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.'"
I wish we had more people like that in government in the US.
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
'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.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I'm sure that most countries, at least most relatively developed ones (and I consider India as such), already have their own group investigating climate change. Besides, I don't see any mention from the article that India is actually "ditching" the UN group. It's just establishing its own group, rather than relying 100% on the UN group to base their national policies and laws upon.
... 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.
... written by hundreds of individuals = "climate evangelism". Apparently.
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.
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.
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.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Try again. That wasn't the only error.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023598/after-climategate-pachaurigate-and-glaciergate-amazongate/
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/
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.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
"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?
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The problem here is, that 97% have to BELIEVE in it. Nothing is proven. Everybody just BELIEVES in it. I stopped believing, when I started thinking. Thanks.
If you find a typo, you may keep it.
They used two different measuring systems, and diddled the numbers until the graphs overlapped. They used data from measuring stations that were not properly shielded from mundane human activity (I think one was actually near a pub, in Australia?) and whose data could not be normalized using nearby measuring stations. They declined to use proper measuring stations that showed a decline in temperature. And they actively, and conciously, LIED about this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Unexciting but useful commentary on the CRU data.
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.
Let's put the science back in science fiction.