Slashdot Mirror
India Ditches UN Climate Change Group
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.'"
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
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/PM-expresses-confidence-in-IPCCs-work-lauds-Pachauris-leadership/articleshow/5540596.cms
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
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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 constraining the influences of the sun, and has since been much better constrained. Even the difference between peak and minimum output doesn't provide anywhere even in the same ballpark as much forcing as CO2.
After all, even most of the die-hard warming advocates admit that they can't explain the current cooling trend in their models.
Who the heck are you listening to? First off, there is no cooling trend. There is a small (25%) decrease in how rapidly it's risen due to stratospheric water vapor, a decadal-scale factor.
Seriously, stop listening to people who don't know what the f*** they're talking about.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
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.
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!
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
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.
Want to know how badly the people you've been listening to have been misleading you? Take a look at a temperature graph. 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.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
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 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.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
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.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Everything apart from absolute wilderness is near a pub in Australia.
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 in 1999.
Get your facts straight.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"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.
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.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
wow.. you are entering into a debate about global warming and you don't even know what the CRU is?
well let me inform you, it's the Climate Research Unit..... they pretty much supply ALL the data for global warming enthusiasts world wide.
due to a hefty data breach a massive amount of emails and even some entries made by the poor coder who was commenting how the numbers didn't add up and things were all balls
also the were many many many emails between "respected" climate researchers" which showed them chatting about how they "played the numbers" and 2used tricks" to make up for the fact the global temperatures haven't been going their way and thus they played the numbers, used selected numbers from selected stations and ignored others then conspired.. YEAH they actually did, to perpetuate the falsehood of their finding... heads rolled and resignations came..
a quick google of CRU would have helped
and BTW i live in Scotland, where we have oil BUT we are also pretty much the European leader in renewables and very very high up there in the world stakes
also changing from global warming to climate change is a cop out.
more and more evidence is coming forward that shows a SHIT load of people are blowing smoke out their asses about the human cause of "global warming" and an awful lot more people are profiteering by the spreading of utter FUD about it too.
and the global warming hero Al fucking gore.. the rankest of all the hypocrites... spreading FUD AND a major shareholder in Occidental Petrolium and also making a fortune from the carbon con. ther are some facts about gore that may surprise you
br. always odd how when the smell of bullshit is often along the same path as the smell of hypocrisy and money