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Comments: 403 + - Science: India Ditches UN Climate Change Group on Friday February 05, @04:54PM
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Several readers have told us that the Indian Government is moving to establish its own group to address the science of climate change since it "cannot rely" on the official United Nations panel. "The move is a severe blow to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following the revelation parts of its 3000 page 2007 report on climate science was not subjected to peer review. A primary claim of the report was the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, but the claim was not repeated in any peer-reviewed studies and rebuffed by scientists. India's environment minister Jairam Ramesh announced that the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor climate change in the region. 'There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism,' Ramesh said. 'I am for climate science.'"
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News: Claims of Himalayan Glacier Disaster Melt Away 561 comments
Submission: Climate science dealt blow as India ditches IPCC by Anonymous Coward
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Sounds like a smart man. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like India intends to continue to use coal fired power plants and will not recognize studies that put coal plants in a bad light.
Where have I heard that before?
Sounds like you'd rather have someone waving their arms around chanting some mystical mumbo-jumbo than someone that understands the value and merits of the scientific method.
Because that's exactly what the CRU data is: mystical mumbo-jumbo. That entire set should have been tossed after Berkley discovered that they placed the majority of their instrumentation in areas outside of specification.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because that's exactly what the CRU data is: mystical mumbo-jumbo.
Just because you're too stupid to read how the data is processed [uea.ac.uk] or compare it to what naive processing would yield [realclimate.org]... oh who the f*** am I kidding? Yes, it's mystical mumbo-jumbo. They're just trying to make the lightning-power that walks through wires into your house and runs your picture box and your clickety email machine cost more. CARBON GOOD!
Re:Sounds like a coal industry shill (Score:5, Insightful)
Carbon good, carbon bad, we don't know. Possibly it's not good, probably we should limit our output of it (can't hurt to be neutral), but to suppose we should spend billions of dollars on fixing a potential non-problem, trusting in what we know to be bad science, that's just fucking bullshit.
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You misspelled trillions. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like a coal industry shill (Score:5, Informative)
Everything apart from absolute wilderness is near a pub in Australia.
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CRU data (Score:5, Insightful)
Unexciting but useful commentary on the CRU data [realclimate.org].
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Re:Sounds like a coal industry shill (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's look at "fluff.info", shall we?
Here, apophenia kicks in, and after you've seen that BPM and GDP are correlated, you'll have no problem inventing a model for it.
The first problem with that argument is that the hypothesis of CO2 causing warming came from *before* worldwide datasets were even availabl3e. It was first proposed in the late 1800s based on laboratory experiments showing that some gasses absorb heavily in the infrared range but minimally in the visible range. Secondly, "you'll have no problem inventing a model" for how beats per minute of a Billboard 100 song affects GDP? Really? Um, no.
There's also the problem that it is very difficult to write down a model for which there isn't another model with the causation the other way `round
Which is ludicrous in the context of CO2, since we can measure isotopic ratio changes (indicating the change in old carbon versus fresh carbon) and have good accounting for human inputs to the system versus sources and sinks. Is warming supposed to make us want to dig up more coal?
Without a model to say anything about the extra variables
Too bad we have nothing more than first principles itself to rely on...
(Actually, we do have other things beyond first principles as well! But that's another story)
For example, for many types of game, if you have two players repeating the game a thousand times, the distribution of actions that player one took will have nothing at all to do with the distribution of actions that player two took
If you're using that as an analogy for global warming, it corresponds to claiming that the laws of physics have changed. Fat luck with that.
And seriously -- do you honestly think that statisticians aren't involved in these papers? Really?
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Re:Sounds like a coal industry shill (Score:5, Informative)
Which is ludicrous in the context of CO2, since we can measure isotopic ratio changes (indicating the change in old carbon versus fresh carbon) and have good accounting for human inputs to the system versus sources and sinks.
Regardless of what you think about climate change, you should reject this particular bad science. The isotopic ratio does not mean what is claimed.
Here is a thought experiment for you: You have a bathtub. The drain is open, the faucet is on. You also have a drip tube putting red colored water into the tub. (This is a vaguely "to scale" stand in for the CO2 in the atmosphere. Large sinks, large sources, tiny human influence.)
You then find that the bathtub is turning red. In fact, almost none of the red dye seems to go down the drain at all! Now consider what that means - does it mean that the drip tube is causing any level changes seen in the water? Obviously, it can't. If all else was equal, you'd expect the drip tube to be diluted by the ratio between the drip tube and the faucet.
The only explanation is that the drip tube's dye must not be absorbed. And, in fact, this has been shown to be true. The carbon isotopes being measured have extremely different properties when is comes to atmospheric scrubbing. So the trace isotopes in the "buried" CO2 are not absorbed, and build up in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, that says nothing about the causes of the overall level change.
I will now be modded down because I disclosed a mistake in one of the arguments commonly used in climate change debates, thus confirming the underlying issues in politicizing science.
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All those numbers, and you got it wrong anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas factor by a large margin. It completely swamps any possible CO2 contribution because, unlike CO2, which remains generally stable regardless of atmospheric temperature change (that's most of the basis for the claim that CO2 will incur warming, in fact), the evaporative cooling process accelerates enormously when the atmosphere warms. Warm water goes up, radiates at least half its heat spaceward in energy ranges that CO2 is largely transparent to, and then comes down (much) cooler. This cycle serves as a self-regulating heat pump from surface to space. Heat radiated in this manner is gone forever.
The real question here, especially after the scandals of the tweaked data, the lockout of contrary input, the use of glacial statistics that were entirely false, the unforgivable falsification of the "hockey stick"... the real question is: Can we call AGW good, established science?
To answer that question, one asks: Does the the global warming hypothesis give rise to models with testable predictions? Yes. There have been numerous models.
So, critically, are the results of the models compatible with the predictions made? If so, we have a theory.
But the answer to that is a resounding no. We have this stall in temperature rise; we have the failure of all the models to predict results across all latitudes at once; we have sea level changes that don't match the predicted results; we have wildly varying predictions from different models indicating fundamental disagreement among the AGW hypothesis proponents. In many cases, the models results are not in yet (predictions are for the future, and the future, to be blunt, is not here yet) and so we literally have no results at all -- merely speculation based upon models that have demonstrated themselves to be flawed over and over again. So it tuns out that we have no more than an unsubstantiated idea, a hypothesis with holes in it.
Given this situation, we reasonably can, and we should, ask the proponents of the AGW hypothesis and the resulting models to go back to their workbenches and refine those models until the predictions work out to within a reasonable margin of error. When they get it right (and they may yet do so), that is the time to get behind policy decisions that use the science -- because when the predictions work, then it is science, in the sense that now, finally, one has a theory.
Right now, AGW is a hypothesis, no more, and an entirely unsupported one at that. We don't actually know what our contributions to warming or cooling are, consequently deciding to spend huge amounts of money and effort to further muddy the waters is foolish in the extreme.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
it was also splattered all over the Telegraph LINK HERE [telegraph.co.uk]
the IPCC is so full of it that they have to use info from a student , which is not peer reviewed and is just an opinion of a pup in the greater scheme of things.
i think i'll take the word of the Indians and take my hat off to them for taking a stand against the UTTER SHITE that that IPCC spews! just goes to show the sheer desperation of th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not correct at all. If the BBC said that, then they are wrong.
The information came from an Indian scientist, reported be New Scientist. No it should not be use as an example of the effects of Global Warming, but it in no way invalidates the science. By the way the people claiming this isn't true are also basing that on a non peer reviewed paper.
See, it's a tad more complex then a simpleton like you can conceive, so you have broken it down to a boolean thinking.
SO tell me, after you read the IPCC whic
Re:Sounds like a coal industry shill (Score:4, Informative)
oh right so the linked article which shows that they used a geography students dissertation and an anecdotal story from a climbing magazine is a nonsense? it's been in many papers, on the BBC news and also on a few other programs too
It is not based on a student's dissertation, it is based on a comment made by the leading Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain to an author for the New Scientist [newscientist.com] in 1999.
Get your facts straight.
Falcon
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Re:Sounds like a coal industry shill (Score:5, Informative)
Have you noticed that all of the complaints are from IPCC WGII and WGIII? Not like you know the difference, so let me explain. WGI is about the science of climate change. WGII is about impacts, while WGIII is about how to avert it.
In all of its reports, the IPCC is explicitly [www.ipcc.ch] not limited to peer-reviewed materials. They can use, and I quote:
"Peer reviewed and internationally available scientific technical and socio-economic literature, manuscripts made available for IPCC review and selected non peer-reviewed literature produced by other relevant institutions including industry".
(I bolded the last part because you'll never see the deniers complaining about that, so I thought it deserved particular emphasis!). They can quote peer-reviewed material, governmental material, NGO material, and industry studies. The reason for this is because not everything on the planet is peer-reviewed. Peer-review is for science.
WG1 is almost entirely peer-reviewed. It's about science, so that's what you do. WGII is mostly about "news". While a good chunk of what it mentions is peer reviewed, it does include a number of non-peer-reviewed reports. The same goes with WGIII (which has more of a focus on policy and industry).
Most of the IPCC review effort, likewise, goes into WG1. WGII and WGIII review is much less emphasized. But the real key is that if you find something wrong with WGII or WGIII, you're not attacking the science of climate change, because those reports aren't about science. The science is in WGI. And if you find a non-peer-reviewed report anywhere in the IPCC, it is *not* violating its guidelines. WG1 just avoids them.
Sadly, some of the people who know better (Watts, I'm looking at you) love to spread misconceptions about all of this.
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Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Inconclusiveness (Score:5, Insightful)
'There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism,' Ramesh said. 'I am for climate science.'
That was nicely worded. The line is not very fine in many cases, however. The biggest difference between a climate evangelist (read: Al Gore) and a scientist is the presence of uncertainty in reporting the state of the climate. It is hard to be preachy when data remains inconclusive.
Re:Inconclusiveness (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainty of the data depends on the question you're trying to answer. Is the earth warming? Absolutely. We have numerous bits of evidence from ice cores, tree rings, and soil samples that confirm that the earth's climate is warmer now than it was before. Is mankind causing this warming? There is more uncertainty here, but signs are increasingly pointing towards the affirmative.
The real question is, "Does the cost of adaptation outweigh the cost of going carbon free?" Humanity is the most adaptable species on the planet. It may very well be the case that the cost of adapting to climate change outweighs the cost of stopping climate change.
Besides, even if prevention is conclusively proven to be more cost efficient, I'm not sure that we have a choice anymore. Most climate scientists say that the Earth is headed for a 4 C rise in temperature, regardless of what humans do at this point. To put that into context, 4 C was the worst case scenario being considered during the 1990s. So, even while the scientists argue about what's causing global warming, I think its worthwhile that we as a nation figure out how to deal with global warming. There will be significant changes in rainfall and temperature patterns. If we do some advance planning now (like not subsidizing building in low lying areas, or encouraging agriculture in places that are going to dry out), we can make the future significantly more comfortable, regardless of whether global warming is our fault or not.
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Worst case (Score:3, Insightful)
US acquires Canada, lets Mexico manage the 'former' US states of the southwest
Re:Inconclusiveness (Score:4, Insightful)
"How could that be ... unless it's likely the Sun doing it - and if so, that would likely explain much of the warming* here on Earth."
How come the current year is tied for the warmest on records while we're in a deep solar minimum?
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Re:Inconclusiveness (Score:5, Interesting)
One major volcanic eruption would affect global climate more than any variance in solar activity, and much more than any supposed "man-made climate change" with drastic amounts of particulate matter being expelled into the atmosphere that utterly dwarf the impact of all of us.
If by that you mean supervolcanic eruption, yes.
If by that you mean major but ordinary volcanic eruption, no. Not even close. Even the worst conventional eruptions cause a couple year blip. And it's only temporary masking of the greenhouse effect, not actual reduction of the greenhouse effect.
Oh, and for the record: volcanoes primarily cool by ejecting SOx into the upper atmosphere, not PM.
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How is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Inaccurate (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't appear as though India is pulling out of the IPCC at all. They are just sending a representative (or "minder" depending on how you look at it).
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/82542/India/India's+IPCC+'tracker'+soon.html [intoday.in]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/PM-expresses-confidence-in-IPCCs-work-lauds-Pachauris-leadership/articleshow/5540596.cms [indiatimes.com]
Before poeple freak out, her is a couple of points (Score:5, Informative)
1) Publishing is usually the beginning of peer review. SO finding a discrepency isn't uncommon
2) The person who made that statement was an Indian Scientist. SO the irony of thise story is rich.
3) is doesn't invalidate the peer reviewed papers, or the overall conclusion.
Here is a good write up:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527434.300-debate-heats-up-over-ipcc-melting-glaciers-claim.html [newscientist.com]
Be sure to follow the read more link.
Yes, yes, most people want some sort of black and white answer. There isn't one, and if you are truly interested you will
read about this is reputable journal. That way you have a chance to see all the facts that lead up to this.
Re:Before poeple freak out, her is a couple of poi (Score:5, Informative)
NOAA has several gigs of data publically available via FTP, and some open format like csv. No, I'm not going to again link to them. Want to peer review that? Go for it. Or, since you're so sure that all the data is garbage, feel free to go up to any industry threatened by carbon caps and taxes, and propose them a research program that will demonstrate once and for all (ONCE AND FOR ALL!!) that there is no global climate change. Should be a cinch, right? Imagine: you'll be rich, you'll be famous, you'll be the savior of humanity!
Or, you can bitch on slashdot. Your call.
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Lets not forget IPCC's wrongful analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
A primary claim of the report was the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, but the claim was not repeated in any peer-reviewed studies and rebuffed by scientists.
Who would blame India for not having faith and carrying out their out climate study with an in-house panel? Did the IPCC not botch the initial rreport [sistertoldjah.com] because someone did the School of Office Space decimal point shift in the math dealing with the melting factor of the Himalayan glaciers? I guess some counties feel that if they want something done right, they'll do it themselves. Cant' fault India for that.
See also: China, Russia.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Take Russia. It also regularly disputes AGW claims.
At the same time, it coincidentally happens to be a major oil exporter, and world largest natural gas exporter. Its economy to a large extent depends on worldwide demand for those resources - oil alone accounts for 40% of all exports.
Internally, most (~65%) power is generated by coal and gas plants. The USSR had a long-term program for replacing those with hydro and nuclear, for resource conservation and environmental reasons, but that only got 1/3 way through - and Russia cannot afford to proceed with that anymore, and is actually struggling [wikipedia.org] to maintain the Soviet legacy.
Oh yes, also, if AGW models are actually correct, then Russia will benefit in many ways. One is that warming up Siberia will create large new swaths of habitable lands. Another is that same changes, as well as melting of ice in the Arctic, will provide for much easier access to extremely rich natural resource deposits which are currently very hard (and in many cases economically unfeasible) to develop.
That's quite enough dots to connect them.
Now, I wrote about Russia, because I actually wrote about it - but are China and India any different? At the very least, they all still heavily rely on fossil fuels to power their industrialization, and cannot afford to stop there no matter the consequences. And - surprise! - China historically had been dismissive of AGW. I don't know much about past India stance on this, but it would seem that them joining the club would be expected, purely for political reasons.
Actually, I am glad, and should the UN (Score:3, Insightful)
Elephant in the room (Score:5, Insightful)
"Global warming" is not the problem. "Climate change" or whatever they're calling it this week is not the problem. Deglaciation is not the problem.
The problem is the billions of tons of ancient fossil carbon we're removing from the ground and adding to the atmosphere. All the climate / ocean / ecology effects are symptoms of that problem. That problem doesn't need "more study" or evangelism or scientific consensus, it's a simple obvious fact that anybody with high school education (even a politician or a capitalist) can understand. It's been obvious for decades, since long before "global warming" started getting any traction in public discourse.
The possible effects of the problem range from trivial and insignificant, to serious hardships of various sorts (well publicized by Gore et al), to utter catastrophe. The chances of serious hardship are high enough that we can't afford to dick around with study after study after study of complex chaotic systems trying build a model that can predict exactly, precisely, what is absolutely guaranteed to happen over the next 100 years. The chances of utter catastrophe, while still really unknown and probably very small, are still enough that we should ask ourselves why the fuck we're playing russian roulette with the whole world, when all we have to do is Stop. Putting. So. Much. Carbon. Into. The. Atmosphere.
I guess this attitude makes me an "evangelist" since I'm not advocating that we go full bore status quo until we're absolutely, positively, 100% certain with no doubt whatsoever what precise effects all this new CO2 will have in the long term. The problem is simple, the solution is obvious, the consequences are uncertain but why fuck around when the stakes are so high? How exactly are we benefiting by continuing to burn more and more and more petroleum and coal every year, mindlessly jerking around the delicately balanced ecosystem that keeps us alive?
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:4, Insightful)
And where, pray tell, did all that carbon come from in the first place? The atmosphere. Carbon levels in the past were way higher than they are today, and the planet survived just fine.
I don't really give a shit about the planet surviving if humans don't. Or if we do but have to revert to a pre-technological society. This whole natural cycle bullshit completely misses the point that nature isn't some benign force that looks out for us out of the goodness of its heart; it is something that is just there. Humans should steward the planet in such away that makes it best for us. If the place is getting too hot, we need to combat that, be it through cutting co2 emmisions, developing more efficient carbon sinks, or just launching a dirty big sunshade into an earth-sun lagrange point.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:4, Insightful)
... written by hundreds of individuals = "climate evangelism". Apparently.
No, preaching something that doesn't exist and then claiming that science supports what you preach is "climate evangelism".
I'm looking forward to visiting those glaciers with my great-grandkids.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:It's shitty science, Rei. (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, there were more than just "a couple" of errors. That report is full of just plain shitty science.
Citation needed.
or caused by some other factor (the sun, for instance)
The sun? Oh my god, what a brilliant idea! Nobody has ever thought of that one before! Quick, young lad, make haste! Inform the world that people ought to consider the sun -- the single most widely studied object outside of Earth, monitored by thousands of ground-based instruments, satellites in various Earth orbits, and even custom satellites in our Lagrangian points. That data might be useful! Perhaps a couple dozen people people should write several dozen papers studying what sort of direct and indirect effects the sun might have on our climate! And then perhaps they should be summarized in the IPCC report! .... oh wait....
An XKCD comic comes to mind [xkcd.com].
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Re:It's shitty science, Rei. (Score:5, Insightful)
The sun? Oh my god, what a brilliant idea! Nobody has ever thought of that one before! Quick, young lad, make haste! Inform the world that people ought to consider the sun -- the single most widely studied object outside of Earth, monitored by thousands of ground-based instruments, satellites in various Earth orbits, and even custom satellites in our Lagrangian points. That data might be useful! Perhaps a couple dozen people people should write several dozen papers studying what sort of direct and indirect effects the sun might have on our climate! And then perhaps they should be summarized in the IPCC report! .... oh wait....
Yes, we've studied the Sun intently. Is that supposed to mean that we have a complete understanding of its effect on the climate? Really? Do you honestly think we have all the answers now? That we're even close to having all the answers?
That's my whole problem with the "science is settled" meme. Science is never settled. It's constantly progressing, proving old assumptions wrong much of the time. Not only is the science not settled here, its becoming more and more apparent that we don't have near the understanding of the climate that we thought we did. After all, even most of the die-hard warming advocates admit that they can't explain the current cooling trend in their models.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, we've studied the Sun intently. Is that supposed to mean that we have a complete understanding of its effect on the climate? Really?
Yes. Read the papers (if you need a starting point, you can find them all referenced in AR4, Ch.02). All of the sun's impacts but one (upper-atmospheric GCR shielding's role in cloud seeding) are very easily measured and straightforward on Earth, with the massive variety of different datasets matching each other. GCR provided the only degree of uncertainty to constraini
Re:It's shitty science, Rei. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hubris, much?
We learn new things all the time about our planet, the sun, the solar system and this wonderful universe. It wouldn't take long to make a list of things we only recently learned that overturned previous 'settled science'.
This has been a bad year for your side, so I can understand your obvious frustrations.
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Re:It's shitty science, Rei. (Score:5, Informative)
So why the decrease when the CO2 keeps increasing year after year?
I swear, it's like a whack-a-mole game sometimes.
No, it hasn't. [realclimate.org]
Want to know how badly the people you've been listening to have been misleading you? Take a look at a temperature graph [wikimedia.org]. To get that "decrease" in temperature, they have to:
1) Cherry-pick the hottest year they can as the starting point (1998 -- one of the most intense El Nino events on record) and use that as a starting point. See the huge one-year spike in 1998? That's what they're picking as their starting point.
2) Pick a lower subsequent year and use that as an end point (often 2008, a La Nina year)
3) Pick the one (of three) major global temperature datasets that makes 1998 hotter than 2005.
4) Ignore the actual way you create a trend line (you don't just look at the start and end points -- you also include a weighted average of the intermediary points.
If you skip any one of those things, you get the opposite result. Let me explicit: anyone who pushes that point who's not just passing along something they heard from someone else is deliberately trying to hoodwink you.
In case you're curious about El Nino/La Nina: El Nino involves the weakening of the Walker Circulation, an equatorial atmospheric wind pattern. This slows the upwelling of deep, cold water in the Pacific. So the equatorial Pacific in an El Nino year has a big splotch of warm water across it, which heats the atmosphere more than usual. In a La Nina year, the Walker Circulation increases, leading to a big splotch of cold water across the equatorial Pacific, cooling the atmosphere.
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Re:It's shitty science, Rei. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's completely unproven, except for the millions of spectra taken of the molecule, which show its resonance in the infrared part of the spectrum. Science, bitches — it works. Now, had you said something about the AMOUNT of heat it traps and whether that amount is significant, then we could be having an actual debate. I'll be bringing my physics Ph.D. with me, how about you?
And here you reveal the biases that inform your decision — not against the science based on any understanding of physics and chemistry, but because one of the advocates is someone with which you disagree politically. Pathetic.
Still, kudos on your all-too-accurate Slashdot ID.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:5, Insightful)
No, putting in primary claims which are known to be suspect from a non-peer-reviewed journal with an agenda, for the ADMITTED purpose of 'influencing policymakers'... THAT is evangelism.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there were a couple mistakes in a 3,000 page document
These weren't "mistakes", they were intentionally included for the purpose of raising hysteria. The people composing the report were warned by scientists that these claims were not supported before the report was written. A company partially owned by the head of the IPCC received a multi-million dollar grant to investigate the supposed loss of the glaciers in the Himalayas by 2035. Oh yeah, he then hired the guy who was the source for it (n a casual conversation with a journalist as an off the cuff comment not based on anything). So the head of the IPCC is told that there is no science behind the claim, but includes it in the report anyway and then takes a grant for millions of dollars to investigate it.
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yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, finding several major errors makes the entire document suspect. Especially given the amount of time and money that went into it. The errors that have been found are inexcusable.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah a couple of errors in a scientific document that happens to impact everyone on the planet along with emails implicating some of those scientists were "massaging" the results to prove their hypothesis.
Kind of important to ensure accuracy. They haven't grasped that. Their too busy building their own unquestionable institution with grandiose threats.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:5, Insightful)
Try again. That wasn't the only error.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023598/after-climategate-pachaurigate-and-glaciergate-amazongate/ [telegraph.co.uk]
They make a major claim about the affect of climate change on the Amazon. The problem is the original study was done by an advocacy group (WWF), wasn't peer reviewed, and wasn't even on the subject of global warming! It was a study on wildfires.
And keep going in that vein...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/24/the-scandal-deepens-ipcc-ar4-riddled-with-non-peer-reviewed-wwf-papers/ [wattsupwiththat.com]
These reports are NOT peer reviewed science and DO NOT belong in the IPCC report, which claims to be properly peer reviewed.
The IPCC fucked up big.
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Re:A couple errors in a 3,000 page document (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. And the whole argument they're making ignores the fact that the IPCC isn't strictly limited to peer-reviewed papers. I'll quote:
"Peer reviewed and internationally available scientific technical and socio-economic literature, manuscripts made available for IPCC review and selected non peer-reviewed literature produced by other relevant institutions including industry".
Yes, the overwhelming majority of what gets cited is peer-reviewed, and anyone who looks through the references can confirm that. In the most important technical report (IMHO), Ch. 2, there's not a single WWF reference out of the many hundreds -- it's all things like Nature, Science, etc. But the IPCC is explicitly allowed to use governmental, NGO, and industry reports where there are no peer-reviewed references available. Not that you'll ever hear Watts complaining about the IPCC's use of industry reports, mind you, but that's a different story.
For example of what they're like, one of the WWF reports they cite is used to reference the following:
"The rapidly expanding tourism industry is driving much of the transformation of natural coastal areas, paving the way for resorts, marinas and golf courses"
And then:
"Recently, dredging for a massive port expansion has resulted in the destruction of more mangroves and the free ecosystem services they provided"
How many peer-reviewed reports do you think there are on tourism's effects on golf courses in Latin America? It's not like they're making a claim, "The first principles forcing for XXX is YYY" or whatnot. What they're citing is news and general knowledge from the region. Hell, if someone *tried* to fund a study on whether a port expansion in a mangrove swamp destroyed mangroves, the same people criticizing this would call it pork!
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The WHO hyped up a potential pandemic to stop it becoming a pandemic. If you're informed about something (i.e. a disease) you can deal with it, inform others, get help etc. If you're in the dark, have zero information and have no idea what's afoot, the chances are you'll ignore any problems, unintentionally assist the spread of the disease and... bang. You have a catalyst. Keeping it hyped kept people vigilant
Re:Good! The UN is nothing but a scam. (Score:4, Informative)
If you mean swine flu, it DID become a pandemic. It was a lot less virulent than originally thought, but it's pandemic because of its spread. If you're going to bash WHO, at least do it for the right reasons.
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Re:Good! The UN is nothing but a scam. (Score:4, Informative)
"In general, the UN is nothing but a scam. It has no accountability"
Er, you mean apart from to every country in the world, bar the only 2 that aren't?
"and due to how it panders to politicians and their whims"
Well yeah, that's generally the idea- an organisation that allows politicians from every country world wide to work together and find solutions that suit everyone, rather than people just going off on conflicting unilateral tangents. Who do you think the UN is supposed to pander to? some grand dictator? or the people? Oh wait, the people are represented by politicians... If your concern is that politicians in your country don't serve the people, then focus on that, because that's a national problem for your country, if your nations population aren't happy with their leadership then they must seek to replace it.
"Frankly, people are fed up with these supranational organizations that do nothing but cause problems."
Yeah, the fucking bastards, damn the International Civil Aviation Organization for ensuring aircraft can communicate in the countries they travel between and don't collide, curse the International Maritime Organization for allowing the same benefits to ships and assisting navigation at sea, screw the Universal Postal Union for ensuring that post can be sent between countries and reach it's destination okay and fuck the International Telecommunication Union for assigning things like country codes so that people in different countries don't have different numbers making international phone systems incompatible.
Wait what's that? You didn't realise it does these things, or simply chose to conveniently ignore them?
I'm first to criticise some UN departments, particularly the likes of the WHO, but tarring the whole of the UN with the same old brush is shows a stunning display of ignorance. The UN has a massive remit, and you don't hear about large parts of it precisely because it does do those things that don't make it into the news so damn well- it runs important global systems and standards transparently enough that people don't even notice it's doing the job just fine. The UN provides a massive benefit to the world despite it's flaws.
I sincerely believe the UN needs major overhauls in some areas- WIPO, WTO, WHO certainly (the head of the WHO, Chan, needs to be sacked ASAP for her incompetence over swine flu), but the idea of getting rid of the UN as a whole including the above departments and the likes of UNESCO is really dumb. Sure you could say disband the UN and continue to run these organisations separately, but that's really just wasteful- why have countries require separate signups to the likes of the postal, aviation, telecomms, maritime and so forth when they need to be part of them all anyway and they work just fine under the UN?
Clearly the UN isn't a scam and is a fundamental organisation for an increasingly connected world, the real solution is to simply fix the UN, rather than shoot it down altogether. Hold up departments that work as examples of how it should be done, and reform those that don't work, sacking he people responsible for such failings.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And speaking of global warming, isn't this this coldest winter on record?
Hmm...any unusual weather patterns? So. Cal was having an unusually cold winter. But conversely Alaska was unusually warm. Were, say, Iceland or Greenland having unusual highs?
Yeah, sadly that part requires research instead of ZOMG ITS COLD!!
Re:cold and ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's try to get this one out of the way early: Weather is not climate [google.com].
Parent
Re:Don't be fooled (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that's called argumentum ad hominem. Fine, India has a ton of issues - water, poverty etc. Firstly, India is very heterogenous, far more than most Europeans and Americans can fathom. There is a large educated middle class that actually does care about the environment, and by the way does enjoy clean drinking water. Does it follow that because a substantial fraction of the country has to deal with issues the Western countries have solved, that Indians must be bound to accept the conclusions of a UN body ? Does it make them automatically incompetent to derive their own conclusions ?
It is irrelevant. If they want an independent assessment, its a good thing. After the CO2 emissions/Kyoto fiasco, Indians are wary of Western environmental policies. Most Indians see any limitation on their CO2 emissions as retarding their development due to a problem that is created largely by the now-developed nations, in the last century.
In any case, in science, as many independent investigations there are , the better the confidence in the findings. And trust me, the Indians know the entire Ganges plain is fed by Himalayan glaciers. They have a very large stake here.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. When I think of India I think of hundreds of millions of people finally making the climb out of poverty to a decent standard of living. Granted, that standard of living won't let the average Indian squander nearly as many resources as the average environmentally aware American, but it's still a huge accomplishment that deserves applause and support. I'm glad to see the In