With the IPCC is under fire yet AGAIN, the question becomes why is ANYONE putting ANY stock whatsoever in anything this bunch of knothole-raping hippies says? Last week it was "discovered" that the claims this so-called expert panel have woven into the political discourse regarding the imminent melt-off of the Himalayan glaciers (quite likely by 2035) were...um......crap! Based on a SWAG (Stupid Wild Arsed Guess) which the mouth-breathers at IPCC formulated, apparently after drinking the old bong-water whilst reading a 1999 New Scientist magazine article, the UN swore by the petrified testicle of the Al-mighty Gorealce that if immediate action wasn't taken immediately to stop "global warming", all of the ice and snow ON FREAKING MOUNT EVEREST would be melted away by 2035. Dunder-heads in capitols throughout most of the world bought into this...after all the UN said it, and His Tubbiness concurred (he got a Nobel prize AND an Oscar you know).
So now I'm reading how the same brainiacs are in hot water for "wrongly" linking Global Warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters, such as floods and hurricanes. The Times (UK) Online is running the following story.
UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece
Y'all can hop on over and partake of the sweet, sweet "I told ya so" goodness yourselves, but I'd be remiss in not pointing some of the more salient points:
" It(IPCC) based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too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. "
"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."
"It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored."
The academic paper at the centre of the latest questions was written in 2006 by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a London consultancy, who later became a contributing author to the section of the IPCC's 2007 report dealing with climate change impacts. He is widely respected as an expert on disaster impacts.
Let me interject here, Mr. Muir-Wood, the widely respected expert, was hired to do this research as part of a larger study for a Colorado University workshop on disaster losses in 2006. So he does this report, in which he finds basically NO INCREASE in disaster losses from 1950 to 2005 (the entire period of his study), once growth (the rising number of people who both desired to, and became able to afford to, live near the beach) was accounted for. He did note a slight 2% increase during the period of 1970 to 2005, which corresponded with a period of increasing temperatures (forget for a minute that 1998 was the last year global temperatures actually rose). HOWEVER, he clearly stated that MOST of this increase could be attributed to the "active" 2004 and 2005 Hurricane Seasons, among other things (like the fact that the strong US dollar meant that any disaster affecting the US would invariably skew the results toward a "larger" global price-tag)
The IPCC decided to only use the part of Muir-Wood's report dealing with the 1970-2005 time frame, and IGNORED the caveats in the report itself, to claim PROOF.....SCIENTIFIC PROOF....that global warming was causing more, and more costly disasters.
The Colorado U team, meanwhile, published a statement agreeing that so far there was no evidence to link global warming with any increase in the severity or frequency of disasters. It's chairman, Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, also an expert on disaster impacts, not only correctly identified the non-issue "exposed" in Muir-Wood's report, but called the IPCC out for cherry-picking the data.
What does the IPCC have to say?
"We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific." - Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium climatologist, who is vice-chair of the IPCC.
OOOOOO-kaaaay! Rigorous and Scientific! But if it's soooooo rigorous, then why does this guy say this?
Science is progressive. If something turns out to be wrong we can fix it next time around.” However he confirmed he would be introducing rigorous new review procedures for future reports to ensure errors were kept to a minimum. - Professor Christopher Field,director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in California, who is the new co-chairman of the IPCC working group overseeing the climate impacts report.
The IPCC's process is soo very rigorous and scientifically sound that the new HMIFIC is instituting new, more rigorous and science-y processes to ensure that errors are kept to a minimum! Reminds me of the opening credits to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
"We apologize for the previous scientific process. Those responsible for the sacking of those responsible,have themselves just been sacked." IPCC
Big Deal Shifty, you're probably saying...who cares? Well, I do. And so should you. Unless you WANT to forfeit both your standard of living (things like lights, heat, air-conditioning...anything run by electricity) AND your money. As the Times points out, the IPCC's totally made-up claim "has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month's Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions." 100 Billion is a lot of cash. Now factor in the moron politicians here and abroad that are clamoring for action NOW to combat Global Warming, and the "action" they propose. Cap and Tax? Won't slow GW one whit. Won't even bankrupt coal like Obama promised to do. All it will do is make YOU and I shell out more and more money to the Government, funnelled through our local power company and gas stations.
Letting the EPA regulate CO2, because that same agency has "determined" that CO2 is a hazard to humans? Ummm... did the nuns at St. Pat's lie to me in science when they told me that plants NEED CO2 to live? Where the hell is the Sierra Club on this one....the EPA wants to kill all plant life! And as far as the EPA's ability to regulate anything....let's just say I remain singularly unimpressed by them...and my job requires me to deal with that agency on a regular basis. I once worked at a municipal power plant on the banks of the Detroit River. The windows on our turbine deck looked out over the river to the sprawling Great Lakes Steel. The local EPA dweeb had his office in a strip mall less than a mile from the plant, with HIS windows looking at our three smokestacks. I can't count the number of times I'd field a call from him, demanding to know why he saw a light grayish haze coming out of our stack, then walk right out on the turbine deck, look northward and watch a noxious green, or rust-orange, or yellow cloud of smoke roll off the steel mill, obscuring it from view! (And just a little tidbit of info....a light grayish haze coming out of a fossil-fuel fired power plants stack is called "economy haze" and it indicates that the plant is actually emitting LESS pollutants than a totally clear stack!)
Bottom line is this: if we remain silent and let the hockey-helmeted politicians drive the short bus off the Global Warming prevention cliff, we have nobody but ourselves to blame. I, for one, LIKE my big-screen Plasma TV, 4 home computers and keeping the house a comfortable 72 degrees F all year long! How about you?
