Note that Prometheus designed by Roger Pielke and humans in general are represented by the IPCC climate panel. On the other hand, Anubis is one of the most powerful and evil Goa'uld in history. Goa'uld are bad guys and parasitic beings that take over hosts such as humans and that came from the P3X-888 planet. You should now ask:
What the hell is he talking about?
Well, sorry that it wasn't clear so far. I am talking about the same battle that Bob Ferguson aptly named
- food-fight over alarmism among the consensus.
Just like in the case of the Catholic Church and Protestants, the environmentalist church of consensus is going to split. Everyone in the church agrees that there is a 100% consensus among all experts but unfortunately two equally strong groups of experts disagree what the consensus says.
This disagreement emerged because of the IPCC AR4 report whose summary will be released on Friday, after four days of secret word-by-word editing. The main point of disagreement is Antarctica. See
- The Observer (of the Grauniad fame)
- Associated Press (IHT, Boston Globe etc.)
There are two groups of experts who face each other. Various Anubis' experts have
- denounced the IPCC report as misleading
- said that the report fails to give the right ✭impression✭ about the CO2 effect on Antarctica
- said that the IPCC neglects the gorillas
- said that the prediction of the IPCC is obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we can't (even) model now but we ✞know✞ it's happening
I agree with Bob that the second sentence above is really characteristic of their movement. The goal of a scientific report is apparently to "give the right impression". The statement about gorillas comes from an Ohio State Anubis' expert and another Anubis' expert, MacCracken of The Neverending Story who used to lead the U.S. government reviews of the IPCC reports until 2001, has fired off a letter of protest because of the gorillas (Greenland and Antarctica deserve this name as the key reservoirs of ice).
The IPCC report is going to say that Antarctica won't see any significant difference even if CO2 levels continue to grow. In fact, Antarctica has seen some cooling and increased precipitation is raising the total amount of ice mass on this continent, as the IPCC report also mentions. The frequent readers of this blog also know that Greenland has cooled down in the last 70 years, too. Its ice mass seems to be increasing there as well, by 6 centimeters per year - see this paper in Science.
These facts are not good enough for Anubis (it's one guy equipped with some forces, as Stargate junkies surely know) who wants all continents, including Antarctica, to obey the consensus. Antarctica must go catastrophic, too! It's time for Antarctica to come in from the cold and join the warming world. If you think that the joke in the previous sentence is so absurd that no alarmist would ever write such a thing, read The Independent. For a sentence with an arbitrarily small "epsilon" of intelligence, there exists a "delta" of people who will say such a sentence seriously. The smaller "epsilon" is, the more likely their opinions will be published in nationwide newspapers. ;-)
The early version of the IPCC report calculated that the sea level will increase by 5-23 inches by 2100. Because the authors of a Science paper published this month obtained a much "better" result - namely 20-55 inches - they will probably complain, too. The 55-inch people include Stefan Rahmstorf who has received 1+ million dollars for alarmism so far. How could IPCC include such inferior numbers and betray the consensus by a factor of four or so? ;-) Isn't the very job of the comrades at IPCC to suppress people who are less alarmist?
William Connolley who is something in between Anubis and humans has joined the humans in this battle. He argues that one of Anubis' experts - William's boss Chris Rapley, a famous advocate of a significant population reduction to fight the climate change - hasn't even read the report and he mixes apples with oranges, for example lower troposphere with the mid-troposphere. Needless to say, most journalists will fight on the side of Anubis and Kraken so it can be quite a ➷battle➷. :-)
The Anubis' critics point out that the IPCC is a "conservative body". Who could have thought? ;-) We report, you decide.
A related war
German car industry finally realized that they are one of the targets of the eco-attacks. They would have to fire about 65,000 workers if the new CO2 limits promoted by Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner, were accepted. At least this is the calculation of the German environment ministry. CSU politicians and the carmakers' trade union have called to stop this madness urgently. S.O.S.
The boss of Porsche warned of an impending business war between Germany on one side and France with Italy on the other side because of the latter countries' support for mad plans to regulate CO2 and destroy German luxury carmakers - and especially because these two countries produce worse, carbon-poor vehicles. "It is an attack on BMW, Mercedes, Audi and ourselves [Porsche] ... This is a business war in Europe. We will fight," Mr Wiedeking told shareholders. For Porsche and others, this is indeed an existential war against the eco-crusaders.
While the luxury carmakers and their cars - especially 911 Turbo above - are the most endangered species, the chiefs of all German carmakers have strongly urged the EU commission to withdraw the plans to force the manufacturers to reduce CO2 emissions of new cars sold in the EU to 120 grams per km by 2012. This includes BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Opel, and Volkswagen. The German leaders are split on the issue. Economy minister Michael Glos and Günther Verheugen whom Central Europe knows as the commissioner for EU expansion oppose the regulation plans. German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) supports Dimas' plans. Gabriel also does everything he can to undermine Glos' plans to sue the EU commission.
The Washington Times have described the forced Europe's economic suicide.
Update - cars
The proposal to regulate car emissions in this brutal way has been delayed indefinitely on the same day when this posting was written.
