Term Paper Dictates UN Policy

UN climate change panel based their claims on a student dissertation. My term paper on Lady GaGa still got a lousy D!

No doubt this little gem may cause fresh eggs to be thrown on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which, as you might have heard, were forced to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming. (Full)

This new report, says that the observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information. But about that... it seems that it was actually some kid and a mountain climbing magazine. Presumably the climbing magazine was either skimmed at the grocery store or at a dentist's office - that isn't clear at the moment.

What is clear is that they're simply making this stuff up - and not using that higher power of science -- but, as it seems, using hearsay and the telephone game to create their policy. That policy which could alter the course of the entire human race.

Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said: "These are essentially a collection of anecdotes."

"Why did they do this? It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for drawing up this section of the report) has been.

"There is no way current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense."

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by government's worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions of people. Oh, so I guess this is kind of serious.

Look, I want a nice place to live until we get off this rock and go screw up that planet that was in Avatar. We need to pick and choose what the best way to use our resources are - and we need to make the case whether carting a 300 lb incontinent office secretary back and forth from her cats and work is the best use of the rest of our gasoline. I'm even thinking that using coal to fire up the old Lappy 486 on my desk isn't exactly the best use of a precious resource either... but my concern here is that these so called scientists ARE JUST MAKING STUFF UP!

Worse, is that their brand of 'science' is nothing more than snake oil wrapped up in good intentions. The larger danger is that those folks who believe that Atlantis and Big Foot are science, or are already at odds with science because their church, state, ex-governors from Alaska and the television are telling them that the white lab coat people are funneling their tax dollars away from the new football scoreboard over some scam... then we're all going to die off, and in a very unpleasant manner.

So knock it off!