This is a post which really should have been written by Justin.

Justin might have even called it "Meet Dr. Watson." Anyway, one Robert T. Watson has managed to steal the global warming show today with a huge, Drudge-linked, incendiary doom-and-gloom headline along with plenty of Chicken Little predictions:

Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up'

Tim Radford, science editor
Wednesday March 30, 2005
The Guardian

The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure.

The study contains what its authors call "a stark warning" for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself.

"Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it says.

The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London. It warns that:

· Because of human demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel, more land has been claimed for agriculture in the last 60 years than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined.

· An estimated 24% of the Earth's land surface is now cultivated.

· Water withdrawals from lakes and rivers has doubled in the last 40 years. Humans now use between 40% and 50% of all available freshwater running off the land.

· At least a quarter of all fish stocks are overharvested. In some areas, the catch is now less than a hundredth of that before industrial fishing.

· Since 1980, about 35% of mangroves have been lost, 20% of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed and another 20% badly degraded.

· Deforestation and other changes could increase the risks of malaria and cholera, and open the way for new and so far unknown disease to emerge.

From what I can glean about Dr. Watson, his real gripe is that he lost his job as Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Here's Patrick Michaels on Watson's 2002 demise:

A variety of factors conspired against Watson. Ten years of carping about the United States did not endear him to the current Administration, nor did his expressed preference for doing global warming policy rather than global warming science.

"Global Change," a Washington newsletter, said of Watson in 1997: "In his work for the federal government and now the World Bank, Watson retains his involvement with science but can also influence directly and strongly the social issues that matter to him." Of his potential to influence policy, Watson said, "I find it an order of magnitude more rewarding, much more rewarding."

Watson in that interview described the Clinton Administration's position on global warming as "absolutely admirable." Of the then-Republican Congress, he said, "Rather than moving things forward constructively, we've [?] been trying to make sure that the things we've been doing were not undone."

That quote probably didn't help him with the current Administration. Nor did his statement at a U.N. press conference in Shanghai on the day of George Bush's inauguration: "A country like China has done more, in my opinion, than a country like the United States to move forward in economic development while remaining environmentally sensitive." A look at the opaque air of Shanghai and Beijing argues otherwise.

Watson was in Shanghai to preside over the approval of the UN's third and latest compendium on climate change, which included a ridiculous "storyline" (that's what the UN now calls its forecasts) of an 11°F global warming in the next 100 years. Those of us in the scientific community who reviewed the document never saw this outlandish projection because it was inserted after our peer review. John Christy, the Alabama scientist who has developed the satellite temperature history (which shows very little warming) subsequently told a hearing chaired by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), "This is one forecast that isn't going to happen."

At the time, the UN also made 244 other temperature forecasts, all cooler. But Watson seized on this one and told the press that it "adds impetus for governments to live up to their commitments [under the Kyoto Protocol] to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases."

There's lots of hot air. But most of it emanates from Watson, who has been called one of the world's leading "Political" scientists:

Watson presided over the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR), published last year. The assessment reports are supposed to be a comprehensive review of the state of climate science in support of the international climate negotiations. What they have become under Watson's guidance is a political bludgeon to enforce global warming orthodoxy.

The first inkling that Watson was manipulating the panel's work for political ends was two weeks before the 2000 presidential election. A draft of the report's Summary for Policymakers was leaked toThe New York Times, which reported that the IPCC "has now concluded that mankind's contribution to the problem is greater than originally believed," and that, "Its worst-case scenario calls for a truly unnerving rise of 11 degrees Fahrenheit over 1990 levels." The leak was clearly calculated to aid Al Gore's campaign.

In January 2001, Watson publicly released the final draft of the summary, even though the report itself was still under revision, producing another media circus. Watson chimed in that, "This adds impetus for governments of the world to find ways to live up to their commitments … to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases."

The Summary for Policymakers, written by U.N. politicos rather than scientists, is used by Watson to misrepresent the science. IPCC lead author Dr. Richard Lindzen noted that the 35-page chapter that he worked on was summarized in one sentence, and avoided any mention of the many problems with how the models misrepresent key climate processes.

By releasing the Summary for Policymakers before the report itself, Watson assured that its alarmist message was well ingrained in the public psyche before the real science could get a fair public hearing. Watson's unorthodox strategy has achieved the desired political impact as the report itself has been largely ignored.

Unfortunately, the report itself wasn't free of Watson's meddling. The new report estimates that the Earth's average temperature would rise between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius -- or 10.44 degrees Fahrenheit, which The New York Times rounded up to 11 -- over the next century, a big change from its earlier estimate of 1 to 3.5 degrees C.

The higher prediction is not based on new evidence or on a new understanding of the relationship between greenhouse gases and climate change, but on an unwarranted change in the assumptions about future population growth, economic growth and fossil fuel use.

Stephen Schneider, a professor at Stanford University and staunch proponent of the global warming agenda, expressed reservations in Nature magazine about the new assumptions. According to Schneider, "This sweeping revision depends on two factors that were not the handiwork of the modelers: smaller projected emissions of climate cooling aerosols; and a few predictions containing particularly large CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions."

To come up with the outlandish CO2 projections, for instance, Watson formed a group of academic scientists, environmental organizations, industrial scientists, engineers, economists, and systems analysts that decided to "create 'storylines' about future worlds from which population, affluence and technology drivers could be inferred. These storylines "gave rise to radically different families of emission profiles up to 2100 -- from below current CO2 emissions to five times current emissions," according to Schneider.

To get the final "dramatic revision upward in the IPCC's third assessment," he wrote, it combined the climate sensitivities of seven general circulation models (GCMs) with the "six illustrative scenarios from the special report" within a simple model to get 40 climate scenarios.

To add insult to injury, these storylines were not subjected to peer review. In fact, they were added to the IPCC report during a "government review" after the scientific peer review was concluded.

Watson's actions proved that he was not fit to continue as the head of a scientific review process. The product of his tenure was not science but advocacy. The IPCC's new chairman faces the difficult task of getting the IPCC to promote sound science rather than political advocacy masquerading as science.

For all I know, he's a pal of Rifkin, Ehrlich and company. Where is Justin when I need him?

Anyway, I'll grant that the man has stamina.

Nonetheless, it is a bit unfair. Watson really is indefatigable, or at least he doesn't show fatigue. At the interminable U.N. meetings, such as the one that slapped together the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, he stayed up all night, a lot of nights, to craft text acceptable to Al Gore. In an earlier incarnation, as a graduate student in atmospheric chemistry at University of Maryland, and later as honcho of NASA's stratospheric chemistry program, his drive and commitment were legendary.

Along the way, though, Watson discovered that his true calling wasn't science so much as it was using science to tell people what to do. And he's proud of it, too. In April 1996 he left his position as associate director of President Clinton's Office of Science and Technology Policy for the World Bank. In an article on the job change, Washington's greenie gossip sheet Global Change wrote:

In his work for the federal government and now the World Bank, Watson retains his involvement with science but can also influence directly and strongly the social issues that matter to him. [Said Watson:] "I find it an order of magnitude more rewarding, much [italics in original] more rewarding.

UPDATE: Here's today's Drudge headline:

If the Phildelphia Inquirer did that based on such a crummy story, I'd be all over them.

(Glad I'm not a journalist, and don't have to answer to anyone....)