03 Feb 2010 Bizarre Climategate Update #5: Perhaps Our Children’s Fourth Grade Class Should Help the IPCC

Maybe the IPCC used a primary school geography book that wasn’t peer-reviewed?

Steve McIntyre reports that the last IPCC report (AR4) claimed 55 percent of land on which 60 percent of the Dutch live is below sea level. The true figure is 20 percent.

Over the last few days there has been a dustup between climate scientist Michael Tobis and a number of bloggers and commentators after Tobis questioned whether a woman who had raised nine kids is qualified to question climate scientists (because, as he put it, she hadn’t had the time “to think about complicated grownup stuff”).

By the time a mom has helped nine kids through their primary school science homework, she might have a pretty good idea about the geography of the Netherlands.

Obviously, the racy-novel-writing economist and engineer who runs the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, doesn’t.

Maybe he should have helped his kids with their homework more often.

Put a mom in charge, I say. Or my kids. At least when fourth graders do a job, someone checks their work.

Addendum, 2/6/10: Michael Tobis ended the conversation about parenthood on a gracious note (here and here).

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Labels: Climate, Environment, Scandals, United Nations