[Coral-List] IPCC and coral reefs

Douglas Fenner douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Wed May 21 18:08:16 EDT 2014


Gene,
    You wrote that:

"The reader should be remindned that all the media buzz about the IPCC
report is based on the Summary for Policy Makers which was not written by
the scientists who wrote the IPCC report.  Gene"

Yet Jean-Pierre Gattuso, who seems to know what he's talking about since he
was involved in it, says

"The only potential political interference is about the Summary for
Policy Makers which is written by scientists but needs approval by 195
countries. My understanding is that material that is not present in the
main report cannot be added, but material can be removed (from the SPM)
and the formulation of sentences can be changed although in a way that
does not contradict the main report."

Sounds like you are saying that the government people wrote the Summary and
that it contradicts the main report.  You have evidence of that??  Or are
you saying that although the Summary was written by scientists, it wasn't
written by the same scientists that wrote the main body of the report?  So
how is that a problem, if passes the review of scientists that it
summarizes the main report and doesn't contradict it??  Anybody who wants
to can go back to the main report, and compare with the summary, and point
out for all the world to see that the summary says things that contradict
the main report.  I'm sure there are people who don't like the report who
look through it with a fine toothed comb looking for anything to attack.  I
haven't heard of attacks based on contradictions between the report and the
summary, I'm sure they would be front page news if anybody found anything
substantial.

Jean-Pierre writes that

"The report of Working Group of the IPCC went through 3 drafts which were
reviewed by 1729 experts from 84 countries and 49 governments. A total of
50,492 comments were made, and each of them was addressed by the author
team. The whole process is transparent and can be consulted on the IPCC web
site. I cannot think of a scientific document that is more thorough,
accurate
and reliable than the IPCC report."

Do you dispute any of that??  Do you claim that the "NIPCC report even thou
it has a large coral reef section based on peer reviewed literature" you
referred to, that was produced by the Heartland Institute, which is a
political group that previously worked for the tobacco industry claiming
that second hand smoke does not affect people, had a large number of expert
scientists that were not on its staff (staff funded no doubt by the fossil
fuel industry) produce the report (which has a name that is designed to
mislead readers into thinking it is similar to the IPCC) and the production
of their report was transparent like the IPCC's?  If you do claim that, I
think it's incumbent on you to show that the Heartland Institute used a lot
of outside scientific experts, had multiple drafts and allowed outside
comment and incorporated a large number of comments, and had a transparent
process.  Certainly their funding is not transparent.
     Oh, and people who don't publish in peer-reviewed scientific
literature on climate change are not scientific experts on the subject.  I
don't, and I don't claim to be.  Are the people who wrote the NIPCC denier
report actual experts on the subject?  Very few deniers are, of course.
 The reason is simple, the actual data when you examine it instead of
manipulating and massaging it, doesn't support the view that all climate
change is natural.  Note that the IPCC doesn't claim that ALL climate
change is produced by humans, there are a variety of different
contributors, some natural, some human-produced.  Some human effects even
act to cool the earth, like emissions of aerosols like sulphate which are
normally considered pollutants.  Aerosols released by volcanic eruptions
like Mt. Pinatubo can cool the earth for a year or two, and human air
pollution also cools the earth.  Someone please correct me if that's wrong.

There is a world of difference between these two reports, and it's not just
politics, its the difference between science and propaganda pretending to
be science for political reasons.

 Cheers,  Doug

"belief in climate change is optional, participation is mandatory."


On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Eugene Shinn <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>wrote:

> Steve, Have you ever met a scientist that did not have an ideology? In
> my experience with thousands of scientists both industry, government,
> and academia, I can't recall any who did not have an ideology of one
> sort or another be they Christians, Moslems, Buddists, Hindu, atheist,
> etc. A scientist can always claim his or her  results are statistical
> correct and pure but remember the scientist still decides what subject
> to work on in the first place. It can work both ways. We both pretty
> much know where most coral reef scientists heads are. I would not expect
> them to read the
> NIPCC report even thou it has a large coral reef section based on peer
> reviewed literature. You can find that in chapter 6
> http://climatechangereconsidered.org/  The reader should be remindned
> that all the media buzz about the IPCC report is based on the Summary
> for Policy Makers which was not written by the scientists who wrote the
> IPCC report.  Gene
>
> --
>
>
> No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
> ------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
> E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
> University of South Florida
> College of Marine Science Room 221A
> 140 Seventh Avenue South
> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
> <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
> Tel 727 553-1158
> ---------------------------------- -----------------------------------
>
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> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
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>



-- 
Douglas Fenner
Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc.
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084
website:  http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner
Blog:
http://cctus.org/conservation-science/2014-expedition-scholar/2014-expedition-scholar-douglas-fenner-ph-d/2014-expedition-scholar-blog


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