Exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the threat from global warming risk undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and contain climate change, senior scientists have told The Times. All senior scientists, or just some cherry-picked senior scientists?
Environmental lobbyists, politicians, researchers and journalists who distort climate science to support an agenda erode public understanding and play into the hands of sceptics, according to experts including a former government chief scientist.
Excessive statements about the decline of Arctic sea ice, severe weather events and the probability of extreme warming in the next century detract from the credibility of robust findings about climate change, they said. Yeah, I guess it all seems kinda silly now, all those scientists making comments to this end. Or am I misrememebering and they were just hippies wearing lab coats testifying in front of Al Gore?
Such claims can easily be rebutted by critics of global warming science to cast doubt on the whole field. They also confuse the public about what has been established as fact, and what is conjecture. Established? By a faulty scientific process which has misplaced all the original data and can't seem to duplicate it again?
The experts all believe that global warming is a real phenomenon with serious consequences, and that action to curb emissions is urgently needed. I guess you're only an expert if you believe in global warming.
They fear, however, that the contribution of natural climate variations towards events such as storms, melting ice and heatwaves is too often overlooked, and that possible scenarios about future warming are misleadingly presented as fact.
I worry a lot that NGOs [non-governmental organisations] are very much in the habit of doing exactly that, said Professor Sir David King, director of the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and a former government chief scientific adviser. Different strokes for different folks. These guys are just scared out in the open, and you guys are just hiding behind an abuse of the scientific process.
When people overstate happenings that arent necessarily climate change-related, or set up as almost certainties things that are difficult to establish scientifically, it distracts from the science we do understand. The danger is they can be accused of scaremongering. Also, we can all become described as kind of left-wing greens. Is green a code word for lunatic?
Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said: It isnt helpful to anybody to exaggerate the situation. Its scary enough as it is. That was Vicky's last known comment, as shortly aftwards she saw her own shadow and ran screaming out the emergency exit.
She was particularly critical of claims made by scientists and environmental groups two years ago, when observations showed that Arctic sea ice had declined to the lowest extent on record, 39 per cent below the average between 1979 and 2001. This led Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, to say that Arctic ice was in a downward spiral and may have passed the point of no return.
Dr Pope said that while climate change was a factor, normal variations also played a part, and it was always likely that ice would recover a little in subsequent years, as had happened. It was the long-term downward trend that mattered, rather than the figures for any one year, she added.
The problem with saying that weve reached a tipping point is that when the extent starts to increase again as it has the sceptics will come along and say, Well, its stopped, she said. This is why its important were as objective as we can be, and use all the available evidence to make clear whats actually happening, because neither of those claims is right.
Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford, said: Some claims that were made about the ice anomaly were misleading. A lot of people said this is the beginning of the end of Arctic ice, and of course it recovered the following year and everybody looked a bit silly. Dr Allen said that predictions of how the world was likely to warm also needed to be framed carefully. While there was little doubt that the Earth would get hotter, there were still many uncertainties about the precise extent and regional impact.
I think we need to be very careful about purporting to be able to supply very detailed and apparently accurate information about how the climate will be in 50 or 100 years time, when what were really giving is a possible future climate, he added.
Were not in a position to say how likely it is and what the chances are of it being different. Theres an understandable tendency to want to make climate change real for people and tell them whats going to happen in their postcode, and thats very dangerous because it gets beyond the level on which current models can operate. You mean like when all the polar ice melts, how the water level will go up until only Mt. Ararat will be safe? Is this supposed to happen when the last cubic inch melts at the poles, because I thought we were almost to that point already.
Chris Huntingford, of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said: I think the research scientists in general are extremely cautious about making projections for the future, but that caution is vital. We dont dispute that warming is happening, but its important that the NGOs and other people interested in the issue dont always pick the high scenario and present it as fact. They may be extremely cautious about the present and future, but they seem to have no problem drawing conclusions from questionable historical data.
Temperature trends of the past two decades have also been widely mis-interpreted to support particular points of view, the scientists said. Rapid warming in the 1990s, culminating in the hottest year on record in 1998, was erroneously used to suggest that climate change was accelerating. Since then, temperatures have stabilised, prompting sceptics to claim that global warming has stopped. This implies that skeptics thought global warming was real in the first place. Good try.
In 1998, people thought the world was going to end, temperatures were going up so much, Dr Pope said. People pick up whatever makes their argument, but this works both ways. Its the long-term trend that counts, which is continuing and inexorable. But The Goracle sez we have less than five years! By the way, where did Al get his figures for global temps before 100 years ago? For that matter, where did he get his figures since then?
#2
Sea level has been rising an average of about 1/3 of an inch per year for the last 12,000 years; Tampa, Florida was several hundred miles inland. Of course 100,000 years before that Florida looked more like the Bahamas.
#3
The headline is true, the exaggerated claims certainly caused my logical defenses to discount a lot of what the 'blame people' movement has been saying.
Having said that, this comes off as a way as a blanket excuse and cover. Yeah, that science you disagree with, that was overblown, but this other science over here!
Something to be thankful for come this November.
Aiming to dramatically slash costs, Time Inc. will lay off roughly 540 employees starting next week, company insiders say.
The cuts will be staggered over two weeks and wrap up right before Thanksgiving so that the magazine publisher can take a charge against earnings in the fourth quarter.
Layoffs are expected to be 6 percent of the workforce, which is now estimated to have shrunk to 9,000 employees worldwide. But even that number is not finalized and could end up bigger.
Last year, the company cut 600 people (or 6 percent) from its 10,000 employees and took a charge against earnings of $176 million.
The News and Finance Group, which includes Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Fortune Small Business and Money, is expected to be the hardest-hit part of the company. The unit will have a small reprieve: under a contract with the Newspaper Guild the company will first have to seek buyout volunteers.
The London-based IPC Group and the Birmingham, Ala.-based Southern Progress, whose flagship title is Southern Living, escaped major hits in the round of layoffs unveiled in the fourth quarter of last year. The division, headed by Executive Vice President Sylvia Auton, will not be so lucky this time around, sources predicted.
The scale of the layoffs means Time Inc. holds the distinction of the biggest mass firing in publishing this year, outpacing the 460-plus involuntary terminations at rival Condé Nast.
Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore and Editor-in-Chief John Huey are keeping the total number they aim to cut quiet. Insiders now say they may opt to go the Condé Nast route and not reveal the total number at all, despite the bad publicity Condé racked up over four weeks of layoffs.
In the areas covered by the union agreement, if Time Inc. doesn't get sufficient volunteers after two weeks to meet its target cuts, then the involuntary firings will begin. There is nothing to prevent the company from instituting cuts immediately in areas not covered by the agreement.
People and Entertainment Weekly are among the magazines covered by the Guild contract, but most of the other titles, such as InStyle and Real Simple, are not.
The company has not opened any negotiations with union representatives, which indicates that it won't offer any sweeteners for voluntary departures.
"We haven't had any discussion this time around," said Bobby Townsend, the Newspaper Guild representative at Time Inc. "Sometimes we don't get a lot of advance notice before layoffs are announced."
Last time around, the union was told about the firings less than 24 hours before they were announced.
The Guild contract provides laid-off employees with two weeks of pay for each year of service, plus some slightly larger packages for employees of 20 or 25 years.
The Guild unit at Time Inc. has shrunk to just 300 members, but often the pay and severance packages are used as the benchmark for the non-unionized US-based workers in other areas of the company, as well.
#6
Snowy: Do you mean in theory or in practice? A couple of man years just went into a small table of numbers we handed off to the tracker alignment guys this Wednesday. But we were trying to be accurate...
Posted by: James ||
10/31/2009 12:13 Comments ||
Top||
It's now Obama's war, his jobless rate, his debt, etc Read slowly, so you can enjoy Mark's incredible use of language as he speaks "truth to power."
Valerie Jarrett announced the other day that "we're going to speak truth to power."
Who's Valerie Jarrett? She's "Senior Adviser" to the president of the United States -- i.e., the leader of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth. You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to "speak truth to power" to. But I suppose if you're as eager to do so as his Senior Adviser, there's always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Adviser has selected targets closer to home: "I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we're going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death."
Ah, right. People "putting up signs." Can't have that, can we? The most powerful woman in the inner circle of the most powerful man on Earth has decided to speak truth to powerful people standing in the street with handwritten placards saying "THIS GRAN'MA ISN'T SHOVEL READY." Was it only a week ago that I wrote about this administration's peculiar need for domestic enemies?
The Senior Adviser seems to have forgotten that sheis the power. Admittedly, this is a recurring lapse on the part of the administration. There was Barack Obama only the other day, blaming everything on the president -- no, no, silly, not him, the other fellow, the Designated Fall Guy who stepped down as head of state in January to accept the new constitutional position of Blame Czar. Musing on problems in Afghanistan, Obama blamed the "long years of drift" under his predecessor. The new president -- OK, newish president -- has been Drifter-in-Chief for almost a year but he's too busy speaking truth to the former power to get on top of the situation. It could be a while yet. In his more self-regarding moments, such as his speech to the United Nations, he gives the strong impression that the "long years of drift" began in 1776.
Rocco Landesman, head honcho at the National Endowment for the Arts, seems closer to the reality of the situation. In his keynote address to the 2009 "Grantmakers in the Arts" conference, Landesman hailed Obama as "the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar". He didn't mean a "powerful writer" as in a compelling voice, gripping narrative, vivid characterization, command of language, etc. He meant a "powerful writer" as in Caesar was king of the world, and now Obama is. He came, he saw, he stimulated: "If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists."
I suppose so. He could invade somewhere and force the natives to accept degrading roles in NEA-funded performance art. He could take out the Iranian nuclear program by carpet-bombing it with unreadable literary novels. That is, if you "accept the premise" that the United States is the most powerful country in the world.
Rocco Landesman may, but it's not clear, from his actions (or inactions) in Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere, that the president does. But, even so, it seems an odd pitch to "American artists." Rocco Landesman, Speaking Goof to Power, isn't the first Obama groupie to enjoy the kinky frisson of groveling obsequiousness, but he's set an impressive new standard in public revelation thereof. Rocco's aunt, Fran Landesman, is the great lyricist of "Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most" as well as "The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men." But surely there are few sadder middle-age men than her nephew, prostrating himself before his master as the most literate global colossus in two millennial.
Meanwhile, Larry David is now doing televised NEA exhibits on his HBO show "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Christians are said to be "angry" at him because of an episode in which, after he accidentally sprays his urine on a picture of Jesus, his assistant mistakes the droplets for tears and calls in her mother to witness the miracle of Christ weeping. Ha-ha! Oh, those brave transgressive artists! Of course, Christians aren't "angry" in the sense that two U.S. residents arrested last week are. The pair -- one an American citizen, the other Canadian -- were so "angry" about the Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that they hatched a plot to kill the artist and his editor. As many commentators pointed out, Mr. David's splashy stunt is a dreary provocation: It's easy to be provocative with people who can't be provoked. If he were to start urinating in a more Mecca-ly direction, he'd find an entirely more motivated crowd waiting for him at the stage door.
But I liked the point made by the Anchoress, a writer at the magazine First Things: Putting Muhammad, et al aside, if Larry David had a yen to urinate hither and yon, wouldn't it have been "braver" to have done it to the religious icon du jour? That's to say, Barack Obama. And then maybe Ashton Kutcher could have marveled at how even Obama's image was empathizing tearily with all 687 million Americans without health insurance. Or, alternatively, dribbling warm champagne from his Norwegian Nobel banquet toast. C'mon, Larry. Sure, you might not have a career afterward, but, unlike any Islamo-provocations, you're not gonna get killed. Just fired, and probably damned as a racist. But at least you wouldn't be a simpering suck-up to power like Rocco Landesman and the other creeps.
At some point the Caesar cult has to manifest itself in an achievement -- I mean a real achievement, not merely some dud prize handed out by Norwegian Lefties. Afghanistan is his now: Notwithstanding "years of drift," whether it winds up as victory or defeat is his call. It's Obama's war. It's Obama's economy. The stimulus bill is his stimulus, and for $787 billion it created 30,000 new jobs (according to the government) or (according to the Associated Press) 25,000. Either way, you do the math. It's Obama's unemployment rate, Obama's dollar, Obama's debt. Pace Valerie Jarrett, the truth is you are the power. And those on the receiving end of it are going to be speaking a lot louder in the months ahead.
It's not easy striking the right balance, is it? He doesn't seem to hesitate when it comes to screwing up America though.
Seven years ago, Dick Cheney proclaimed: "The Taliban is out of business, permanently." Last week, the former vice-president came close to accusing Barack Obama of lacking the guts to "do what it takes" to win the war against the very same Taliban.
Some time in the next two weeks, Mr Obama is likely to bring months of agonised deliberation to a close when he decides how many more troops to send to Afghanistan. The number, which could be as high as the 40,000 recommended by Stanley McChrystal, the general in charge, will be analysed minutely for what it can achieve on the ground in Afghanistan.
But as Mr Cheney's contrasting observations illustrate, the more influential war is being fought politically on the ground in America. Somehow, the compulsions of US politics have brought the candidate who electrified America by promising to pull out of Iraq to a position where many of his most ardent backers fear he may be about to get America into another Vietnam.
The decision, much like the one by Lyndon Johnson to step up involvement in Indochina, could prove to be the most important Mr Obama takes in office. It presents America's most liberal president in a generation with a classic dilemma between guns and butter that is only likely to deepen, whatever choice he makes.
"What began as an almost reflex debating stance on the campaign trail -- that George W. Bush had started the wrong war in Iraq and that Hillary Clinton had voted for it -- has brought us to this moment," says Daniel Markey at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Only now is the president really analysing the implications of escalation in Afghanistan. And they are potentially paralysing."
Continued on Page 49
#1
"will also be hotting up with midterm congressional elections..."
I feel the need to say that I think the phrase "hotting up" sounds absolutely STUPID!!!!!
The term is "heating up". Heat, heating, heated. A perfectly good verb. Trying to turn the adjective/adverb "hot" into a verb just seems idiotic and pointless. Very disappointing to see a semi-reputable British institution like the Financial Times using such sloppy style.
[end rant]
#2
But as Mr Cheney's contrasting observations illustrate, the more influential war is being fought politically on the ground in America.
Pompey's threat was not the Gauls or Hellas Asian Princes or even the mobs of Rome. Pompey knew his real threat was Caesar. The one American who stands to threaten by social hierarchical standing over The One, is in Asia.
If The One reinforces his enemy in Asia and his enemy is successful, then The One does not profit from that success, but his enemy does.
If The One cuts the strength of his enemy in Asia then any failure is his and not his enemy's.
That means The One must do neither for as long as possible, playing for time, for an opening to reduce his enemy.
#3
"Heating up" is American. "Hotting up" is British. In a British newspaper it is perfectly legitimate to use a British formulation, Scooter.
Separately, when the need of the time is to fight an foreign war, domestic concerns have to be modified. If Mr. Obama can't handle reality, he shouldn't have run for the most reality-based job in the world. "The buck stops here," is a description, not a folksy saying burnt into a piece of old barnwood hanging on the wall.
#5
Many of the liberals who populate northern Virginia around Washington are expected to sit on their hands -- a sense of disillusion already sinking in.
#6
Much like LBJ, Mr Obama is surrounded by the best and the brightest, many of whom are urging the president to take the advice of the military, which appears to be nearly unanimous.
The Washington Post via Bob Woodward flogged this "MacNamara's Ghost" meme about two weeks ago. Same with the NYT's Cohen, though as befits a lesser talent, it was a lesser display.
What was also mentioned, directly by Cohen and suggested by Woodward, was the fall of South Vietnam when Congress cut that nation off at the knees.
Poor libs - caught between their baser instincts and the growing realization that they're the Power they once fought against.
#7
"President Johnson had relatively few military associations as Senator or Vice President. As President, he had a mistrust of the military...There was no such closeness of contact between the Commander-in-Chief and his responsible advisers in uniform as existed between President Roosevelt, President Truman or President Eisenhower and their Chiefs of Staff
...The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was the only member of the Joint Chiefs who say the President with any regularity in the crucial years 1965-1968 [but even he] rarely saw the President alone; only about once in every eight or nine White House visits. He was almost always accompanied either by the Secretary of Defense or his deputy, who never hesitated to "second guess" the Chairman and to dilute and contradict his statements. The individual members of the Joint Chiefs - the responsible heads of the fighting services: the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines - seldom saw the President privately. In the crucial twelve months from June 1965, to June 1966, when large numbers of US ground troops were committed to Vietnam..The Chief of the Staff of the Army saw the President twice." - Hanson. W. Baldwin, Strategy for Tomorrow (NY; Harper&Row, 1970), pgs 13-15
#8
I doubt any British schoolmarm would approve of "hotting up" in a grammar class, TW. Somehow this horrible bit of slang seems to have entered the mainstream over there and I'm sad it has won the approval of editors at a newspaper that should know better.
#9
Nobody doubts Mr Obama's intellectual ability to parse the constant advice he is soliciting.
Bull. Where did this meme about Zero's intellectual ability come from? Can anyone actually site evidence of his intelligence and intellectual accomplishments?
As far as I can tell he is a gifted con man in the political area with all the morals and compassion of a hit-man for a drug cartel.
Whatever the basic, unadorned facts of the Israeli-Arab conflict, they are continually distorted in favour of the Arab side by pressure groups like Amnesty International and media groups like the BBC and CNN with their tremendous reach, power and influence.
CNN gives an extreme example of this distortion by pumping out blatant propaganda (pun intended) on the water issue, raised by Amnesty, which claimed that Israel was depriving the Palestinians of water.
Here's Paula Hancocks:
These two water wells here in Jabalya in northern Gaza were targeted on day one of Israel's military operation here in Gaza, which started back in December.
I guess she imagines Israeli military commanders sitting around a table and deciding that one of their very first targets would be Gaza water so that Hamas members, dying of thirst, would eventually be unable to fight.
As you can see it is completely destroyed.
CNN wants you to see what it wants to see.
It would have supplied water, we're told, to up to 40 000 people in this area.
"Would have?" Is she herself saying, or has she been "told" that this was a brand new installation, not yet in operation, that the Israelis deliberately targeted as a war strategy? And why doesn't she name the teller of this tale?
Now the water board tells us what they're trying to do now is recycle this material they can't rebuild here to try rebuild somewhere else....
Someone help me out here. There's apparently plenty water there but they are going to rebuild somewhere else, first having to look for another source of water? Why would they do that? The camera has followed her along past the alleged destruction and now she pauses next to a few main water pipes, apparently to allow the camera to dwell on more evidence of the "complete destruction."
Perhaps CNN and Paula Hancocks would like to explain how the Israelis managed to neatly disconnect these apparently undamaged pipes from whatever they were connected to by targeting them with whatever they allegedly targeted them with?
Would it ever cross what there is of a CNN reporter's mind, that those missing sections might now be in Israel as the remains of exploded Kassam rockets?
....because it's very difficult to get materials across the Israeli border into Gaza.
I wonder why. Hancocks doesn't. Neither does she wonder about the fact that Gaza also has a border with its Egyptian brothers.
Then she goes on to the Amnesty International "report."
The whole clip takes just over a minute with an extraordinary amount of anti-Israel propaganda packed into it. And there is no mention at all of any Israeli response to the Amnesty allegations or the "targeting" of Jabaliya's water supply, as if the Israeli side to this story simply doesn't exist.
This is CNN obediently relaying Pallywood to its audience worldwide, without any thought or editing whatsoever. Need something to back up and emphasise the Amnesty attack on Israel? Look, here's a destroyed water installation our Palestinian friends found for us! And not only has it been destroyed, it must have been deliberately destroyed by the Israelis because the Palestinians said so!
No wonder so many people have the standard tunnel vision of Israel as the wicked colonial occupier and the Palestinians the innocent victims. Mod note: Link was incorrect. Good content and good comments, moved to Opinion.
#1
Thanks for posting my article and for the kind comments, Mod. Hell, I dunno what happened with the link. The video clip was titled Lack of water in Gaza camps and I wanted to see what you guys thought of it because it seemed doubtful to me that the installation had actually come under attack. I'm not clued up on these matters, but it seemed to be staged. I'll try the link again:
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the threat from global warming risk undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and contain climate change, senior scientists have told The Times. 
