back to article Drought effect on rainforests is negligible

More bad news today for the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as another of its extravagant ecopocalypse predictions, sourced from green campaigners, has been confirmed as bunk by scientists. The UN body came under attack earlier this year for suggesting that 40 per cent of the Amazonian rainforests - dubbed the " …

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  1. Leo Davidson

    What's the scoreline?

    What's the scoreline here, in terms of mistakes made on each side of the debate?

    Is the reason The Register doesn't run similar stories about debunked claims from climate-change deniers that it would be a fulltime job to document the lies/mistakes that come from that side of the debate?

    Or is there confirmation bias and/or an agenda at work here?

    Not saying everything the IPCC do is right, but if being 100% right is the requirement then you've got to reject every single organisation, I suspect.

    1. Captain Save-a-ho
      Troll

      Here's your chance to prove deniers wrong

      Obviously, you can post your complaints about the coverage from El Reg. How about your put yourself to work and provide competing research that falls on the IPCC support side of things. Maybe you'll really sway people with some convincing evidence (or you'll shut your pie hole and crawl back under that rock you live under). I don't really care either way, but don't blame the Reg for covering a side that doesn't really appear important to the rest of the media now that there's no disasterous doom impending.

      For the record, I'm an IT pro and not a scientist (though I have two Ph.D biologists in my immediate family who are convinced all this global climate change is real, but completely normal and not human influenced). Personally, I think very little in the "debate" has a damn thing to do with science, as most of the discussion is really just political bullshit, positioning one group against another for hands outs of money from the governments of the world (and people stupid enough to donate to such causes).

      Any day someone can provide some real science, I'll gladly listen. Unfortunately, I don't expect that to occur any time soon, as climatology is really more of a soft science, like sociology and psychology. Call me a sceptic, but I thought that was a requirement for critical thinking and science in general.

      1. Mat Ballard

        Dr Mat

        First of all, congratulations on being one of the few anti-AGW journalists who permit pro-AGW posts on your site.

        As for some convincing evidence, have a quick look at:

        http://www.csiro.au/resources/State-of-the-Climate.html

        Note that this was personally authorized by the CEO of CSIRO, Dr Megan Clark, who spent most of her career in that well-know greenie leftist bunch called "Western Mining Corporation", followed by those tree-hugging commies in BHP Billiton, which owns most of the coal in Australia.

        Or, if you want something that is a bit more meaty and globally orientated, try:

        http://www.skepticalscience.com/

    2. scrubber
      Pirate

      Good on the Reg

      They report the debunked official claims of organisations that are actively influencing government policies. These people are supposed to be experts, they are supposed to be the scientific consensus and shouldn't be making elementary errors like this that may affect government policy.

      A bit like they report on the few laptops that went missing from the MOD, not the hundreds of thousands that don't.

      If the Reg had to comment on the thousands of crazy claims made by AGW sceptics there wouldn't be enough space for any IT news. Or enough journalists to do it. If there was an official body, or if OPEC came out with claims based on junk science then the Reg would, hopefully, fully report when that had been debunked too.

    3. MIc
      Thumb Down

      Emotions run high but this isn't a team sport

      why keep score? WHy care about who made the most mistakes?

      It looks as though there is an emotional attachment to one "team" vs the other like this is the super bowl. Almost as though you take the statements of this article personaly because you subscribe to human caused climate change. (As do I)

      The only take away from any article that does a good job of pointing out bad science is to recognize just how dangerous bad science is and how foolish it is to stop throwing stones even if we do argee or hope that they are right.

      1. Leo Davidson

        I don't have a side

        Not sure why people think I have a side. I was asking for balanced reporting, not for reporting which favours either side.

        Anyone who has been paying attention to The Register's coverage of climate change issues will know it's been far from balanced. Extremely selective is what I'd call it.

    4. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects 1
      Alien

      I am neutral but

      Speaking as one of the first climate change deniers I ever heard of this one got me:

      "Samanta, Ganguly and their colleagues also consider that their results debunk another controversial paper published in 2007, which said that the 2005 drought was actually good for the rainforests, causing them to "green up" due to more sunlight from cloudless skies.

      These results are "not reproducible", according to the new analysis, which indicates that in fact nothing much changed down on the Amazon during the 2005 dry spell."

      If it's the report I think it is, I picked it up and ran with it. For which I blame Earth Observatory.

      As far as I know this is a first from my perspective. Perhaps you can tell me what I have missed?

  2. ToddRundgren

    Good old IPCC

    Why is the only place I find this information, either the Register or Sunday Torygraph. The UK's mainstream media is an absolute disgrace. As far as the IPCC is concerned, it shold be shutdown.

    1. SingerScientist
      Grenade

      You've half answered your own question

      Because only the Sunday Torygraph (a mainstream publication if ever there was one) and, apparently, The Register, have a readership gullible enough to belive this oil-lobby-funded nonsense.

      1. Alan Esworthy
        Grenade

        You've half-eaten your own brain

        Only the cognitively challenged true believers fail to recognize that the spending by govts and quangos promoting and propagandizing their own climate change programs and command-and-control systems overwhelm any conceivable amount by energy company on their own efforts by at least three orders of magnitude.

        You are a silly person and only worth paying attention to if you vote and therefore are dangerous to civilization.

        1. DonaldTwain
          FAIL

          But Alan has swallowed his whole

          http://www.justsharethis.com/top-10-biggest-companies-in-the-world-2009/

          Alan is right! Exxon Mobil pump that oil out of the ground for the good of their health, and hardly make a penny out of it. The market capitalisation must reflect people's esteem for the charitable work they do. They would be much better off making wind turbines out of recycled baked bean cans for spare change. Perhaps it has never crossed their minds to richly fund a disinformation campaign. They simply can't afford it. We should pass a hat round, or better still, we could work as unpaid oil company shills in our spare time. Who's with Alan and me? We could start off by looking through the thousands of references in the IPCC report and seeing if they got any of the page numbers wrong. Tell us about global warming? They can't even count!

      2. dogged
        Stop

        wait...

        Are you suggesting that this story is untrue?

        Citations, please.

      3. JayB
        Happy

        Just for Singer Scientist...

        All together now...

        Troll Troll trollity troll... etc and so on and so forth....

        Muppet. Of all publicly available news sources I rather imagine the average IQ around this publication exceeds the national average by just a tinesy wee bit.

        Go sit back under your bridge and wait for a Billy goat... silly man.

      4. Il Midga di Macaroni
        FAIL

        Actually...

        Actually, the oil lobby funds the climate change believers. To the tune of millions. The skeptics pretty much have to pay for their own research.

        1. Alan Firminger

          Allegedly

          Oil funds deniers, nuclear fund believers. There is no funding for cautious sceptics.

  3. JoeBreg

    The IPCC again?

    How people can still believe a word these so-called 'experts' say it beyond me.

    Here is how I see it: climate change is happening - just as it has since the earth began. I don't believe that it is human driven in the slightest.

    Ignoring that, I still believe that green energy is the way to go. I'm fed up of all these ridiculous claims being purported by the media. We should want renewable energy for the sake of having renewable energy, not because some heavily subsidised scientists or hardline environmental groups say the world is going to end in a few years.

    Why not take the money away from scientists who are paid to find the many ways humans are supposedly altering the earths weather patterns and put it into proper energy research. The world will change regardless of whether we change with it, we should think about the future of housing, food production and power generation instead of wasting pointless hours on trying to prove or disprove human involvement.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Wonderful!

    The AGW/MMCC house of cards continues to collapse, fantastic.

  5. Sweep

    not reproducible

    "These results are "not reproducible", according to the new analysis, which indicates that in fact nothing much changed down on the Amazon during the 2005 dry spell."

    I am not going to go read the paper, but I would have thought that all that means is that there is not way to reproduce or test the conditions and results that the hypothesis is based on, no?

    It certainly does not indicate to me that nothing much changed, only that the conclusion that the dry spell was good for the Amazon cannot be subjected to the scientific method.

    1. John Angelico
      Boffin

      Which goes to show...

      [quote]

      "only that the conclusion that the dry spell was good for the Amazon cannot be subjected to the scientific method."

      [/quote]

      Thus the original conclusion that the dry spell was dangerous for the Amazon and the entire planet, was likewise incapable of scientific determination.

      So the science is definitely NOT "in" as the mantra previously had it, and the IPCC is once more demonstrated to be not a scientific document but merely a political one.

      Which means that down under our PM's claim that the IPCC is "a bunch of 4000 scientists running around in white coats" is pure humbug.

  6. Martin
    Stop

    Why are ALL the climate-change articles on El Reg "sceptical"?

    It would be nice if you would publish a few articles pointing out the inaccuracies (and worse) published by the sceptic community.

    Bear in mind, if the climate change people are wrong, but we go along with their suggestions, we'll still end up with a better planet. If the climate change sceptics are wrong, and we go along with them, the prospects are pretty grim.

    1. Daren Nestor

      Save me!

      "Bear in mind, if the climate change people are wrong, but we go along with their suggestions, we'll still end up with a better planet"

      Evidence, please! This is widely touted, but all the solutions presented so far involve paying people off, not dealing with the problems. Those are the ok solutions, we won't mention the solution of population control .

      "It would be nice if you would publish a few articles pointing out the inaccuracies (and worse) published by the sceptic community."

      Why? Serious question. If you mean the reputable skeptic community, then fine. But the point is that the IPCC predicts disasters, and is pushing (or its results are responsible for pushing) a massive and expensive social engineering campaign. It has attracted the lunatic fringe of the green movement (i.e. the aforementioned WWF). The entire world is affected. If they've been taking predictions from WWF and Greenpeace promotional literature then they might as well have hired Dan Brown to write the damn thing.

      There are good reasons to reduce CO2 emissions. Acidification of the oceans, for instance. This climate change scare isn't one of them

    2. Il Midga di Macaroni
      Stop

      Better planet? How?

      Of course it depends which emission target we go with, but let's take the 30%-down-on-1990-levels figure that seems to be pretty much accepted as a good middle of the road position between the raving alarmists and the jaded skeptics.

      To reduce our emissions to that level, we would need a Carbon Trading Scheme. Basically, a tax on all CO2 emissions. Any economist in the world will confidently tell you that will completely ruin the economy of any western nation. Unemployment edging up to 25% and that sort of thing. Do you call that a better planet?

      We would also need some very heavy, very fast investment in non-carbon-emitting energy production. Nuke, for instance. To produce the amount of energy we need to power our society, we'd be producing nuke waste at an alarming rate. There is still no way of getting rid of the stuff, and no prospects of a breakthrough in the next 50 years. And the stuff can have a pretty horrific effect on life in the area, especially if a bit leaks out (which can happen). Do you call that a better planet?

      And transport is a major contributor of atmospheric CO2. To get our emissions down we'd pretty much have to restrict the use of private cars (because deterrent taxes have been shown to be ineffective). Or we could have a return to wartime petrol rationing. Do you call that a better planet?

      And the icing on the cake is, even if we go to all this effort and reduce our emissions by 30% on 1990 levels, the alarmists say it won't be enough to prevent several island nations from being inundated by rising sea levels. What's the point?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Don't really know and can't be arsed

        Typical of the "Don't really know and can't be arsed" mindset of so many people these days.

        Why does everyone think they are a climate expert these days? Absolute nonsense. In any other walk of life we trust the experts, even if they don't get it right 100% of the time.

        As an attempt at some kind of analogy, a huge proportion of doctors misdiagnose and most medicines have undesirable side-effects, or simply don't work at all. But we still plave enough faith in all of them overall to ultimately improve the quality of our lives, even if not our own immediately.

        Our 1 planet is too important to f*** up by ignorant and vociferous barstewards who only have their own selfish interests at heart. How any intelligent Register reader cannot see through that particular con is beyond me and makes me despair for society.

        Climate science is not perfect, far from it, but on something as important as protecting our only home we MUST employ the cautionary principle and take note of the vast majority of experts...even if some day ultimately the scientific evidence changes and they are wrong. Especially since the measures to reduce CO2 will not actually harm our existence, only the pockets of the oil companies and dirty industry.

        Get a grip people! Otherwise shut up and go back to sleep!

      2. Etrien Dautre
        Pirate

        Damn Title... OK, Duke

        Ahasuerus at the immigration office: do you have another globe?

        The following was likely said coupla days ago: the world's CO2 emission might be ceased to 0 % (zero) by anno 2050. Very funny.

      3. YARR

        Carbon tax maybe, but NOT carbon trading

        "To reduce our emissions to that level, we would need a Carbon Trading Scheme. Basically, a tax on all CO2 emissions"

        Carbon trading and carbon tax are not the same thing. Carbon trading allows the wealthy* to pay to continue to pollute. Also current international agreements permit developing countries to continue to grow and pollute more at the expense of developed countries.

        IMO everyone and every country needs to reduce their demand on the Earth's resources (not just CO2 reduction). Practical technological solutions and simple lifestyle changes are needed to help people change the way they live - not draconian political targets with no plan for how they can be achieved. As part of this, countries with rapidly growing populations must take radical action to curb their population growth, otherwise the problems will only multiply.

        * by wealthy, I mean those with a large surplus of income, not ordinary Westerners who live hand to mouth but just happen to have a more valuable currency than the poor in the Third World. Most Westerners are in debt, but most Third Worlders aren't - i.e. they already live within their very limited means.

      4. Steve Roper
        Thumb Up

        Better planet? Yes, nuke

        Actually nuclear is the way to go. We have a perfectly serviceable, safe and capacious nuclear waste dump right here in South Australia, where other states and countries can dispose of their nuclear waste. It's not widely publicised due to greenie opposition, but I for one am glad it's here, for two reasons:

        1) We get to charge everyone else like wounded bulls for dumping their waste here; and

        2) the dump is located a mile down in massive borosilicate concrete bunkers inside the solid granitic craton of our continent. It's the most geologically stable region on the planet; no seismic disturbances have taken place there since before the dinosaurs died out, and no earthquake, volcano, fracture or other geological cataclysm is even remotely likely to occur there for at least 150 million years, when Australia collides with China due to tectonic drift - and by then all that radioactive waste will have long since decayed to nothing more than so many blocks of lead. Better here where it's stable than in some earthquake-prone Pacific-ring-of-fire nation where the next rumbler would turn the site into another Chernobyl!

        So yeah, go nuclear. And pay us to dispose of your nuke waste safely. We love the money! :)

    3. perlcat
      FAIL

      Why skeptical? Indeed.

      That, sir, is what *real* science is all about. Applying reason to your problems, being skeptical, and re-evaluating your results as new information comes in. Just because they aren't a cheerleader for your pet cause does not make them "pro" or "anti" -- it just makes them "professional".

      I smelled a rat a long time ago with the whole AGW thing -- too much

      1) hating of that bad old western civilization.

      2) hating of specific "bad" industries.

      3) hating of anybody that offers anything resembling doubts, or who doesn't immediately enthusiastically embrace it.

      AGW offers up a convenient new set of straw men for people to hate each other and make gobs of cash.

      Any REAL scientist welcomes challenges to their theories. However, Al Gore and his ilk have a problem with opposing theories, research, and opinions. "The science is all in". Bullshit. Science has never been and never will be in on anything, or it would not be science. It is "debate", and while "debate" is useful, it never can pass for good science.

      So, for now, as a person who embraces the scientific method, I am going to retain my theory that AGW is started and maintained by a bunch of hippies hell-bent on bitching about the weather until we all get priuses, so we can all die of sudden acceleration death, freeing the world for happy unicorns, rainbows, and shit like that. (That, and a few political hacks who stand to make serious money from manipulating public hysteria).

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    maybe a small name change is needed

    that's more like it.

  8. DavCrav

    Does this mean...?

    ...that you can have scientific peer-reviewed literature that does not support eco-mentalists? And indeed that challenges the IPCC report? Presumably so. So all these scientific papers proving the bulk of climate science is wrong should come pouring out now, right, since it's been shown that the peer review process doesn't stop all papers that are off-message?

    What, you mean there aren't any? Hmm...

    1. lawndart

      I found these...

      http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html

      The number appears to have gone up from the 450 when I last looked.

  9. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    Grenade

    @WWF:

    (not that they're likely to read this, but it's Friday and my VM just crashed...)

    "The organisation started out as a fairly mainstream outfit intended to protect wildlife, but has nowadays widened its remit into protecting the entire planet from unsuitable human activities."

    Would those "unsuitable" activities include "breathing", "eating" and "existing"? That appears to be their new remit.

    Weird. Last time I looked, humans weren't robots, or aliens. We're just as "natural" and integral to the ecosystem of this planet as tigers, pandas and rainforests.

    I remember* when it were all hippies and free love.

    * (barely).

    1. Robert E A Harvey
      Paris Hilton

      Free love?

      I grew up in the 50s and 60s and have a clear memory that Free Love was happening somewhere else. Nowhere near me.

      Perhaps climate change is like that. I know it was perishing cold when I took the dogs for a walk last night!

      Paris. She ain't free though.

  10. Andy G

    interesting....

    You pick out the soft science flaw in the impacts section rather than a flaw in the actual climate change science section: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/ippc-sealevel-gate/

    I wonder why that is!

  11. SingerScientist
    Stop

    This article is bullshit, please shut this guy up.

    See the following link to see a complete rebuttal of this made-up story and other IPCC "scandals", and learn about how the IPCC actually operates.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/15/ipcc-errors-facts-spin

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Umm... read your own article

      On your "rebuttal" article as to why this one is bullshit... please point to the part where it proves that it is correct in relation 40% to the rainforest relative being at danger to drought. You made the claim, so surely you should be able to show it.

      And you and I both know that some stupid squabble about attributing a report to the WWF vs attributing it to another person (which is the only thing I could find mentioned in your article on the Amazon) means absolutely nothing on your claim about proving that the NASA & IPCC people in this article are as you say "bullshit".

    2. McToo
      FAIL

      Linking to the Grauniad for climate change 'facts'???

      That would be like going to Wikipedia to find facts on Jimbo Wales. Now seriously, just FOAD!

    3. TeeCee Gold badge
      FAIL

      Call that a reference?

      So the "right on" Grauniad is "right on" message about the "right on" topic du jour?

      Try telling us something that couldn't have been guessed with 100% accuracy by any halfwit.

  12. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Flame

    Yeah, but...

    ...won't the amazon rainforest disappear anyway to make place for soja planted to feed the chicken that goes into the bellies of phat northerners? AFAIK, when global warming hits, it will won't matter to the amazon.

    "We should actually be praying for a prolonged and massive recession with no recovery afterwards."

    Only makes sense to people who don't realize that a "recession" is just an inevitable pruning of malinvestments made possibly by helicopters dumping freshly printed money onto the streets. If they do want durable damage, they should pray for more Greenspan, Brown, Ben, Tim and Obama.

    Also, I laugh at the idea that forests destroyed by fires would yield to plants even more prone to fires.

    1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects 1
      Pint

      Paper to the mills

      Coals to Newcastle and rainforest to ashes. All nothing to do with the article. It was about the reaction to dry weather/wet weather.

      In the 1960's decimation on a huge scale began in the South American jungles to make paper. The project went tits up but left a niche for farming on a large scale.

      This is a widespread and well known problem. You only have to compare Haiti with it's neighbours to see that.

      I have just watched the tail end of a programme on the fall of the city of Detroit. It is much the same problem of market forces and the foresight of Investment Wankers.

      Basically if you have to pay anyone you pay the top echelon. Anything lower down makes do with the fall out.

      But that has nothing to do with the papers concerned or the article.

      I remember posting to a newsgroup, that when I was a boy the CO2 levels were estimated at about 1/2 % of the atmosphere (IIRC) because the gas is water soluble. And the nastiness I got from that statement put me on alert.

      People don't like to be disabused/unbrainwashed.

      They just... don't like it up em.

  13. lukewarmdog
    Pint

    Friday

    Yes I agree with the eco rabble, El Reg should totally transform itself into a peer reviewed establishment with proper in-depth climate control credentials. Now if one of you hippies could bring me some organic ale in a recycled glass I'd be most greatful.

  14. leakyPC
    Coat

    Shame on them

    Shame on the World Wrestling Federation for changing from their original goal, of wanting grown men to hug each other.

  15. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge
    Stop

    The IPCC is a political organisation.

    The problem is, there is an incompatibility in the level of truth required between politics and science. In order for the scientific message to be put through to politicians, a certain amount of simplification and spin must be applied to avoid the conclusions being downplayed by those adept in the art of lies, err, I mean politics.

    There was an excellent article in New Scientist magazine recently regarding the role the IPCC is forced to play, IIRC, so those criticising the mainstream media may want to stop considering the tabloids a primary news source?

    1. Brian Mankin
      Thumb Down

      The IPCC asserts that it is a scientfic organisation.

      Ed's opinion aside, the IPCC asserts that it is a scientific organisation (http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.htm). It exists 'to provide the world with a clear scientific view' based on 'the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information'. Their role is to provide 'rigorous and balanced scientific information to decision makers'. On this basis, they should be held to scientific standards, not political ones.

      Ed asserts that there is an incompatibility in the level of truth required between politics and science. While this may be true in practice I do not believe it is true in principle. Both politicians and scientists should be held to the highest standards of honesty and accuracy.

      Accepting that an incompatibility in the level of truth required exists; There is also an incompatibility in the level of truth required between honest representations and fraudulent ones. I do not know whether the recent problems are result of incompetence or dishonesty and I would not like to say but given the IPCC's reprentation of itself as a scientific organisation and not a political one, suspicions of dishonesty do not appear to be unjustified. Incompetence on such a grand scale hardly seems possible unless at the very least the contributors and reviewers serving the IPCC have been dishonest about the scientific rigour of their work.

      Speaking personally, the recent revelations of poor scientific process has done more to make me sceptical of climate change than anything the sceptics ever said or did before. Regardless of whether the problems are due to dishonesty or incompetence, I no longer have faith in the IPCC and I am unwilling to trust them any further.

    2. sam-i-am

      True Science is Not Political

      Every day we apply the results of computer science, we benefit from medical science, and we can even argue over the advisability of harnessing nuclear science, but in every case there is a set of core facts that we can agree on.

      Not so with Climate "Science". Maybe the reason why "a certain amount of simplification and spin must be applied..." is because the so-called climate scientists don't have any facts to back up their claims. So they make them up... oops, I mean spin and simplify.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    WWW != IPCC

    Your backyard != global

    Weather != climate

    etc

    Still comments are allowed unlike Orlowski's dreck.

  17. BlueGreen

    Kicking off dispute with skewed articles is getting boring

    Some blogger mentioned that he was ignored until he started being a jerk then the indignation kicked in with a flood of attention following.

    The reg is trying to do the same. Probably the Mail's model too. Well, as you like it. Anything with Orlowski at the top now gets skipped by default.

    I love the reg for its entertainment, value it for some of its informational articles but I'm getting narked with skewed reporting for the heat not the light they try to bring. Now tend to skip anything that mentions the ipcc because it is often poorly done. Give me the facts, even if they're not what I want to hear, not spin!

    Love Lewis' articles in particular but this climate wooden-spoon stuff suxxx.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Bad bet = your problem

      You mean you backed the wrong horse, and now the evidence makes you look like a gullible twit?

      I can see why you'd want The Register etc to stop, LOL. It should cover all science, not science except Eco Loony claims that don't stand up.

  18. Joe 35
    Thumb Down

    "Lies and mistakes from climate change deniers"

    Leo D said "Is the reason The Register doesn't run similar stories about debunked claims from climate-change deniers that it would be a fulltime job to document the lies/mistakes that come from that side of the debate?"

    I hope its because the junk like this that finds its way into IPCC reports affects us all in the form of money removed from our pockets by the government in the spurious name of green taxes which are spuriously claimed to prevent these non-events from happening.

    And no doubt that will be the next claim "oh look you paid the tax and the Amazon didn't catch fire, so lets bung on another £100 on your air fare to stop it happening again".

  19. Old Tom
    Stop

    Positive feedback? Negative

    I have to sneer at all these positive feedback mechanisms that the IPCC gravy trainers keep suggesting. If all these mechanisms existed, the climate would not have been stable for millions of years - at some point along the way the 'tipping point' would have been crossed and we would simply not exist.

    Say no to positive feedback bunk.

  20. Fatman
    WTF?

    WWF

    WWF stands for

    We

    Want

    Funding!!!

    But, the icon does say it all.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facts

    1. Climate change is real.

    2. Climate change is caused by human activity.

    3. Climate change is not a big deal.

    4. Most people who have strong opinions on the topic, in any direction, hold those opinions for political reasons, not scientific reasons.

    The ecosystem has been through much worse. Human activities other than carbon dioxide generation are having a much worse impact on our environment. Other forms of pollution like particulates and NOx harm us more directly than CO2.

    1. Intractable Potsherd
      Stop

      No -

      - climates have changed since the atmospherere first formed. Therefore, climate change happens without human activity. The burden of proof is on those who make the extraordinary claim not only that humans are affecting a process that has been going on for billions of years, but that - even if we are - that it is especially harmful. Don't forget that 20000 years ago, humans were quite happily living in a climate we would regard as inimitable to life today.

      Like many others posting on here, being more efficient in our energy production is a good thing, and we are at a point where, for the first time in human history, we can use the energy of the sun directly. This should be done for its own sake. However, the underlying message of the IPCC and its cronies is so anti-human that the huge improvements in the standard of living since the industrial revolution must be abandoned. Not only that, countries that have not reached our standard of living must give up the aspiration. I prefer to think that we are in a position to level the energy gap by giving more to all, instead of taking away from those that have.

      1. arkizzle
        WTF?

        @Intractable Potsherd

        "Don't forget that 20000 years ago, humans were quite happily living in a climate we would regard as inimitable to life today."

        What?

        Inimitable? ..to life? What does that even mean in this context?

        Life currently occupies a greater range of temperatures and climates today than it did 20,000 years ago, when most of the world was glaciated and temperature were plateaued between extremely cold or extremely hot. These days we still have pretty much the same extremes, but now the middle stretch of temperatures is more populated. There is life from the Arctic to the fringes of underwater volcanoes; in both oxygen rich and oxygen poor environments; there is life practically everywhere, and there has been since it got a foothold billions of years ago.

        But that doesn't mean we would *choose* to return to these extreme conditions, just that enough of us survived them to carry on the human race.

        1. demat
          Headmaster

          I think you mean...

          inimicable

      2. Mike VandeVelde
        Alert

        Yes -

        Climates have changed wildly over eons, life has evolved. Show me the last time the concentration of carbon dioxide has practically doubled in centuries as opposed to over hundreds of thousands of years. The amount of change during the tiny blip lifetime of homo sapiens, let alone human "civilization", is unprecedented.

        Volcanoes spew humongous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the climate recovers. Well next time that happens, since we have moved the baseline so much higher, the peak will be that much higher, and the climate will be that much more stressed. Solar flare cycles, same thing - we should not move the whole scale up so many notches.

        Eco warriors cry about the end of life on Earth, armchair skeptics cry about the end of economic prosperity. Both wrong. Life will continue, it may change but it always has. If we do get off our collective asses and do something about CO2 emissions, I don't see how it will send everyone into poverty. Well the majority of the world's population lives in poverty already, what these people are crying about is the rich minority getting their extravagant lifestyles brought down to be more in balance with the world average.

        Tell me that there isn't obscene waste piled up in every single corner, under every single couch cushion, of our "efficient" capitalist economy. Liar. Cry about going back to the stone age if we can't keep up our current level of energy consumption. Yes life sure would be terrible if we couldn't spend billions and billions of dollars upgrading from DVD to Blu-ray, keeping our children well supplied with Pokemon and Barbies, and taking our speedboats / ATVs / snowmobiles / jet skis etc out for a spin on the weekend. Poor us. And don't even mention how much could be saved with minor changes in building codes and a retrofitting program. And mandating higher fuel efficiency for vehicles, obviously a no go area. Taxing CO2 emissions, increasing the cost of fossil fuel ahead of time and using the money to investigate alternatives, NAZI FASCISM!! Yeah sure. Etc.

        With the decline of the American Empire, and with peak oil, your lifestyle *will* change. Sorry sweet heart. There are billions of non-white people in the world moving on up to take more of their share. The size of the pie has peaked, unless you think there is another New World to be discovered and pillaged? Do you want to prepare for living with less / more expensive energy now, or wait until after you can't afford to fill up your SUV to get to work, power your stove to cook dinner, heat your home in the winter?

        Even if you don't believe in man causing catastrophic climate change (you should at least be slightly worried by our unprecedented output of CO2, and yes maybe / probably even more worried by other more directly toxic pollutants), I for one can't see what the problem is with looking for ways to decrease our output. CO2 output is at least an indicator of inefficiency, but also a warning that since fossil fuel is becoming more expensive, more scarce, and more in demand, then maybe having a backup plan for where else that energy could come from would be prudent.

        Stick that in your smokestack and burn it, whinging skeptic bitches ;-)

        1. andy 45
          Headmaster

          Sorry, you talk nonsense

          Your arguments are not based on science, vandevelde...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Typical eco loony crap as per usual

            Vandevelde:

            So your argument essentially is:

            1) Western folks should abandon all progress

            2) developing countries should be allowed to do as they please as they were "oppressed"

            In reply,

            If we spent as much in nuclear research as we have on - bailing out banks, green propaganda and welfare payments for lazy chavs and trailer trash, we would now probably be closer to sustainable nuclear fusion, thereby negating any need for power savings in terms of electricity.

            I will agree that we should plan ahead for fossil fuel replacement, but not to the point of turning back the clock in terms of disease reduction, childhood mortality etc. The green lobby though don't like to admit they would be ecstatic to see hundreds of thousands of western (preferably white) people dying from disease and living in poverty to make up for "our years of indulgence"...reminds me strongly of fundamentalist Christians - "the fear that some one somewhere is enjoying themselves and that everyone else will be punished for their fun"

            Let me put it this way, the air where I live is cleaner now than when I grew up, why? When I grew up (1980s/ early 1990s) most houses were heated solely by a coal fire, which burned poorly and caused the town to be covered in a hazy on winter days. Now everyone uses either electric or gas the air quality is much improved. So Best solution as far as I can see is to develop fusion, develop realistic electric vehicles (no bloody G-Whizz noddy cars), and support the developing world to build fusion reactors.

            However won't happen as the anti science aka green lobby will scream about killer nukes polluting us all with radiation.

      3. sailrick

        Long established science

        The theory of green house gas effect was first proposed in the 1820s. Further research in the 1850s and at the turn of the century to 1900s. It is not some new fad. It is well established science. It was studied again in the 1950s and the current intense focus has been going on since the 1970s.

        You say

        "Don't forget that 20000 years ago, humans were quite happily living in a climate we would regard as inimitable to life today"

        Maybe, but they didn't have coastal cities to worry about and 6 billion people to feed etc.

        Imagine todays modern world in either an ice age or a world where all the ice has melted, which is could do in coming centuries. If all the world's ice melts, the sea level will rise something like 270 feet. How many times will cities and agriculture and everything else have to be moved? You are just repeating standard deniar canaards that are not really helpful.

        You say

        - climates have changed since the atmospherere first formed. Therefore, climate change happens without human activity"

        What kind of reasoning do you call that? You logic is absurd on the face of it. Fortunately, science works a little differently.

        Okay, lets dispense with a few more silly denier arguments while we are at it.

        "The Sun is causing he warming"

        No its not. The solar activity has been very quiet for about 35 years now. We have been at a hundred year solar minimum since 1983. The study showing a correlation of warming with solar activity that skeptics like to point to as proof that the sun is the cause, comes to the exact opposite conlusion because of what my firstr two sentences say.

        "Its Volcanos"

        No its not. Man emits at least 100 times as much greenhouse gases as volcanos on average. Climate scientists have had a few good chances to study volcanos in recent years. Mt St Hellens in Washington state adn the big volcano in the Philippines in the 90s. Volcanos give off a lot of aerosols that act as atmospheric cooling agents by blocking incoming sunligtht.

        Whats amazing is how many believe both of these arguments at the same time. If you debunk one, they bring up the other one. Actually most deniers believe all their arguments at the same time. Amazingly absurd.

        "If global warming is real, why did scientists change the name to climate change?"

        Nobody changed the name. Scientists have been using both terms since the mid 70s.

        Ever hear of the Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming? No of course you haven't, because its been called the Intergovernmental Panel on CLIMATE CHANGE since it was founded and named in 1988, 22 years ago.

        ""Climate scientists are doing it for the money."

        No they're not. If they wanted to make big money they would go into the private sector where PhDs are paid well. The IPCC scientists do the work on their own time for FREE.

        They aren't even paid.

        "Climate scientists can't be trusted because they are paid with govt funds."

        Most basic research in every field of science is govt funded. After academics do the basic research, industry picks up the information and develops products and new technologies from it. Your tax dollars at work, mostly benefitting the private sector business world.

        "Al Gore is getting rich off global warming'

        No he's not. He donates every penny to non profit groups for environmental education.

        Oh, and his house is now energy efficient. Yes he flies around the world in big airplanes to educate people about global warming. To my mind, thats a pretty good trade off.

        "Mann's "hockey stick" graph of temps is fake."

        No its not. The chart has been reproduced about a dozen times by other scientists with the same result. It has been validated by the National Academy of Science. It has been validated by an investigation by the Universtiy of Pennsylvania, and by a thorough investigation of the climate gate issue by the Associated Press. The AP found no falsification of data whatsoever, by Mann or anyone else at the IPCC. The only study that found any fault with Mann's graph was the Wegman study for the U.S. senate and it was a rigged investigation that may lead to charges of perjury in a senate investigation. It was supposed to be unbiased. The National Academy of Science offered to do the study. But denier congresssman Barton chose a known denier with no science background instead. And the only difference in their chart was in the handle of the hockey stick, not in the blade, which is the part deniers don't believe, because is shows accelerated warming in this century. That's how deniers work. They can't beat the science, so they use mouthy amateurs like Monckton, Watts, McItrick, science fictioin writer Michael Crichton etc who can charm an audience and sound scientificky, without ever speaking a word of truth.

        "John Coleman disagrees with the IPCC, and he founded the Weather Channel."

        Right, and John Coleman isn't even a meteorologist, never mind a climate scientist. He is a TV personality who gives weather reports and is an avid anti envrionmentalist.

        He likes to pretend he has some special skills but he's just another fraud.

        Weather is not climate anyway.

        "Its water vapor"

        No its not. Water vapor is a feedback factor but not a cause of warming. The warmer it gets, the more water evaporates, accelerating the warming.

        Roy Spencer and John Christy are both well known scientists among the climate change denier crowd . These two single handedly gave deniers amunition for a skeptic argument, about whether satellite data confirmed the global warming that the surface data showed. Deniers used this argument for a decade, encouraged by Spencer and Christy. It is well known that Spencer and Christy made serious and numerous errors in their data analysis. They were wrong. But this skeptic argument is still repeated all the time by deniers. Read more AT:

        Climate Progress, search for Spencer and Christy

        or at:

        Real Climate " how to cook a graph in three easy lessons"

        Argument:

        It's so cold this winter in Peoria (fill in the location of your choice), what happened to global warming?

        Answer:

        That's not climate, that's weather. One week, month, winter or year are way too short to be meaningful, when talking about long term global climate change. Climate is measured over time periods of 30-100 years, not year to year fluctuations.

        Argument:

        Scientists in the 1970s were predicting global cooling. Why should we believe their warnings of global warming?

        Answer:

        Global Cooling in the 70s was NOT the issue. Seven scientific papers predicted cooling. The lead scientist recanted three years later, saying he had underestimated the amount of CO2 in the atomosphere. At the same time there were 42 scientific papers predicting global warming - AGW. So there were six times as many scientific papers predicting global warming as there were for global cooling. But the popular mass media got a hold of the cooling story and publicized it. That's why skeptics need to learn not to look to the popular press for their information. It rarely reflects the views of real climate scientists and certainly not the vast majority who support the IPCC findings.

        Argument:

        The earth has had much warmer climates in the past. What's so special about the current climate? Anyway, it seems like a generally warmer world will be better.

        Answer

        "I don't know if there is a meaningful way to define an "optimum" average temperature for planet earth. Surely it is better now for all of us than it was 20,000 years ago when so much land was trapped beneath ice sheets. Perhaps any point between the recent climate and the extreme one we may be heading for, with tropical forests inside the arctic circle, is as good as any other. Maybe it's even better with no ice caps anywhere.It doesn't matter. The critical issue is not what the temperature is, or may be, or will be. The critical issue is how fast it is moving.

        Rapid change is the real danger. Human habits and infrastructure are suited to particular weather patterns and sea levels, as are ecosystems and animal behaviors. The rate at which global temperature is rising today is likely unique in the history of our species.

        This kind of sudden change is rare even in geological history, though perhaps not unprecedented. So the planet may have been through similar things before -- that sounds reassuring, right?

        Not so much. Once you look at the impact similar changes had on biodiversity at the time, the existence of historical precedent becomes anything but reassuring. Rapid climate change is the prime suspect in most mass extinction events, including the Great Dying some 250 million years ago, in which 90% of all life went extinct."

        from Gristmill.com

    2. heyrick Silver badge

      Real facts

      1. Climate Change is real. Yes.

      2. Bollocks. Unless you believe in the creationalist myth, the Earth is really really old. Humans have existed for a bare hiccup in time, and our ability to rampage around the planet is but a clock cycle in the processor of life. [see Geologic time scale in Wiki for info]

      True science can be summed up with useful phrases such as "many things can prove a theory, but it only needs one thing to disprove it". Your assertion implies the Earth passed millions of years without any change of its climate, which is obviously rubbish.

      3. Depends on who is asking. If climate change causes sea levels to rise bringing violent weather such that events like Katrina will be commonplace, plus a lessening of our inhabitable land-mass by... I have no idea of the percentage, but I'd reckon a LOT)... well, yeah, that's kinda a big deal unless you live in a cave halfway up a mountain.

      But in the scale of things, worse has happened. The planet will survive, it's no big. It just might do it without the blight of humans. After all, dinosaurs got themselves wiped out. Nature isn't above hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del when the caca hits the ventilation device, and it is no big deal at all.

      Unless you're a dinosaur.

      Or maybe a human.

      4. I think those who hold strong opinions are fed UP with the politics, and just want some actual science, dammit, and not two raving lobbies of polar opposites duking it out in public. There's no way "mankind's greatest mistake, we're all gonna die" and "it's all hokum, spin and lies for greater taxation" will ever, EVER, see eye to eye. Don't bother trying. Just sod off so we can wait for somebody with more intelligence than the average Daily Mail reader to speak...

      As for your final comment, indeed. There are a myriad of things we're doing that are potentially more disastrous than CO2, but these threats are either encouraged (because it's a cash cow) or ignored (as it isn't a likely source of revenue). Oh, I'm sorry, too political for you? Then why are you even reading this article!? :-)

  22. Lars Silver badge

    The Jungle

    What a wonderfully precise definition. And let us not mix this jungle with the Tarzan jungle in Africa.

    Perhaps it would be a good idea to define the limit and coordinates and essence of this jungle or we have nothing to compare with later.

    Global this or that, I think we can all agree that we do not know enough, we will know more, and hardly ever everything, but we are arguing. We are not completely dumb, perhaps,

    My Baltic is badly polluted. Nobody would argue against "man made" pollution.

    So do we have to pollute the air as well.

    Global warming this or that, would it not be better to stop polluting the air too.

  23. Patriotson

    Its politically correct to associate everything to climate change

    Climate change is weather. Weather is seasonal. Jet streams dictate pretty much what will happen and when. Snow is moisture in the air when it is cold. Rain is partical buildup when moisture becomes to heavy to remain in the atmosphere. Climate Change has little to do with birds and where is the science, Oh, you can't trust science now, so EPA is the final authority on regulatory control, a 4th arm of government.

  24. ZenCoder
    Boffin

    People prefer to be enteratined rather than informed.

    Groups that produce sand and rational research based on solid science are pretty much ignored.

    All the attention instead all the attention goes to the extremist nut jobs.

    I think we have a culture in which being sand and rational isn't even an option. To get funding, media attention, publicity .. you have to behave line an extremist nut job even if you are not.

    I read a book in 1990 that predicted the world would be 100% out of oil by 2000 and that we'd have an epidemic of cancer, birth defects and auto immune diseases cause by man made toxins in the environment.

    Was the author a complete moron or did he just know that sane and rational doesn't sell books?

  25. Charlie van Becelaere
    Pint

    WWF Made it all up?

    It's hardly difficult to imagine that an organisation with the initials WWF might be involved in promoting fictional plotlines disguised as reality, is it?

    One understands now why Vince McMahon was quick to disassociate his (formerly WWF) WWE from that acronymic cesspool.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Real analysis

    For a referenced analysis of this issue, see:

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-the-IPCC-and-peer-reviewed-science-say-about-Amazonian-forests.html

  27. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Down

    A lot of this stuff seems due to Working Group 2

    Who (according to the Guardian article) deal with the effects of climate change and *not* with the underlying science.

    They seem to be *very* slack in checking the provenance of their sources.

  28. wgae
    Thumb Up

    Thanks El Reg

    That you are one of the few news outlets not parotting the official nonsensus of global warming! AGW has long been identified as big money-making scheme for the elite (e.g. Al Gore) who want to simply destroy western lifestyle. Keep up the good work!

  29. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    It only takes one error to destroy all credibilty...

    And I'm not talking about the WWF but Mr Page's "report".

    Lewis, you claim that "The [WWF] started out as a fairly mainstream outfit intended to protect wildlife, but has nowadays widened its remit into protecting the entire planet from unsuitable human activities."

    Funny that because I remember working on an award-winning multimedia project for the WWF about this very subject in 1979. 31 years ago is, to me at least, a very odd definition of "nowadays".

    As Ronnie Reagan once said: "Facts are stupid things".

  30. Thought About IT

    Anti-science agenda

    By being so one-sided in what they publish on AGW, the Reg are revealing an anti-science agenda that undermines their credentials to report objectively on technological matters. Advances in technology are built on scientific research, which is conducted in the same peer reviewed fashion, whatever the discipline, so stop trying to undermine it!

  31. JeffyPooh
    FAIL

    Call me when they're capturing CO2 from concrete factories

    Concrete factories spew enormous amounts of CO2. They're point sources. Their product then recaptures some CO2 over its life. It's the ultimate low-hanging fruit. The fact that they're not capturing CO2 at concrete factories is clear-cut evidence that the whole thing if pure fraud.

    I'll take the issue seriously once the concrete factories are capturing CO2.

  32. sailrick

    The only fake science is from deniers

    The whole climate gate issue is mostly hyperbole, that has been reported with distortions and misrepresentations of the science and what scientists have said. The mistake about Himalayan glaciers was an embarrasment because it should have been spotted sooner. It was based on information supplied by the Indian govt., and may have been a typo, 2035 vs 2350.

    It does not change the fact that the glaciers are melting, about 95% worldwide are melting. The Himalayan glaciers have lost 20% since 1960.

    The error about Dutch flooding was based on information supplied by the Dutch govt., and failed to separate two types of flooding from each other.

    None of this has anything to do with Working Group 1 science, which is the basis of AGW theory, which has a mountain of evidence and is the most thoroughly peer reviewed study in the history of science. Deniers have been fooled by perhaps the biggest disinformation campaign in history. Read the book "Climate Cover-Up" by James Hoggan. The real scam is very well documented, this being the fourth book detailing this crime against humanity. Another book will be out in May. "Merchants of Doubt" by Naomi Oreskes. Please read these and two books by Ross Gelbspan "The Boiling Point" and "The Heat Is On" that also detail this propaganda campaign to deceive and confuse the public about climate change. These books have all the details, names, money trails, hired gun scientists who often are the same ones who worked for tobacco companies, chemical companies to deny acid rain and ozone depletion from CFCs.

    This PR campaign uses the same phony astroturf "think tanks" that the tobacco and chemical companies used to defend their baseless claims of safety. The oil companies "wipe the oil" of the money trail by funneling it through these huge webs of astroturf PR groups that are nothing but fronts for industry. It all gives the appearanc of a grassroots campaign, when they are all run by the same people. Fred Singer who someone mentioned, was once a good scientitst, as was Frederick Seitz. Then they both became hired guns for tobacco interests, chemical interests, polluter interests and now are hired to deny the science of global warming.

  33. sailrick

    Denier lies get more media coverage

    This misinformation campaign is aided and abetted by some media outlets like the Daily Mail, the Wall St Journal, Fox news, the Calgary newpapers, The Australian and others.

    The Daily Mail was the one who interviewed IPCC scientist Phil Jones and asked him about the temperature trend since 1995. They printed an article with a headline proclaiming that an IPCC climate scientist had stated that there has been no warming since 1995. This was immediately picked up and repeated by Fox news and other newspapers like the ones I mentioned. It is a complete fabrication and total distortion of what Phil Jones said. But to deniers, this is now further proof that there is no global warming. It is now a new myth in the littany of crank arguments and claims that have no truth or scientific reality. This new lie has been repeated thousands of times on the internet and conservative talk show hosts.

    What did Phil Jones actually say? The time period form 1995 to present is too short, and there is enough statistical noise that the trendline isn't 95% statistically significant. That is all he said. The trendline is about 97% statistically significant, but scientists look for better confirmation than that. So the reality is that there is maybe a 7% chance that the upward trendline is not accurate.

    The whole denier littany is composed of distortions just like this one. myth upon myth upon myth. Nine of the warmest years since 1830 are in the past ten years. Thirteen of the warmest are in the past fourteen years. The upward trendline has never been broken. Last year was tied for the second warmest on record. This winter was the warmest in the satellite records.

    If you want to know about falsified science and distortions of the truth, make a habit of visiting websites like desmogblog, realclimate, deltoid, open mind, skeptical science, deepclimate, where you can read abou them on a daily basis. There are so many cases of deniers falsifying the science or distorting it and misrepresenting what IPCC scientists say, that I can't keep up with cataloging them all. They are a daily occurance.

    Like Fox news? How about their "climate expert", Steve Milloy? Milloy is not even a scientist. He is a professional PR man and a registered and paid lobbyist for fossil fuel interests.

    And Fox has never disclosed this.

    Anthony Watts of Watts Up Wtih That blog is a fraud. He is one of the worst distorters of science and he also is not a scientist.

    Want an example? Watt's and his crony D'Aleo cooked up a report claiming

    "NO WARMING TREND IN THE 351-YEAR CENTRAL ENGLAND TEMPERATURE RECORD"

    and get their heads handed to them by Tamino at the Open Mind blog

    Long story short, they left out the 19th century and only used summer data to arrive at their quackery graph. You see, summers in the 18 century were unusually cool, but the winters were unusually warm, so they left out the winters of the 1700s and skipped the 1800s to come up with their quackery graph and make this claim.

    I don't know if this site allows html links so just I only gave the blog name

    Go ahead read it. Its not long. I read stuff like this everyday. This is the kind of junk that real science is up against, and what the deniers have half of Americans believing. Tamino is brilliant and debunks this stuff regularly. Unfortunately, the public doesn't see much of that, as it never makes it into the mainstream media. But the junk sure does. The real science doesn't have the massive PR campaign to counter it. And it doesn't have the legions of denier fanatics spreading it all over the internet.

    I have info on dozens and dozens of such distortions and lies by deniers.

    Its all made to sound scientificky and thruthy to the public which has a hard time seperating the psuedo science from the real thing, and that is what they depend on.

  34. sailrick

    Deniers have no shame.

    Deniers like to point out that a judge in England ruled against Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth". In reality, the judge ruled in Gore's favor.

    Here's the judge's conclusion. "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate" and "substantially founded upon scientific research and fact."

    And the judge never said Gore had 9 errors. He said there were 9 points that some skeptics disagreed with and that "might" be errors.

    The plaintiffs, which included Monckton, who is a complete fraud, wanted the judge to rule that the movie "The Great Global Warming Swindle" be shown to school children if Gore's movie was allowed to be shown. The judge saw no reason to show this pseudoscientific nonsense to school children but okayed showing Gore's movie.

    Some of you are probably fans of Bjorn Lomborg and his books "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It".

    Here is a comparison of Al Gore's movie and book to Lomborgs work.

    Al Gore´s film: 2 errors, 8 flaws, 10 in total.

    Al Gore´s book: 2 errors, 11 flaws, 13 in total.

    Film and book together: 2 errors, 12 flaws, 14 in total.

    Lomborg

    Chapter 24 on global warming in "The Skeptical Environmentalist": 22 errors, 59 flaws, 81 in total.

    (This is more than one distortion per page).

    "The Skeptical Environmentalist" in total (up to now 12/9/09):

    117 errors, 219 flaws, 336 in total.

    "Cool it!", British edition: 48 errors, 111 flaws, 159 in total (up to now, with about 40 % of the book investigated).

    (This is nearly two distortions per page).

    this can be found at http:// lomborg-errors.dk/GoreversusLomborg.htm

    I have typed this with a space so it isnt a url.

    This is a whole website debunking Lomborg. I can supply at least a dozen other links debunking his nonsense. He is not a scientist, but has a degree in political science.

  35. sailrick

    IPCC political?

    Yes the IPCC is somewhat political. However not in the way that deniers claim. The truth is that it has the tendency to water down the IPCC reports to make them palatable to govt leaders.

    The IPCC has in fact been too conservative in their projections. This has been proven out numerous times by comparing what they projected in the past with current observations.

    For instance their projections do not take into account numeruous amplifyers of global warming, like melting of tundra that will release methane, or melting of large ice sheets.

    Pauchari the head of the IPCC, who deniers like to attack as being an alarmist, was actually a skeptic. The Bush administration and oil companies objected to the former head of the IPCC Watson, because he was convinced that AGW is real. So they maneuvered to have Pauchari replace him. Now he is convinced also, so they attack him

    The refusal to submit answers to freedom of information requests for data that has been overhyped in the press concerning the stolen CRU emails was for a good reason. Number one, the data was freely available elsewhere. Number two, the deniers were attacking climate scientists, harrassing them by flooding them with FOI requests. It takes many hours of work to respond to each FOI request. These scientists do this work for free. Thats right, they are not paid. They do it on their own valuable time, taking time away from other research. They were fed up and disgusted with this treatment.

    Texas climate scientists: Global warming science is solid Know of no climate scientists in Texas who disagree

    There truly is only a handful of qualified scientists who disagree with the IPCC report and from what I have found in over 2500 hours of research, is that every one of them is funded by fossil fuel interests, either directly or through the phony astroturf groups like the Heartland Institute.

    In fact, I have never heard of a prominent climate scieintist skeptic who is not funded by them.

  36. sailrick

    Amateurs vs real scienists

    Lomborg is not a scientist

    Steve Milloy is not a scientist

    Monckton is not a scientist

    Anthony Watts is not a scientist

  37. sailrick

    Real scientific skepticism is not denial

    Want to know what a real honest to goodness skeptic has to say?

    Here's Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories, from the website of The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

    "Denialists have attempted to call the science into question by writing articles that include fabricated data. They’ve improperly graphed data using tricks to hide evidence that contradicts their beliefs. They chronically misrepresent the careful published work of scientists, distorting all logic and meaning in an organized misinformation campaign. To an uncritical media and gullible non-scientists, this ongoing conflict has had the intended effect: it gives the appearance of a scientific controversy and seems to contradict climate researchers who have stated that the scientific debate over the reality of human-caused climate change is over (statements that have been distorted by denialists to imply the ridiculous claim that in all respects the science is settled)."

    You can go to their website and read the whole article, which discusses climate gate and evaluates the scientific peer review process.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why the WWF was refrenced

    The IPCC are supposed to bring together all science on the subject, beit pro, anti, on the fence etc. This is then all looked at in the report. Hence some very good and some bollocks science are included.

  39. sailrick

    Petroleum Geologists verses the world

    Conflicts of interest on the part of deniers?

    I have two lists here.

    List #1

    Here is a list of professional societies of scientists that are relevent to climate science, and who support the findings of the IPCC

    * National Academy of Science (US)

    * Royal Society (UK)

    * Chinese Academy of Sciences

    * Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

    * Academy of Science of South Africa

    * Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy

    * Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, Mexico

    * Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Germany

    * Académie des Sciences, France

    * Royal Society of Canada

    * Indian National Science Academy

    * Science Council of Japan

    * Australian Academy of Sciences

    * Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

    * Caribbean Academy of Sciences

    * Indonesian Academy of Sciences

    * Royal Irish Academy

    * Academy of Sciences Malaysia

    * Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

    * Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

    * NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

    * National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

    * National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

    * State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)

    * Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

    * American Geophysical Union (AGU)

    * American Institute of Physics (AIP)

    * National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

    * American Meteorological Society (AMS)

    * Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

    * American Association of State Climatologists

    * American Chemical Society - (world’s largest scientific organization with over 155,000 members

    * Geological Society of America

    * American Astronomical Society

    * American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

    * Stratigraphy Commission - Geological Society of London - (The world’s oldest and the United Kingdom’s largest geoscience organization)

    * The Institution of Engineers Australia

    * National Research Council

    * International Council on Science

    List #2

    And here is the list of professional scientific societies that do not agree with the IPCC

    *

    *

    * American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

    *

    *

    *

    *

    *

    *

    thats it

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Not the AAPG?

      "And here is the list of professional scientific societies that do not agree with the IPCC

      * American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)"

      I wouldn't be so sure about that.

      http://dpa.aapg.org/gac/statements/climatechange.cfm

      It seems they are coming over to the dark side and no longer seem to deny the obvious.

  40. sailrick

    Snow and Global Warming

    A good example of just how absurd the climate change denial has become is the latest noise about how much snow parts of the U.S. got a few weeks ago. Republican politicians, talk show hosts like Fox's Hannity and others were saying that the snow proved there is no global warming. Donald Trump said Gore should have his Nobel prize taken away because the snow proves no global warming.

    Here are the facts.

    Fact

    One of the big snowstorms that hit Wash DC happened on the warmest Feb 6 on record.

    Fact

    Washington DC is having normal winter temperatures.

    Fact

    Warmer air carries more moisture and hence more precipitation. This says nothing about it being colder than normal. It just has to be cold enough to snow. It's winter

    Fact

    No one said global warming eliminates winter.

    Fact

    This has been the warmest winter, so far, in the satellite records.

    Fact

    This snow was a few days in one region, and is local weather variability, not long term global climate. The U.S. only represents about 2.5% of global land mass.

    Fact

    At the same time, Vermont and Vancouver (where the Olympics are being held), don't have enough snow for sking. It was 55 F in Vancouver.

    Fact

    A study has shown that most to the United States gets more snow during warm winters than during cold winters.

    Fact

    Climate scientists only say the earth has warmed about 1.4 deg F over a century or so. They didn't say winter would turn into summer at your house.

    Fact

    Latest scientific data shows 2009 as second warmest since 1830.

    Fact

    Last month was the 4th warmest January since 1830.

    Fact

    What they have said is that there will be weather extremes, more and more. But they don't as a rule claim that any particular storm or extreme season is the result of global warming. The fact is that we are experiencing El Nino again, which probably explains the wierd weather.

    ""It's important that people recognize that weather is not the same as climate, and record-breaking storms neither negate nor prove climate change," Jane Lubchenco of NOAA said.

    What's interesting, is that while scientists are loath to attribute any particular storm or patch of bad weather to global warming, they have said that there will be more weather extremes. So what do the deniers do? As soon as there is extreme weather, they claim it's proof against global warming.

    But to these idiots, one week of snow in a few percent of the globe cancels all that out.

    Do you think maybe they are ignoring a few facts?

    "The Global Climate Coalition, an industry-funded group that spent years vehemently contesting any evidence linking anthropogenic activity to climate change, found itself in the uncomfortable position of rejecting its own experts’ recommendations when they reached the inevitable conclusion that the contribution of manmade greenhouse gas emissions to climate change could not be refuted."

    "That’s right: even the scientists that these companies had consistently trotted out to discredit the findings of the IPCC could no longer deny the truth when faced with the hard facts. They acknowledged as much in an internal report released in 1995 in which they stated unequivocably that: The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied."

    "When confronted with this frank assessment, the leadership of the Global Climate Coalition did the only reasonable thing: drop the offending passages and expunge the report’s existence from the public record."

    above is from Desmogblog

    You know those lists of skeptical scientists you've heard about? They are all bogus.

    Senator Inhofes list of 650 "prominent scientists who disagree with the IPCC actually only contains about 24 climate scientists, and I bet I can name every single fossil fuel industry funded one of them.

    His list is loaded with economists, TV weathermen who have no expertise in climate change science whatsoevery, dead people, oil company employees and some scientists who actually agree with the IPCC, but who's names were used against their will. When some of them complained their names were never removed.

    The Oregon Petition and it's claim of 19,000 then later expanded to 32,000 scientists who disagree with the IPCC is no less bogus. It contains about 200 actual climate scientists and only about 100 with advanced degrees. I would bet that at least half are members of the Association of American Petroleum Geologists.

    Sounds impressive right? 200 climate scientists? Except the AGU American Geophysical Union has 50,000 members in U.S. and Europe.

    So the 200 is about 4/10 of 1% of the AGU membership.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Warmest Winter?

      On what f*cking planet are you living on???

      The only people who are telling me their winters have been milder than usual are those living in the US and Canada, everyone else I speak to has been freezing all winter.

      My heating was maxed out this winter for the first time ever in 20 odd years of having heating, plus i had to buy more radiators, for the first time ever.

      Also since the Tsunami in 2004, I've noticed large amounts of odd weather, but only since then, ergo I'm pretty convinced that the tsunami had a lot to do with strange weather phenomenons and I'm not the only one, slight change in ocean currents would be all it would take to radically change weather patterns.

      Wait why am I bothering trying to point out a sensible alternative viewpoint to an Eco Loony? NONE of you listen to any alternate viewpoint, NONE of you are scientists, ALL of you quote excerpts from reports you can't understand and ALL of you remind me of religious fundamentalists, so I think all I have left to say is - Sod off back to your cave you Eco troll!

  41. sailrick

    Perspective

    Another good book to read is "The Carbon Age" by Eric Roston. A fascinating book about carbon and how unique it is, and how the balance of carbon in the carbon cycle is so critical to life as we know it.

    And now for a little sense of perspective about the IPCC and their few errors.

    "Climate Scientists Defend IPCC Peer Review as Most Rigorous in History

    by Stacy Feldman - Feb 26th, 2010"

    "Nicholls, a professor at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, said the IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment report was subjected to several rigorous tiers of review. The study cites over 10,000 papers from the scientific literature, "most of which have already been through the peer-review process to get into the scientific literature."

    "The report went through four separate reviews and received 90,000 comments from 2,500 reviewers, all of which are publicly available, along with the responses of the authors, Nicholls said."

    "Kurt Lambeck, a geophysicist at the Australian National University and president of the Australian Academy of Science, said the Himalayan blunder is one of a few that "slipped through." The other that skeptics have seized on involved the percentage of the Netherlands that is below sea level, a number that was provided by the Dutch government itself."

    "Occasional errors are not surprising, said Kevin Walsh, a professor of meteorology at the University of Melbourne. "

    the above is from an article at Solve Climate dot com

    If you make it a habit of reading Desmogblog, Real Climate, Deltoid, Open Mind etc. you will learn about a new misrepresentation of science, fabricated or cooked graphs of temperature, sea level rise, arctic ice and other flat out lies, every single day. All by deniers.

  42. sailrick

    Skeptic arguments

    You can find rebuttals of every skeptic argument at Skeptical Science.

    Another good blog is Climate Progress.

    1. Frank 2
      Thumb Down

      Science

      if you think you are a scientist you are sadly mistaken.

  43. sailrick

    Working group 2 stuff

    John Smith 19 said

    "A lot of this stuff seems due to Working Group 2 #"

    You are correct in that none of it has anything to do with Working group 1 which studies the cause of warming.

    But where is there a "lot of stuff"? One mistake having to do with rate of melting of Himalaya glaciers, and another one has to do with degreee of flooding potential in Holland, both of which were based on Govt supplied information. What was embarrasing was that they should have been noticed earlier.

    I don't call that a lot of stuff in a 3000 page report based on 10,000 scientific papers.

    Its especially not a lot of stuff when all I can find in the denial sphere is a lot of stuff and nothing else.

    I repeat what another commenter (Anonymous Coward) said. If you want to understand the issue about the Amozonian rain forest go to this link.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-the-IPCC-and-peer-reviewed-science-say-about-Amazonian-forests.html

    Another tempest in a teapot is what it is. Of course you can always hang on to your misinformed opinons on the other hand.

  44. sailrick

    IPCC is the reputable skeptic community

    Daren Nestor says

    "If you mean the reputable skeptic community, then fine. But the point is that the IPCC predicts disasters, and is pushing (or its results are responsible for pushing) a massive and expensive social engineering campaign. It has attracted the lunatic fringe of the green movement (i.e. the aforementioned WWF). "

    What you refer to as the "reputable sketpic community is no such thing. And the lunatic fringe is what you think is reputable skepticism. In fact, its an insult to real scientific skepticism.

    The IPCC is pushing nothing. That is pure denier BS. And your claim that they are pushing a massive social engineering campaign is simply your imagination.

    It is clear to anyone with eyes and a brain that deniers are mostly motivated by their political ideology, as your words show. You then project your own fascination onto the IPCC.

    Your objections like most deniers are not based on science. They can't be, because the deniers don't really have any science/.

    You know how to repeat all the denier talking points and don't have a damn clue what you are talking about.

    1. Daren Nestor

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      "That is pure denier BS." -- nice. Who said I was a denier. Climate change is happening. Fact. CO2 is causing acidification of the oceans, which is likely to cause more problems in the short and medium term that any climate change. Fact.

      "What you refer to as the "reputable sketpic community is no such thing. And the lunatic fringe is what you think is reputable skepticism. In fact, its an insult to real scientific skepticism."

      Incorrect. There is skepticism over elements of the science. The fundamentals are agreed to, of course, but there are some inconsistencies some areas of the science. Unfortunately, bringing them up is considered as bad as denying the warming effect of CO2, even if there's no comparison. For instance, a NAS report slammed the climate sciences use of statistical methods and their unwillingness to engage with statistics experts to improve those methods.

      "Your objections like most deniers are not based on science. They can't be, because the deniers don't really have any science/.

      You know how to repeat all the denier talking points and don't have a damn clue what you are talking about."

      It's unfortunate that you're reading with foam at your mouth, because it's nonsense like this that makes reasonable people shake their heads and walk away. I don't "believe" in climate change, because belief has no place in this debate. The science says that climate is changing. Climate is, therefore, changing. The problem is that the solutions proposed so far all seem to be batshit crazy, and one of them is the social engineering that I mentioned, where we are being conditioned to take any amount of abuse if it will stop climate change! The only way out of this situation that is acceptable is to move forward, and find technologies that don't pollute. Not go back to the stone age.

  45. jerwin
    Thumb Down

    Read the paper

    http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL042154.pdf

    Although it is especially critical of claims that the Amazon greened in 2007, and somewhat less passionately so about claims that link browning to drought severity, the dataset they're using is rubbish.

    "The remaining 60% of EVI data are invalid, being atmosphere‐corrupted."

    I don't suppose it would be possible to design a remote sensing program that better distinguishes vegetation from aerosols.

  46. scatter

    The Register's environment coverage 2010:

    In reverse order...

    Climate bashing

    Met Office bashing

    Snowball earth

    Climate bashing

    Toads

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Energy

    Climate bashing

    Energy

    Climate bashing

    Botnet bugging

    Climate bashing

    Energy

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Wow a sort of vaguely reasonable climate story (i.e not from LP or AO)

    Climate bashing

    Wow a sort of vaguely reasonable climate story (i.e not from LP or AO)

    Climate bashing

    Climate bashing

    Energy

    Computing

    Snow

    Climate bashing

    There's balance for you!

    1. BossHog
      Thumb Up

      Yeah!

      Toads are awesome.

  47. Ponmyword
    WTF?

    El-Reg up/down voting

    It's irritating that when you rate a post up or down, you get taken to another page, then have to click to get back again.

    There are plenty of sites around where a vote click doesn't take you to another page - check out the various uk newspaper sites, e.g. guardian, daily mail.

    p.s.

    Did it really seem a good idea at the time, for the IPCC to take their facts from a bunch of anarcho-eco-weenies at an environmental "charity" such as the WWF? Unbelievable - except that it is.

    1. The Islander
      WTF?

      Re: El-Reg up/down voting

      Agreed - mechanics of voting slightly irritating. Another slight peeve is that some comments replying to earlier posts could benefit from improved visibility of that association. All this feedback on the story has been fascinating (& illuminating in some cases) but I had a bit of a struggle to detect where some responses diverged from a critque into personal pov ...

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Aus science and weather peak bodies speak about climate change

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/15/2845519.htm

    <quote>

    The head of Australia's peak science body has spoken out in defence of climate scientists, saying the link between human activity and climate change is beyond doubt.

    The head of the CSIRO, Dr Megan Clark, says the evidence of global warming is unquestionable, and in Australia it is backed by years of robust research.

    Dr Clark says climate records are being broken every decade and all parts of the nation are warming.

    <quote />

    And:

    http://www.csiro.au/resources/State-of-the-Climate.html

    <quote>

    Changes observed include:

    * Highly variable rainfall across the country, with substantial increases in rainfall in northern and central parts of Australia, as well as significant decreases across much of southern and eastern Australia.

    * Rapidly rising sea levels from 1993 to 2009, with levels around Australia rising, between 1.5 and 3mm per year in Australia’s south and east and between 7 and 10mm in the country’s north

    <quote />

    Any comments, Lewis?

    1. Daren Nestor

      maybe this sounds stupid but...

      "Rapidly rising sea levels from 1993 to 2009, with levels around Australia rising, between 1.5 and 3mm per year in Australia’s south and east and between 7 and 10mm in the country’s north"

      How does this work? I didn't know you could get a consistent differential in sea level rises like that.

      Also, that claim is dubious, sea level researchers recently claimed that the sea level rises globally have been steady at 1.1mm per year for the last 20 years (which is when they started collecting the data), so a 10-fold increase would surely have hit the literature.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        It seems I have two choices...

        "Also, that claim is dubious"

        I can trust in the data collected by scientists and meteorologists for a century or I can trust in some random commenter on El Reg. Sorry, dude, science wins.

        I truly wish that sea level rise was a figment of someone's imagination but as I live about one metre above the king tide level I have to pay attention to this stuff. It's kind of important to me.

  49. wgae
    Stop

    IPCC?

    The IPCC has become the laughing stock for everyone with a critical mind. Now it's about time to bring the obvious nonsense to our elected leaders [cough] and make them stop any legislation based upon IPCC reports. It's as easy as that. Now, when is the next election? ;-)

  50. John Hughes
    FAIL

    Concrete results

    JeffyPooh doesn't believe in AGW 'cos "they" aren't capturing CO2 from concrete manufacture.

    Can't quite see your logic, old chap.

  51. Jim McCafferty
    WTF?

    WTF

    Title says it all really. Here I am turning on the television, expecting to see the Undertaker take down Stone Cold Steve Austin and then there's a bunch of Pandas on the screen. And now it's not even just Pandas any more.

    When are they going to find time to toodle off to Africa to prevent nasty poachers from shooting elephants if they're too busy criticising me for how much water I'm putting in my kettle?

    Every business is required to fill out a business plan, and these plans have a tendency to focus on specifics.

    This paragraph would suggest otherwise:

    "However, as the organization grew over the 70s and into the 80s, WWF began to expand its work to conserve the environment as a whole (reflecting the interdependence of all living things), rather than focusing on selected species in isolation. So, although we continued to use our well-known initials, during the 80s our legal name became "WWF-World Wide Fund For Nature" (formerly World Wildlife Fund - except in North America where the old name was retained)."

    In other words, we're taking a leaf out of BBC's book. We've realised the global marketing sledgehammer called "Global Warming" is a bandwagon too sweet to miss, and we've got to be on board. Conserving endangered animals does not tick those boxes, so our corporate message must be as fuzzy and vague as possible. We can tick more boxes that way when the funding application forms arrive.

    Credibility? - Overrated in this day and age. The real question people should be asking is where the heck is the authority who should be ripping the IPCC to pieces round about now. Someone's head should be on a pole, if credibility and science are the name of the game.

    .... and breathe. No, it's ok Nurse, I don't need my medication.

  52. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Snow and Global Warming

    "A good example of just how absurd the climate change denial has become is the latest noise about how much snow parts of the U.S. got a few weeks ago."

    The pro lobby constantly bring Weather into the climate change debate every summer. If I had a fiver for every time a TV presenter or weatherman says "Could this be more evidence of climate change?" After every heatwave, flash flood, heavy rainstorm, new hottest day on record, etc I'd be a millionaire...

    When the cold snap happened here in the UK we were immediately blasted with the pro lobby denouncing the cold snap as "just weather" when during the summer it is "climate change".

    No wonder people are getting confused.

  53. Tom Paine
    Boffin

    Nonensical story comprehensively refuted

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/up-is-down-brown-is-green-with-apologies-to-orwell/

  54. ed 22

    Up is Down, Brown is Green (with apologies to Orwell)

    A study in 2007 showed that the forest gets greener when it rains less. A new study, by Samanta et al. in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the earlier work was flawed.

    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/up-is-down-brown-is-green-with-apologies-to-orwell/

This topic is closed for new posts.