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Saturday 30 January 2010

The BBC's environmental analysist is wriggling now.


I give you Roger Harrabin.

In his article about the so called Amazongate scandal, where it was reported that the IPCC had declared that the Amazonian rain forests were in imminent danger of dying due to a lack of rainfall, due to Global warming, he now appears to distance himself from it.

After the usual bluster he concludes with this:

I have tried to contact the lead author of Working Group II to ask why his team cited WWF not the journals - but without success so far.

My guess is that NGO reports often offer an easy synthesis of already-published evidence.

In my experience, NGO papers are often both accessible and accurate - though clearly written from a point of view.

But it is obvious that the next IPCC report will have to be much more meticulous about flagging up the provenance of its sources.

There will need to be more clarification of what is known as "grey" literature (not peer-reviewed) and IPCC panel participation.

It all points to the need for much greater transparency, though that will throw up issues of its own for a body striving to offer a coherent view to policymakers of an issue dominated by risk, uncertainty and values, rather that unambiguous science.

Just this week, for instance, there were two pieces of published research in Science and Nature suggesting that the very worse effects of climate change may have been overestimated.

The researchers of both papers say they are still concerned about man-made climate change, though.

The unfinished science of climate change goes on.

Full article here At the BBC

MEN ARE JUST HAPPIER PEOPLE

mr happy

NICKNAMES
· If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.
· If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla and Four-eyes.
EATING OUT

· When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in £20, even though it's only for £32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
· When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators..
MONEY

· A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.
· A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.
BATHROOMS

· A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel ..
· The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.
ARGUMENTS

· A woman has the last word in any argument.
· Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE
· A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
· A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS
· A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
· A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
MARRIAGE

· A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
· A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.

DRESSING UP
· A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
· A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.
NATURAL

· Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed..
· Women somehow deteriorate during the night.
OFFSPRING

· Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
· A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

A married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!

So he hoped it wouldn't be noticed, I suppose?

pachauri2

 

It really takes the biscuit.

Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists.

The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions.

It makes you wonder what else he hasn't been telling us.

And the article ends with this bit of bluster.

“And within three or four days, we were able to come up with a clear and a very honest and objective assessment of what had happened. So I think this presumption on your part or on the part of any others is totally wrong. We are certainly never — and I can say this categorically — ever going to do anything other than what is truthful and what upholds the veracity of science.”

Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Bring it on.

Full article in The Times