Aielyn said:
In other words, you were making assertions without any substantive evidence, on the basis of incomplete understanding of what you're talking about. Basically, the exact same thing you accuse them of. You are referring to the "assessment report" - what you have to realise is that, while it's being informed by scientists, it's a political report. It's a report that is released in order to influence policy, on the basis of science. And after 10 years of them saying "major catastrophe if we don't act" and getting no real reaction from policy-makers, it shouldn't surprise you that they stop wasting space in the report with the part where they try to emphasise the importance in that way. They instead leave it all in more scientific terminology, and let scientists within the major governmental science organisations explain it. The IPCC, which I have no doubt you're thinking of when you refer to "assessment report", isn't a scientific research body. It's a scientific aggregation body. They take research from other sources, and combine them into a report. Here's an experiment for you - go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.com.au) and search for "climate model prediction". Then restrict the search to "Since 2015". At the time of my posting this, there's "about 63,600 results". Of course, many of these aren't quite what we're looking for - predictions of impacts of climate on cotton yields in Greece, for instance. But there's more than enough to demonstrate, even at a glance, that they're most certainly still doing it. The reason you don't know about it is that the news isn't going to go "This just in, the predictions haven't changed". And as I recall, the main change in the IPCC report was aligning their reported numbers to the more standard reference confidence levels, rather than the more arbitrary levels they were previously using (it's standard to use 95% confidence, representing approximately two standard deviations, but they were using 90% confidence, which is something like 1.8 standard deviations). A higher confidence level produces a larger confidence interval, so the resulting lower bounds were lower (still showing warming, though). The fact that you keep throwing phrases like "alarmism" and "activism" shows me, though, that you're not going to listen to what I'm saying. Note that I'm more of an expert on this topic than most here, having a PhD in mathematical physics specialising in fluid flow and heat transfer. I haven't actually done climate modelling, so I wouldn't actually call myself an expert, but I have the tools necessary to completely understand the models at a fundamental level. But I'm sure you're confident in your understanding, on the basis of having read two or three abstracts and a heap of articles by anti-science people arguing that the climate isn't changing because it was hot yesterday where they live. |
Wow you're making some big assumptions about where I sit on this issue. I am more than happy to listen to what you are saying if you hold the qualifications you claim to. Physicists are exactly the types of people I try to learn from. Just so you know I don't claim to be an expert either, but I certainly don't listen to 'anti-science' people, whatever they are.
I don't just read the assessment report by the IPCC, I also try to read as many actual papers on the subject as possible. My understanding is obviously limited, but the easiest sources of information on climate change are proving to be the least accurate (media whether right or left wing, politicians etc).
The reason I use the term 'alarmism' is due to the alarmism that is present in the media, previous IPCC assessment reports and from politicians. It appears intended to alarm people, and maybe people should be alarmed. I don't use alarmism in a negative context unless it's unjustified. I'm not sure that they realise the millions of deaths that could result from energy poverty in the developing world as a result of demonising coal, and that has me quite alarmed.
Activism on the other hand implies bias. If you are writing a paper on something, people will want to know that you are as politically neutral on the subject as possible. Otherwise they will see only your bias and not your data. The same thing happens to people who take funding from Exxon Mobil and write a paper about the solar influence on climate. Nobody will take them seriously, even if their data is good. I don't listen to the likes of Willie Soon for this very reason. His data might be good - I don't know, I haven't read it because the bias is implied and I'm not qualified to test it. So being a member of an activist organisation should disqualify you from being part of the IPCC assessment report process, because you are advising people essentially about how alarmed they should be. I think the IPCC are realising that their credibility is at stake and are taking the necessary measures to fix the problem.
Your last sentence was particularly sarcastic, so I'm assuming I somehow hurt your feelings, but I can assure you that you are wrong. All I am after is the truth, but on this issue people tend to get emotional. Will AGW likely kill more people than energy poverty? Then we should focus our efforts on reducing emisisons. Will energy poverty likely kill more people? Then let the developing world use their fossil fuels until they are strong enough to withstand a transition to renewables. By then renewable technology should be far more advanced anyway, so long as there are people left to enjoy it.
I don't consider myself left or right wing, conservative or liberal. I consider myself pro-human. If it's good for people, I'm for it. Just so you know that's about the only thing I am unwavering on.
