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On 1/27/10 6:21 PM, Paula wrote: > The point of the article is that the 2007 IPCC report misled the public into > thinking that global warming since the 1970s has made natural disasters worse. > The IPCC was also wrong to claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt almost > completely by 2035. Altogether, the lesson for us is that the so-called > 'consensus view' should not be accepted uncritically. but clearly the Himalayan melting was NOT a "consensus view", some jerk stuffed it into the IPCC report without properly checking the statement. and when someone who knew better looked close (it was a small part of the report) the whistle did done blew. and there is some evidence in the models that "natural disasters" could get stronger in intensity, a la Emanuel, etc., so i don't see the general statement that the IPCC report misled. and i don't see you take up the debatable evidence for such an effect. on the IPCC reports: the IPCC aims to be a clearing house for the results of AGW research efforts. is it the best/optimal way to bring the mass of results to the public's attention? not sure ... i am hoping that the East Anglia CRU email debacle convinces climate scientists that they are better off confronting political issues directly, openly, and outwardly, rather than by the rather cowardly behind the scenes shenanigans with journals and such. > Recognizing uncertainty - not witch-hunting one's critics - is the > right approach for science. the climate modelers responsible for developing and running the GCMs have for years talked about uncertainty, to the point where they attempted to quantify it by ensemble runs. i think you have the identification of the witch-hunting all screwed up, lets remember who originally got hunted. and then, Paula, there are the kooks like Cockburn's recent second-law-of-thermodynamics cronies. let's speak bluntly: they didn't have the guts to try to publish their stuff in the mainstream climate research journals, so they go off and find some off-the-climate-beaten path to publish their ground-breaking trash, and then having it published in such a peer-reviewed journal, the deniers then take it as gospel tested truth. Les ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
