"Accentuate the negative"

I take my title from an article in The Economist on Line.  In it they report on an an embarrassing error in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) picked up in Holland.  Various errors have come to light and most of them have been covered on the net and in the media.  The one that upset the Dutch related to claims about a huge increase in the area of land liable to sea-flooding in Holland.  Some wretched, dandruff-ridden hack from a Dutch newspaper decided to check it out and found the 'experts' had added to the total areas only at risk from the Rivers Meuse and Rhine.  Red, or perhaps orange, faces all round and the Dutch environment minister responsible for providing the data set up an inquiry by the independent Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL).  They have now reported.  Apparently they bent over backwards not to lay into the IPCC too hard but were compelled to point out numerous errors.  Above all, they stressed the constant tendency amongst the IPCC report-writers to always go for the worst case scenarios.  Where the 'experts' might offer a range of possible outcomes for any given possibility, the IPCC always go for the worst, the most dramatic, the one most likely to produce the headlines.  Thus it was when the IPCC boss, the ridiculous Rajendra Pachauri, adopted the dubious notion that the Himalayan glaciers would all have disappeared by 2035, and who screeched like a parrot when it was pointed out as nonsense, and then had to eat his words when he and the panel were proved wrong.

So, more of the 'same old same old', I suppose.  I must admit that I haven't written too much recently on HAFs (Hot Air Fanatics) and their silliness because only the purblind now could ignore the transparent shenanigans at East Anglia University and all those embarrassing - and incriminating - e-mails.  And yet ... and yet ... still the HAFs go on like the charge of the Light Brigade, apparently unaware that no one is following them any more.  In sensible circles they are treated with sniggers as though they had turned up at a black tie 'do' in fancy dress!  Why do they do it?  I think the answer is similar to the one I proposed in an earlier post concerning those eccentric Marxists who still go around like so many demented Plymouth Brethren spouting nonsense about 'the workers' and 'come the revolution' and all that sort of thing.  It's a hobby!  A hobby, I grant you, taken to extreme ends so as to almost verge on religiosity, but a hobby nonetheless.

Why can't they stick to model railways - or amateur theatricals? 

I am obliged - yet again - to Cafe Hayek for the pointer.

Comments

[dearieme]

Seen lately: "Sometimes I wonder whether it would have been better if Plymouth Rock had landed on the Pilgrim Fathers".

[David Duff]

Heh, heh, heh!