Catholicism and Climate Change: The Sequel

[JasonSB]

50 to 60 is very recent.

Plenty long enough for the tasks at hand.

Perhaps you should be a surveyer. You seem to have such a grasp of it.

I have presented papers and workshops at survey conferences (including on monitoring subsidence) so I guess that could explain it.

Of course, armchair quarterbacking is easy.

As is pointing out how illogical Monte’s scenario is.

Surveyors are personally liable for the data they generate. They have to be willing to stand up in court to defend their results. In Monte’s scenario, the possibility of the benchmark itself sinking should have been (a) obvious and (b) routinely checked. There is a reason why that is a requirement for tide gauges, and tectonic movement is far from the only (or even most significant) cause.

To suggest that nobody thought of this until recently shows a staggering lack of familiarity with the subject for someone who feels comfortable pontificating on it.

 

[JasonSB]

Where’ve you been for the last six months, JasonSB? I’ll have to start paying attention to this thread again now that you’ve made it interesting again.

Thanks. I’m afraid I didn’t have the time to keep banging my head against a brick wall.

But I think it’s unfortunate that Catholics who are genuinely confused by the issues and seek answers here are far more likely to encounter people happy to spread disinformation from the same people and organisations that denied tobacco causes lung cancer than a report from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that talks about 2 million premature deaths per year and urges all societies to “reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions without delay, using all means possible”. (Even mentioning the report on a Catholic forum is enough to be accused of throwing “objectivity out the window” and throwing “garbage to promote [my] causes”!)

A guy who asked fossil fuel interests for money to promote their cause and was given $150,000 in response gets quoted verbatim as if his word is gospel, while the Australian Catholic Bishop’s position paper claiming that human induced climate change “raises serious moral and spiritual questions, not just for Catholics but for all Australian citizens and leaders, and calls for change in our way of life” is ignored — just like the scientists themselves.

It’s a real shame.

 

[vz71]

Yet, mysteriously, continental drift was hypothesised some 400 years before GPS was invented and the theory of plate tectonics was developed several decades before.

Plate tectonics was developed in the 20th century.
The means to measure it was likewise developed in the 20th century.
One of the leads in bringing the theory to bear in the scientific community was a man by the name of Alfred Wegener.
I normally dislike wikipedia, however in this instance they seem to be spot on.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics
Perhaps you have other information you would like to share???
If you are thinking about Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus (1596), sorry, but no.
A theory that the Americas were drawn apart by earthquakes is too vague to be used in sea level measurements.

You seem to believe that until GPS was invented, nobody knew that the continents were in motion and roughly how fast they were going.

Untrue, and a straw man.
Plate tectonics was developed long before we launched the first satellites into orbit.
However, it was not until GPS came about that we could measure it with any real accuracy.

You also seem to believe that the continents accelerate so much over the time frames involved that readings made in the last two decades carry no information at all about how fast they were moving a hundred years ago.

Another falsehood and another strawman. Are your arguments so weak that you cannot counter the real arguments but instead have to pursue things no one has said?
During the Alaskan earthquake of 1964, a fairly large chunk of the state (nearly 200 square miles) was moved 30 feet.
That alone would be enough to call into question any extropolation of movements before we could directly measure it.
These events show that tectonic movement is not a smooth and even process.
Predicting the drift of a continent needs to be able to take this into account and a few decades of data does not provide enough information.
We may know where continents came from and be able to predict where they are headed, but we cannot predict with mm level accuracy the location of a given point from 60 years ago.

And, finally, you seem to have completely missed my post explaining how they accounted for it.

I read the paper.
Apparently they did not consult with you.

Then you need to read the 2004 paper again, as well as my explanation.

Pehaps I missed it…please specify the specific location within the paper or better still quote the pertinent part.

 

[vz71]

Why on earth would you do that?

Is “Why bother asking questions if you’re not going to read my responses? I even included a colourful picture!” not enough of a hint that you seem to have completely failed to understand what I said by virtue of the fact that you’re asking a question that’s already been answered?

It was a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.
Were you clear in your postion, there would be no need to ask it.
And a simply response of no more then three letters would have sufficed.

If you do not like what I believe you answer to actually be, perhaps you should have taken the time to actually answer the question rather then waste time trying to dig at people.

 

[vz71]

I just noticed this…

foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/

I wonder what else is going on that has not been noticed by the press.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I just noticed this…

foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/

I wonder what else is going on that has not been noticed by the press.

More data fakery. Unreal!!!

And Jason hasn’t picked up on it.

How strange.

Changing Tides: Research Center Under Fire for ‘Adjusted’ Sea-Level Data
By Maxim Lott
Published June 17, 2011
| FoxNews.com

NASA
In a NASA “what-if” animation, light-blue areas in southern Florida and Louisiana indicate regions that may be underwater should sea levels rise dramatically.
Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued – or are climate scientists doctoring the data?
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters – or about the thickness of a fingernail – every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
“Gatekeepers of our sea level data are manufacturing a fictitious sea level rise that is not occurring,” said James M. Taylor, a lawyer who focuses on environmental issues for the Heartland Institute.

Steve Nerem, the director of the widely relied-upon research center, told FoxNews.com that his group added the 0.3 millimeters per year to the actual sea level measurements because land masses, still rebounding from the ice age, are rising and increasing the amount of water that oceans can hold.
“We have to account for the fact that the ocean basins are actually getting slightly bigger… water volume is expanding,” he said, a phenomenon they call glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA).
Taylor calls it tomfoolery.
“There really is no reason to do this other than to advance a political agenda,” he said.
Climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the amount of water in the ocean and sea level were two different things.
“To me… sea level rise is what’s measured against the actual coast,” he told FoxNews.com. “That’s what tells us the impact of rising oceans.”
Taylor agreed.
“Many global warming alarmists say that vast stretches of coastline are going to be swallowed up by the sea. Well, that means we should be talking about sea level, not about global water volume.”
In e-mails with FoxNews.com, Nerem indicated that he considered “sea level rise” to be the same thing as the amount of water in the ocean.
“If we correct our data to remove [the effect of rising land], it actually does cause the rate of sea level (a.k.a. ocean water volume change) rise to be bigger,” Nerem wrote. The adjustment is trivial, and not worth public attention, he added.
“For the layperson, this correction is a non-issue and certainly not newsworthy… [The] effect is tiny – only 1 inch over 100 years, whereas we expect sea level to rise 2-4 feet.”
But Taylor said that the correction seemed bigger when compared with actual sea level increases.
“We’ve seen only 7 inches of sea level rise in the past century and it hasn’t sped up this century. Compared to that, this would add nearly 20 percent to the sea level rise. That’s not insignificant,” he told FoxNews.com.
Nerem said that the research center is considering compromising on the adjustment.
“We are considering putting both data sets on our website – a GIA-corrected dataset, as well as one without the GIA correction,” he said.
Christy said that would be a welcome change.
“I would encourage CU to put the sea level rate [with] no adjustment at the top of the website,” he said.
Taylor’s takeaway: Be wary of sea level rise estimates.
“When Al Gore talks about Manhattan flooding this century, and 20 feet of sea level rise, that’s simply not going to happen. If it were going to happen, he wouldn’t have bought his multi-million dollar mansion along the coast in California.”

Read more: foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/#ixzz1PaQR7ecX

 

[kimmielittle]

My prediction was that you would “find a way to smear the scientists with no evidence that their work is actually wrong”.

What did you do? Well, I see you wrote a bunch of stuff about P.J. Crutzen who is apparently an atheist and a signer of the manifesto of American Humanist Association which apparently “has radical views of Catholicism / Christians”. Is that not an attempt to smear the lead author?

You even question the wisdom of Chancellor Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo in signing a paper “when the lead Author is Atheist”.

Did you once attempt to actually demonstrate any error in the document?

No.

You made a whole bunch of claims about the provenance of the document, and a whole bunch of claims about the authors of the document, but not one single claim about the science in the document. Therefore my prediction was correct.

:

Well, apart from calling it a “misleading piece of propaganda”, you mostly tried to smear all those associated with it, even going so far as to fantasise about why it might have been “pulled”.

Oh my my…

Can you prove it isn’t propaganda?

Before you foolishly try - let me ask where do you think the word comes from?

Once again, I’ll do your research for you.
It comes from the Catholic Faith.
In FACT the Catholic Church has the oldest Ministry of “Propaganda” known. It is called Congregation of Propaganda Fide, established by Pope Gregory XV in 1622.

It is to used to “Propagate the faith”.

You don’t seem to have an argument that this is a Religious Paper and not a Scientific one.

BEING a Religious paper used to propagate the faith ] - I have EVERY RIGHT to question the “wisdom” of an Atheist “propagating” my faith. IMO it remains a “misleading piece of propaganda”.

If I wanted to point to errors which I need not do ] I would point to the most obvious .
It calls the world to reduce by 50% to protect the Himalayas.The condition of the Himalayas is because of **Regional ** India mostly ] poor air standards Black soot - aerosols emissions ].The Himalayas could see “protection” almost immediately IF India reduced its Black Soot.

I said: “It is a peer review of the science by Ajai, L. Bengtsson, D. Breashears, P.J. Crutzen, S. Fuzzi, W. Haeberli, W.W. Immerzeel, G. Kaser, C. Kennel, A. Kulkarni, R. Pachauri, T. Painter, J. Rabassa, V. Ramanathan, A. Robock, C. Rubbia, L. Russell, M. Sánchez Sorondo, H.J. Schellnhuber, S. Sorooshian, T. F. Stocker, L.G. Thompson, O.B. Toon, and D. Zaelke — more peer review than most papers get.” That is absolutely correct. What do you think “peer review” is?

Peer review of science requires - it to be examined from all sides - not in a vacuum. AND you know this.

A smear campaign is not science.

WHOA This coming from the FIRST to smear… Just like Your Tobacco industry / Exxon Esso ] attempts - James Dingpole etc etc etc. Actually, that main fault of yours “smearing” Is what brought your “Scientific Credibility” In question, to me. BUT I told you about it many times in the first thread - evidently, looking at your posts above - you haven’t understood.

I know this may come as a shock to you, given the sort of rubbish you normally swallow hook, line, and sinker,

I surely don’t swallow your rubbish

but if you want to discredit the report scientifically then you point out where the report is inconsistent with the scientific literature.

The report doesn’t qualify as a scientific report. It hasn’t been published - can’t get published in any scientific journal. I’m surprised a “scientist” does not know this… Actually, no I’m not surprised by this any more ].

 

[kimmielittle]

I just noticed this…

foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/

I wonder what else is going on that has not been noticed by the press.

It’s a shame, to me, that FOI has to be used to uncover what hasn’t been told.

Thank you for the link

 

[Monte_RCMS]

And YET, …

… MORE revelations of cheating.

thegwpf.org/

There is no end to this!

 

[JasonSB]

Plate tectonics was developed in the 20th century.

As I pointed out. I also pointed out that 50 years is a long time to have a theory explaining continental drift and 400 years is a long time to know about the possibility of continental drift for people to suddenly start thinking that the scientists measuring historical sea levels had no idea that they needed to account for continental drift.

You claimed that Church et al did not account for plate tectonics. I pointed out that not only did they account for it, I even explained how. If you wish to argue that their method fails to account for plate tectonics sufficiently then by all means argue your case. But don’t wave your hands around saying they couldn’t have done it and pretend it wasn’t even mentioned.

Untrue

Excellent. I’m glad we can put that furphy aside.

Another falsehood and another strawman. Are your arguments so weak that you cannot counter the real arguments but instead have to pursue things no one has said?

I said “seem” because so far your argument has basically been “they didn’t account for it” because “they couldn’t account for it”, apparently because the theory of plate tectonics is so “young”.

If you can’t argue why you think their method of accounting for it won’t work then I’m left with trying to guess what your reasoning is. It’s not good enough to say “because the ocean is so big” or “because the land moved”. Those are merely appeals to incredulity that overlook the observational fact that the trend derived from tide gauges and the trend derived from satellites are statistically indistinguishable during the period where we have both. You’re asking us to believe that the tide gauge method suddenly starts working perfectly when we’re in a position to independently verify it but is completely wrong before then while, at the same time, ignoring the fact that the tide gauge reconstruction also agrees with non-instrumental reconstructions during the period they overlap as well.

During the Alaskan earthquake of 1964, a fairly large chunk of the state (nearly 200 square miles) was moved 30 feet.
That alone would be enough to call into question any extropolation of movements before we could directly measure it.

It would, if their method wasn’t designed to directly account for sudden shifts like this.

Even if there were no plate tectonics, the method would still need to detect and accommodate discontinuities in the record because things happen — instruments get replaced, ships crash into wharves, ground subsides, etc., etc., etc.

That is why the technique they used for processing historical data was explicitly designed to accommodate that.

These events show that tectonic movement is not a smooth and even process.

Non-smooth and uneven processes are the easy ones to account for. It’s a long-term smooth change that can be confused with a long-term trend and needs extra care. Hence GIA.

Predicting the drift of a continent needs to be able to take this into account and a few decades of data does not provide enough information.

No, predicting the drift of a continent doesn’t need to be able to take those into account because the analysis technique removes those artefacts in the very first processing stage. It’s the long-term smooth changes that need to be treated carefully, and the effect of those can be modelled even with a few decades’ data and the residual error can be incorporated into the error calculations.

We may know where continents came from and be able to predict where they are headed, but we cannot predict with mm level accuracy the location of a given point from 60 years ago.

And it’s a strawman to think that we need do.

I read the paper.
Apparently they did not consult with you.

Why would they need to? One read of the paper is enough to see that they’re clearly on the ball.

Pehaps I missed it…please specify the specific location within the paper or better still quote the pertinent part.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day…

I think it would be instructive for you to read it carefully yourself and try to understand it and then ask questions if it still doesn’t leap out at you.

Here are some hints to get you started:

How is global mean sea level reconstruction with tide gauges similar to global temperature reconstruction with thermometers?

What techniques are used to detect, correct for, and account for residual random and systematic errors, as well as discontinuities in the record?

 

[JasonSB]

It was a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.
Were you clear in your postion, there would be no need to ask it.
And a simply response of no more then three letters would have sufficed.

So even though I’ve told you clearly that you have obviously failed to read my posts, you refuse to go back and see for yourself?

Sigh…

If by “any accuracy” you mean “at all” then the answer is “Of course”. Have you noticed what happens when you try to pile up the water at one end of a bathtub or fish tank? As soon as you give up, it automatically tries to become level again and, given enough time, will do so.

Now, thanks to the fact that the earth is not perfectly flat, the sea is constantly in motion, and there are continents in the way, the sea isn’t able to become perfectly level, even when averaged over long periods of time:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...graphy.jpg/400px-Ocean_dynamic_topography.jpg

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t detect even minute changes to the overall volume of the sea over long periods of time even using relatively few data collection points.

(Bolding added.)

Now, how can you ask “Do you believe sea level to be the same across the entire globe?” after reading that and seeing the colourful picture showing mean sea level relative to Earth’s geoid and a link to a Wikipedia article discussing ocean surface topograpy?

If you do not like what I believe you answer to actually be, perhaps you should have taken the time to actually answer the question rather then waste time trying to dig at people.

If you don’t want people to dig at you for not reading what they’ve written and then asking questions clearly already answered, perhaps you should actually do them the courtesy of reading their replies rather than waste time asking those questions.

What is even more galling is the fact that you asked that question quoting the part of my post up to “and, given enough time, will do so.” and then omitted the very next section that answered the question you then went on to ask.

So please don’t complain to me about “wasting time”.

 

[JasonSB]

I just noticed this…

foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/

When Monte previously posted this exact same story about the lawyer from the Heartland Institute alleging ficticious sea level rises by the University of Colorado I responded:

I wonder why you would consider the Heartland Institute a reliable authority on sea level rise and not the peer-reviewed scientific literature?

Their post combines a too-short-period of measurement (sea level rise since 2006) with a claim that Glacial Isostatic Adjustment is “scientifically unjustified” despite all the science to the contrary and the common sense intuition that says if the land is rising (or falling), you need to compensate for that.

I can’t believe anybody listens to these guys. Do you believe then when they claim that there are no health effects from second-hand smoke? If not, what makes you think they’re being honest about the science this time?

How has Fox News picking up this story changed anything I said the first time around?

I wonder what else is going on that has not been noticed by the press.

Well, since it took Fox News over six weeks to beat up a news story out of a change that was publicly announced on the University of Colorado’s website, I can see why you’d be concerned if you rely on them as your source of scientific knowledge.

I can’t help but be amused at how important you seem to think a change of 0.3 mm/year is. If this correction to “account for the fact that the global ocean basins are getting slightly larger over time as mantle material moves from under the oceans into previously glaciated regions on land” really bothers you, then “simply subtract 0.3 mm/year if you prefer to not include the GIA correction.”

My goodness.

 

[JasonSB]

More data fakery. Unreal!!!

“Unreal” is correct, although perhaps not in the sense you intended.

And Jason hasn’t picked up on it.

… despite addressing this the first time you raised this exact same issue.

How strange.

How strange, indeed.

Oh wait — I see that treating a Fox News article about a story you already brought up as if it is new is not enough, now you’re actually going to copy-and-paste the entire article that vz71 already linked to just to make sure???

Changing Tides: Research Center Under Fire for ‘Adjusted’ Sea-Level Data…

Yep, you are.

The irony, of course, is that I seem to be the only one who actually read both articles.

I suppose if you guys can’t even be bothered to read your own links then I can’t be surprised that you ignore what I write.

Read more:

What more is there to read? You quoted the whole thing.

 

[JasonSB]

There is no end to this!

Apparently.

 

[JasonSB]

Sorry kimmielittle, it was hard to find a legitimate attempt to address my comments amongst all the mockery and insults so I’ll address just this one:

Peer review of science requires - it to be examined from all sides - not in a vacuum. AND you know this.

Firstly, please do not assert that I know something. It adds nothing to your argument and merely raises the suspicion that I’m being duplicitous.

Secondly, a citation in support of your claim about what “peer review requires” would be useful in supporting your argument. As it is, it’s merely an assertion from somebody who has clearly never conducted peer review nor been subject to it coupled with a claim that I know you are correct, perhaps in a bizarre attempt to lend authority to your claim.

My claim, in response to your question “Can you document ANY Peer review?”, was that the report itself is a review of the science by scientific peers.

To dispute what I actually said, you need to demonstrate either that the experts assembled by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences are not, in fact, qualified to assess the science (i.e. not “peers”), or that they have not actually reviewed the science (e.g. by showing their report is inconsistent with it). Giving history lessons on the word “Propaganda” is neither.

Now, you seem determined to argue that the report iself is not peer reviewed, which is bizarre on the face of it, because there has been no suggestion that this report was itself subject to independent peer review by submission to a scientific journal. It is, as I said, the result of the Vatican assembling a team of scientists from a wide range of backgrounds and asking them what the science says — as opposed to, say, copying-and-pasting verbatim non-peer-reviewed blog postings and reports from right-wing think tanks and PR firms funded by Exxon Mobil and the Koch Brothers who spent years telling everyone that tobacco was harmless, which is something that you’re more familiar with.

So arguing what constitutes “peer review” is pointless because the report is exactly as I characterised it and so far all you’ve done is attack strawmen rather than disprove what I said.

Having said that, your assertion about what “peer review” is is also false when it comes to peer-reviewed scientific literature, because peer review certainly does not require a publication “to be examined from all sides - not in a vacuum”. A journal with good reviewing practices might go out of its way to find reviewers who are likely to challenge a paper, but as the recently-retracted Wegman paper on shoddy scholarship and poor peer-review practices ironically demonstrated — by itself being a perfect example of shoddy scholarship and poor peer-review — this is not always the case.

Interestingly, while attacking all those strawmen, you seem to have ignored a key issue, so let me ask directly:

Why did you accuse me of throwing “objectivity out the window” and throwing “garbage to promote [my] causes” for daring to mention and accurately quote extracts from a report taken from the Vatican’s own website, on a Catholic forum?

Why is it acceptable for you to quote verbatim the musings of people who ask for and receive funding from the fossil fuel industry specifically to promote their cause, but unacceptable for me to quote a report published by the Vatican?

What bizarre world do we live in where quoting from the Vatican’s own website on a Catholic forum is reason enough to abuse someone?

 

[JasonSB]

It’s a shame, to me, that FOI has to be used to uncover what hasn’t been told.

Or, in this case, simply reading the public announcement on their website.

Why stick to the facts when the claims you make up sound so much better, eh?

And what’s a detailed explanation of what they’re doing and why in comparison to a laywer’s claim of “tomfoolery”?

The bizarre thing is that according to vz71 and Monte we need to correct for these changes in the surface of the Earth in order to calculate mean sea level accurately, but at the same time stories about actually correcting of these changes in the surface of the Earth are noteworthy examples of “data fakery” because a lawyer working for the Heartland Institute says so.

What’s particularly amusing, given your earlier comments about genetic modification, is that not only does Heartland have a long history of promoting the interests of the tobacco industry, they also campaign in support of genetically engineered crops and products! Apparently that is no obstacle when it comes to unsubstantiated accusations of “tomfoolery” and only an issue when you contribute to a report on the Vatican’s website.

 

[vz71]

Pehaps I missed it…please specify the specific location within the paper or better still quote the pertinent part.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day…

I think it would be instructive for you to read it carefully yourself and try to understand it and then ask questions if it still doesn’t leap out at you.

Here are some hints to get you started:

How is global mean sea level reconstruction with tide gauges similar to global temperature reconstruction with thermometers?

What techniques are used to detect, correct for, and account for residual random and systematic errors, as well as discontinuities in the record?

In the face of asking for specific information, you are attempting to hide behind some high-minded platitude.

So let me address the platitude.

You have no fish.

 

[vz71]

The bizarre thing is that according to vz71 and Monte we need to correct for these changes in the surface of the Earth in order to calculate mean sea level accurately, but at the same time stories about actually correcting of these changes in the surface of the Earth are noteworthy examples of “data fakery” because a lawyer working for the Heartland Institute says so.

They simply added in. The explanation is ostensibly provided as correcting for sea level changes, but they did not include any type of calculation to come to their conclusion, they simply threw it in.
That is not a correction, that is a distortion.

 

[Ender]

Correct. In fact, as I showed before, the sea levels have been rising for a long time now (still rising due to the end of the last ice age):

The charts you provided (Vidarholmi and Connecticut) show changes in meters so perhaps that’s too large a scale, but neither chart looks anything like a graph of temperature over those times. If temperature directly correlates with sea level shouldn’t the charts have somewhat similar shapes? After all, if the rise in sea level in the last 150 years is attributed to rising temperatures then why don’t we see any sea level change due to the MWP and LIA? Global temps during the MWP were comparable to today’s temp 1 - why was the sea level lower then than now?

1 - Loehle, C. and McCulloch, J.H. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy & Environment 19: 93-100.

As you can see from the graph above, clearly the rate has accelerated during the last 100+ years compared to the thousand+ years before

That is what the graph shows, but as the graph (apparently) doesn’t correspond to temperature, I’m not sure what it means. There also seems to be some disagreement as to what the historical tide values actually were since the following description doesn’t describe what your charts show.

…scientists have deduced the four phases of sea-level development: From 200 BC to 1000 AD, the water level remained relatively stable. Starting in the 11th century, it rose for 400 years by about five centimeters per century, which was due to the Medieval Warm Period. Then there was another stable period with a cooler climate, which lasted until the late 19th century, as the researchers report in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

thegwpf.org/science-news/3267-new-sea-level-study-divides-climate-researchers-.html

(I actually think that’s the wrong approach to take because by not including something you are stating that you are certain it is unimportant, but unfortunately the IPCC is very conservative by its very nature — it has to get countries like Saudi Arabia to sign off on the conclusions and they have proven to be very stubborn in the past.)

This is an aside - but I don’t understand this comment. Are you saying the IPCC has to get countries to agree about what the science says and if they were to oppose something their vote would override the facts?

As I’ve said before, if you want a simple, first-order approximation of what we can expect from CO2 levels as high as they are now, then look at what the world was like last time they were this high: “global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland”.

But the last time temperatures were this high was the MWP and sea levels were nothing like that. What drives sea level: temperature or CO2?

Ender

 

[kimmielittle]

Firstly, please do not assert that I know something. It adds nothing to your argument and merely raises the suspicion that I’m being duplicitous.

Are you or are you not a scientist? You say you are…then, I assume that you can tell that the people listed are CO-WRITERS. This These CO-writers - Are Clearly identified as Co-Writers… within the document ]… you have attempted but failed ] to pass off as Peer review.

Secondly, a citation in support of your claim about what “peer review requires” would be useful in supporting your argument. As it is, it’s merely an assertion from somebody who has clearly never conducted peer review nor been subject to it coupled with a claim that I know you are correct, perhaps in a bizarre attempt to lend authority to your claim.

It is not my authority in question, nor my credibility. If you don’t see that Co-Writers are not the same as Peer review.

Peer review is independent of Authors Or so it is supposed to be …but not done within many “AGW Teams” it seems…see CRU emails ] lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/climategate-emails.pdf

A peer review is a documented, critical review performed by peers [defined in the USNRC report as “a person having technical expertise in the subject matter to be reviewed (or a subset of the subject matter to be reviewed) to a degree at least equivalent to that needed for the original work”]** who are independent of the work being reviewed. The peer’s independence from the work being reviewed means that the peer, a) was not involved as a participant, supervisor, technical reviewer, or advisor in the work being reviewed, and b) to the extent practical, has sufficient freedom from funding considerations to assure the work is impartially reviewed.**

A peer review is an in-depth critique of assumptions, calculations, extrapolations, alternate interpretations, methodology, and acceptance criteria employed, and of conclusions drawn in the original work. Peer reviews confirm the adequacy of the work.

In this definition, the term peer review has the following characteristics:

expert (including national/international perspectives on the issue),

independent,

external, and

technical.

Most importantly, peer reviews must be carded out by independent reviewers who are experts in the technical issues relevant to the projects under review. Such reviewers must be highly qualified and independent.

nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309059437&page=9

These above criteria hold true for most scientific journals - associations - government agencies.

It would be called Peer reviewed not ** PAL reviewed**. What we have here is,** PAL reviewed**.

This is not the first time that The Pontifical Academy of Science has passed off PAL Reviewed hmmm “Science”…OR has staged a platform for Activist serving / disguised as science.

Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the Academy’s chancellor, One of the Co-writers / signers of this report ] told the Catholic News Service that the aim was to gather “an objective group of experts” in a search for “scientific clarity” on the subject.

That “Objective group”…

But the 40 or so participants listed on the academy’s website[3] are all GM supporters, with many well known for their extreme pro-GM views or having vested interests in GMO adoption.

powerbase.info/index.php/SpinWatch_condemns_Vatican_GM_event_as_a_“charade_by_vested_interests”

Now, you seem determined to argue that the report iself is not peer reviewed, which is bizarre on the face of it, because there has been no suggestion that this report was itself subject to independent peer review by submission to a scientific journal.

You admit then, that this is “'opinion editorial” of these CO-Writers?

An “opinion editorial” issued by The Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Used to propagate move ] the faith.

If it isn’t a scientific paper It doesn’t meet the criteria - lack of citations - lack of data used - lack of transparency of sources ]…It’s what?

AND a somewhat …mysterious use of claims.

Most notable the call for the world to decrease 50% to protect the Himalayas… A somewhat dubious repeat of the IPCC claims - expressly held by R.K. Pachauri ( A CO-Writer of this opinion-editorial - from India - And IPCC Head ) ]

An honest approach would have been demand Catholics to call on India especially ] to clean up it’s air quality and protect the Himalayas. In this report, they do not do. Nor do the call on Indians to help provide cook stoves - TWO simple but almost immediate ways to “protect” the Himalayas.

Clearly, the current snow-albedo-altering impact of B[lack ] C [arbon] wafting over the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau vastly overshadows its direct radiative warming impact, which suggests that the most logical way to strive to avert the melting of Himalayan glaciers would be to reduce Asian BC emissions, which would also have a huge positive impact on the health of people living throughout this part of the world, particularly since Ramanathan and Carmichael (2008) note that the majority of BC emissions (60%) arise from “cooking with biofuels such as wood, dung and crop residue” and from “open biomass burning (associated with deforestation and crop residue burning),” and since Venkataraman et al. (2005) note that control of BC emissions through cleaner cooking technologies alone could help in “reducing health risks to several hundred million users.”

References

Reference
Kopacz, M., Mauzerall, D.L., Wang, J., Leibensperger, E.M., Henze, D.K. and Singh, K. 2011. Origin and radiative forcing of black carbon transported to the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 11: 2837-2852.

Continued