Count Chocula wrote:Patrick Deagan wrote:Ah, you "guessed", did you? That's certainly rock-solid evidence to support your claim there.
As for the "top to bottom review", repeated reviews have pretty much confirmed the science behind global climate change, so this is another non-issue. That India and China so far refuse to recognise how serious the problem is also has no bearing upon the validity of the science behind GCC. Oh, and the so-called Climategate scandal has been debunked.
We're a little bit OT here, but I'll see your reference to an
Australian Progressive writer's article, see you an article from the former head of the IPCC
calling for a review of the IPCC report for possible political bias, and the
UN will empanel an independent review of their report, and
one of the lead authors of the IPCC report called the IPCC "peer review" process "so flawed that the result is tantamount to fraud." The failure of the East Anglia group to release the code for its modeling does little to increase confidence in the most influential model used by the IPCC. You and I could trade volleys all day on this without getting anywhere.
Guess what? I'll raise you:
NASA says you're full
of shit. So does
The Washington Post, the
World Meteorological Organisation (.pdf link), and
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And whether IPCC's timeframe is completely accurate or not, the fact still remains that the
Himalayan glaciers are melting at a substantially accelerated rate.
Further, as the
Financial Times blogsite explains the controversy:
Fiona Harvey wrote:Take the IPCC first. In early January, the New Scientist reported that a claim in the 2007 IPCC report on climate change - that the Himalaya’s glaciers could lose most of their mass by 2035 - was based on a report by WWF, which in turn was based on the New Scientist’s account of an interview it held with an Indian glaciologist in 1999. The expert in question did not repeat the claim in any peer-reviewed study.
To cite such a source for such a dramatic claim was certainly a bad mistake by the IPCC, and shows reprehensible sloppiness.
But to put the claim in context, it’s important to understand how the IPCC works.
The 2007 report was divided into three: one part on the basic science of climate change, the second on the impacts that climate change would have on natural systems and human infrastructure, and the third on the economics of climate change and what to do about it. The glaciers claim was one line in the second section of the report, which ran to about 1,000 pages.
In drawing up the report, the hundreds of authors draw on an immense range of sources. Thousands of scientists have an input, scouring tens and even hundreds of thousands of pieces of research, and years of extensive work may yield only a few lines that make it into the report. Conversely, drawing the net so widely means that reports that have not been subjected to the most rigorous review can also be included - again, mostly they are granted a line or two.
This produces the 1,000 page comprehensive report - so comprehensive that a good proportion of the views in it are those of climate sceptic scientists. Lord Monckton, for instance, the prominent British climate sceptic, boasts of being an IPCC author (athough the claim is partly tongue-in-cheek, as his contribution was a letter pointing out a typographical error). Other sceptics who are IPCC authors included Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Christy.
As a result of this extraordinarily wide range of views, many sceptical scientists have no quarrel with this part of the IPCC process.
After all, if all of the information included in the report had to be peer-reviewed, many of the sceptics’ papers would not make it in, as some of them have not passed peer review. This is a very important point to make.
It is only by including non-peer-review material, then, that the IPCC can claim to be comprehensive.
Where sceptics often start to disagree with the IPCC process is the next stage: when these thousand pages are distilled to a technical summary and from that to a short “summary for policymakers”, or SPM for short. At this point, a smaller number of scientists reviews the chapters and draw from them the most important conclusions.
This is the crucial document from the IPCC - the SPM is what is presented to governments, and its findings are used to inform the international negotiations on a global response to climate change. The SPM is, in short, the gold standard.
In drawing the conclusions for the SPM, the scientists apply more robust methodologies than are applied to the inclusion of data into the wider report. The predictions that make it into the summary for policymakers are only those that are most widely supported by different data sources - that is, where many pieces of research point in the same direction.
It’s also important to note that, in part for this reason, the Himalayan glacier claim never made it into the summary for policymakers. (And a search of world media outlets shows that, until last month, the Himialayan claim had only been referred to a handful of times, suggesting it did not have very much impact - and indeed most claims that are not included in the SPM do not get much attention, as the SPM is recognised as the crucial document.)
Sceptics complain that their findings are often left out of the SPM. Other climate scientists frequently complain that their findings showing that the dangers of climate change are far greater than had been presumed are also left out.
In other words, only the mainstream findings have a chance of making it in to the SPM, the ones that have most backing.
There is one final stage to the SPM. Before it can be published, every government in the world has the right to send a delegation to the meeting where it is discussed. (These delegations need not be made up only of scientists, moreover, and some countries send very large delegations - China was reported to have sent nearly 50 people in 2007.)
Every word of the SPM must be approved by every government present before it can be published. This makes for a long process in which governments wrangle and haggle about every adjective, comma and full stop. And critics say it produces a document that is bland and does not reflect the diversity of opinion among scientists. But it does produce a document that no government can then deny, because all have agreed it.
This arduous and convoluted process is designed to ensure that the SPM contains only substantiated data and can be relied on by policymakers.
The fact that the Himalayan claim was not in the SPM is, therefore, very important in judging how serious a mistake was its inclusion in the wider report.
Which means the whole issue you're getting your little panties in a twist over amounted to a couple of lines in a 1000 pg. body of text which has been cherry-picked out of the text and blown up into a manufactured controversy for political aims. Which, in the end, means you're still full of shit.
Patrick Deagan wrote:No, unlike Joe Stack, the parents became fatally depressed at what they saw was a dying world and went the way of most family annihilators. They did not attempt to trumpet some sort of wider political agenda but decided to take themselves and their children out of the picture. By contrast, Stack decided that mass-murder was a valid form of protest and attempted to carry it out by the most violent means at his disposal and trumpeted his act with his whiny, self-serving suicide blog which he intended should go public as far and wide as possible, which means that he intended it to be a political act.
Great loas and spirits, you are spectacularly bad at seeing the forest for the trees.
Oh,
this should be good...
Now you're pulling out a red herring, one that's oddly reminiscent of the back-and-forth in the Joe Stack thread. Don't be a shitknuckle. You're ascribing motives to the shitwads that hasn't surfaced in the reports; in fact, your assertion is contrary to what's known (the couple expressing ANGER at the government's inaction on AGW). Back to the dictionary, Deegie-Boy; "depressed" /= "angry." Here's a rhetorical question: which is a wider political agenda, a UN-sponsored policy review on manmade global warming with GLOBAL financial and governmental effects, or one man's (or one million mens') disgruntlement at an agency of the US government?
Take your rhetorical question and shove it up your ass. Stack's act was indeed based on a wider political agenda, as he intended an act of terrorism and mass-murder to express his disgruntlement, made very public and carried out by the most violent means possible. An act of family annihilation carried out in private, the motivation for which is spelled out in a note intended to be found by whomever forced their way into the home, doesn't even begin to compare in scale to Stack's action no matter what the voices in your little head tell you to the contrary. You really make a fool of yourself here trying to compare politics instead of the actual deeds and ignoring which murderer was the more motivated to make the more violent and public demonstration. So once again, you are full of shit.
So this shitwad couple in Argentina decided to murder their children and each other, and cite anger over lack of action on AGW. Political statement, check. Shitwad Joe Stack decided to murder IRS agents in a flamboyant manner, citing anger over their (and a raft of other agencies, individuals, and spirit in the sky) mistreatment of him. Political statement, check. The Argentinian shitwads left a suicide note, and probably figured it would get circulated. Joe Stack shitwad left a suicide blog, and probably figured it would get circulated. In both cases, we have shitwads lashing out at helpless people. Do you really think there's a difference in the opprobrium that both of them deserve?
Do you really think that stack had an agenda and the Buenos Aires shitwads just said "fuck this life?" If so, you're fucked up.
See above, asshole. There is no real comparison between Joe Stack and Francisco Lotero (who really couldn't expect just how widely his suicide note would be circulated, if at all) despite your very desperate reach for one, and your continuing effort to mine the tragedy in Buenos Aires for your own political grandstanding marks
you as the one who's very fucked up in this thread. Do yourself a favour and just shut it while you've still got some tiny shred of dignity left to you.
What the hell is wrong with these people? 
