What Environmental Reporting Leaves Out

[CRH]

23. Addendum to post 22, ...

An addendum, ...

Sorry I was called away mid post and couldn't finish and before I could edit the above post.

I do have a few other points to make.

In your original rebuttal post #15 you certainly implied, that those on this board of the opinion the climate is rapidly changing as we speak with probable catastrophic consequence, are of an overly extreme doomer mentality and therefore, separated from constructive conversation. The innuendo is our views carry the same weight as the climate skeptics, because of a single paragraph quoted from skeptical science.

This is too delicious to pass by.

My first point would be that Skeptical Science site rebuts the science skeptics in the Global Warming debate using a variety of sources and studies contesting bogus applied science and often repeated points found to have no validity. In doing so they intentionally keep their statements and opinions very conservative as to not invite any room for possible logical and peer reviewed, rebuttal.

The scientists who have signed on to the IPCC report (2007) and all the studies and models from which the report has been based, have through consensus, used the same methods in stating the case for anthropogenic global warming and the subsequent climate change. So many of the deductions from models and studies have in effect, diluted or delayed possible impacts, some believe to make it more palatable to a non scientific public. There is also the political pressure to understate the data in the studies that have been submitted.

The above paragraph is a bold statement, but let us look at some of the deductions from the 2007 report.

-- That effects of warming above 2*C would lead to serious changes in the climate. We are at .8*C now and everyday there are articles and studies indicating the effects of climate are much ahead of schedule in time, and at lower concentrations of CO2, thought to be workable threshold.

-- The Arctic sea ice will disappear sometime near 2100 if cuts in CO2 production are not addressed soon. Just five years past the report, this conservative deduction has been jettisoned for the optimistic views the ice will remain to about 2030, with many scientists now saying within this decade. About 70 - 80 years before projections.

-- Damaging ocean acidification is happening sooner and at lower atmospheric CO2 concentration than thought in the 2007 report. Note the stories of the effects of acidity with crustaceans and corrals.

-- The warmer water temperatures are already significantly changing the Southern Ocean, threatening the krill. Without the krill a collapse of the entire fishery is certain, and many of the ecosystems this little crustacean supports. This was not even modeled or highlighted in the 2007 report.

-- Also not included in the 2007 IPCC report and models were the changes now occurring in the sequestration of CO2 in the Southern Ocean. Another feedback loop we are now facing that wasn't even listed in the report.

-- The scientific consensus in view of the continued rise in CO2 production has also changed in the last five years, with few scientists believing the 2*C threshold is possible and our future problem will be much greater than outlined in the 2007 report.

-- The methane vents in the ocean north of Siberia and the tundra as well, are far ahead of 2007 modeling, both in time and at a much lower level of CO2 concentration and global temperature rise.

I could continue but I think you get my drift. The reported and modeled science we are dealing with today has been diluted to such a politically and publicly palatable extreme of understatement, it can't be trusted much more than the skeptics pseudo science.

So before inferring those on this board who you consider to be overly extreme, defeatist, or doomsayers, and are counter productive to the dialog, please realize we have our reasons for a not so rosy view. Simply said, can you trust the peer reviewed consensus diluted studies and models you have been provided to date?

You don't want the lectures, don't lump us in with quaint little quotes about skeptics, from sites that purposefully use peer reviewed studies diluted to obvious understatement of data.