Another shoe drops on IPCC: Natural disasters not linked to global warming
Compiled by SpiralMan
Natural disasters not linked to global warming?
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Natural-disasters-not-linked-to-global-warming/articleshow/5496259.cms
UN climate science panel incorrectly linked global warming to rise in natural disasters
The United Nations’ climate science panel is facing further embarrassment after claims it incorrectly linked global warming to a rise in natural disasters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7066720/UN-climate-science-panel-incorrectly-linked-global-warming-to-rise-in-natural-disasters.html IPCC’S HIMALAYAN GLACIER ‘MISTAKE’ NOT AN ACCIDENT
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/55556/title/IPCCs_Himalayan_glacier_mistake_not_an_accident [
This is getting kind of sad……and I suspect there will be more.
Email-gate. Glacier-gate. Disaster-gate. Prophets and Nihilists masturbate. Yes, I know I stated this same stuff going back several years that most of the specifics alleged by IPCC to be manifestations of climate change were not so, and probably more likely the result of observation bias (seeing an something occurring because now you are looking for it), local causes (eg soot, deforestation, farm runoff, and overfishing) and cyclicality (eg. El Nino/La Nina, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic MultiDecadal Oscillation), which are invisible in crude and sparse proxy data over millions of years from inconsistent, non-normalized sources. In other words, climate modeling suffers from the same types of problems that have made molecular cellular physiological modeling so difficult, with which I am painfully familiar.
In this most recent Disaster-gate however, the various experts on hurricanes, and other disasters broke from IPCC and the media hype over precisely this issue over the last 4 years. And as the Glacier gate is unfolding, the glacier specialists also voiced their dissent and were systematically muted. How did I so quickly come to my judgment about the IPCC’s reports?
I read them.
In 2003, I read the 2001 report.
In 2004, I read the 2004 report.
In 2007, I read the 2007 report.
They all acknowledged that they didn’t model oceanic biota, yet the world is 3/4 covered by oceans, all kinds of microorganisms that rapidly evolve, change their relative proportions and symbiotic partners exist throughout, and oceans are where a great deal of carbon and heat cycles occur.
They all acknowledged that they didn’t model clouds or water flows in the atmosphere, and yet water vapor is the most important carrier of heat.
They thought that soot and aerosols were minor contributors, yet I intuited from growing up in Los Angeles, that albedo effects from smog and soot were serious business.
I had trouble picturing that an imbalance in a major input for photosynthesis, CO2, wouldn’t somehow be utilized; nature tends to evolve towards efficiently utilizing food sources, and microbes and symbiotic relationships can evolve quickly. Most importantly, the report’s assumptions of the best case scenarios appeared ridiculous to me.
Their scenarios showed straightline growth rates of CO2 emissions with no interruption from economic crises, yet looking at the historical data you can clearly see that the Depression, World War 2, the collapse of the USSR or even the 1970’s Arab Oil Embargo and Iranian Revolution all led to significant slowdowns and/or temporary reductions of either global or regional CO2 emissions. 
As I have tirelessly argued, the capitalist overproduction crisis inevitably means a significant decline, or at best stagnation, in industrial production including utilization of the status quo energy systems.
Meanwhile leading multinational corporations which are large customers of energy, and who rely on stable affordable energy sources, have stampeded into investments in energy efficiency for their operations, and the unrelenting propaganda on all mainstream media as well as all alternative media, whether right wing or left wing, preaches about the urgency of energy conservation. Finally, the ultimate solutions to our current energy- and food- related environmental problems are dropping in price exponentially, far faster than the problems are even increasing. And as noted this week by Germany’s Environmental Minister, solar power will be the cheapest source of energy on the planet by 2013. I have referred to this epochal process of one system dying and other being born as going through roughly 4 phases:
Spike, Crash, Streamline, Replace
So why do I say this latest string of exposures of the IPCC is sad? It’s sad because the environment is extremely complex and anything we do, whether unconsciously or consciously, with either profit or environment as objective, whether increasing or decreasing CO2/CH4 emissions or farm runoff or overfishing, etc. still can have gigantic non-linear impacts, and we need to get a handle on these, and not have scientists time wasted in the house of mirrors of groupthink.
It’s sad because I really do believe in the principle of iteratively making and testing scientific models about this stuff.
It’s sad because I believe in the value of cross disciplinary, international scientific teams building and testing these models.
It’s sad because science should be able to be relied upon by the public to understand, predict and control our world; and shoddy science like this, hyped and politicized to such levels could discredit the scientific method. (This is why as a scientist with no ties to the status quo energy systems, who has previously had a ‘dark horse’ impact on biological sciences, I felt it important for me to represent a scientifically-based dissent to the orthodoxy.)
It’s sad because so many people of good intentions have had their emotions played with by the excessive disaster fear mongering, the ‘green’ equivalent of Bush II’s WMD’s.
It’s sad because very important efforts for environmental destruction rehabilitation have been justified almost completely by this singular story of impending disasters. It is positive however, in that those who still want to think and act globally, who still want to improve the planet’s environment, will now be more open to the real reasons why our current systems of energy, water, and food have to be revolutionized.
And these reasons, don’t rely on invoking imagination about a horror yet to come decades or centuries in the future, but the already existing horrors that destroy millions of people’s lives today and everyday for centuries all around the world. These reasons don’t require boycotts of low income (per capita) oil and gas producing countries.
They don’t call for regressive taxation of poor people’s energy consumption.
They don’t call for stampeding into nuclear power…..or corn based, (water-sucking) ethanol. Instead they call for: Equal Watts!
Sunny Side Up!
Stop Soot, South First, North Pays!
Tax Sprawl Not Energy!
]
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Natural-disasters-not-linked-to-global-warming/articleshow/5496259.cms
UN climate science panel incorrectly linked global warming to rise in natural disasters
The United Nations’ climate science panel is facing further embarrassment after claims it incorrectly linked global warming to a rise in natural disasters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7066720/UN-climate-science-panel-incorrectly-linked-global-warming-to-rise-in-natural-disasters.html IPCC’S HIMALAYAN GLACIER ‘MISTAKE’ NOT AN ACCIDENT
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/55556/title/IPCCs_Himalayan_glacier_mistake_not_an_accident [
This is getting kind of sad……and I suspect there will be more.
Email-gate. Glacier-gate. Disaster-gate. Prophets and Nihilists masturbate. Yes, I know I stated this same stuff going back several years that most of the specifics alleged by IPCC to be manifestations of climate change were not so, and probably more likely the result of observation bias (seeing an something occurring because now you are looking for it), local causes (eg soot, deforestation, farm runoff, and overfishing) and cyclicality (eg. El Nino/La Nina, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic MultiDecadal Oscillation), which are invisible in crude and sparse proxy data over millions of years from inconsistent, non-normalized sources. In other words, climate modeling suffers from the same types of problems that have made molecular cellular physiological modeling so difficult, with which I am painfully familiar.
In this most recent Disaster-gate however, the various experts on hurricanes, and other disasters broke from IPCC and the media hype over precisely this issue over the last 4 years. And as the Glacier gate is unfolding, the glacier specialists also voiced their dissent and were systematically muted. How did I so quickly come to my judgment about the IPCC’s reports?
I read them.
In 2003, I read the 2001 report.
In 2004, I read the 2004 report.
In 2007, I read the 2007 report.
They all acknowledged that they didn’t model oceanic biota, yet the world is 3/4 covered by oceans, all kinds of microorganisms that rapidly evolve, change their relative proportions and symbiotic partners exist throughout, and oceans are where a great deal of carbon and heat cycles occur.
They all acknowledged that they didn’t model clouds or water flows in the atmosphere, and yet water vapor is the most important carrier of heat.
They thought that soot and aerosols were minor contributors, yet I intuited from growing up in Los Angeles, that albedo effects from smog and soot were serious business.
I had trouble picturing that an imbalance in a major input for photosynthesis, CO2, wouldn’t somehow be utilized; nature tends to evolve towards efficiently utilizing food sources, and microbes and symbiotic relationships can evolve quickly. Most importantly, the report’s assumptions of the best case scenarios appeared ridiculous to me.
Their scenarios showed straightline growth rates of CO2 emissions with no interruption from economic crises, yet looking at the historical data you can clearly see that the Depression, World War 2, the collapse of the USSR or even the 1970’s Arab Oil Embargo and Iranian Revolution all led to significant slowdowns and/or temporary reductions of either global or regional CO2 emissions. 
As I have tirelessly argued, the capitalist overproduction crisis inevitably means a significant decline, or at best stagnation, in industrial production including utilization of the status quo energy systems.
Meanwhile leading multinational corporations which are large customers of energy, and who rely on stable affordable energy sources, have stampeded into investments in energy efficiency for their operations, and the unrelenting propaganda on all mainstream media as well as all alternative media, whether right wing or left wing, preaches about the urgency of energy conservation. Finally, the ultimate solutions to our current energy- and food- related environmental problems are dropping in price exponentially, far faster than the problems are even increasing. And as noted this week by Germany’s Environmental Minister, solar power will be the cheapest source of energy on the planet by 2013. I have referred to this epochal process of one system dying and other being born as going through roughly 4 phases:
Spike, Crash, Streamline, Replace
So why do I say this latest string of exposures of the IPCC is sad? It’s sad because the environment is extremely complex and anything we do, whether unconsciously or consciously, with either profit or environment as objective, whether increasing or decreasing CO2/CH4 emissions or farm runoff or overfishing, etc. still can have gigantic non-linear impacts, and we need to get a handle on these, and not have scientists time wasted in the house of mirrors of groupthink.
It’s sad because I really do believe in the principle of iteratively making and testing scientific models about this stuff.
It’s sad because I believe in the value of cross disciplinary, international scientific teams building and testing these models.
It’s sad because science should be able to be relied upon by the public to understand, predict and control our world; and shoddy science like this, hyped and politicized to such levels could discredit the scientific method. (This is why as a scientist with no ties to the status quo energy systems, who has previously had a ‘dark horse’ impact on biological sciences, I felt it important for me to represent a scientifically-based dissent to the orthodoxy.)
It’s sad because so many people of good intentions have had their emotions played with by the excessive disaster fear mongering, the ‘green’ equivalent of Bush II’s WMD’s.
It’s sad because very important efforts for environmental destruction rehabilitation have been justified almost completely by this singular story of impending disasters. It is positive however, in that those who still want to think and act globally, who still want to improve the planet’s environment, will now be more open to the real reasons why our current systems of energy, water, and food have to be revolutionized.
And these reasons, don’t rely on invoking imagination about a horror yet to come decades or centuries in the future, but the already existing horrors that destroy millions of people’s lives today and everyday for centuries all around the world. These reasons don’t require boycotts of low income (per capita) oil and gas producing countries.
They don’t call for regressive taxation of poor people’s energy consumption.
They don’t call for stampeding into nuclear power…..or corn based, (water-sucking) ethanol. Instead they call for: Equal Watts!
Sunny Side Up!
Stop Soot, South First, North Pays!
Tax Sprawl Not Energy!
]
RSS
Archive
Mobile
