Dutch Agency Admits Mistakes In UN Climate Report 447
Hugh Pickens writes "The AP reports that the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has taken the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal, 3,000-page UN report last year on climate change, and disclosed that it had discovered more small mistakes. However, the review by the agency also claims that none of the errors affected the fundamental conclusion by a UN panel of scientists: that global warming caused by humans already is happening and is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people. The Dutch agency reported in 2005 that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when only 26 percent is. The second previously reported error claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, which the Dutch agency partly traced to a report on the likely shrinking of glaciers by the year 2350. The original report also said global warming will put 75 million to 250 million Africans at risk of severe water shortages in the next 10 years, but a recalculation showed that range should be 90 million to 220 million. The analysis said future IPCC reports should have a more robust review process, and should look more closely at where information comes from."
Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Saying that Africa is going to have water shortages in 10 years and then say it might be 220 million years is more than a small error.
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Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
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*No* climatologist would ever go to the extreme of predicting an end to snow anywhere. Google "outliers".
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I don't know if you were just jesting at the poorly formed sentence, or completely missed that the range changed from 75 million to 250 million Africans at risk of severe water shortages to 90 million to 220 Africans at risk of severe water shortages - the 10 years thing is constant.
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220 million people, not years.
Damn Americans (Score:3, Funny)
>>>Saying that Africa is going to have water shortages in 10 years and then say it might be 220 million years is more than a small error.
Always frakking everything up.
Oh.
Wait.
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I'm just glad the Dutch don't have a space program.
Sure, Americans get confused about the whole "metric-imperial conversion" thing, but these are some serious typos~
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The error was not in percentages, but in what to include.
55 percent is at risk of flooding, but more than half that because of rivers. 26 percent is at risk from flooding by sealevel-rises alone.
Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:4, Insightful)
For analogous purposes, it is like writing a college research report using wikipedia as a primary source (or as any source really). Any good professor is going to mock you for it, and for good reasons.
Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you know how long the IPCC report is? It's effing huge. If the worst things the denialists can find after going through it with a fine toothed comb are what amounts to a typo, a misstatement, and a bad calculation, that is amazing.
Further, the physical sciences basis [global-gre...arming.com] for global warming remains unchanged and completely unchallenged. The only thing we are quibbling about (indeed, what you're so concerned about in your post) are what the actual effects of global warming will be, not whether or not it is happening.
It's like that old apocryphal story about Winston Churchill - we've already agreed that global warming is happening, now we're just haggling over how painful it will be. For some reason, people seem to think that if they haggle the pain down a little, the "already agreed" part will go away.
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Your apocryphal story about Winston Churchill is a retelling of an actual occurrence...but George Bernard Shaw was the man asking the question of the lady.
Maybe it was too long then. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe it was too long then. (Score:5, Funny)
If they couldn't write an accurate report the size of IPCC report, they should have written a smaller one.
Gee, by that standard, the deniers should shut the fuck up.
Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, that myth has been comprehensively debunked. Here is one of many debunkings written by climate scientists:
climate-myths-we-cant-trust-computer-models [newscientist.com]
The climate models I am running on climateprediction.net [climateprediction.net] begin in 1820. They do that to correlate the various models with the climate record since 1820. Only models that show a good correlation are used to predict the future. There are plenty of links on the site showing this correlation, take a peek.
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All my predictions are true. Honest!, Here is a paper I wrote that says they are true!
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Only models that show a good correlation are used to predict the future
Other than proving your ignorance of computational physics, this claim demonstrates very little. I can show you any number of unphysical, highly-parameterized models that can be made to correlate well with the past, but do very badly at predicting the future.
It is an unfortunate truth that climate models are unphysical and highly parameterized. This combination is very, very bad. An unphysical model with few parameters is not so bad, because it is unlikely to be able to fit real data and so is met with a
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Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Informative)
There are four volumes in the report [www.ipcc.ch], the report of which you speak uses "grey material" from goverment, industry and private sources that cannot be found anywhere else. In this case they used a government source for the percentage of land below sea level, unfortunately the Dutch govt got it wrong but that is about impacts and has nothing to do with the science. The scientific volume (WG1) only uses peer-reviewed sources and nobody has yet pointed out any errors in WG1, in fact the people who pointed out the 2035 error were contributors to WG1.
Note the prominent link directly above the reports to their statement about the 2035 mistake. The IPCC is widely recognised by scientific institutions as one of the most robust peer-review exercises ever conducted and it has been forthright about recognsing it's mistake but if your expecting perfection from a large bunch of humans over a 20yr period you will be dissapointed.
Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet your unreasonably dogmatic approach to this subject is still preventing you from actually learning anything.
"The IPCC report is now utterly unreliable for giving us this information"
Donald Knuth is famous for giving token cheques to anyone who spots an error in his classic computer science textbooks. Several cheques have been handed out over the years and the people who have recieved them display them as a badge of honour. Do you apply the same reasoning to "The art and science of computer programming" and therfore conclude that Knuth's classic texts are "utterly unreliable".
In other words the direct opposite to your claim is true, when someone, (be it Knuth or the IPCC), openly admits and corrects thier mistakes it makes their work more reliable and their motivations more honourable to everyone except extremly myopic observers. When the observers are an army of one-eyed psuedo-skeptical vested interests and the errors are few and far between then it is very strong evidence the work is extrodinarily reliable.
"the fact that WGII was using unscientific sources of information is unconscionable"
What is unconscionable is the fact you keep ignoring the fact that the report itself clearly states it's reasoning behind the inclusion of grey material. There is nothing wrong with material from any source unless you are trying to misrepresent it as something other than what it is, which BTW is what you are doing to the WG11.
Now do you understand why some of the more astute moderators saw through your populist bullshit and moderated you "troll"? - It was not because you make any error in fact, it was because you built a credible sounding strawman by ommitting inconvienient facts. The very tactic that you and your fellow useful idiots [wikipedia.org] often claim the IPCC is guilty of - projection much?
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As to the Stefan-Boltzmann law you mentioned in your last post, this is a red-herring introduced a few years ago by the well known fra
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The reason I have bolded Antartic is because the seasonal sea ice there is
Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Informative)
Your analogy fails, to fix it there would be two sections to the college research paper, one that deals with scientific sources and the other that includes other sources such as the media reports and public opinion. Wikipedia turns out to be a pretty good jumping off point for the second section, though any good professor would still likely mock you for stopping at Wikipedia.
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I agree with your point to a limited extent, but your tone is one of "neener, neener" which likely enhanced the quick-finger reaction of the troll mods.
Perhaps that's just a sensitivity to this topic that I have, because both sides of the argument have a very high quantity of argumentative dicks who are completely ignorant, except their particular brand of political talking points.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. You know... . CO2 is clearly bad, but the world won't end in 8 years. Perhaps i
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My sense is that Slashdot has become infested with moderators (possibly) gaming the system with a vengeance when it comes to these comments threads.
I noticed it at first when I posted several politely stated but skeptical posts on a global warming thread a couple of months ago that were nuke-moderated. Because of that, I looked in subsequent climate threads for a pattern and I think I see one. Even remotely skeptical posts questioning the basis of event parts of AGW will often be moderated downward. Seri
Before people scream consistency... (Score:2, Insightful)
All this means is that scientists are in fact humans and make small errors just like everyone else.
Well actually, overstating by 200% the amount of land underwater in a small country is not really a "small" error.
Some of the other errors are small, true. But it's hard to put a lot of faith the conclusion is correct when so many other little things are wrong. If the report is not consistent in accuracy throughout, trusting the result because they claim to have found "none of the errors actually matter" is
Re:Before people scream consistency... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before people scream consistency... (Score:5, Informative)
> Well actually, overstating by 200% the amount of land underwater in a small country is not really a "small" error.
yeah, it's about as serious as overstating the difference between 26% and 55% by about 100%.
hint: 55% is just over double 26%, not triple. so it would be an ~ 110% overstatement, not 200%.
hint2: anyone can make simple mistakes.
> Some of the other errors are small, true. But it's hard to put a lot of faith the conclusion is correct when so many other little things are wrong.
see, that's the thing. you don't put "faith" into the report. science is not about faith, it's about evidence and reason. faith is belief despite evidence or even despite the evidence. instead, you examine the evidence and analyse the rationale and the conclusions and decide a) whether they are consistent, logical, and rigorous, b) whether they match observed reality, and c) whether, over time, they are shown to be a good predictive tool for future observations of reality.
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the obvious fear-mongering and finger-pointing that will result from the anti-AGW camp.
Yeah, we wouldn't want anything to interfere with the obvious fear-mongering and finger pointing from the pro-AGW camp.
Beware the mirror-image projection (Score:3, Informative)
So sad. So pointless.
We will destroy this world, because of our ignorance.
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Hey, I believe in AGW, but this is much more than just a "small error". It indicates that papers supportive of the conclusion had a much lower threshold for inclusion than papers contradictory to it. As in, there was no threshold for pro-GW papers. You could make up stuff and if it sounded good it could be included, without any fact-checking.
The issue isn't whether there were a few factual errors. It's
Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... (Score:5, Informative)
Again, the paper in question was not investigating the scientific basis of the climate change, that paper has never been found to have significant errors.
This is a DIFFERENT section of the report, which is designed to use "non-scientific" input in order to ascertain a POLITICAL impact of potential changes that were concluded in the scientific paper, separately.
Try to keep them separate, because they are.
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Just for reference-- this is not physics (Score:5, Informative)
Just as a quick reminder, this report is talking about errors in the Working Group II report (the effects of climate change), and not the Working Group I report (the physical basis of climate change).
The errors discussed here don't call into question the physical basis of the fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect; they have to do with the question of what the effects of the warming will. (And even there, I'll point out that the WG-II errors in question are from misquoting the research, or in quoting sources that don't refer to actual research at all-- they don't seem to be errors in the original science sources.)
It's easy enough to get this confused, since most of the media reports don't distinguish the reports-- don't even seem to know that there is not just one report being discussed.
How about "more than 0.1%"? (Score:5, Informative)
The IPCC report contains over six thousand factual assertions. Only 3 or 4 have been shown to be inaccurate, and they're all to do with the implications of GW. Not one of the assertions supporting the causes of AGW have been demonstrated to be inaccurate.
The errors in your comment show a serious lack of quality in your own research, and it sounds more like you've been believing in someone rather than trusting and verifying.
Please Just Let This Go... Just... Let It Go... (Score:2, Insightful)
Global Warming: The Y2K Scare for the New Century.
Re:Please Just Let This Go... Just... Let It Go... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good analogy in that Y2K was more than just a scare, required a lot of people working on it to prepare, and even though there WERE issues, we managed to evade the catastrophy due to hard work and determination.
The only issue we have right now is that Global Warming doesn't have the same commitment the Y2K scare had, and Global Warming is not something that can be fixed by computer scientists alone.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
With Y2K, if you talked to computer scientists, it was problems with dates, maybe spreadsheets, maybe welfare checks would have trouble getting sent. But to the general public, it was about power plants exploding, planes falling out of the sky, and general chaos. People were literally stocking food and ammo. If the worst case computer-scientist scenario had happened, it would have seemed l
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The fact is, the computer models are known to be horrible at predicting rain patterns. Just as likely the extra heat would cause extra evaporation from the oceans, and cause more land to become farmable. Or it could do nothing. One thing we do know is extra CO2 in the air increases plant-yield. So really there's no point in spreading propaganda like you just stated when we don't even know what would happen.
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The only issue we have right now is that Global Warming doesn't have the same commitment the Y2K scare had, and Global Warming is not something that can be fixed by computer scientists alone.
There is also the pesky problem that there is no consensus on global warming. For some reason, proponents of the theory like to assume that the science is settled, perhaps so they can conveniently call anyone who might disagree a loony denier.
I think that's at least one other point where GW differs drastically from Y2K.
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There is also the pesky problem that there is no consensus on global warming.
Not by the ones that are actually qualified to do such a judgement.
I think that's at least one other point where GW differs drastically from Y2K.
Not really. I'm sure there were a lot of rednecks that called Y2K a lie manufactured by IT guys to get a job back then.
Re:Please Just Let This Go... Just... Let It Go... (Score:5, Insightful)
Global Warming: The Y2K Scare for the New Century.
Absolutely. People realised well before the crisis occurred that remedial action was necessary to address shortcomings in human-designed systems whose effects, while difficult to quantify (and the subject of wild speculation), were known to be adverse.
While some efforts began well in advance of the crisis itself, consensus concerning action didn't arise immediately. The result was a late push toward a technical fix that ended up costing businesses and governments more, because once-plentiful resources were now in high demand.
The difference between Y2K and Climate Change, of course, is that one only required that a date field be fixed, and the systems we were modeling were entirely of human creation. Our sense of the scope of the problem, and therefore our predictive capability, was much better. This didn't stop an ill-informed media from announcing the Apocalypse and helping drive a millennial fervour among many, but those in this know were nonetheless able to concentrate on the task at hand and, for the most part, remedy it before it became a problem.
Our understanding of the scope and nature of Climate Change, on the other hand, is based on observation of a nearly infinitely more complex natural system. Achieving a clear understanding of the scope and exact nature of the problem is therefore exceedingly difficult. Scientific speculation about possible effects has led to an ill-informed media announcing the Apocalypse and helped drive a (Mayan) millennial fervour among many.
Those in the know are thwarted by competing economic interests who see mere acceptance of the concept of global climate change as a threat to their profitability. They have therefore recruited numerous 'public relations' companies to subvert the credibility of said researchers and to use any means necessary to cast doubt on the research itself. This has hampered efforts to win public support for action, which in turn has made it politically difficult to commit to anything but often meaningless half measures (e.g. cap-and-trade).
... But aside from the differences, yeah, they're exactly alike. 8^)
truth still getting it's boots on (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ok, for a report this size, that is being used to massively change the living conditions of many millions of people downwards, how many errors need to be found before the results become questionable? At what point will you stop and say, I think we need to look deeper into this before we subject all these people to miserable living conditions based on these questionable results? There are so many "small errors" in this report that, if you wrote it as a school assignment, you'd probably get a failing grade.
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Ok, for a report this size, that is being used to massively change the living conditions of many millions of people downwards, how many errors need to be found before the results become questionable? At what point will you stop and say, I think we need to look deeper into this before we subject all these people to miserable living conditions based on these questionable results?
The implied assertion in such questions is that the only points of the report that were reviewed are the ones which have been reported as inaccurate. I do wonder, if you look at the total count of issues reviewed, and the percentage of those that has been proven accurate after review, how large will that be? That is the only metric under which you can truly judge the quality of the report.
Re:truth still getting it's boots on (Score:4, Informative)
Erm I kinda like having my computer with its internet connection.
Ok, so you like your computer to be on all the time. Try to make allowances in other places in your life.
Oh wait. Wind and solar power cant produce enough power to keep them going? Bye bye internet. Do you realise how much power Google uses alone?
Google likely uses a lot of power. However, wind and solar do have lots of power capacity. Wind has 5x the current world capacity (theoretically). 20 seconds, Wikipedia. In a directed study, like the UK, they predicted about 50x their power demands. This doesn't even count solar, tidal, geothermal. Also, why you do think that a transition to renewable energy and improving efficiencies and standards (such as CCS) would suddenly cause existing power generation and infrastructure to blow up?
Remember that these idiots are wanting to ditch coal power, refuse to use nuclear (wtf?) and if everyone cant power their lives off a small pinwheel then your being wasteful.
Sounds like a bit of a hyperbole. From my experiences, nuclear has more proponents among environmentalists who see it as an appropriate measure to move towards renewables and away from coal than among the anti-AGW crowd.
If you want to make more legitimate criticisms, look towards energy density of storage and transportation mediums, as an example. Also, invest in companies that do battery research.
The greater problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that right wing bloggers trumpet these up to raise doubts about the basic science
Oh there's a far greater problem, it's people like you willing to whitewash inaccuracies and the inability for people to review the data used to reach the conclusion they claim is accurate. To just blow past that and still claim there's even science going on, much less that it is sound, is pretty incredible to me on a site where people are otherwise very level-headed about technical matters.
If you can't peer re
Re:The greater problem (Score:4, Informative)
"Oh there's a far greater problem, it's people like you willing to whitewash inaccuracies and the inability for people to review the data used to reach the conclusion they claim is accurate."
Which. Fucking. Inaccuracies?
We're talking about several errors in a giant report. How do you imagine that they can change the very BASICS of the climate science?
Do you suggest that ALL climate scientists are members of a global conspiracy ring, spanning more than a century and more than 300 countries?
"If you can't peer review, it's not science. If you're theory cannot actually predict anything but the past, that's not a good theory and you need to go back to the drawing board."
It fucking can. IPCC predicitons from 1988 come true today, and they are statistically significant.
Hell, even Arrhenius' predictions from 1890-s are correct (within their margin of error).
Go on and study climate science before making stupid remarks.
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You know, if you wish to be taken seriously you should start by trying not to sound like a 15-years-old with a testosterone imbalance. And then follow it by linking to a more reputable source than this "newsmax" of yours, whose author's agenda and ignorance of science is so painfully evident from the way he writes.
I've been reading part of that paper you linked and while I don't think I'll have enough time to look at it completely, the introduction at least is full of pointless fluff and irrelevant factoids
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You know, I'm surprised that laymen have no ability to distinguish between significant errors, insignificant errors, and acceptable margins of error. For AGW, being in the proper ballpark of the order of magnitude is a significant enough datum for systems which may have exponential behavior (or much worse, like the realities of the difficulty modeling climate). Considering how hard it i
Re:The greater problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any regard for the truth, or do you just think sound bites are sufficient?
The truth is that there are a number of predictions that come from climate science that have been confirmed by observation:
1. The surface temperature will increase - it has
2. The heat content of the oceans will increase - it has
3. The poles - especially the nth pole will warm faster than the rest of the planet. The observed warming of the Nth pole is dramatic.
4. The stratosphere will cool as the troposphere warms. It has.
5. Ocean acidity will rise - it has.
A couple of these predictions are more than a century old, having been first made by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius in 1896. He was the first to arrive at an estimate of sensitivity of climate to increase in atmospheric CO2. An estimate not that different to what is the accepted range today.
Not only have these predictions been confirmed by observation, but no other plausible explanation has been found other than an enhanced greenhouse effect. Despite exhaustive efforts, attribution of climate change principally to solar changes, cosmic rays, astronomical cycles etc etc has been shown to be plainly incompatible with available observation.
What inaccuracies? (Score:2)
These IPCC errors? They affect some implications, not the cause or the many other implications of AGW. CRU's data, their methodologies, their peer-review process? All vindicated by three independent inquiries. Any other inaccuracies you were thinking of?
If you want to challenge the mountain of good science that's been done on AGW, you're going to have to use better science, certainly more than vague, sweeping, unsubstantiated accusations. Though that seems sufficient for all too much of the public today.
It's not one small error (Score:2, Informative)
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If only you understood the things you took such trouble to comment on.
Your complaint is that the WGII contains non-peer reviewed non-scientific materiel. That is its goal and its charter.
Sky blue today. Film at 11.
Small errors? (Score:4, Insightful)
55% to 26% is a small error? Sounds like double to me. I'm not going to deny that climate change is happening, its happened for millions of years. I've seen layers of sandstone with sea shells it them, in the next foot of rock above there was petrified wood. From sea to forest in a short geological time span and back then humans weren't around. We may see climate change on such scales, that doesn't frighten me, we can adapt. The thing that does frighten me is politicians who use climate change as a platform to push whatever agenda they please.
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Are you actually suggesting there are people out there who believe only human activity could possibly lead to significant climate change? Why must climate change be explained either exclusively in terms of human influence or exclusively in terms of non-human factors? It doesn't make sense.
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If this isn't a small error for you, here's more shocking news: We (humans) have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by more than 30% during last 200 years. Definitely sounds like a lot, doesn't it?
(The point is, you cannot determine if error is small or not from percentage alone.)
Re:Small errors? (Score:5, Insightful)
55% to 26% is a small error? Sounds like double to me.
Yes, that's right. They got the sea level of the Netherlands wrong, and therefore anthropogenic global warming doesn't exist.
Yup, that's perfectly sound logic, that is.
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I really don't know why we should leave that sweat spot either 2 degrees Celsius down or up. According to the 4th assesment report of IPPC WG1 even the low scenario B1 has a best estimate of 1.8 degrees C warming till the end of this century (page 13 (PDF) [unibe.ch]). So atm we have a rise, let's keep that in
lol (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:lol (Score:5, Informative)
The changes aren't just not driving an SUV. It is things like not driving at all. Not being able to buy food in plastic packaging and only buy food that is grown within 100 miles or so of where you live. Things like starting to put people to work demolishing freeways in California so the space can be used to move people closer to where they work - no more driving, no more freeways, etc.
Do you begin to understand the magnitude of the changes that are actually required?
How about a simple one? Assuming the immigration influx into the US continues and the building of new powerplants continues on the rapid pace it has for the last 40 years (like none at all), you can expect that we will be running out of electricity commonly. We have to make some hard decisions about offices and homes - and telecommunity isn't a solution. If your refrigerator won't keep food cold for a day without electricity better think about getting a new one. If your pets can't live without air conditioning, time to start thinking about an aquarium instead.
Sure, we could supply the entire country's electrical needs from solar cells in Arizona and Nevada. Except, who is going to keep the protesters out of the meetings where the new transmission lines get decided on? Nobody? It is their right? Well, then you can forget about new transmission lines because way, way too many people "know" they cause cancer, impotence and all sorts of other bad things. So they will not be built and solar cell farms in Arizona and Nevada will never be built, just like the huge wind farms in Texas - because the electricity cannot be transferred from there to the cities where it is needed.
No mention of... (Score:4, Insightful)
No mention of the 6,475,248 correct statements in the report.
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Or this problem: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/ippc-sealevel-gate/ [realclimate.org] The errors in IPCC report actually cut both ways.
Meh! Meh, I say! (Score:3, Insightful)
If the climate miraculously stops changing and steadies at current levels, and even if it is so predictable that we can evacuate places before storms hit, there will still be millions of people starving because the population keeps growing and the planet and its resources doesn't.
So meh to climate change. A few thousand people can live in a desert or tundra, 20 billion cannot.
Not unlike the evolution "debate" (Score:5, Insightful)
The current debate over global warming is not unlike the debate over evolution, which is to say, there really isn't any rational debate, only people whose vested interests are threatened by the conclusions of science who are desperately grasping at straws to deny settled facts. In the case of evolution, the vested interest is an emotional attachment to long-discredited Bronze Age superstitions, while climate change deniers feel their (unsustainable) wealth and convenience are threatened by the growing recognition that those things cannot go on unchanged without risking our continued existence. As a result, each new fact added to the edifice of evolutionary theory, as with climate theory, leads to a perverse demand that science fill in the ever shrinking gaps. In the case of evolution-deniers, the gaps are now so small that they have been reduced to all but demanding a running video record of speciation. Climate change deniers have a little more wiggle room, the risk of global warming having been recognized for only sixty or so years now, but even they have been reduced to positing the existence of a global conspiracy of climatologists to rule the world.
It would be funny if the threats we faced were not both urgent and existential.
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Yup, definitely the AGW people are stupid. One side insists that the facts need backing data to prove them correct, and the other side took a poll and claimed a consensus. Doesn't everybody learn in grade school that the scientific method is done by taking polls? Don't you remember taking a vote on the value of pi in junior high?
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For a moment, let us accept that the only way to actually force change upon the climate-change deniers is to take radical, violent action. Without this, they will not believe, they will not change and everything on the planet will die.
So, what have you done to further the goal of knocking these deniers off their pedastle of wealth and convenience? Burned any cars? After all, they are a symbol of 20th Century Western progress, right? How about destroying an airliner on the ground? They spew millions of
Re:So true! (Score:5, Insightful)
how is it rational to believe in a conclusion based on data they will not let you see?
How is it rational to instead believe the only possible alternative conclusion; that 98.5% of climatologists must be deliberately falsifying their conclusions in a global conspiracy to mislead the public for nefarious but unstated purposes?
Plenty of data available [Re:So true!] (Score:2)
The current debate over global warming is not unlike the debate over evolution, which is to say, there really isn't any rational debate.
Exactly what many of us have been saying, how is it rational to believe in a conclusion based on data they will not let you see?
I would like to point out the the fundamental physics is not only open-source, it is over a hundred years old. The detailed calculation of the effects of carbon dioxide, Manabe and Wetherald (1967), is forty-three years old, and you can and should repeat it for yourself. There are many global circulation models (the detailed numerical models of the thermal balance of the atmosphere), and most of them are open source-- you can go to the MIT GCM page, for example, and download the code and run it yourself.
Science is iterative (Score:5, Funny)
But, if we are honest, most of this is not about the science buy about the policy decisions. We are still reeling from the bad science that meant we could no longer increase yields by spraying crops with DDT just because a few radical scientists created massive birds deaths, like liberals caused the gulf oil spill to stop oil drilling. Or overstating the effects of lead on children, or asbestos, to destroy those industries and destroy capitalism. We all know that scientist don't really do science, but spend all their time trying to destroy democracy and all that is good.
Re:Science is iterative (Score:5, Insightful)
But, if we are honest, most of this is not about the science buy about the policy decisions. We are still reeling from the bad science that meant we could no longer increase yields by spraying crops with DDT just because a few radical scientists created massive birds deaths, like liberals caused the gulf oil spill to stop oil drilling. Or overstating the effects of lead on children, or asbestos, to destroy those industries and destroy capitalism. We all know that scientist don't really do science, but spend all their time trying to destroy democracy and all that is good.
What's scary is that I can't be 100% sure you're shooting for satire here...
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Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.
-- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
"Looking God in the Eye"
Only 220 million Africans. (Score:2)
Oh, only 220 Africans are i the danger of dying a slow, painful death; thats so much different from 250 million.
Let me spell it out clearly:
a) the IPCC report is not a peer reviewed journal; if you want to have it more valid, introduce peer review. In the scientific part that took place, however the biggest problems are in the part where the consequences are described not by scientists, but collected by social and political sciences.
b) the IPCC report is meant to be a basis for politics. There are few thing
Some facts for everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather....
OOOPS!... sorry, I mistakenly was quoting scientific data from the 1970's with regards to Global Cooling. Nothing to see here I guess, just forget I ever mentioned this. Thank goodness we have honest reporting and scientific fact finding these days, nothing like an apocalyptic blast from the past eh? Now don't forget to stay scared and make sure you let your state agencies dictate how much you eat and what temperature you can keep your house at.
I'm sure they'll get it right with Global Warming this time!! Maybe we'll even die because of it in 10 years!
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Re:"Redefine what peer review means" (Score:5, Informative)
As many posters have said about the IPCC, you should try checking the primary source to find out if your adopted claims are factual or political.
New Campaign! Stop cretinous fools! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Keep hiding that decline, boys. Wouldn't want anybody to realize that we are in a global cooling snap and have been for a decade now."
Really. Such fools as you should be put against the wall and shot. Then buried with the stake through heart, just to be sure.
The garbage you're spewing is based on a simple fact of 1998 being a statistical fluke. However, the last year is the _hottest_ year on records and beats 1998. So no, there's just no global cooling. There are just stupid fools who don't understand the basics.
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"The data from the IPCC and other climate centers can not be trusted, and the CRU leaks show why."
OK. Now show me the data which proves that Earth is cooling. Of course, without using ANY official weather data - they are all parts of the global conspiracy.
Go on, make my day.
Re:New Campaign! Stop cretinous fools! (Score:4, Informative)
The CRU methodology has been completely cleared by three independent inquiries comprised of experts in the field, and their data fully vindicated.
Claims that the integrity of the data has been "lost somehow" show a lack of understanding of the statistical analysis methods used throughout the physical sciences. Claims that are all the more ironic when coming from the denialist crowd, whose accusations of "faked science" are riddled with obvious selection bias (exhibit A: the "cooling decade" argument referenced by the GP).
Re:New Campaign! Stop cretinous fools! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you are correct. But that doesn't mean what you hope it means.
For political reasons the actual projections were toned down and made milder, largely by excluding models that projected faster or more extreme warming. Then they averaged the remaining projections.
Now one can argue that this makes the report invalid, but I don't see how one can say it makes it overly dramatic.
One could argue that the models are invalid. I hope you are correct. But they have been validated by predicting past results in order to obtain some estimate of how accurate they are. All current models suffer from two kinds of error:
1) We don't have enough data, and
2) The models have been oversimplified to make it possible to run projections on available computers. Using all the factors and data we have available would result in models that ran in much slower than real time.
So ALL of the models are oversimplified, and known to be so. Sorry, that's the best we can do.
P.S.: I am not associated with any author of the report or any of the models used in the report. This post is a synopsis of things that I have read in the popular scientific press.
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Here is the raw data [noaa.gov], go and do some calculations and get back to us if you find a trend that significantly deviates from the accepted 0.14degC/decade.
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"If you are placing your monitoring stations under A/C exhaust vents and in the middle of asphalt parking lots, you can make any year the warmest on record."
Yeah, yeah. I know, we in our Global Conspiracy try hard.
But I'm still waiting on data proving that the Earth is cooling.
Where is it?
"It is clear you never read the CRU leak's actual contents, or are you one of the fucking tools that would have us believe that plain English terms like "hide the decline" are being misinterpreted? Because you fucks aren't
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Warming or cooling we're negatively affecting the environment - at least that much has been proven. The only thing that seems to unclear is how bad it is yet.
We may not have caused global warming on a massive scale yet, but if we keep it up, we will. Better to change our habits now, it's not like we've got much else to worry about. Once the scientists have figured out the whole interstellar space travel thing, we can take off and nuke the planet from orbit, and then we'll be sure.
Redefine what selection bias means (Score:5, Insightful)
If you pick 1998 as the year to start, then yes, temperatures have declined from that extraordinary El Nino weather pattern.
Similarly, I can say that the economy has been roaring since late 2008 - the stock market is up over 30%! Or I can say the economy has been suffering since early 2008 - the market is down over 40%! Both cases are a little misleading, and not only because the Dow Jones has little to do with the real economy.
Global air and sea temperatures are on average going up, and have been doing so for decades. The US military is planning for the defense of the northwest passage. The USA, Russia, and Canada have already started bickering over the ownership of resources under the ice pack in the Arctic Ocean.
Something tells me that all of these things are not just coincidence.
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Not coincidence? So you're saying the stock market is causing global warming? I knew somehow Goldman Sachs was to blame!!! It all makes sense now.
Sarcasm as edgy as a rotted wooden spoon.
But if there's a way to make a dollar from misery, you can be sure all of Wall St has people looking into it. To get you started, here's a helpful article from 2003 [msn.com] about what defense stocks to buy, now that investors are bullish on a long war in Iraq.
And though the Journal has been bearish on climate change so far, as soon as they find a way to profit from it, I expect them to change their tune as quickly as they discard their values for a new, more profitable set o
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And if you go back... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you pick 1998 as the year to start, then yes, temperatures have declined from that extraordinary El Nino weather pattern.
And, if you go back to the end of the last ice age, you'll also see a warming trend. Long before the industrial age and man-made CO2 emissions.
And again, if you go back to the beginning of the Pliocene Epoch, you'll find that the Earth has cooled since then.
What's your point?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What's your point?
That the earth is warming? I think it's a pretty simple premise to start from, given the data. Then we can move on to things like, will there be enough water in the new climate? If no, can we take steps to reduce it's effects? Should we begin slowly migrating away from the coast instead of waiting until it's too late to rebuild the infrastructure?
Or to translate it into American political terms, how can I take away your god-given right to limitless natural resources and destroy your dignity by making you pa
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If you pick 1998 as the year to start, then yes, temperatures have declined from that extraordinary El Nino weather pattern.
And, if you go back to the end of the last ice age, you'll also see a warming trend. Long before the industrial age and man-made CO2 emissions.
And again, if you go back to the beginning of the Pliocene Epoch, you'll find that the Earth has cooled since then.
What's your point?
The point is that picking a window at a precise point in the past 10 years does not have any predictive power on the time scale we need answers on. Your other bogus examples are similar: We do not need predictions about what will happen at the end of the Eocene or the end of the next glacial period. We need them for the next 50-100 years, so we look at time scales that are 1-2 order of magnitude larger. More importantly, we want results that do not depend on carefully chosen endpoints (like 1998). You
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"If you pick 1998 as the year to start, then yes, temperatures have declined from that extraordinary El Nino weather pattern."
Not even that, anymore. 2009 was warmer than 1998.
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Global air and sea temperatures are on average going up, and have been doing so for decades.
On geological time scales, pointing to "decades" is just as misleading as pointing to "decade".
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AAAARGH why is it that sometimes people are so incredibly ignorant?! Yes, we got the whole below-sea-level-thing to work. We had a lot of time to do so. We invested a lot of effort and money. Hey, it all worked out, yay.
That does NOT mean that it's feasible everywhere else, and to suggest is is, well, REALLY REALLY WRONG.
Re:26% below sea level (Score:5, Informative)
Basically most of it was salt water marshes and lakes that we drained. Fortunately we are not living anywhere near a geological active region, nor do we have a rainy season or trouble with hurricanes. A lot of the world is not as lucky. We've spend oodles of money and time into building dikes and such. We are a highly organized, rich country. You cannot just take our solution and implement it anywhere else.
You won't even believe what we have to do to be safe from newer threats that come from the changes in climate. Basically we have to make all the dikes a lot higher. The chances of floods from rivers is much higher and the sea dikes were not build with higher water levels either.
BTW, fun fact, Schiphol was a lake, so when you land, don't forget that the runway already is 3m below sea level - and the train station is much lower than that :)