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« David King at the ECC | Main | University ethics »
Tuesday
Mar252014

The return of Secret Santa

Secret Santa, the mole within IPCC Working Group II, has delivered his latest batch of goodies:

  • The latest draft of the WGII Summary for Policymakers, currently being discussed in Yokahama
  • A document floating round the conference that demonstrates through its title - "Hope for our Earth" - the policy-neutral environment in which delegates are operating.

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Reader Comments (13)

Is the purpose of this document to give politicians and environmentalists scary graphs? I think page 36 sums it up. The temperature graph trying to obscure the fact that the projections are "out of this world. Why believe anything from models that do not work?

A bar graph of ficticious effects of thermgeddon. Wow a high risk of extinction - yes a bit like the polar bear population which they said was threatened (even though it has doubled in the last 30 years) but now the basis of that is questioned?

Mar 25, 2014 at 9:45 AM | Unregistered CommenterCharmingQuark

When a ducument produced for a 'scientific' gathering talks about:

-"Saving the Planet"
-"Hope for our Earth"
-"action we can take now" and
-"Saving the Planet for Future Generations"

even the densest journalist should be able to see that science has left the building.

This is religious revival language. This is "it's more fun, interesting & sexy to be a savior than a scientist."

Mar 25, 2014 at 12:01 PM | Unregistered CommenterDonna Laframboise

The ultimate conspiracy theory: "Mankind is Destroying the Earth." Perhaps Professor Lewandowsky should apply his expertise to that.

Mar 25, 2014 at 2:06 PM | Unregistered Commentertheduke

On page 6, IPCC Working Group II arrives at the stunning conclusion that violent conflict around the world will make it more difficult for poor people to adapt to scary climate change.

Not so. Some of them adapt perfectly well by dying from gunshots, chemical attacks, exposure, malnutrition, disease. Excuse me, you war refugees over there, you mustn't burn that cow dung to cook those few grains of rice you found in the dirt, because it'll overheat our future climate.

This report asserts flatly that crop yields from future warming will be negative, not positive. I think that's absolutely crazy. And they cite the PRICE, not the actual YIELDS, in this document. Holy crap, who are these idiots.

These people has some effed up priorities.

Mar 25, 2014 at 2:08 PM | Unregistered CommenterMickey Reno

What a whopper this is from the "Hope For Our Earth" document:

"The IPCC forecasts that the global air temperature will rise
between now and around 2100 (by an annual average of 0.3℃
-4.8℃)"

An ANNUAL average of 0.3C to 4.8C? So, in 86 years' time, the global air temperature would have risen by between 25.8C and 412.8C?

Seems that there is no hope for our Earth if this level of critical thinking prevails...

Mar 25, 2014 at 3:03 PM | Unregistered CommenterKeith

Value judgement????? Their values have little to do with a judgement that is unbiased and unadulterated.
What ever happened to observation and analysis followed by reasoned estimation of associated errors prior to risk assessment?

Mar 25, 2014 at 3:18 PM | Unregistered CommenterPJB

Mar 25, 2014 at 3:03 PM | Unregistered CommenterKeith

What a whopper this is from the "Hope For Our Earth" document:

"The IPCC forecasts that the global air temperature will rise
between now and around 2100 (by an annual average of 0.3℃
-4.8℃)"

=================================

Perhaps they mean an annual average of 0.3C minus 4.8C ?

A cooling of 4.5C per annum would project global air temperatures to reach absolute zero by the year 2078.

Now THAT would be something we can really get alarmed about!

Mar 25, 2014 at 4:17 PM | Unregistered CommenterAnything is possible

Yokohama?

Mar 25, 2014 at 8:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterBrute

Both links return "Page not found" for me.

Mar 25, 2014 at 9:43 PM | Unregistered CommenterBob

Keith, Anything is possible --
It seems apparent to me that "The IPCC forecasts that the global air temperature will rise between now and around 2100 (by an annual average of 0.3℃ -4.8℃)" is just an infelicitous attempt to summarize Table SPM.2 of AR5 WG1, which predicts the end-of-century ranges for temperatures for each of the four RCP scenarios. [That table also predicts sea level rise, which is mentioned at the end of the original sentence.]
Rephrase to "The IPCC forecasts that the annual-average global air temperature will rise between now and around 2100 by 0.3℃ to 4.8℃."

Mar 26, 2014 at 2:04 AM | Registered CommenterHaroldW

HaroldW
I think they probably out-sourced the translation to the same people who do electrical goods manuals!

Mar 26, 2014 at 9:16 AM | Registered CommenterMike Jackson

Isn't it deeply offensive to portray the Japanese as Lego like figures with no hands and square heads?

Mar 26, 2014 at 12:55 PM | Unregistered CommenterBilly Liar

Mike Jackson -
Heh. Almost as bad.

P.S. In addition to the clumsy sentence construction, there's a (minor) substantive mistake in there as well. Table SPM.2 contains the "likely range" for "[p]rojected change in global mean surface air temperature and global mean sea level rise for the mid- and late 21st century relative to the reference period of 1986–2005." The "late" value is 2081-2100, so their "around 2100" is OK; but "now" is about 0.1 K warmer than the reference period. For convenience, I've taken "now" to be the average over the last five years, viz. 2009-2013.

Mar 26, 2014 at 4:43 PM | Registered CommenterHaroldW

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