally mathematically challenged when it comes to counting the number of governments present at IPCC Working Group “sessions” during which “key messages” are “approved”.

A few years ago, Klein was most insistent that the U.K. Guardian‘s enviro-activist churnalist, Damian Carrington was “correct” when he had declared that the Summary for Policy Makers of an IPCC report had been “discussed and then approved by all 194 countries”. For the record, to this day, neither Klein nor Carrington has acknowledged his error – an error which has been confirmed by the IPCC’s very own numbers!

Stocker – ever the manipulator – seems to be following in Klein’s math-challenged hyperbolic footsteps.

As noted in the quote with which I began this post, Stocker had declared that the “key messages” had been “approved, for the first time, by all the governments participating in the United Nations.”

For the record, according to the UN’s own numbers, the latest count (as of 2011) is 193 member nations.

So, did 193 nations approve the IPCC’s key messages? Well, certainly not according to the IPCC’s own numbers of those present (albeit not accounted for) at the Stockholm “session”. At most there might have been 110 (as per the number cited during the opening meeting).

However, according to the IPCC’s very own report of delegates in attendance, a mere 101 countries were represented. Although no indication is given regarding when they arrived, nor for which days’ deliberations each was in attendance. So transparent, eh?!

I’m certainly not asking you to take my word for this. You can check for yourself in the appendix to this Draft Report. And here’s a GoogleDocs spreadsheet of what I extracted from this appendix.

So, whether the correct number of nations that participated in this ‘valued .. process’ is 101 or 110, it’s a very far cry from Stocker’s claim of “all the governments of the United Nations”.

And if we can’t trust Stocker’s “simple” math, why should we trust the validity of his “simple key messages“?!