Gate du Jour – Now it's Greenpeace reports in the IPCC AR4

Ms. Laframboise,
First, thanks for your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my comments, though I must say I’m very disappointed in what I read. I emailed you under the assumption that, as your Noconsensus.org blog states, you really did want to expand the debate on Global Warming. My expectation after reading that was you meant to cut through the BS surrounding Global Warming, not add to it. But your response to me shows the opposite.
You state “A Greenpeace document is cited as evidence in an IPCC report. That is my sole concern.” and then later continue “Might there be occasions in which referencing Greenpeace-generated literature is appropriate and legitimate? Perhaps. But that is another discussion.” No, that is not another discussion. That is this discussion. To author a post that suggests there is a problem with the IPCC citing Greenpeace as a reference and then to suggest, after the fact, that it is possible some of those citations may have been appropriate or legitimate is the height of dishonesty. How can it be wrong for the IPCC to cite Greenpeace, but also be appropriate and legitimate? In addition, since your response suggests you haven’t yet considered whether the Greenpeace citations were appropriate or legitimate, I’d like to know when you plan your follow up post examining that question?
And you’ve still got item #1 on my list of your errors wrong. You even rewrote the complete sentence and failed to see it, so I’ll put it here again: ““Other likely impacts of climate change on coastal tourism are due to coral reef degradation (Box 6.1; Section 6.4.1.5) (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2000).” Did you bother to check out Box 6.1 or Section 6.4.1.5? Though you continue to assert that Greenpeace was the sole reference for the part of this sentence that links climate change to coral reef degradation, had you checked out either of those sections you would have found a plethora of peer-reviewed references that talk all about climate change and the coral reefs. And did you read the entire title of the Greenpeace reference before posting a truncated version in your blog post? The title is not “Pacific in Peril” as you assert. The full title is “Pacific in peril: biological, economic and social impacts of climate change on Pacific coral reefs”. ECONOMIC. It’s clear if you read the title (and even more clear if you read the paper – I linked to it above) that the focus of this document is not how climate change degrades coral reefs, but what impact that degradation may have on the people of the Pacific (including economic impacts from reduced tourism). In short, a wholly appropriate reference for a sentence suggesting coral reef degradation may hurt tourism.
You write, in closing, that your thesis was meant to be: “That the IPCC treats material published by Greenpeace as evidence.”, but this is in no way a thesis statement nor was it yours unless you really have no business being part of the discussion on global warming. “That the IPCC treats material published by Greenpeace as evidence” requires no argument. Anyone who has bothered to read the IPCC report can see this. The debate revolves around whether theses citations were appropriate or not and until you take the important step of answering that question I don’t see why yours is a voice worth hearing in this discussion.

Mods,
Since Donna Laframboise’s most recent post makes it clear that she has yet to investigate the significance of the Greenpeace references cited in the IPCC report, can you correct your sentence in the original post that states Greenpeace has had “a significant hand in the IPCC climate bible.”? Or, if you have other information regarding the significance of the Greenpeace references, can you please post that information when you get a chance?

Phil Jourdan (06:10:32) :
“The statement is true as written. Why correct a statement of fact?”
No, it’s not true as written. None of the Greenpeace references listed by Laframboise support the idea that Greenpeace had a “significant hand in the IPCC climate bible.” and WUWT has not offered any additional information. You do know what the word “significant” means, right?

PhilJourdan (15:50:18) :
“You do know what “a hand in” means, right? For non native speakers, idioms are often difficult. I will translate it to simpler terms if you need it.”
I’d love to hear your translation. And don’t forget to use the word ‘significant’ in front of it.

I wonder how many commentators here have delved into the report? Mostly what I see is reactionary comments based on shallow media reports and like-minded blogs. It’s a good idea if you’re after the truth to delve yourself. For example, Box 4.4 on coral reefs in chapter 4 of Working group 2 provides a densely referenced assessment, here’s a small extract “Adaptation potential (Hughes et al., 2003) by reef organisms requires further experimental and applied study (Coles and Brown, 2003; Hughes et al., 2003). Natural adaptive shifts to symbionts with +2°C resistance may delay demise of some reefs to roughly 2100 (Sheppard, 2003), rather than mid-century (Hoegh-Guldberg, 2005) although this may vary widely across the globe (Donner et al., 2005). Estimates of warm-water coral cover reduction in the last 20-25 years are 30% or higher (Wilkinson, 2004; Hoegh-Guldberg, 2005) due largely to increasing higher SST frequency (Hoegh-Guldberg, 1999). In some regions, such as the Caribbean, coral losses have been estimated at 80% (Gardner et al., 2003). Coral migration to higher latitudes with more optimal SST is unlikely, due both to latitudinally decreasing aragonite concentrations and projected atmospheric CO2 increases (Kleypas et al., 2001; Guinotte et al., 2003; Orr et al., 2005; Raven et al., 2005). Coral migration is also limited by lack of available substrate (Chapter 6, Section 6.4.1.5). Elevated SST and decreasing aragonite have a complex synergy (Harvell et al., 2002; Reynaud et al., 2003; McNeil et al., 2004; Kleypas et al., 2005) but could produce major coral reef changes (Guinotte et al., 2003; Hoegh-Guldberg, 2005). Corals could become rare on tropical and sub-tropical reefs by 2050 due to the combined effects of increasing CO2 and increasing frequency of bleaching events (at 2-3 * CO2) (Kleypas and Langdon, 2002; Hoegh-Guldberg, 2005; Raven et al., 2005).”
I dare you go and read the reports in detail before sounding off.

REPLY: see the main page of WUWT, there’s now calls from a prominent scientist in the UK to address these issues – Anthony

Wow, you guys should be proud. I see Mark Landsbaum has picked up and run with the BS printed in this post: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-234092–.html
Check out the paragraph on Reefgate: “Let’s not forget the alleged link between climate change and coral reef degradation. The IPCC cited not peer-reviewed literature, but advocacy articles by Greenpeace, the publicity-hungry advocacy group, as its sole source for this claim.”
Hard to find anything in that paragraph that’s true. Congratulations on successfully adding to the volumes of misinformation that are already out there regarding the IPCC!