It seems the alarming story of “Ocean extinction has started in our time” making the rounds of the alarmist blogs and gullible media is nothing more than an unpublished, unchecked opinion, and some pal review amongst activists at a three day conference.
Barry Woods writes:
Oh for goodness sake (parallels to IPCC 80% greenpeace renewables story)
The International Panel on the State of the Ocean !!! IPSO – modest bunch – see mission statement (front page website)
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/
The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) was established by scientists with the aim of saving the Earth and all life on it.
Another Press release – Gets a shocking headline – the wait for the report (so that it can be checked) so that it is forgotten about and at the end – it is too early to say, but the trends are, etc,etc,etc
Maybe the Oceans are in a shocking state, I’m just getting too cynical to care…
BBC: World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline – Richard Black – 20th June 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479
“The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.”
“In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.
The International Panel on the State of the Ocean !!! IPSO
This is getting beyond satire ‘panel for the State of the ocean’ but no doubt lots more UN jobs and research required, plus urgent action and control of the oceans.
“The findings are shocking,” said Alex Rogers, IPSO’s scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.
“Its report will be formally released later this week.”
Its worse than we thought (they considered)
”…As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.”
“We’ve sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we’re seeing, and we’ve ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we’re seeing changes that are happening faster than we’d thought, or in ways that we didn’t expect to see for hundreds of years.”
” These “accelerated” changes include melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of methane trapped in the sea bed.”
BUT at the end. – It is too early to say !!!!
“The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively.”
But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say – and far faster than any of the previous five extinctions.
I’m sorry but I have utter contempt for this sort of pseudo-science by press release…
I wonder what the report really says, and how well it holds up to the headline, I wonder if anyone will bother to check…
Seriously though: The International Panel of the State of the Ocean (IPSO)
With a name like that and their mission statement, – “with the aim of saving all life on the planet!” – they are hardly ever going to come to the conclusion, that it might be doing ‘just fine’,
Diagnosing the state of the Ocean’s health
IPSO is currently compiling the Global State of the Ocean Report, which will collate world-wide marine science to give a comprehensive overview of the health of the Ocean. The Report is due to be published in 2012 but we already know that the Ocean’s health is in a critical state.
=================================================================
Thanks Barry, but wait there’s more. Ben Pile, of the website “Climate Resistance” writes:
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…
World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline
Warns Richard Black at the BBC.
The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.
In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.
They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.
The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.
The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.
Call me a cynic, but I no longer take claims about ‘expert panel of scientists’ at face value. Sadly, Richard Black of the BBC does.
…
Ok. So who the hell are the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition?
A coordination team works together with a Steering Group that currently consists of the Ecology Action Centre, Greenpeace International, Marine Conservation Biology Institute, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Environment Group and Seas at Risk. The DSCC has developed a formidable international team of scientists, policy and communication experts, lawyers and political activists who on behalf of the deep sea have established a strong reputation and profile on the issue at the UN and in other fora.
The ‘panel of experts’ — IPSO — may well be expert. But, look, again, we see Greenpeace’s name up there, steering the research — in its own words — alongside the Pew group, and Friends of the Earth.
I don’t believe a word of it. This is not scientific research, it’s ‘grey literature’, put out by yet another grey institution, the true nature of which is concealed from first appearances. Not far behind, the agenda is revealed.
[Anthony: Ben Pile also located a helpful video:]
From the video description on YouTube:
Dr. Alex Rogers, Scientific Director of IPSO and Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, gives the overview of the main problems affecting the ocean – and some suggested solutions.
Pile continues:
So, yeah, another NGO lobbying outfit, in cahoots with government and businesses, blurring the lines between activism, scientific research, and so on.
Back to IPSO. Here’s the web-page that relates to the new report. It describes the background to the report:
The 3 day workshop, co-sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), looked at the latest science across different disciplines.
The 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats — and a stark conclusion about future risks to marine and human life if the current trajectory of damage continues: that the world’s ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.
So it turns out that this report took the scientists just three days of chin-wagging. Says the report:
The workshop provided a rare opportunity to interact with other disciplines to determine the net effect of what is already happening to the ocean and is projected to do so in the future. Over the three days 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries (Annex 1) assessed the latest information on impacts and stresses, and the synergistic effects these are having on the global ocean.
Through presentations, discussions and recommendations the workshop documented and described the cumulative effects of such impacts, how these commonly act in a negatively synergistic way, and why therefore concerted action is now needed to address the consequences set out in this report.
==============================================================
Here’s the team from the IPSO website:
A high-level international workshop convened by IPSO met at the University of Oxford earlier this year. It was the first inter-disciplinary international meeting of marine scientists of its kind and was designed to consider the cumulative impact of multiple stressors on the ocean, including warming, acidification, and overfishing.
The 3 day workshop, co-sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), looked at the latest science across different disciplines.
The 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats — and a stark conclusion about future risks to marine and human life if the current trajectory of damage continues: that the world’s ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.
Delegates called for urgent and unequivocal action to halt further declines in ocean health. (click for press release)
…
(They seem really upset about this photo, this fish seems happy with his new home though, and anyone who knows anything about aluminum in the ocean will tell you the fish will probably outlive the can – A)
So, the BBC story “World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline” seems to be based on nothing more than some joint opinion at a conference with Greenpeace activists, a regurgitated press release, and no peer reviewed publication yet.
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While I don’t like using the world’s water as our collective toilet I do think anyone’s save the planet and all life on it hubris is funny. Not just in a George Carlin way but I’d love to see their plan for moving the earth out farther in orbit as the sun expands.
As an aside, the ‘alumium can lives in the sea for 500 years’ myth has been promoted by Greenpeace and ilk. However, in our seawater aquariums they disappear within 5 years, the flip tops take a bit longer.
We may be mocking the fear and concern of ‘warmists’ and ‘conservationists’ but the world is somewhat in a mess. The problem is where to obtain reliable information rather than propaganda? As a skeptic I’ve been working on this since 1990, and my conclusion is that only reliable education can help us ‘do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time’. So spend some time informing yourself about the world’s foremost problems relating to land, sea and air. Some effort on your part will be needed, because this is pure science after all. Are you up to it? Then tell others. Let the skeptical snowball roll.
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/climate.htm
With over 4000 printed pages and over 5000 images it has been a labour of love and is still not completed. I am working on the fisheries issue but the science of it is so politicised that truth and fact are very hard to find.
It is reported on the BBC website that ‘Carbon dioxide levels are now so high…that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently…”We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News.’
I’m surprised that anyone making such silly statements can be taken seriously. Hoegh-Guldberg is one of the most crazed of these chicken little, alarmist types who discredits the name of science. I care nothing about his scientific credentials – he is using them to get a platform with the media to spread falsehood.
In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg warned that the Great Barrier Reef was under pressure from global warming, and much of it had turned white. When others checked up on him and found that wasn’t the case he said the reef had made a ‘surprising’ recovery.
In 2006, he warned that “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s great Barrier Reef could die within a month”. When it didn’t he had to admit there had been ‘a minimal impact’.
In 2007, he warned again that global warming was bleaching the reef. The following year the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network announced that there had been no significant damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report.
Anyone can set up a body with a grandiose name like the International Programme on the State of the Oceans and then generate absolute nonsense, and the likes of Richard Black at the BBC will just pick it up. This is not the output of a scientific body, this is advocacy, and if you look at the co-sponsors of the report you will find the likes of Greenpeace all over it. Who are those on ‘IPSO’s unique consortium…including those from the legal, communications and political arenas’? Who were the ’27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries [who] produced a grave assessment of current threats’?
Well, there’s
Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent North, and Vice President Globe UK, the Global Legislators Organisation, a pressure group for ‘advancing domestic legislation on climate change’ according to their website.
Aurelie Spadone, Dan Laffoley, James Oliver, Kristina Gjerde, and Patricio Bernal of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, an advocacy group.
Kelly Rigg, Executive Director, Global Campaign for Climate Action, former senior campaign director for Greenpeace International during 20 years with the organization.
Josh Reichert and Karen Sack of the Pew Environment Group, an advocacy group.
Mirella Von Lindenfels representing IPSO, the organizing advocacy group.
Conn Nugent of the JM Kaplan Fund, a fund that bankrolls Green advocacy.
Matt Gianni, Policy Advisor of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition (DSCC), an advocacy group with Greenpeace on the Steering Committee.
Charlotte Smith, Senior Accounts Director of Communications Inc, which does corporate communications for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF, the JM Kaplan Fund, IPSO, DSCC, and other Green advocacy groups.
Derek Tittensor, who works for the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
Oh my, I’m really impressed by this line up at the IPSO ‘high-level international workshop’! More than half the delegates work for, bankroll or are suppliers to Big Green. This is just an echo chamber for green advocacy groups who have an incestuous relationship in projects like this with politically motivated ‘scientists’ who like to get off on an ego trip and have their views splashed around the media.
What are the recommendations of this IPSO workshop apart from an immediate deep cut in carbon emissions? All deep green, deep socialism, total world governance by the UN (of course!), I’m afraid. There are no recommendations whatsoever to do with science:
‘universal implementation of the precautionary principle by reversing the burden of proof’
‘urgent introduction…of effective governance of the High Seas beyond the jurisdiction of individual nations…Such a regime should include powers to levy fines [and] suspend a State’s right to flag vessels…’
‘[to] avoid, reduce or at minimum universally and stringently regulate oil, gas, aggregate and mineral extraction’
Imagine a world with no oil, gas, aggregate or mineral extraction, and with shipping suspended, and nothing ever being able to be done because the burden of proof is reversed under universal precautionary principle. The end of civilization, a world where billions die in poverty and starvation. This is a world where mankind has no environmental impact, because mankind will have done the planet a favour and exterminated itself, except for those who are servants and clients of the UN. Welcome to the Green paradise.
@Tom says:
June 21, 2011 at 12:25 pm
You wrote:-
“I doubt very much if the kitchen at Canonbury Villas, London, N1 2PN would carry as much weight – but it would be entirely appropriate.”
I Googled the address and ruined my keyboard!!
Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Paul Ehrlich, in 1981, predicted that by the year 2000 half of the earth’s species would be extinct and all would be gone by 2015.
Just four years to go folks and we’re gonners!
I can’t even see the pesky grey squirrels going extinct round here!!
ScientistForTruth says:
June 21, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Huge-Goldbrick isn’t a crazy. He’s a very good used car salesman who got into the wrong field.
Dr Alex Rogers has done loads of work for UN agencies, for GLOBE, and as he says “I have also worked for other NGOs including the WWF, Greenpeace and the Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition”
http://static.zsl.org/files/alex-rogers-research-information-1091.pdf
Rogers is on the steering group (along with Greenpeace) of the DSCC.
His ZSL page (now taken down but still available in cache) confirms that he has worked for: “UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), UN Division of Oceans and Law of the Sea (UN-DOALOS), UN International Seabed Authority (ISA), and NGOs including WWF and Greenpeace.”
Why am I not surprised?
If you call your org int’l program on the state of oceans you have already concluded in advance that they are already in rough shape. You’re not going to meet, decide the oceans are hunky dory and go home! Indeed this built-in foregone conclusion in the name is a grey lit giveaway. I recall on an earlier post some time ago on the rapid extinctions being caused by cagw,Willis Eschenbach asked “Where are the bodies?” If you are having mass extinctions there would be millions of tons of bodies putrifying along the shores, plugging the estuaries, interfering with navigation. Remember the previous SH winter the bitter cold in S. America wiped out domestic and wild animals in Brazil, froze several hundred children in Peru and choked the waterways of Ecuador with dead fish, turtles and crocs – hey there were lots of bodies and this was the reverse of gw. I hardly saw much reporting on this “weather” disaster.
Harold Camping used his twisted interpretation of the Bible to predict the end of the world. And even when he was proven wrong (twice), it doesn’t deter him. He just keeps on making new predictions — and the scientists laugh. But how are these scientists any different? They keep twisting the scientific process to make their own predictions about the end of the world. Be it overpopulation, a silent spring, acid rain, China syndrome, ozone depletion, global cooling, global warming, or the death of the oceans, they keep making dire predictions and getting it wrong. But that doesn’t stop them. As soon as one prediction fails to materialize, they immediately come out with another.
“The superstition of science scoffs at the superstition of faith.” – James A. Froude
Same reason as Camping had: predictions pay! They induce politicians and other fools to throw money at you to avert the putatively almost inevitable. The direr the doom, the more money. CAGW, for instance …
P.S. About Camping: how soon will he finally be D. Camping?
The sad thing is that by emphasising climate as the main cause it suggests the solution is the impossible task of ‘fighting’ climate change, which could only be done on a global scale, and would fail anyway.
Overfishing and pollution IS a problem and CAN be tackled on any scale, from small local initiatives to a global effort.
In general green organisations are failing in what they originally meant to do by making the solution too massive to achieve.
For example in China the emphasis has been on CO2 reduction, but it would have been more fruitful to concentrate on reducing pollution, again which can be done on any scale from individual factories to the country as a whole.
Most so-called ‘ Green’ organisations are no longer really green.
It is a shame that science has degraded to this. But it needs to be said….so let the truth speak for itself.
Also…Barry Woods made it clear about his concerns from overfishing and pollution. Thanks for the commitment to logic, Barry. Much appreciated.
BTW…Vigilantfish your comments are on point.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Billy Liar says:
June 21, 2011 at 1:32 pm
R. Gates says:
June 21, 2011 at 10:56 am
…So, the bottom line is, there is actual research, and lots of it, to support their findings.
Thanks for the link, but no -there is a long list of papers.
_____
Yeah Billy, there actually is, but as you said, “you can’t be bothered” with such a long list.
Jeezus there’s a group for everything. I’ll bet there’s even an international group against public nail clipping…
What?
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2263435357
That’s it. I must end my life.
/sarc
TRM says:
June 21, 2011 at 2:08 pm
“While I don’t like using the world’s water as our collective toilet I do think anyone’s save the planet and all life on it hubris is funny”
Whales, sharks, fish, birds and the billions of other animals in the sea have all been using the oceans as their collective toilet since time began. I have a relatively small pool with over 100 large goldfish in it. They have been using the pool as their collective toilet for many years, and so far they remain in the best of health and the water remains pure. Could we be wrong about the dangers of human bodily waste contaminating the seas, in other words could any human waste that is discharged into the sea be contributing to other forms of life in the oceans, we know it does on land?.
This story has been parroted all over the world on TV, radio and print. Apparently the lefty alarmist journalists are still around, perhaps trying to make some kind of revival. I thought the MSM had already learned their lesson regarding this type of alarmism, this is like some kind of throwback to the good ol’ days before Climategate and Copenhagen 2009. I hear a lot of alarmists are trying to call our era the anthropocene, perhaps this report is part of that strategy. The left with its self-loathing; I don’t know how these people get through each day, yuck.
WikiP defines it “The Anthropocene is a recent and informal geologic chronological term that serves to mark the evidence and extent of human activities that have had a significant global impact on the Earth’s ecosystems.”
Even the Chinese seem to blame themselves for overfishing!
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/life/environment/2008/04/17/152382/Over-fishing-causes.htm