Comments on: The Age of the Age of Stupid

By: George Carty

George Carty — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:38:31 +0000

No John Bailo, I think the whole argument of the Climate Resistance site is that The People have not been sold on AGW, but that the Establishment is using AGW propaganda in pursuit of its own ends…

By: John Bailo

John Bailo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:42:21 +0000

Unfortunately, Naturogenic Global Warmers have made the classic mistake of overestimating the intelligence of The People.

While we argue with facts and logic, Al Gore shows clips of polar bears.

Given a society with the maturity of a 6 year old, and even less of an attention span…really, who would you have expected to win?

By: geoffchambers

geoffchambers — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:19:13 +0000

to SJones at #10
Thanks for your polite and reasoned objections to my proposal for analysing the Annan report. I’m not used to that on Comment is Free. And I’ve no problem with you questioning my motives, since I agree with the editors here that the the battle is not so much against the global warming thesis as such, but rather against the idea that the debate is a purely scientific one among experts. I’m not a scientist engaged in some value-free search for objective truth, I’m just a citizen with certain stubborn ideas about the rôle of the media in a democracy, and I don’t like seeing intelligent journalists in a respected paper (some of them with science PhDs) pretending to believe tosh, presumably in the service of some higher moral purpose, like saving the planet.

As an example of the level of reasoning in the report, take this, from p15:
“More than one third of the world’s population are [sic] physically vulnerable to climate change”. This statement is backed up by a footnote referring to article in the Independent which quotes a study by a consultancy specialising in the mapping of risk. The article states:
“The originality of the new study is that it does not predict global warming’s impacts … Instead, it looks at how countries are fitted to meet them. ‘We’re not saying anything about the changing climate,’ said one of the report’s authors. ‘We’re saying: … If there were an impact, how vulnerable would the country be?’”
So the source for the headline claiming that one third of the world’s population are vulnerable to climate change is a report whose authors specifically say that they know nothing about the changing climate. That was just one footnote out of 200+ which I bothered to look up.

This report is junk. Oxfam the IPCC, and the other organisations which have lent their authority to it should be ashamed. To wait for this supposedly expert document to come under scrutiny (presumably from more experts) is a negation of normal democratic practice. It’s precisely up to ordinary citizens – Guardian readers, Oxfam contributors, voters – to let the “authorities” know that there is no need to be hypnotised by the pseudoscience.

By: Editors

Editors — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:17:26 +0000

Sjones – ‘it will only lead to more questions, which can only be addressed by those working in the field or by experts.’

That’s possibly the worst argument for not scrutinising the product of a think tank that we’ve ever seen.

Heaven forfend that people with influence over the public agenda should be accountable and answerable to the public. The whole world would surely come tumbling down.

By: SJones

SJones — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:07:40 +0000

With respect Mr Chambers, I cannot accept that picking apart a report like this by non experts will have much validity. You may be be able to highlight weak arguments or even incorrect syntax, but ultimately it will only lead to more questions, which can only be addressed by those working in the field or by experts.
This is not to say that the report should not be questioned, nor that its reliability be substantiated. I think you can rest assured it will come under scrutiny, particularly if it is to stand as a key document

I am simply questioning your motives, which judging from the nature of your comments, seem to veer toward the tendency to ridicule this report and undermine its conclusions, rather than a demand for an objective analysis.

By: geoffchambers

geoffchambers — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:04:46 +0000

to SJones at #6
You ask why I am worried about the Annan Report, and you follow up with a number of questions and suggestions as to what I might do, some of them obviously ironical. We are far outside the sphere of peer-reviewed science here. I imagine your reference to field work, first hand accounts and observations is just your polite way of saying “What are your qualifications for disagreeing with x thousand climate scientists?” etc. My answer is: none. The whole point of my numerous interventions on blogs like the Guardian’s Comment is Free is to demonstrate that what passes for science jounalism there is often so trivially inadequate that any non-specialist with an ounce of reasoning power can demolish the arguments put forward, with no need of the specialised knowledge required to criticise the peer-reviewed science. (C-R does the same thing better and at greater length here, but unfortunately to a smaller audience).
I agree with Lee Jones at #1 that it would be useful to prepare a thorough analysis of tha Annan report, not because of him (and your suggestion that I attack the man is really out of place on a blog like this) but simply because the Guardian, and similar green-leaning media, have obviously decided that this is going to be one of their key reference documents in the propaganda wars leading up to the Copenhagen Conference. (They did the same thing with a recent MIT document forecasting temperature rises of 7°C by the end of the century. I bored myself silly pointing out over and over again that the report they cited was based on research financed by Exxon. It’s childish, but it might just shut them up).
And as I made clear in my comments here and on the Guardian articles, what is needed is not fieldwork and peer-reviewed science, just some simple internet spadework which any competent junior science correspondent could do. And this is the true nature of the political / media scandal which C-R treats at a more abstract level: it is unthinkable that a science journalist would dare to propose a critical treatment of global warming in Britain today.
(Look at the long-running farce of Ben Goldberg’s Bad Science column in the Guardian. Week after week he criticises journalists and their homeopathic / aroma-therapist friends, while in a parallel universe, over at Guardian Environment, other journalists and their climatologist/ carbon-trading friends are up to precisely the same tricks).

By: UK Sceptic

UK Sceptic — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:54:25 +0000

To SJones.

There’s this process called falsification. Scientists use it to prove/disprove theories. Why should it be unacceptable to inspect the claims made in the Annan report and test the science? Are you suggesting that Kofi Annan should be taken at his word and no investigation be made into the validity of his claims?

UN and Warmist consensus may operate by those principles but real science doesn’t.

By: SJones

SJones — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:29:04 +0000

To geoffchambers.
Why are worried that the Annan Report may gain any status as a key document in the global warming corpus? Are you afraid that that people might believe it?

Do you think that picking it apart will prove it to be untrue? Or is your motive simply to cast doubt on its authenticity? Given that the impact of climate change is somewhat difficult to measure, it shouldn´t be too difficult. Perhaps you should have a go at discrediting Kofi Annan while you are at it, something about how he is only in it for the money kind of thing.

Alternatively you could do some field work yourself. Go take a look, or at least talk to the people involved: those apparently affected and those who are working with the agencies that helped compile the report.

This would be considerably less boring than picking apart the report line by line, and may add an important ring of truth to your conclusions if you were to include some first hand accounts and observations.

By: snowdon

snowdon — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:49:32 +0000

Thanks for the quick reply. Of course, the 150,000 deaths a year has now moved up to 300,000. That figure comes from the GHF who initially didn’t put the report online because they are “the most disorganised humanitarian group I have ever come across” (G. Monbiot).

It is, however, now online at http://www.ghf-geneva.org. More of a brochure than a scientific report, really. The 300,000 estimate is addressed on p. 90, and that gives a reference (no. 21) which is the WHO’s 2004 report: The Global Burden of Disease. That is available here:

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GBD_report_2004update_full.pdf

And although I haven’t read it all, a quick search shows that it doesn’t mention ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ once. Any ideas?

By: Editors

Editors — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:55:54 +0000

Snowdon,

The graph was copied from the WHO’s 2002 The world health report 2002 – Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life .

http://www.who.int/whr/2002/en/index.html

The data in our table copies table 4.9 on page 98 of the full report.