Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
In an earlier post, The IPCC: Hiding the Decline…, I argued that even more egregious than the IPCC’s mistaken claim that Himalayan glaciers would be mainly gone by 2035, was the willful omission in the IPCC Working Group II’s 2007 Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of the fact that global warming could reduce the net global population at risk of water shortage. That this was a willful decision on the part of the authors of the of the IPCC SPM is suggested by the fact that one of the Expert comments on the Second Order Draft (SOD) of the SPM had explicitly warned that: “It is disingenuous to report the population ‘new water stressed’ without also noting that as many, if not more, may no longer be water stressed (if Arnell’s analyses are to be trusted).”
In this post I will show that this was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern. I will show that there are other sins of omission which are also very unlikely to have occurred due to ignorance of the impacts literature or careless reporting, and that it was probably due to a conscious effort to tell the truth, but not the whole truth.
Before identifying other sins of omission, I should note that over the years, our political leaders, e.g., President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, President Chirac, President Sarkozy, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — have told us frequently that global warming is one of the – if not the – most important policy issues facing the world today. While there is no scientific or economic basis for such rhetoric (see, e.g., here, here, and here), it does show that policy makers ought to be very interested in how the impacts of global warming compare against other problems afflicting society. [Without such a comparison how could one know that it was ( or was not) the most important problem or issue facing humanity?] Therefore, one would think that any Summary for Policy Makers would be eager to shed light on this matter.
Contribution of Global Warming to Population at Risk of Hunger
Among the Expert comments on the Second Order Draft (SOD) of the SPM, (see page 28, Item A) was the following:
We note that global impact assessments undertaken by Parry et al. (1999, 2004) indeed indicate that large numbers will be thrown at risk for hunger because of CC; however, they also indicate that many more millions would be at risk whether or not climate changes. (see [sic] Goklany (2003, 2005a). Policy makers are owed this context. Withholding this nugget of information is a sin of omission. Without such information, policy makers would lack necessary information for evaluating response strategies and the trade-offs involved in selecting one approach and not another. One consequence of using Parry et al.’s results to compare population at risk for hunger with and without climate change is that it indicates that measures to reduce vulnerability to current climate sensitive problems that would be exacerbated by CC could have very high benefit-cost ratios. In fact, analyses by Goklany (2005a) using results from Parry et al. (1999) and Arnell et al. (2002) suggests that over the next few decades, vulnerability reduction measures would provide greater benefits, more rapidly, and more surely than would reactive adaptation measures or, for that matter, any mitigation scheme. [Emphasis added.]
To which, the IPCC writing team responded thus:
This whole text, from lines 11 to 26, has been deleted. Tables SPM-1 and SPM-2 give greater insights into risks of hunger etc, with full confidence range from negative to positive changes.
But if we go through the current SPM, there is nothing that indicates that even in the foreseeable future, the contribution of global warming to hunger would be substantially smaller than that of non-global warming related factors. Any such statement would, of course, imply that, with respect to hunger, climate change is a smaller problem than proponents of drastic GHG controls would have us believe. That is, regarding hunger, at least, other problems should take precedence over global warming.
Contribution of Global Warming to Population at Risk of Malaria
On page 63 of Expert comments on the Second Order Draft (SOD) of the SPM, it is noted:
First, most of the information on these lines is based on Table 20.4. However, there are several problems with that table that need to be fixed; after that is done, these lines in the SPM should be fixed. The problems we have with Table 20.4 are the following:
A. Table 20.4 omits critical information that would provide a context in which CC impacts should be viewed. This information, which is also available in Arnell et al. (2002) — the same source used to construct this table — is the millions of people that are exposed to the stresses highlighted in this table (i.e., the population at risk) in the absence of climate change. This information should be included in an additional column. This compilation has already been done by Goklany (2005a) for the 2080s. It shows that for hunger, water stress and malaria — which inexplicably is not included in this table, although the data are available in Arnell et al (2002) — the population at risk in the absence of climate change exceeds the population at risk under the “unmitigated” or the S750 and S550 cases. This suggests that for these stresses through the 2080s (at least), non-climate change related factors are more important than climate change, and that existing hurdles to sustainable development would outweigh additional hurdles due to climate change (through 2085, at least). Reference: Goklany, I.M.: 2005a. “A Climate Policy for the Short and Medium Term: Stabilization or Adaptation?” Energy & Environment 16: 667- 680.
B. The implications of the relative magnitude of the populations at risk for the hazards noted above with and without climate change should be noted in the SPM (see Goklany 2005a).
C. This table only provides information on the millions of people for whom water stress is increased without providing a parallel estimate of the millions for whom water stress would be reduced.
The IPCC SPM writing team’s response was:
Text has been deleted and replaced by headline on page 18 line 16 and the following text. In particular, lines 25-29 in the old SPM, which were based on Table 20.4, have been deleted.
Table SPM-1 now presents broadly the same information in a more rigorous format. Full range of stabilisation and SRES profiles for 3 time slices are shown, together with examples of impacts related to various temperature changes.
And if one looks at the current SPM or Table 20.4 in the IPCC WG II report, it is silent on the fact that impacts analyses show that through the foreseeable future:
- The contribution of global warming to future population at risk for malaria verges on the trivial,
- The contribution of global warming to the population at risk for hunger is small,
- Global warming could reduce the net population at risk of water shortage.
Noting these results from global impacts analyses would have undermined the case for drastic greenhouse gas emission reductions.
What’s truly remarkable about the above-noted comments on the SOD is that they are based on work done by Parry, Arnell, and their colleagues. But Parry was the Chairman of the IPCC Working Group II, and both were on the writing team for the SPM! It wasn’t as if the comment was saying anything that they didn’t already know, since it was all based on their papers (and, in fact, had been brought to their attention a few times previously – but that is another story ). What seems to have been lacking was candor. Perhaps they didn’t want to get crossways with their political masters. But if that was the case, what function does the SPM serve other than rubber stamp political leanings?
Regardless, they committed sins of omissions and, it seems, with due deliberation.
The IPCC: More Sins of Omission – Telling the Truth but Not the Whole Truth
Indur M. Goklany
In an earlier post, The IPCC: Hiding the Decline…, I argued that even more egregious than the IPCC’s mistaken claim that Himalayan glaciers would be mainly gone by 2035, was the willful omission in the IPCC Working Group II’s 2007 Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of the fact that global warming could reduce the net global population at risk of water shortage. That this was a willful decision on the part of the authors of the of the IPCC SPM is suggested by the fact that one of the Expert comments on the Second Order Draft (SOD) of the SPM had explicitly warned that: “It is disingenuous to report the population ‘new water stressed’ without also noting that as many, if not more, may no longer be water stressed (if Arnell’s analyses are to be trusted).”
In this post I will show that this was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern. I will show that there are other sins of omission which are also very unlikely to have occurred due to ignorance of the impacts literature or careless reporting, and that it was probably due to a conscious effort to tell the truth, but not the whole truth.
Before identifying other sins of omission, I should note that over the years, our political leaders, e.g., President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, President Chirac, President Sarkozy, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — have told us frequently that global warming is one of the – if not the – most important policy issues facing the world today. While there is no scientific or economic basis for such rhetoric (see, e.g., here, here, and here), it does show that policy makers ought to be very interested in how the impacts of global warming compare against other problems afflicting society. [Without such a comparison how could one know that it was ( or was not) the most important problem or issue facing humanity?] Therefore, one would think that any Summary for Policy Makers would be eager to shed light on this matter.
Contribution of Global Warming to Population at Risk of Hunger
Among the Expert comments on the Second Order Draft (SOD) of the SPM, (see page 28, Item A) was the following:
We note that global impact assessments undertaken by Parry et al. (1999, 2004) indeed indicate that large numbers will be thrown at risk for hunger because of CC; however, they also indicate that many more millions would be at risk whether or not climate changes. (see [sic] Goklany (2003, 2005a). Policy makers are owed this context. Withholding this nugget of information is a sin of omission. Without such information, policy makers would lack necessary information for evaluating response strategies and the trade-offs involved in selecting one approach and not another. One consequence of using Parry et al.’s results to compare population at risk for hunger with and without climate change is that it indicates that measures to reduce vulnerability to current climate sensitive problems that would be exacerbated by CC could have very high benefit-cost ratios. In fact, analyses by Goklany (2005a) using results from Parry et al. (1999) and Arnell et al. (2002) suggests that over the next few decades, vulnerability reduction measures would provide greater benefits, more rapidly, and more surely than would reactive adaptation measures or, for that matter, any mitigation scheme. [Emphasis added.]
To which, the IPCC writing team responded thus:
This whole text, from lines 11 to 26, has been deleted. Tables SPM-1 and SPM-2 give greater insights into risks of hunger etc, with full confidence range from negative to positive changes.
But if we go through the current SPM, there is nothing that indicates that even in the foreseeable future, the contribution of global warming to hunger would be substantially smaller than that of non-global warming related factors. Any such statement would, of course, imply that, with respect to hunger, climate change is a smaller problem than proponents of drastic GHG controls would have us believe. That is, regarding hunger, at least, other problems should take precedence over global warming.
Contribution of Global Warming to Population at Risk of Malaria
On page 63 of Expert comments on the Second Order Draft (SOD) of the SPM, it is noted:
First, most of the information on these lines is based on Table 20.4. However, there are several problems with that table that need to be fixed; after that is done, these lines in the SPM should be fixed. The problems we have with Table 20.4 are the following:
A. Table 20.4 omits critical information that would provide a context in which CC impacts should be viewed. This information, which is also available in Arnell et al. (2002) — the same source used to construct this table — is the millions of people that are exposed to the stresses highlighted in this table (i.e., the population at risk) in the absence of climate change. This information should be included in an additional column. This compilation has already been done by Goklany (2005a) for the 2080s. It shows that for hunger, water stress and malaria — which inexplicably is not included in this table, although the data are available in Arnell et al (2002) — the population at risk in the absence of climate change exceeds the population at risk under the “unmitigated” or the S750 and S550 cases. This suggests that for these stresses through the 2080s (at least), non-climate change related factors are more important than climate change, and that existing hurdles to sustainable development would outweigh additional hurdles due to climate change (through 2085, at least). Reference: Goklany, I.M.: 2005a. “A Climate Policy for the Short and Medium Term: Stabilization or Adaptation?” Energy & Environment 16: 667- 680.
B. The implications of the relative magnitude of the populations at risk for the hazards noted above with and without climate change should be noted in the SPM (see Goklany 2005a).
C. This table only provides information on the millions of people for whom water stress is increased without providing a parallel estimate of the millions for whom water stress would be reduced.
The IPCC SPM writing team’s response was:
Text has been deleted and replaced by headline on page 18 line 16 and the following text. In particular, lines 25-29 in the old SPM, which were based on Table 20.4, have been deleted.
Table SPM-1 now presents broadly the same information in a more rigorous format. Full range of stabilisation and SRES profiles for 3 time slices are shown, together with examples of impacts related to various temperature changes.
And if one looks at the current SPM or Table 20.4 in the IPCC WG II report, it is silent on the fact that impacts analyses show that through the foreseeable future:
· The contribution of global warming to future population at risk for malaria verges on the trivial,
· The contribution of global warming to the population at risk for hunger is small,
· Global warming could reduce the net population at risk of water shortage.
Noting these results from global impacts analyses would have undermined the case for drastic greenhouse gas emission reductions.
What’s truly remarkable about the above-noted comments on the SOD is that they are based on work done by Parry, Arnell, and their colleagues. But Parry was the Chairman of the IPCC Working Group II, and both were on the writing team for the SPM! It wasn’t as if the comment was saying anything that they didn’t already know, since it was all based on their papers (and, in fact, had been brought to their attention a few times previously – but that is another story ). What seems to have been lacking was candor. Perhaps they didn’t want to get crossways with their political masters. But if that was the case, what function does the SPM serve other than rubber stamp political leanings?
Regardless, they committed sins of omissions and, it seems, with due deliberation.
The morale of the warmists must be near zero by now. Time to kick em whilst they’re down (I’m not interested in playing fair with this mob)
Thousands of us should click across to Realclimate.org and cut n paste the following…
“The IPCC science is ROBUST” hahahha hahahah hahahahh hahahahah
There is a thread titled “The IPCC is fallible..shock”
@Bob Highland (18:25:06)
Excellent, post, Sir!
As far as I know, all of we “deniers” who are not in the pay of Big Oil or Big Tobacco, are rationalists and followers of logic.
We are prepared to listen to sensible, coherent and verifiable argument on the science.
We are not prepared to listen to appeals to authority, we are not prepared to accept the bland regurgitation of CAGW beliefs, and we are not prepared to accept propaganda from vested interests, falsified and deleted records, and other scientifically fraudulent practices.
We are sensible people – provide us with the evidence, we will listen and consider. If the evidence is sufficient, we will change our opinion. That is what reasonably intelligent people do, when confronted with a viable and verifiable argument, which meets the criteria of logic. Indeed, to do otherwise would be symptomatic of insanity.
If there is a verifiable danger to the Earth, which could be avoided, then we certainly want to know about it, and actively seek remedies.
For all you trolls and apologists for the CAGW carpet-baggers, here is a challenge. Please formulate a simple, coherent argument, in similar fashion to the logical precepts of the Scientific Method, which you consider may be persuasive to those of us in the “denier” camp, and post it as a “guest” post or whatever.
I am fairly sure that our host would consider a well-presented guest post from the Dark Side.
Go on, knock yourselves out.
Herman L (11:29:51) :
RESPONSE: No one says that the “IPCC is all wrong”. But at critical junctures, it fails to give all the information, and in some places it is wrong.
PeteM (15:03:54) :
RESPONSE: First, I am inclined to believe that the world is warming. That is unremarkable, especially since we came out of a multi-century long Little Ice Age only a century and a half ago. The question is what portion of that warming is due to human beings, and of that, what fraction is due to well-mixed greenhouse gases such as CO2 (and that does not include soot, aerosols). If you don’t knowe the answers to these, then you have no method of knowing whetehr or how much good reductions in CO2 and other WMGHG emissions will do.
Second, with respect to glaciers and polar ice, what fraction of the melt, if any, is due to well-mixed greenhouse gases, and what fraction is due to soot?
Regarding plants, yes, plants are being affected, but so what? The fact that it is being affected doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily for the worse. In fact, we have more vegetation today than we had a couple of decades ago, and the biological world’s net primary productivity has increased. Not only does this mean more food for humans, it also means more food for all other animals that feed on vegetation (directly or indirectly). Is that a bad thing?
Check out this link: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/16/another-al-gore-reality-check-%E2%80%9Crising-tree-mortality%E2%80%9D/
Smokey (17:36:49) :
I’ve got to find more before & after pictures of seacoast to drive home the point:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/WhatGlobalWarming.htm
And the point is that
a.) if there is melting of icecaps & glaciers runaway
b.) I can’t see it in the ocean levels.
Whomever did the picture of the Lost Coast in Calfornia was an intrigued person, who upon seeing the 1940’s shoreline, got in a plane and took another one in 2009.
Even taking into account the tides, there is no evidence that sea levels have risen to eat more of the soil away from the land next to the beach.
What global warming? What sea level rise?
Gore is telling whoppers.
I support you, Smokey.
from http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2800538.htm:
* from Prof. Pitmann’s own website: “2004-7 Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $48,400.”
deniers suck (09:24:52) :
Global warming is real!
Anthony Watts is not a scientist. Who are you going to listen to, a blogger or thousands of scientists?
Mr Suck,
I doubt you stuck around. I choose to listen to thousands of scientis…(From an earlier post of another) “My sources on AGW are worldwide, (not outside of mainstream science) and from far more PHD scientists then represented by the IPCC, which in the end (those who write the summaries at least) is a political body with many of the valid fallacies constructed by the critics of religion, equally present in this UN organization. I could quote from among peer reviewed literature, papers by Lindzen, Pielke, Christy, Spencer, Eschenbach, Scafetta, Myhre, Akasofu, Douglass, McIntyre and many others, all of whom have robustly challenged the dogma of a few cloistered warmists. These are not “big oil shills” as some try to claim, nor are they nutters. They are all eminent climate scientists who are showing that observations do not support the hypothesis that CO2 is significantly warming the planet, a hypothesis that is predicated on the false premise that historical climate has remained fixed for millennia, which is in contradiction of overwhelming evidence that temperatures were warmer than today a thousand years ago. I could point to 100 more papers that show that the medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than today – a mountain of evidence against the warmists broken hockey stick. Additionally these scientist are unafraid to reveal their methodology and data, unlike many deacons high in the AGW hierarchy. The fact that climate alarmists reject the Scientific Method means that they are political advocates first, and mendacious scientists second.”
You like thousands… more than 31,000 U.S. scientists (over 9,000 PHDs) have already signed the OISM Petition, which states:
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
“prijo (11:25:14) :
When you are fed poo long enough, you begin to like the taste of poo, and when someone tries to tell you there is something better than poo, you say “no thanks, i like this poo just fine”.
I know people, that in spite of all of these revelations about scientific fraud and outright lies, still swear by the poo they have been fed and simply refuse to taste the truth, poo is just fine with them. Very frustrating.”
More frustrating is your repetition of baby language rather than the usual Anglo-Saxon word.
Have a nice day.
I just read all the 600+ comments on the most recent IPCC thread on Real Climate and I can tell you it’s a relief to get back here, and find a bit of humour (as opposed to lip-curling sarcasm), civility (as opposed to – well you know what) and common sense and intelligence rather than swivel-eyed fanaticism, ranting and raving, and scarcely believable blinkered arrogance. One of the mods there remarked on the low quality of the dissenting voices these days – who can wonder, as no scientist who didn’t believe in AGW would choose to descend into that bear-pit. You’d be wasting your time, just to be insulted.
Joking apart, it was quite frightening: but I wanted to see whether even a tiny chink of light was penetrating the glazed certainties of those self-appointed (and enormously self-congratulatory) messiahs. But not a bit of it – Gavin and his ilk still refuse to admit that there is any problem with what’s been revealed over the last few days (or weeks). Their followers continue to blindly believe in the ‘science’ of their computer models; and think that reiterating ‘it was just one typo’ over and over will silence all doubters (or ‘deniers’ as they persist in calling us). The IPCC can do no wrong – and if it does it doesn’t matter (it was only a typo, see…)
What is frightening, is that they continue to have the ear of policy makers everywhere, esp in the EU, UN and most governments, and also in large swathes of the MSN; so it’s still going to be a long haul to counter their unremitting barrage of insult and dishonesty. Comment to one sceptic from Gavin: ” The IPCC does not argue for measures. The reports are policy neutral”. Yeah, right!
A fairly typical comment, indicative of the general level of abuse, from Josh Cryer at 120:
“I doubt that the majority of skeptics are publicly funded, however, it is clear that some of the make huge amounts of money through ad revenue (WUWT), and most of them are misled by lobbiests whose sole goal is to spread doubt…. [snip] …. I always say, and it’s really simple, if people have a problem with the data, then submit it to peer review. Lindzen and Choi (2009) show that if you can make decent arguments you can get through the peer review, so objections about corruption in the peer review are garbage, on the face of it. The fact is the vast, overwhelming, majority of arguments by “skeptics” are very weak and usually based on an intrinsic misunderstanding of the data, or a concerted effort to make stuff up.”
And there was much worse…
I need a bath, I feel like I’ve spent six hours in a sewer pipe
Smokey (15:05:58) :
You kill me with your “clicks”, Smokey. You really do.
I bookmark all of your references but there are so many graphs and charts on my bookmarks bar thanks to you that I now need hire a secretary to organize them.
Why can’t you be like the Church of the CAGW and just make your statements, vague, simplistic, and without content or substance?
Or better yet, rather than address the specific questions at hand, like you so fastidiously do, why not throw out a few strawpeople (politically correct term) as easy diversions??
It would certainly let me be able to go to bed earlier because there is less material I have to read.
And I really don’t want to learn anymore anyways, because my scientific mind is made up by Big Brother IPCC, for me.
I mean….Pachuri (or however the hell you spell it) says it is so, then it must be so, no?
My scientific mind is made up, Smokey. Why do you muddy the waters??
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
SteveK = Herman L
deniers suck
someone
PeteM
then PeteM quotes Herman L
This is a troll daisy chain.
One goal of such trolling is to take up blog space and put
distance between semi-coherent and possibly logically linear
entries on the thread.
A second is to lower the ambiance of the thread by interjecting
sharp, fallacious and spurious claims, then whipsawing back and
forth between the trolling claimants.
Regular participants on WUWT can expect this and other forms
of trolling to happen more often as the MSM and blogosphere
news disappoints all the young Warmistas followers.
Do Not Feed The Trolls
WOW! The CAGW crowd are quaking in their boots at the strength and funding of we sceptics. There must be very little behind their front. They feel victory slipping from their grasp.
the times we live in are getting very interesting
Sam (22:03:42)……lol, I feel your pain!!! I just got back from there. My comments are still in “moderation”. Sigh, and I thought I was fairly innocuous. The fact is, we can chase these assertions in perpetuity. Every time they charge that some glacier dying is proof we’re all going to die, they’re shown the assertions isn’t factually based. Or polar bears are dying, or penguins, or millions of species, or world floods or deserts or malaria or starvation or whatever depending on the dire prediction of the day.
None of it matters. They have us chasing their tails. It boils down to THREE questions. The order is significant but is it 1 or 3?
1. Are we getting warmer?
2. Is it man caused?
3. Does warmer matter?
If the answer to 3 is no, 1 doesn’t matter, ergo 2 doesn’t either.
If the answer to 3 is yes, 1 and 2 matter, but an entirely different issue.
So 3 should be the first question? Not unless a warmer/colder environment was called in question.
At any rate. To my satisfaction, or to any reasonable person(IMHO) Questions 1, 2, and 3 haven’t been answered to any certainty.
I’m out of beer.
R.S.Brown (22:44:35) :
I know, but I can’t help myself at times!!!! Sometimes, they’re fun to play with.
James, LOL! You have more stamina than me, my head hurt so after reading all that vitriol and garbage, I couldn’t be bothered to post! So you are awaiting moderation on RealClimate?
I know I shouldn’t, but may I re-post this gem, which was put up on RC six days ago, with no comment from Gavin nor any of the mods, so clearly fits their ‘scientific’ criteria?
From rosie hughes — 19 January 2010 @ur momisugly 8:04 PM
“27 “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all this fixation on get-it-right, got-it-wrong is obscuring the real issue: the truth is what we define it to be, and the truth is that mankind is a scourge on the planet. The sooner we can limit the right to breed, the sooner the planet will recover. If glacier data is a little incorrect but helps that effort, then the data is true in all but a very narrow and clinical scientific sense.
Common people don’t really understand science. But they understand not having enough to eat and not being able to sit down on a too-crowded subway. if we can educate people not to reproduce there will be many seats and the fewer people will be happier. Indeed, as the capitalist economies of scale are reduced, the atisfaction from making your own clothes and embracing a low-carbon vegan diet will be so intense, reproduction will come to be seen in the same category as child abuse.
I yearn for the day when i might not have been born! ” “
If the estimates for water shortage risks have been exaggerated, we could name that particular scandal Watergate;-)
@TerrySkinner
The map between “science” and “religion” needs redrawing, because what really counts isn’t what the book says, but how people interpret it. Actually, what we usually call “religious” in a derogatory sence, is people who don’t know that they are making interpretations when they read. In effect, people who don’t question themselves and what they think. People who are not cognitively inquiring the nature of truth. People who simply take things as “given”.
I want to labour thus point because you can find people with varying ability to inquire into things and their own opinions and interpretations, you can find people like that on both “sides”, both in religion and in science. Which is why the map between science and religion needs scrapping and redrawing. Some people take religious texts literally, but some take religious texts as an act of interpretation. They interpret the stories as a means of inquring into the nature of life. Of course, it is about the human condition, and it won’t be anything about how matter is affected by gravity—that is the domain of science.
But note that some who take an interpretative enquring approach to myths and stories, it could be The Gita, it could be Shakespear, tend to revel in the mystery of life, which is to say, they delve into the feeling that they know that they don’t know. So they look at the world and feel awe. That’s a “religious” feeling. But it is very different to those who’s minds cam only take things literally and dogmatically, and as we see, we can find many “non religious” people, like greenie activists, who appear to be like that.
It’s the dogmatic unquestioning people we need to worry about. Some of those belong to a religion but many do not.
Sent from my iPhone (please excuse the typos).
R.S.Brown – Wow – you really are paranoid if you think I’m part of some conspiracy / multi thread attempt to deliberately disrupt your views .
For folks determined to accuse the ‘other side’ of bias / blinkered views / being trolls and so on you are certainly showing an interesting approach.
Basically my view is that if the IPCC haven’t got it 100% right this is not a major problem that is being claimed by so many of the contributions on this blog. Curiously, that is how many of the people see it as well . There is a stack of other evidence ( some of which I have seen firsthand) showing the planet is warming . This is inline with the concept of GW due to greenhouse gas emissions ). The policy implication is obviously that the sooner we get controls on man made greenhouse gas emission the better.
Also , as an outsider to this debate , the approach of hacking email sites , attacking IPCC individuals seems very sinister and reminiscent of tatics of less pleasant governments or organisations.
Troll = Troll
Direct from Wikipedia:
“In internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an on-line-discussion forum, chat room, or blog with the primary intent of provoking other users into an response or otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”
(emphasis added)
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
Troll + Troll = Troll
Omissions? This is common in AGW propaganda.
Here is a classic omission from the BBC, for this analysis of wind power does not mention the primary disadvantage of wind – intermittency.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/adaptation/wind_power.shtml
But then why should we expect balance or impartiality from the paramilitary wing of Greenpeace??
.
Cold weather, europe.
http://news.google.com/news/search?um=1&cf=all&ned=es_us&hl=es&q=cold+poland
Another anti-AGW story the BBC are studiously ignoring.
.
How would you know if you are wrong? How do you test that?
Consider the phenomenon of synchronicity. How can you tell if it is merely coincidence? Many people become convinced by synchronicity and the implication of paranormal connections. Their coincidence is inline with the concept of the mind as a radio receiver, and not located in the brain. Do you agree that they are 90% correct ? The evidence fits the concept.
PeteM:
“There is a stack of other evidence ( some of which I have seen firsthand) showing the planet is warming .”
Models are not evidence of anything.
R.S Brown – looks like the speed with which you reach for the word troll for someone not agreeing with your view is , well , selectively onesided.
Steffan – I think a better analogy is to consider smoking . If you find some individuals (say 10% of smokers) who live a long life without getting any unfortunate disease does this undermine the whole concept of smoking related diseases .
I see the evidence as multi-sourced and not necessarily always100%
Interesting question about how you test ? In the context of the ‘correctness’ of IPCC and its predictions – I really would prefer not to run the experiment ( ie – find out if putting greenhouse gases in to the atmoshpere has a bad outcome for the human species ).
Looking across a range of indicators most are pointing to a warming planet .