Climate Damage 'Irreversible' According Leaked Climate Report

New submitter SomeoneFromBelgium (3420851) writes According to Bloomberg a leaked climate report from the IPPC speaks of "Irreversible Damage." The warnings in the report are, as such, not new but the tone of voice is more urgent and more direct than ever. It states among other things that global warming already is affecting "all continents and across the oceans," and that "risks from mitigation can be substantial, but they do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation action."

Comments

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me that spewing into the atmosphere millions of years of accumulated sunlight and cutting down most of the natural CO2 scrubers (trees) of the world will have negative effects? Nah! Imposible!

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling me that spewing into the atmosphere millions of years of accumulated sunlight and cutting down most of the natural CO2 scrubers (trees) of the world will have negative effects?

1. Trees do nothing
2. Human emissions are not even stable, they are continuing to increase. 60 million barrels of oil went up in smoke 10 years ago. Today, almost 50% MORE, 90 million barrels a day. Coal, increasing too. Gas usage, increasing.

Confused people will start talking about things like "cow farts" or "trees" or similar. These have nothing to do with global warming - the climate thing - because these do not represent sequestered carbon. These are all carbon cycle stuff. Sequestered carbon being ADDED to the atmosphere is the issue - coal, oil, gas, peat.

If your "solution" is planting trees, and it does not include harvesting said trees and burring them in mines, then all you are doing is deluding yourself.

PS. I like trees. They clean the air. They look nice. I grow them from seeds. But just planting them does absolutely nothing to carbon sequestration.

Re:What?

[makq]

As long as the tree is growing more than it is decomposing, don't they sequester carbon internally?

Re:What?

[dtjohnson]

Yes, in the beginning there was carbon and water. Then, the water was split into hydrogen and oxygen which oxidized the carbon into carbon dioxide and left a lot of hydrogen gas drifting around. Then life spontaneously arose and converted the carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons aka "stored sunlight." Then more new life spontaneously arose which could metabolize the stored sunlight (aka food) into carbon dioxide and now here we are busily turning/burning the stored sunlight back into carbon dioxide. Now, all we need to do is to stop everyone from burning the stored sunlight and we will all live happily ever after on our beautiful planet while happily skipping naked hand in hand with naked females through meadows filled with daisies and dandelions. [editor: please add the above to the IPCC report to the world leaders]

Re:What?

[Layzej]

Yes. You are right. And currently about 1/4 of our emitted carbon is being sequestered by new plant growth that is outpacing plant death: http://climatechangenationalfo...

Re:What?

[Lumpy]

Tree Farts? can we PLEASE start that one so we can at least get some laughter out of it.

Re:What?

[joocemann]

Called a 'Treef'

only 2 things left to do...

[Cardoor]

change your name to Kamin and learn to play the flute.

Delayed action

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll never do anything about climate change as long as businesses can dictate law, control the EPA, and guide lawmaking through lobbyists. The Supreme Court has literally ensured this.

I can't stand the idea that multi-billion corporations can't afford to spend 1/8th of their profit, if even that much, to operate in a more environmentally friendly manner.

Gotta hoard and accumulate money at all costs, no matter what happens.

Re:Delayed action

[RobinH]

That would actually be illogical for an individual to do if they're mostly interested in themselves and their offspring (and people do it which shows how generous some people are, sacrificing themselves for the greater good). A single person giving up 1/8 of their income for the benefit of everyone instead of themselves is just putting themselves at an economic disadvantage. Those are resources that can't be put towards better education for their kids, buying bigger/newer (i.e. safer for themselves) vehicles, etc. This kind of stuff will only work if we agree as a society that everyone has to play along by the new rules, for the benefit of everyone as a whole. A lot of people are completely against this idea (government intrusion on freedom, etc.) but that's the only way we've ever solved problems based on the "tragedy of the commons". If there's a common resource that people have an incentive to exploit, with no limit, for essentially free (e.g. the atmosphere) then they will do it. Sure, we all breath, but there's little/no incentive to breath "more". We can, however, use more energy by burning inexpensive fuel which consumes O2 and releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and we don't, as individuals or as companies, have to pay for that "externality". Therefore we will *never* stop doing it until we all agree as a society to regulate CO2 emissions.

Simple English Wikipedia will come in handy

[timrod]

From the article:

The UN panel since September has published three separate reports into the physical science of global warming, its impacts, and ways to fight it. The study leaked yesterday, called the “Synthesis Report” intends to pick out the most important findings and present them in a way that lawmakers can easily understand. (Emphasis mine)

Why do I have a feeling the report to the politicians will have to read a lot like the Simple English Wikipedia, to the point where it might not be a bad idea to get the writers for that on it.

"Global warming is a bad thing that causes lots of problems. Burning stuff causes global warming. If you keep burning stuff, you will have a bad problem."

Re:Simple English Wikipedia will come in handy

[tarius8105]

Thats not the problem though. They understand english and know how to look up big words. The problem is that they receive campaign donations from people who have an interest in keeping the status quo. If lawmakers were to pass bills that would attempt to counter global warming on a large scale, these same businesses would have a huge hit to their bottom line. The stupidity of the situation is if we made changes little by little when people started to raise alarms about global warming, we probably could have made the changes without impacting the bottom line too much.

Irreversible?

[SternisheFan]

--- “Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

Shel Silverstein

The 'impossible' is just something that hasn't been done yet.

Re:Irreversible?

[Solandri]

I have a slightly different take on it. Using absolutes like "irreversible" or "unavoidable" is dangerous is because it decreases public support for what you're trying to accomplish. People will think, "well if we can't do anything about it, then I guess there's nothing left to do but live it up in the time we have left."

Impacts

[mdsolar]

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.

Re:Impacts

[Intrepid imaginaut]

It was kind of going that way anyhow though, either to a tropical earth or back towards a new ice age. And really given the choice the tropical option is less destrcutive. As I understand it we were in an interglacial until people started digging up sequestered carbon and injecting it into the atmosphere. Either way I don't believe it will be possible to stabilise the climate over the mid to long term, at least not with our current technology, so maybe its best just to prepare to adapt to these changes.

Re:Impacts

[Archangel Michael]

Good for nature, bad for man. Just like O2 Poisoning the planet when it was overrun by Plant life. Life adapts. Humans haven't always been around, and won't be around forever. Because we are aware of our own demise doesn't change these facts.

Re:Impacts

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it sane, given foreknowledge of your own demise and the power to avert it, to charge full-steam-ahead toward that demise? If humanity were a person, we'd lock it up for its own safety.

Re:Impacts

[knightghost]

All I see is "the world is ending!" without any realistic measurements provided. Show me what it's going to cost at each point, and when. The simplest, lowest cost adaptation is simply to build above future sea levels. The lowest cost food change is crop switching and genetic manipulation. The simplest - and probably only - long term solution is reducing population numbers.

Re:Impacts

[Anonymous Coward]

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.

Oh great. "The sky is gonna fall! Almost 100 years from now!!! Disaster is looming!!!!"

And people wonder where deniers come from?

Here's a hint: exaggeration and catastrophic alarmism destroy credibility.

Re:Impacts

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are a lot of conclusions to draw when you openly admit that you have insufficient measurements and cost estimates.

Re:Impacts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt.
With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere.
People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.

Please learn something:

Average planetary temperature and CO2 concentration for the past billion years or so

Important points:

1. Average planetary temperature now is about 12C. Average temperature for most of the past billion years or so is 22C
2. Average CO2 concentration today is EXTREME geological LOW. It's been as high as > 7000ppm
3. There's pretty much ZERO correlation between CO2 and temperature.

Note well that if temperatures go up 2C, we've still got 8C to go before the planet reaches its "normal" average temperature.

Re:Impacts

[mi]

Ah, this is a lot more persuasive than your earlier attempt, but still not quite good enough... Citation needed much? (No, IPCC-produced documents don't count — members of the panel are government-appointed politicians, not scientists.)

Please, don't hate.

Re:Impacts

[blue9steel]

Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt. With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere. People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.

Hogwash. Even in the IPCC A1FI scenario, the most pessimistic case presented, total global warming by 2100 is 1.4C to 6.4C. Yes, that would have significant bad effects but it's not going to mean the end of agriculture across the entire planet. Earth isn't going to turn into Venus. The average temp at the equator now is 30C while in Siberia it's only 0.5C. So, if we look at the average high temperature for Novosibirsk during the hottest month of July (25.7) and add the high end of the worst case scenario (6.4C) then we only get 32.1C, so yeah moving north will be an option. I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones, the collapse of many third world governments and a huge refugee crisis but that's not the same as saying it's unsurvivable by humans as a species.

Re:Impacts

[NotDrWho]

Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt.

Unless this planet gets up to Venus level heat (and I'm pretty sure that's impossible), then humans will adapt.

Re:Impacts

[NotDrWho]

We don't have foreknowledge of shit. It's a pretty epic level of arrogance to think we've suddenly acquired the ability to accurately see 100 years into the future when EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT in the past to accurately predict anything even 20 years in the future has failed MISERABLY and has been LAUGHABLY wrong.

The only thing that I predict about what this planet is going to look like 100 years from now is that it's going to be nothing like what anyone expects today.

Re:Impacts

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Average planetary temperature now is about 12C. Average temperature for most of the past billion years or so is 22C
2. Average CO2 concentration today is EXTREME geological LOW. It's been as high as > 7000ppm
3. There's pretty much ZERO correlation between CO2 and temperature.

Note well that if temperatures go up 2C, we've still got 8C to go before the planet reaches its "normal" average temperature.

Ok, I'll accept that... of course the first mammals appeared on the planet around say 225million years ago, and were the size of perhaps a mouse or smaller. Larger mammals have been found around 100million years ago, around the size of a large rat perhaps... it wasn't until say 55million years ago the earliest ancestor for man/primates appeared, Archicebus, which would fit in the palm of your hand and weigh maybe an ounce.

So maybe instead of the past "billion years" we should focus on say the past 50million, where temperatures and CO2 levels were at a level where a mammal like mankind could survive on most of the planet? Seems rather pointless to say the planet has been "22C average" when at the time it was mankind didn't exist, and more than likely with a 10C increase over current temperatures it's unlikely human beings could survive in many areas (a 100F desert will kill in a day or two w/o water - imagine 120-130F?).

I mean, unless you're worried about ants, cockroaches, and mammals the size of mice, and shrews, it might be wiser to focus on temperatures that human beings can and have survived in, and not some 'average' that includes numbers from many (up to 950million) years before anything even remotely human-like existed. Because, yes, "life" existed at 7000ppm and 22C - but not human life.

Re:Impacts

[fyngyrz]

I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones

Why? Equatorial zones have a great deal of ocean water, which certainly isn't going to change. That water will evaporate faster, the atmosphere will contain more humidity, and therefore there will be more precipitation, if the average temperature is up a few degrees C. How does that constitute the precursors for anticipating equatorial droughts?

I can see marginal areas (US midwest, for instance) baking off the little bit of moisture they have and not reaching any threshold of precipitation, followed by dustbowls and so on, but at the equator? Why would droughts happen there?

Re:Impacts

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt.
With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere.
People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.

Hogwash. Even in the IPCC A1FI scenario, the most pessimistic case presented, total global warming by 2100 is 1.4C to 6.4C. Yes, that would have significant bad effects but it's not going to mean the end of agriculture across the entire planet. Earth isn't going to turn into Venus. The average temp at the equator now is 30C while in Siberia it's only 0.5C. So, if we look at the average high temperature for Novosibirsk during the hottest month of July (25.7) and add the high end of the worst case scenario (6.4C) then we only get 32.1C, so yeah moving north will be an option. I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones, the collapse of many third world governments and a huge refugee crisis but that's not the same as saying it's unsurvivable by humans as a species.

You make the obvious mistake, of course, that "average" = "max"... sorry, but what if the average temp at the equator became 20C (dropped 10C) while the average temp in Siberia rose from 0.5C to 16.5C (16C increase), the "average" is still 6C right? While I'd agree it's unlikely the equator will cool that much, when speaking in averages it's absurd to start talking about temperatures rising by 'that amount' everywhere in the world, only by that amount across the entire planet - we're talking a biosphere with weather patterns, water currents and air currents affected by the temperatures in various regions. A "6C" rise in average global temperature may well wind up being 12C in one area and -6C in another.

It's hard to judge how it will affect the planet because we can only guess to some degree (with some scientific computer modeling) how melting ice caps and warming ocean will affect the water flows (arctic 'conveyer belt' for example) - which will affect weather patterns as the changes increase. Of course, we can predict some things - for instance that *if* climate change is the cause of the current drought issues in CA and the midwest, and it persists or even gets worse, our ability to grow food crops in those areas may be severely depleted (or eliminated). What if hurricanes and tornadoes becomes more frequent? Forest fires in the western states becoming more frequent because of the dryness? Will we even be able to *afford* to fight them? If the ice melts at the poles (and Greenland, etc) and sea level rises - something like 80%+ of the population of the US now lives in coastal areas - if storms become more frequent and sea level is higher what happens to those cities? Imagine "Katrina" on steroids across the entire eastern seaboard...

So, no, it might not "wipe out the human species" by any means, but if food production gets harder due to drought, fresh water is harder to find (we're already draining aquifers, Lake Meade is seriously depleted - what do you think happens to Las Vegas then?), we might well see human population go from 7.1+billion to a small fraction of that (100million say). Might not be a bad thing for the planet, but I'm betting if you're one of the 7 billion that don't make it you might not think so. ;)

Re:Impacts

[fyngyrz]

You *do* realize that the equatorial zone is generally tropical, wet as heck, and quite a bit warmer than everywhere else, yes? And that plants thrive on CO2?

Doesn't follow that making it warmer will make it drier. That doesn't seem to be how it works. Drier happens when water sources go away. There's no reasonable postulate for that which would apply to most equatorial regions.

Re:Impacts

[ShanghaiBill]

Those are a lot of conclusions to draw when you openly admit that you have insufficient measurements and cost estimates.

There are plenty of "no regrets" policies, that should be done regardless of global warming. We should reduce our fuel consumption and dependence on imported oil for reasons of economics and national security. Third world countries should reduce population growth through education and better access to contraception, because that is their path out of poverty.

Re:Impacts

[mi]

IPCC not good enough for you?

Certainly not. The panel would be disbanded, if Climate Change turned out to be a hoax so all members are interested in maintaining the fear. The fear may still be justified, but the glaring conflict of interest disqualifies their reports as evidence.

I would not trust them any more, than I would trust an "anti-poverty" politician to eliminate poverty — what is he going to run on come next elections?

Then how about Koch funded 0.01% papers?

You had the opportunity to offer a link, but chose not to... Is it because you don't have one.

Re:Impacts

[knightghost]

The Stern report assumes that how we do things doesn't change, which is fundamentally incorrect. We constantly change. fivethirtyeight.com has had a few backwards-looking comprehensive stat reports that show we do adapt and that this type of report is bogus.

Climate change is happening and will continue to happen. Society isn't going to abandon oil so researchers need to quit having that fantasy. What are REAL ways that society will agree to change? The simplest is to quit building below anticipated sea levels (probably by adjusting insurance rates... put a cap of CPI-U+5% yearly increase to make it politically palatable). Focus on that - it's an area of society and economics that has a decent chance of actually being changed.

Re: Impacts

[sandertje]

You're condemning my entire country to oblivion! Are you seriously suggesting the billions of people on this planet who live on the coast move somewhere else? Good luck with that. That's a bare minimum of three wars or so.

Re:Beyond what humans can do

[Cardoor]

ready guys? 1....2...3.... get him!!!

Don't Worry!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. Seriously, some very rich people who made a fortune selling gas and coal have assured us that these climate change alarmists are just a bunch of melodramatic liars. There's nothing to worry about.

Re:Don't Worry!

[Moof123]

Yes, rapacious capitalism tends mostly to believe in whatever lines their pockets at the moment.

Your mention of ethanol is a great example. Ethanol on the whole is a big loser both in therms of wasting food, wasting tax dollars subsidizing it, not reducing carbon emissions, and greatly using up public will with a massive sideshow. Monsanto loves it, as do lots of industrial farmers (there are no family farmers left of consequence, just in campaign ads).

If our government was not already captured by the current lot, we could use laws to adjust incentives to get these rapacious capitalists to cause less harm by letting them fight over dollars in solar rather than oil. Sadly, changing the status quo scares the hell out of the current set of rapacious capitalists, so they spend part of their massive profit to manipulate the system to keep their cash cow protected. We as voters have been gerrymandered into being mostly irrelevant, so we cannot do much anymore. Weak minded kumbaya green folks are their own worst enemies, expecting that hugs and good will toward mankind will magically solve the problem (and they SUCK at math).

Re:Damage or Change?

[Urkki]

Climate has always changed, the concept of "Damage" is only relevant to those affected by it.

You mean, the same way as asteroids of various sizes have impacted into the Earth throughout the history of the planet, and "Damage" is only relevant to those affected by it?

Yes, I agree.

Re:well...

[mellon]

Well, if you aspire to be (as opposed to eat) sous vide steaks, I guess there's no problem at all.

It's IPCC...not IPPC

[dtjohnson]

At least get the acronym for the name of the organization predicting doom right. And...there's no hurry for action. The climate is currently taking a 'hiatus' from warming due to the alleged storage of heat in the deep ocean. Forecasts for the upcoming winter are...cold.

Re:Beyond what humans can do

[emagery]

Do you really have so little concept as to the scale of human damage? A single average-sized car puts out 4.75 metric TONS of carbon every year (and about 2-3 years worth during its construction and a little bit more during its destruction.) At last check there were more cars in the use being operated than there are drivers... and that's just one country... whilst this amount is being dwarfed by carbon emissions tied up in industrial agriculture (local/natural agriculture trends toward carbon neutral to negative, but can only sustain modest populations the likes of which we haven't seen on earth for over a century.) The fact that YOUR individual contribution to the damage done is a drop in the bucket does nothing to deny the fact that you are not the only person on earth... it's a tiny place in the grand scheme of things and we've overrun the place and are spending carbon, water, and oxygen like there's no tomorrow... which is no longer a mathematically implausible scenario as a result. The world's WORST extinction level event was also a climate change one, and we've reach the same levels at 40000x the speed... if life couldn't cope at that snail's pace (~1000000 years of constant hawaii-style volcanic carbon farting, killing off some 95% of all life) why do you think it (or we) will fare any better doing the equivalent of flying this jet into a brick wall?

Re:Damage or Change?

[thedonger]

Climate has always changed, the concept of "Damage" is only relevant to those affected by it.

You mean, the same way as asteroids of various sizes have impacted into the Earth throughout the history of the planet, and "Damage" is only relevant to those affected by it?

Yes, I agree.

Sure, why not? And it is only "damage" to the species that die out. Think of all the evolutionary opportunity there will be in the Next Phase!

Re:More urgent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the way it's claimed to have been "leaked", as though the IPCC would sit on this. Perhaps they think making it officially a 'leak' will make people think they were going to cover it up, to trick people into thinking that "something must be done, right now!"

Climate damage is never irreversible

[gurps_npc]

They probably meant irreversible in a reasonable amount of time.

But I absolutely assure you it is possible to undue all damage- if we are willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money to do it.

Now, biological extinctions may be unpreventable, but we can always turn the clock back on climate change.

Re:Climate damage is never irreversible

[Nemyst]

I don't think the worry with climate change was ever that we'd destroy Earth. It's just that it's in our best interests to avoid a certain species of apes from going extinct. Even that is unlikely, but I'm not sure you'd enjoy the possibility of millions or billions of people dying to an extinction-level event. Who's to say you'd be among the survivors, or your children?

Re:Interesting slam of Judith Curry

[i kan reed]

Please characterize the bias.

I won't reject your claims of bias out of hand(and benefit of the doubt is pretty much entirely what deniers rely on for everything so my patience is a little limited.

This isn't "Watts up with that" where there's a financial payment for having the right opinions. These are scientists with appropriate credentials discussing common misinformation.

If there is a bias, there must A: be an undisclosed or clearly concerning motivation or B: some kind of oversight problems.

I don't mind discussing bias, but I want it to be more than "It calls my out my flawed opinions".

Re:Damage or Change?

[GameboyRMH]

I, for one, welcome our new raccoon-descended overlords.

Re:Beyond what humans can do

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I am fine being remembered for pointing out yet again we will be better off in 100, 200 or 300 years keeping the economy strong and forging ahead with technological advancement than slowing it by draconian clamps on the economy (there are many clamps beside environmental remediation).

100 years ago we barely had simple planes and no antibiotics. Horses were still common in the streets. Had they slowed down their growth to "help" us, well, thanks for nuthin', Gentleman Jim.

The best thing we can do for future generations is keep things going.

I remain confident it is the hyperventillation crowd that will be proved murderously dangerous idiots in the long run. I am fine going down on record with that prediction.

Re:More urgent?

[i kan reed]

What thought proccesses could have led to this post?

"Hey my conspiracy theories don't have enough conspiracy in them yet, why don't I make deniers look even crazier?"

It's "leaked" because it's still under review prior to publication.

Re:Beyond what humans can do

[FireFury03]

single average-sized car puts out 4.75 metric TONS of carbon every year

That sounds an unreasonably high figure.

Petrol weighs about 737g / l, so 4750Kg of petrol is 6445 litres.
Wikipedia says the carbon content of petrol is up to about 85%: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
So 6445/0.85 = 7582 litres of petrol contain 4.75t of carbon.
Wikipedia suggests average fuel economy is somewhere around 5l / 100Km: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
7582*100/5 = 151640Km - I'm pretty sure that the average car doesn't travel 152Mm/year!

Lets assume you're talking about tons of CO2 rather than tons of carbon.
Apparently we multiply litres of petrol by 2.331 to get Kg of CO2 emitted: http://www.carbontrust.com/res...
So 4750/2.331 = 2038 litres. At 5l / 100Km, this gives us 2038*100/5 = 40760Km - ok, a vaguely more reasonable figure.

Apparently the average company car does around 30,000Km/year and the average private car does about 12,000Km: http://www.racfoundation.org/m...

So the average is going to be well under 41Mm and around an order of magnitude less than the 152Mm you claimed!

I'm certainly not saying that climate change is nothing to worry about - I think it's a big problem and whether or not you think it's man made, dumping vast amounts of crap into the atmosphere can't possibly be a bright idea. But I really wish people wouldn't just invent bogus "facts" to back up their arguments - the arguments should stand up for themselves, if you need bogus data to prop them up then you've got something really badly wrong somewhere.

Re:Beyond what humans can do

[FrozenToothbrush]

Denier! Denier! Everyone point and make an angry face!

and what can we do?

[nblender]

Buy another LED light bulb? Buy an electric vehicle? Eat vegetarian?

Given there are no good alternatives when it comes to voting time, it seems like we're basically along for the ride..

Get China on the phone

[NotQuiteReal]

China accounts for 42% of the carbon emissions. US and Europe combined are 20%, so even if "the rich" country bankrupted themselves trying, they can't solve the problem alone.

Re:Interesting slam of Judith Curry

[Jane Q. Public]

The site has a science bias. It publishes articles written by scientists. Obviously this doesn't play well for those interested in the various narratives spun by Watts Up with That.

You mean science like the Cook "97%" survey they supported and cited, which was such a laughable parody of responsible statistics that a middle-schooler could show it to be invalid?

Leaked?

[kick6]

Really? Climate change groups have secret reports that need to be leaked because people are just DYING to get the details? Something about this concept seems...well complete bullshit.

Re:IPCC members

[mi]

Your source does not say that IPCC members are not scientists, as that would be an obvious lie.

A person may remain an academic and retain various titles, but he stops being a scientist when his research is done not to advance knowledge, but to confirm an already held conviction. Perhaps, you did not read to this text:

A panel of climate experts are telling the House Science Committee that politics often gets in the way of good science at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as in the U.S. government’s own climate research.

Climate scientists and researchers who dissent even slightly from the talking points of politicians and environmental groups are intimidated and ostracized, said one congressional witness. Politics, the witness said, takes a lead role over science in the study of global warming.

Re:Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

[Jane Q. Public]

Who is "we"?

Yeah, right. So you indirectly cite Levitus as the basis for your argument.

You'll have to do better than that. The raw data does not show this, unless like the Levitus paper you're willing to draw conclusions from localized data and ignore the rest of the world. Which, it must be said, is a technique warmists are rather famous for. It's a form of lying. Like saying the current drought in California is "climate".

China is our fault.

[bussdriver]

China makes everything, for everybody. We pay them to do this, part of the reason everybody pays them is because they are willing and we are not. Since we are not immediately and directly impacted by CO2 ...plus it is invisible... we are simply too shallow to realize it harms us indirectly. Just as people shop at Walmart and wonder why their jobs disappeared (forcing them to shop at Walmart more.)

Is it MY fault I shot you in the foot, when you told me to do it?