Society/Culture UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters

[medusala]

Its all starting to go wrong now.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

..........

Why the bogus "science"?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6999975.ece

The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

...............
And a twist on Glaciergate, merely coincidence I am sure

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...eal-story-behind-the-Glaciergate-scandal.html


Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.

What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general

 

[GeorgeGrljusich]

Are you giggling with glee meds?
Or are you seriously using this as another thin edged wedge to bring the rest of the science down?
God I hope that you pick option one.

 

[medusala]

Just another minor flesh wound eh GG?

Armageddon is still on course?

 

[John]

Just another minor flesh wound eh GG?

Armageddon is still on course?

With these cracks in the science are you utterly convinced that GW is a hoax?

 

[cancat]

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."

Most people would find this reason to celebrate but I expect the greenies will be crying into their decaf lattes.

 

[bit_pattern]

It's starting to grow? Yup, the Murdoch rags are really upping the ante now!

The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

Utter, utter BULLSHIT.

A. The Himalayan glaciers ARE melting

B. Where is the slightest skerrick of evidence that Pachauri has received grants on the strength of a single statement buried deep in the Working Group 4 report, that was never in either the Synthesis Report or the Summary for Policymakers? As far as claims go the 2035 figure was pretty damned obscure. This is a slanderous allegation, Pachauri should sue the Times for everything they are worth.

 

[simpleton]

With these cracks in the science are you utterly convinced that GW is a hoax?

AGW is not a hoax but a delusion just like the geocentric view of the universe and efficent market hypothesis.

 

[bit_pattern]

LOL, it's funny to hear people who are clinging to the old paradigm that humans couldn't possibly influence the climate accusing others of being pre-Copernican!

If it were 15 years ago you are the sort who'd be arguing til your blue in the face that tobacco is perfectly harmless

 

[bit_pattern]

Just to put the Times' bogus claims into perspective

This leads to an important question: what does the peer reviewed science say about Himalayan glaciers? The ice mass over the Himalayas is the third-largest on earth, after the Arctic/Greenland and Antarctic regions (Barnett 2005). There are approximately 15,000 glaciers in the Himalayas. Each summer, these glaciers release meltwater into the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra Rivers. Approximately 500 million people depend upon water from these three rivers (Kehrwald 2008). In China, 23% of the population lives in the western regions, where glacial melt is the principal water source during dry season (Barnett 2005).
On-site measurement of glacier terminus position and ice core records have found many glaciers on the south slope of the central Himalaya have been retreating at an accelerating rate (Ren 2006). Similarly, ice cores amd accumulation stakes on the Naimona'nyi Glacier have observed it's losing mass, a surprising result due to its high altitude (it is now the highest glacier in the world losing mass) (Kehrwald 2008).
While on-site measurements cover only a small range of the Himalayas, broader coverage is achieved through remote sensing satellites and Geographic Information System methods. They've found that over 80% of glaciers in western China have retreated in the past 50 years, losing 4.5% of their combined areal coverage (Ding 2006). This retreat is accelerating across much of the Tibetan plateau (Yao 2007).

 

[skipper kelly]

Isnt this good news????

 

[John]

AGW is not a hoax but a delusion just like the geocentric view of the universe and efficent market hypothesis.

Thanks Meds. When did you change your name and team?

 

[HarryTiger]

The connection between ice and river flow is rather grey and/or local dependent. Water evaporates from the sea, crosses the land, falls on the mountains. That's high school geography. If it falls where it can freeze it freezes, if not it flows. Stacked ice falls with gravity and melts when it gets to a warmer altitude. Winter produces more ice and it melts in summer, so some has been buffered for seasonal release. Also speaking of Nepal (+ India) it's sub-tropical and they have a wet warm season, there's no shortage of rain in summer in Nepal - there's too much which is why it's also mudslide season. North and south sides of Himalayas may be quite different case studies.

 

[bit_pattern]

Isnt this good news????

It would be if it were true, unfortunately even if this particular claim wasn't supported by evidence in the report the fact is that there is ample peer reviewed evidence that GW will lead to an increase in natural disasters.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118596604/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x12l23524001751n/

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118596603/abstract

 

[bit_pattern]

The connection between ice and river flow is rather grey and/or local dependent. Water evaporates from the sea, crosses the land, falls on the mountains. That's high school geography. If it falls where it can freeze it freezes, if not it flows. Stacked ice falls with gravity and melts when it gets to a warmer altitude. Winter produces more ice and it melts in summer, so some has been buffered for seasonal release. Also speaking of Nepal (+ India) it's sub-tropical and they have a wet warm season, there's no shortage of rain in summer in Nepal - there's too much which is why it's also mudslide season. North and south sides of Himalayas may be quite different case studies.

Right, right, high school geography, I'd forgotten what an authority you are on any subject you set your mind to

 

[GeorgeGrljusich]

Thanks Meds. When did you change your name and team?

lol

 

[HarryTiger]

Yeah BP, high school geography - I graduated from High School and went on to graduate from university in a science discipline. You?

 

[GeorgeGrljusich]

Yeah BP, high school geography - I graduated from High School and went on to graduate from university in a science discipline. You?

So did I. However that doesn't make me an expert on all things glacial.

 

[HarryTiger]

Good point, in fact you can post-graduate as a glacial specialist and still not have much clue about it

With those experts on hand I'm not letting go of my own good sense.

 

[bit_pattern]

Yeah BP, high school geography - I graduated from High School and went on to graduate from university in a science discipline. You?

I'm not claiming to be an authority, single handedly rewriting geography based on memories from a high school class, I just present the views of the real experts; which is all anybody should do until they have the relevant PhD (something you'd think a uni science undergrad would understand, what 'science' were you studying? Sports science or something? )

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

A. The Himalayan glaciers ARE melting

They never existed at one stage so a bit of melting was bound to occur eventually in the history of the world.

Nothing ever stays the same on planet earth.

 

[bit_pattern]

They never existed at one stage so a bit of melting was bound to occur eventually in the history of the world.

Nothing ever stays the same on planet earth.

True, but nor do they change within a matter of centuries, it generally takes thousands, if not millions, of years for such changes to play out. The fact that we have had such a dramatic impact on the planet in just 150 years should be very, very worrying for any thinking person.

 

[AndSmithMustScore]

True, but nor do they change within a matter of centuries, it generally takes thousands, if not millions, of years for such changes to play out. The fact that we have had such a dramatic impact on the planet in just 150 years should be very, very worrying for any thinking person.

Well we don't know that for certain.

Wasn't there a massive meteorite that hit what is now modern day Raussia once?

That would have changed the landscape/geography/flaora/fauna etc within that area in a very short time.


What about Pompei?

How did that eruption change that area?

Large event, large change, how long did it take the area to recover? did it recover fully? etc.

Certain things will change over a long period, but even in todays world we can see how somethings can also change quite rapidly in very short periods of time.

 

[bit_pattern]

Well we don't know that for certain.

Yeah, we do, we have a little thing called "geology", they do some amazing things with rocks

Wasn't there a massive meteorite that hit what is now modern day Raussia once?

That would have changed the landscape/geography/flaora/fauna etc within that area in a very short time.


What about Pompei?

How did that eruption change that area?

Large event, large change, how long did it take the area to recover? did it recover fully? etc.

Certain things will change over a long period, but even in todays world we can see how somethings can also change quite rapidly in very short periods of time.

Right, but there hasn't been any volcano's or meteorites, or any other sudden phenomena (except the sudden rise in CO2, which is now higher than at any point in 15 million years, when the oceans were 7 metres higher and the world a radically different place), have there?

 

[medusala]

Utter, utter BULLSHIT.

A. The Himalayan glaciers ARE melting

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...raction-of-himalayan-proportions-1876420.html

For them, the 2035 timeframe meant that the great slabs of ice sitting on top of these mountains, some of which are hundreds of metres thick, must be melting about 25 times faster than expected – an extraordinary claim.

This is a slanderous allegation, Pachauri should sue the Times for everything they are worth.

That he hasnt says alot.

Plimer neglects to reference a graph and you froth at the mouth. Another sceptic changes the moving average on a graph and you cry out hysterically.

Overestimating glacial melt by 25 times? An irrelevance.

Did you not start a thread regarding the hypocrisy of sceptics?

 

[bit_pattern]

The whole basis for the Times' article is that claims of melting Himalayan glaciers are "bogus", this is simply not true. Other than the 2035 reference everything relating to Himalayan glaciers are sound

Pachauri didn't make the 2035 claim, it was an obscure reference buried deep in the WG2 report, it is ridiculous to say that either the glaciers aren't melting - the IPCC conclusions on this in the synthesis report and the WG1 are perfectly sound - or that Pachauri would have crafted his business interests around such an obscure claim that only slipped through the cracks through oversight (A number of reviewers in the drafting process noted that it was a dubious statement that needed citation, but unfortunately, as things are want to do when dealing with hundreds of different reviewers and a report the size of the IPCC AR, it got neglected and it made it through to the final draft). If his not-for-profit organisation did benefit from IPCC claims regarding glaciers it wasn't on the basis of the 2035 cliams, but the solid science contained in the Synthesis Report.

Plimer wrote his own book (claims to, at least, though his lack of familiarity with his own work suggests it was ghost written and he was just the compliant scientist willing to stamp it with his name and credentials) , he knew the graph he'd included was bogus, he thought he could get away with using a bogus graph by sloppily referencing it. Completely different situation.