Nature
Volume 412(6843), 12 July 2001, pp 112-114
Consensus science, or consensus politics?
Schrope, Mark
Mark Schrope is a freelance writer in Melbourne, Florida.
To some, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the pinnacle of scientific collaboration. To others, it is a victory for politics over science. Mark Schrope talks to the experts debating our planet's future.
Rarely does a single scientific document have such far-reaching consequences for international politics. The report - together with two companions produced by the IPCC's other working groups, dealing with the consequences of climate change and strategies for mitigating them - will be a key reference for delegates who meet in Bonn next week in an attempt to revive the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.
Most experts view the IPCC's reports as a huge success story - the first serious attempt to reach a global consensus on a complex scientific issue. But others claim that the involvement of government officials in writing the vital summaries for the reports undermines normal scientific peer-review procedures. Some critics even allege that climate researchers have themselves skewed the reports by expressing their own environmentalist views.
Whatever the truth, such criticisms cannot be ignored. The IPCC aims to provide information to policy-makers without endorsing specific policies. As such, it can only work if it is widely perceived to represent a highly credible and unbiased consensus.
This year's series of reports was the IPCC's third comprehensive assessment of climate change since it was established in 1988. The arduous process of producing an assessment begins with the assembly of a team of authors for each working group. Ensuring wide international participation is important, because climate change means different things to different countries. A small-island state that risks flooding if sea levels rise may not see eye-to-eye with an oil-exporting nation, for instance. So the IPCC Bureau, the panel's governing body of 30 leading climate experts, invites every one of almost 200 eligible countries to nominate individuals for the working groups. The bureau then makes the final choice so that the lead authors reflect an appropriate international selection while having strong scientific credentials.
Data detectives
The authors then start combing the literature for important papers, and calling on other scientists to submit research that is awaiting peer review or publication. They face the Herculean task of condensing the hundreds of individual submissions into a single report - the inclusion of important new findings continues almost right up to the final deadline.
The working groups' draft reports are reviewed by a second team of experts appointed by the bureau. Individual countries also have a chance to comment - the first, but not the most controversial, opportunity for politicians to influence the report. For the first and second IPCC assessments, the authors were left to incorporate these revisions. But after complaints that some suggestions were not adequately taken on board, whereas other changes were not reviewed by the original authors, this time a third body of scientific experts - the review editors - was appointed by the bureau to oversee the revision process.
Given the reports' size - the third full assessment covers about 2,500 pages - few people ever read a full working-group report, much less an entire assessment. Instead, most rely on the 'Summary for Policymakers' (SPM) that accompanies each working-group report. For many critics of the IPCC process, the SPMs, and the way in which they are interpreted in the media, are the key problem.
Drafting an SPM is extremely difficult. When circulated for comment, the draft SPM for Working Group I's third assessment attracted roughly 20 words of comment for every word of the original. Once these comments have been incorporated, the fun really begins. Each working group's SPM has to be approved by a special plenary meeting. This time, roughly 50 authors attended each plenary, along with representatives from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) - but both the scientists and NGOs are there only to advise. The final word rests with 400-odd delegates from the participating countries, who may or may not have a strong background in a relevant scientific discipline.
A literary circus
Every word has to be agreed on unanimously before it enters the SPM. With discussions translated simultaneously into five different languages, the approval of Working Group I's summary for the third assessment - originally just seven pages long - took four days. By the time the delegates to the plenary, held in Shanghai in January, had finished, the document had more than doubled in length.
"You've got an almost circus-like atmosphere," says Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and a Working Group I lead author who was present in Shanghai. "It's hard... very hard."
As government representatives, delegates may arrive with goals for what the summary should say that are based on policy objectives rather than science."They are trying to perhaps weight certain things based on their national interests," says Cynthia Rosenzweig, a Working Group II lead author who heads the Climate Impacts Group at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Kevin Trenberth, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and a lead author for Working Group I, says that the wrangling in Shanghai began with the first paragraph. Saudi Arabian delegates, whom some allege are keen to play down the threat of global warming to protect their country's oil exports, objected to a sentence that read: "Many hundreds of scientists contributed to its preparation and review." The Saudis felt this implied that all of these scientists endorsed the report in every respect. After some verbal wrestling, the line was altered to read: "Many hundreds of scientists from many countries participated in its preparations and review." In the days of discussion that followed, says Trenberth, the process was repeated over and over again. FIGURE 2
The most difficult negotiations, according to Trenberth, related to the connection between human activity and climate change. One contentious line began as: "Despite these uncertainties, it is likely that increasing concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases have combined substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years." By the end of the plenary, it had become: "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
To the untutored eye, these slight differences in wording may seem of little significance. And to Rosenzweig, the fact that such protracted negotiations result in relatively limited changes is a testament to the quality of the IPCC scientists' work. By defining the scientific consensus between narrow limits, she argues, there is little room for bias in the summary. Rosenzweig says the biggest problem was coping with scientists pushing to have their own results included.
Indeed, despite the unusual nature of a process that involves political appointees agreeing on how a scientific study should be summarized, most of the IPCC's authors are satisfied with the way it works. But many say that the SPMs should be marked to indicate that they are not solely the work of scientists. Robert Watson, director for the environment at the World Bank and chair of the IPCC Bureau, says he would not object to some words of explanation being included.
Clarity or bias?
John Houghton of Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, west of London, and co-chair of Working Group I, believes the plenary meetings actually improve the final SPMs. "It's more clear and more relevant," he says. "You might think it would make it worse, but it doesn't."
But speak to critics outside the IPCC's fold and you hear a different story. Fred Singer is a long-standing sceptic of the threat posed by global warming, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a pressure group in Arlington, Virginia. Singer thinks the main reports are sound, but he argues that the SPMs fail to adequately acknowledge the uncertainties in climate-change science. According to Singer, the process that gives rise to the SPMs plays down uncertainties so as to force governments to take climate change seriously. "It is selective in the facts that it uses from the report," says Singer. "It slants things. It puts a spin on things. It starts out with a given conclusion and then selects those facts which support that conclusion."
Most climate researchers argue these charges should be laid at the door of Singer's group, not the IPCC. Thomas Stocker, a climate modeller at the University of Bern in Switzerland and one of Working Group I's lead authors, takes serious issue with Singer's broadside. "That's completely unfounded," he says. "If you read our SPM you will find plenty of sentences that explicitly state where there are uncertainties." He views the agreement between the full report and its précis in the SPM as impressive.
Reflected glory
Exactly how accurately the SPMs reflect the underlying reports was investigated last month by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as part of a request from President George W. Bush to examine climate-change research (see Nature 411, 725; 2001). The NAS report focused on Working Group I - the most contentious, as the other two working groups depend in large part on its conclusions. Like the working group itself, the NAS report provided ammunition for both supporters and critics of the IPCC. Working Group I's SPM, concluded the NAS, is "consistent with the main body of the report". But the NAS report agreed that the SPM had failed to explain adequately the caveats on which some of the uncertainties it referred to were based.
"We found some understatements of uncertainties, but generally changes made from the technical chapters to the SPM didn't affect the impact of the statements very much, which was very impressive," says Ralph Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist and chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, who chaired the NAS panel. Cicerone adds that his panel conducted a quick survey of IPCC authors in the United States and found that those who responded said unanimously that the SPM accurately represented what they wrote in the main text.
But Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the NAS report, does not see it the same way. "Within the confines of professional courtesy," Lindzen wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times, "the panel essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide suitable guidance for the US government." Lindzen has long argued that evidence for climate change is too shaky to justify the costly strategies mooted to tackle it.
Some critics of the IPCC believe that removing politicians from the process could be one way of ending the arguments. "Let the scientists tell the world what the scientists said," says Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University in Tempe. Although Balling contributed material to the Working Group II report, he is a prominent global-warming sceptic and a vocal critic of the IPCC.
But most participants in the IPCC process believe that the presence of national delegates is crucial. "If you didn't have that then the report wouldn't be so important. It's as simple as that," says Michael Grubb, an energy economist at Imperial College London and a Working Group III lead author. He argues that involving government officials in the IPCC process forces politicians to take a close look at the report and the underlying science, rather than simply putting it on the shelf.
Michael Oppenheimer, chief scientist with the New York-based NGO Environmental Defense, and a lead author for Working Group I, agrees. "If the price paid to get there is some discomfort among some of the players and criticism because it's not purely a product of scientists, I think that's a price worth paying," he says.
Panel beating
In the past, revisions to the working groups' full reports subsequent to SPM approval have caused problems. When substantial additions are made to the draft of the SPM, authors must sometimes supplement the main report to ensure that a given point is adequately covered. After the IPCC's second assessment was published, Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project alleged that this process had proceeded largely unchecked, with some authors adding material to the main report without giving others the chance to comment. To deflect such criticism of the third assessment, every change to the main report was logged, whether it resulted from the formal review process or the plenary sessions.
Some critics allege that problems of bias lie not with the SPMs or the IPCC process, but with the climate research community as a whole. They argue that many climate scientists hold environmentalist views, and so tend to stress the importance of research that paints the most worrying picture of climate change in order to spur politicians into action.
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC), based in Washington, which styles itself as a "voice for business in the climate debate", draws attention to remarks made by Stephen Schneider, a climate-change researcher at Stanford University in California and a lead author of the Working Group II report.
In a 1989 Discover magazine article, Schneider discussed the dilemma facing scientists who wanted to draw attention to climate change while remaining true to current scientific knowledge of the subject. "We need to capture the public's imagination," he noted. "That entails getting loads of media coverage, so we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified and dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have." Although Schneider went on to say that he hoped climatologists could be both effective and honest, the remarks were seized on by bodies such as the GCC as evidence that scientists were exaggerating the consequences of climate change.
Tempered view
John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a lead author for Working Group I, believes that researchers who are new to climatology, many of whom have been attracted to the field because of its 'green' associations, are more likely to back extreme climate-change predictions. But he argues that they are largely countered by more experienced researchers who tend to make more conservative judgements because they place less stock in the long-range climate forecasts.
The fact that the IPCC's consensus is backed by Christy, whose views on climate change have on occasion provided ammunition for global-warming sceptics, provides one indication that - despite its critics - the organization is working effectively. But where the IPCC goes from here is still being debated. A fourth assessment will almost certainly take place, but Watson says it might focus on new information rather than attempt another full review.
Some researchers, meanwhile, suggest that the IPCC model should be applied to other thorny issues. Christy, for example, would like to see a similar effort devoted to the environmental problems threatening developing nations, such as deforestation and the lack of suitable fresh water. And the UK House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee recently suggested that the IPCC model could be applied to ocean pollution and genetic modification. "It's the only long-term successful example of how a complex scientific issue can be brought to the decision makers," says Stocker.
Whether or not the model is applied elsewhere, the fact that IPCC reports are accepted as the scientific guide for the Kyoto Protocol negotiations is, for many involved, proof enough that the process is working as well as can be hoped. It might look like a circus at times, but a global response to climate change would probably be impossible without it.
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group
Promena klime
Started by
Mac
, Jan 11 2004 13:23
86 replies to this topic
#62
Indy
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Posted 27 January 2006 - 06:24
Novi momenti u biljnoj fiziologiji, a takodje i u prici o promeni klime...
----------------------
News
Nature 439, 128 (12 January 2006)
Methane finding baffles scientists
Quirin Schiermeier, Munich
Plant production of greenhouse gas throws up questions for climate models.
The startling discovery that terrestrial plants produce the greenhouse gas methane is sending scientists in two disciplines, not to mention a few politicians, back to the drawing board.
The newly revealed methane emissions have taken plant physiologists by surprise, because far more energy is required to create methane than, say, carbon dioxide in an oxygenated environment. Climate researchers are also amazed that they could have missed what is potentially a huge methane source - up to a third of all methane produced worldwide (see 'How could we have missed this?').
Until now, it was thought that plant matter produces methane only through microbial activity in oxygen-free environments such as swamps, flooded rice fields and ruminants' guts. But on page 187 of this issue, Frank Keppler, a geochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, and his colleagues report that grasses and leaves from various species release the gas under normal aerobic conditions.
The source of the methane - and why plants make it - is unknown. Some species make other volatile hydrocarbons such as isoprene, but that reaction involves a specific enzyme, and only seems to kick in when the plants need to dissipate excess energy. The methane emissions that Keppler found rise smoothly with temperature up to 70 C, suggesting that no enzyme is involved.
"This seems to be a secondary chemical reaction with no specific function for plant metabolism," says Elmar Weiler, a plant physiologist at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. "It's a truly surprising finding."
But beyond its implications for botany, the discovery could prove important for understanding and predicting climate change - and for our attempts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere after carbon dioxide, and levels have doubled over the past 200 years, mainly as a result of increased agricultural activity.
The finding doesn't change ideas about the total amount of methane being released into the atmosphere. But scientists had thought they knew about all the significant methane sources and how much each contributed (see Global change: A green source of surprise). Now it seems that their figures were very wrong. As a rough estimate, Keppler reckons that global vegetation may be releasing between 60 million and 240 million tonnes of methane each year - up to a third of the total amount that enters the atmosphere.
"The surprising thing to me is the amount of methane they found," says Martin Heimann, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. "It means we neglected a big driving force for the climate."
It is too early to say exactly how the revelation might influence predictions for future climate change, but it's unlikely to be good news. The fact that plant methane emissions rise with temperature, and that plants are likely to grow faster in a warmer climate anyway*, could lead to a big rise in methane emissions from natural sources, says Johannes Lelieveld, an atmospheric researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.
The finding also restricts our options for reducing methane emissions, he points out, because measures such as growing rice in drier fields are likely to prove less effective than had been thought. "If natural greenhouse-gas sources are greater than we thought, the scope for climate politics becomes narrower," he says. "You wouldn't cut down forests just because trees release methane."
---
*) zaboravili su (pristupacnu) vodu, koje treba da ima vise nego sad, kao i neke druge vazne faktore... al' ajde.
----------------------
News
Nature 439, 128 (12 January 2006)
Methane finding baffles scientists
Quirin Schiermeier, Munich
Plant production of greenhouse gas throws up questions for climate models.
The startling discovery that terrestrial plants produce the greenhouse gas methane is sending scientists in two disciplines, not to mention a few politicians, back to the drawing board.
The newly revealed methane emissions have taken plant physiologists by surprise, because far more energy is required to create methane than, say, carbon dioxide in an oxygenated environment. Climate researchers are also amazed that they could have missed what is potentially a huge methane source - up to a third of all methane produced worldwide (see 'How could we have missed this?').
Until now, it was thought that plant matter produces methane only through microbial activity in oxygen-free environments such as swamps, flooded rice fields and ruminants' guts. But on page 187 of this issue, Frank Keppler, a geochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, and his colleagues report that grasses and leaves from various species release the gas under normal aerobic conditions.
The source of the methane - and why plants make it - is unknown. Some species make other volatile hydrocarbons such as isoprene, but that reaction involves a specific enzyme, and only seems to kick in when the plants need to dissipate excess energy. The methane emissions that Keppler found rise smoothly with temperature up to 70 C, suggesting that no enzyme is involved.
"This seems to be a secondary chemical reaction with no specific function for plant metabolism," says Elmar Weiler, a plant physiologist at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. "It's a truly surprising finding."
But beyond its implications for botany, the discovery could prove important for understanding and predicting climate change - and for our attempts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere after carbon dioxide, and levels have doubled over the past 200 years, mainly as a result of increased agricultural activity.
The finding doesn't change ideas about the total amount of methane being released into the atmosphere. But scientists had thought they knew about all the significant methane sources and how much each contributed (see Global change: A green source of surprise). Now it seems that their figures were very wrong. As a rough estimate, Keppler reckons that global vegetation may be releasing between 60 million and 240 million tonnes of methane each year - up to a third of the total amount that enters the atmosphere.
"The surprising thing to me is the amount of methane they found," says Martin Heimann, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. "It means we neglected a big driving force for the climate."
It is too early to say exactly how the revelation might influence predictions for future climate change, but it's unlikely to be good news. The fact that plant methane emissions rise with temperature, and that plants are likely to grow faster in a warmer climate anyway*, could lead to a big rise in methane emissions from natural sources, says Johannes Lelieveld, an atmospheric researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.
The finding also restricts our options for reducing methane emissions, he points out, because measures such as growing rice in drier fields are likely to prove less effective than had been thought. "If natural greenhouse-gas sources are greater than we thought, the scope for climate politics becomes narrower," he says. "You wouldn't cut down forests just because trees release methane."
---
*) zaboravili su (pristupacnu) vodu, koje treba da ima vise nego sad, kao i neke druge vazne faktore... al' ajde.
#63
Indy
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Posted 29 January 2006 - 05:36
NASA scientist claims he's been silenced
January 29, 2006 - 11:19AM
NASA's top climate scientist said the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture in December calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, The New York Times said.
In an interview with the newspaper, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that officials at the space agency's headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard website and requests for interviews from journalists.
"They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," the Times quoted Hansen as saying, adding that the scientist planned to ignore the new restrictions.
A NASA spokesman denied any effort to silence Hansen, the Times said. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," said Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs."We promote openness and we speak with the facts."
Rather, the spokesman said the restrictions applied to any and all NASA personnel who could be seen by the public as speaking for the agency. Acosta added, however, that while government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen, the Times said.
The story was posted on its website and will be published in the Sunday editions.
Hansen, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is an authority on climate who directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at Manhattan's Goddard Institute.
Since 1988 he has warned publicly about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are a byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels, The Times said.
It said he fell out of favour with the White House in 2004 after a University of Iowa speech ahead of the presidential election in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled, adding that he planned to vote for Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry.
Hansen told the Times over the course of several interviews that an effort began in early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Hansen said the recent efforts to quiet him began after a lecture he gave on December 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco where he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles.
Without leadership by the United States, he told The Times, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet".
Hansen said that NASA headquarters officials repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who warned Hansen of "dire consequences" if such statements continued. The officers confirmed the warning to the Times.
The Bush administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions, the paper said.
The US would not sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, saying it would harm the economy.
© 2006 AAP
January 29, 2006 - 11:19AM
NASA's top climate scientist said the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture in December calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, The New York Times said.
In an interview with the newspaper, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that officials at the space agency's headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard website and requests for interviews from journalists.
"They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," the Times quoted Hansen as saying, adding that the scientist planned to ignore the new restrictions.
A NASA spokesman denied any effort to silence Hansen, the Times said. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," said Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs."We promote openness and we speak with the facts."
Rather, the spokesman said the restrictions applied to any and all NASA personnel who could be seen by the public as speaking for the agency. Acosta added, however, that while government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen, the Times said.
The story was posted on its website and will be published in the Sunday editions.
Hansen, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, is an authority on climate who directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at Manhattan's Goddard Institute.
Since 1988 he has warned publicly about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are a byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels, The Times said.
It said he fell out of favour with the White House in 2004 after a University of Iowa speech ahead of the presidential election in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled, adding that he planned to vote for Democratic nominee Senator John Kerry.
Hansen told the Times over the course of several interviews that an effort began in early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Hansen said the recent efforts to quiet him began after a lecture he gave on December 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco where he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles.
Without leadership by the United States, he told The Times, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet".
Hansen said that NASA headquarters officials repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who warned Hansen of "dire consequences" if such statements continued. The officers confirmed the warning to the Times.
The Bush administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions, the paper said.
The US would not sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, saying it would harm the economy.
© 2006 AAP
#64
Indy
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Posted 13 February 2006 - 01:40
NASA scientist claims he's been silenced
Isto to, samo u Australiji:
Minister denies gagging scientists
February 13, 2006 - 9:49AM
Environment Minister Ian Campbell has distanced the government from claims Australia's top scientists are being prevented from highlighting concerns over climate change.
Three eminent scientists have told tonight's ABC's Four Corners program they have been censored.
Former CSIRO climate director Graeme Pearman said he was prevented from speaking out on climate change if it might make the federal government look bad.
CSIRO executive Steve Morton admitted to censoring Dr Pearman on one occasion, ordering him not to discuss time-frames or target levels for achieving greenhouse gas reductions.
The government has received widespread international criticism for failing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But Senator Campbell denied the government had acted to prevent scientists from criticising its stance on climate change.
"That's an issue for the CSIRO, who I understand is an independent body," Senator Campbell told ABC radio.
"It is certainly not a situation which is condoned by the Australian government.
"If a bureaucrat is giving directions to a scientist not to say something, then it's not something that is being sanctioned by me."
- AAP
#65
TBoneSteak
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Posted 13 February 2006 - 02:22
nauka i tehnologija...
Edited by TBoneSteak, 13 February 2006 - 04:34.
#66
Indy
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Posted 13 February 2006 - 04:09
Naslov topika je "Promena klime" a ne "Globalno otopljavanje".hm, freezing ili warming
Edited by Indy, 13 February 2006 - 04:44.
#67
TBoneSteak
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- Banned
- 639 posts
Posted 13 February 2006 - 04:25
nauka i tehnologija...
Edited by TBoneSteak, 13 February 2006 - 04:34.
#68
Indy
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- 21,392 posts
Posted 13 February 2006 - 04:28
.../suvisno/
Edited by Indy, 13 February 2006 - 04:45.
#70
ljubitelj
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- Banned
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Posted 28 October 2006 - 18:42
QUOTE(Indy @ 18 Jun 2005, 09:32)
Nature
Volume 412(6843), 12 July 2001, pp 112-114
Consensus science, or consensus politics?
Schrope, Mark
Mark Schrope is a freelance writer in Melbourne, Florida.
To some, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the pinnacle of scientific collaboration. To others, it is a victory for politics over science. Mark Schrope talks to the experts debating our planet's future.
Rarely does a single scientific document have such far-reaching consequences for international politics. The report - together with two companions produced by the IPCC's other working groups, dealing with the consequences of climate change and strategies for mitigating them - will be a key reference for delegates who meet in Bonn next week in an attempt to revive the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.
Most experts view the IPCC's reports as a huge success story - the first serious attempt to reach a global consensus on a complex scientific issue. But others claim that the involvement of government officials in writing the vital summaries for the reports undermines normal scientific peer-review procedures. Some critics even allege that climate researchers have themselves skewed the reports by expressing their own environmentalist views.
Whatever the truth, such criticisms cannot be ignored. The IPCC aims to provide information to policy-makers without endorsing specific policies. As such, it can only work if it is widely perceived to represent a highly credible and unbiased consensus.
This year's series of reports was the IPCC's third comprehensive assessment of climate change since it was established in 1988. The arduous process of producing an assessment begins with the assembly of a team of authors for each working group. Ensuring wide international participation is important, because climate change means different things to different countries. A small-island state that risks flooding if sea levels rise may not see eye-to-eye with an oil-exporting nation, for instance. So the IPCC Bureau, the panel's governing body of 30 leading climate experts, invites every one of almost 200 eligible countries to nominate individuals for the working groups. The bureau then makes the final choice so that the lead authors reflect an appropriate international selection while having strong scientific credentials.
Data detectives
The authors then start combing the literature for important papers, and calling on other scientists to submit research that is awaiting peer review or publication. They face the Herculean task of condensing the hundreds of individual submissions into a single report - the inclusion of important new findings continues almost right up to the final deadline.
The working groups' draft reports are reviewed by a second team of experts appointed by the bureau. Individual countries also have a chance to comment - the first, but not the most controversial, opportunity for politicians to influence the report. For the first and second IPCC assessments, the authors were left to incorporate these revisions. But after complaints that some suggestions were not adequately taken on board, whereas other changes were not reviewed by the original authors, this time a third body of scientific experts - the review editors - was appointed by the bureau to oversee the revision process.
Given the reports' size - the third full assessment covers about 2,500 pages - few people ever read a full working-group report, much less an entire assessment. Instead, most rely on the 'Summary for Policymakers' (SPM) that accompanies each working-group report. For many critics of the IPCC process, the SPMs, and the way in which they are interpreted in the media, are the key problem.
Drafting an SPM is extremely difficult. When circulated for comment, the draft SPM for Working Group I's third assessment attracted roughly 20 words of comment for every word of the original. Once these comments have been incorporated, the fun really begins. Each working group's SPM has to be approved by a special plenary meeting. This time, roughly 50 authors attended each plenary, along with representatives from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) - but both the scientists and NGOs are there only to advise. The final word rests with 400-odd delegates from the participating countries, who may or may not have a strong background in a relevant scientific discipline.
A literary circus
Every word has to be agreed on unanimously before it enters the SPM. With discussions translated simultaneously into five different languages, the approval of Working Group I's summary for the third assessment - originally just seven pages long - took four days. By the time the delegates to the plenary, held in Shanghai in January, had finished, the document had more than doubled in length.
"You've got an almost circus-like atmosphere," says Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and a Working Group I lead author who was present in Shanghai. "It's hard... very hard."
As government representatives, delegates may arrive with goals for what the summary should say that are based on policy objectives rather than science."They are trying to perhaps weight certain things based on their national interests," says Cynthia Rosenzweig, a Working Group II lead author who heads the Climate Impacts Group at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Kevin Trenberth, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and a lead author for Working Group I, says that the wrangling in Shanghai began with the first paragraph. Saudi Arabian delegates, whom some allege are keen to play down the threat of global warming to protect their country's oil exports, objected to a sentence that read: "Many hundreds of scientists contributed to its preparation and review." The Saudis felt this implied that all of these scientists endorsed the report in every respect. After some verbal wrestling, the line was altered to read: "Many hundreds of scientists from many countries participated in its preparations and review." In the days of discussion that followed, says Trenberth, the process was repeated over and over again. FIGURE 2
The most difficult negotiations, according to Trenberth, related to the connection between human activity and climate change. One contentious line began as: "Despite these uncertainties, it is likely that increasing concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases have combined substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years." By the end of the plenary, it had become: "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
To the untutored eye, these slight differences in wording may seem of little significance. And to Rosenzweig, the fact that such protracted negotiations result in relatively limited changes is a testament to the quality of the IPCC scientists' work. By defining the scientific consensus between narrow limits, she argues, there is little room for bias in the summary. Rosenzweig says the biggest problem was coping with scientists pushing to have their own results included.
Indeed, despite the unusual nature of a process that involves political appointees agreeing on how a scientific study should be summarized, most of the IPCC's authors are satisfied with the way it works. But many say that the SPMs should be marked to indicate that they are not solely the work of scientists. Robert Watson, director for the environment at the World Bank and chair of the IPCC Bureau, says he would not object to some words of explanation being included.
Clarity or bias?
John Houghton of Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, west of London, and co-chair of Working Group I, believes the plenary meetings actually improve the final SPMs. "It's more clear and more relevant," he says. "You might think it would make it worse, but it doesn't."
But speak to critics outside the IPCC's fold and you hear a different story. Fred Singer is a long-standing sceptic of the threat posed by global warming, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a pressure group in Arlington, Virginia. Singer thinks the main reports are sound, but he argues that the SPMs fail to adequately acknowledge the uncertainties in climate-change science. According to Singer, the process that gives rise to the SPMs plays down uncertainties so as to force governments to take climate change seriously. "It is selective in the facts that it uses from the report," says Singer. "It slants things. It puts a spin on things. It starts out with a given conclusion and then selects those facts which support that conclusion."
Most climate researchers argue these charges should be laid at the door of Singer's group, not the IPCC. Thomas Stocker, a climate modeller at the University of Bern in Switzerland and one of Working Group I's lead authors, takes serious issue with Singer's broadside. "That's completely unfounded," he says. "If you read our SPM you will find plenty of sentences that explicitly state where there are uncertainties." He views the agreement between the full report and its précis in the SPM as impressive.
Reflected glory
Exactly how accurately the SPMs reflect the underlying reports was investigated last month by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as part of a request from President George W. Bush to examine climate-change research (see Nature 411, 725; 2001). The NAS report focused on Working Group I - the most contentious, as the other two working groups depend in large part on its conclusions. Like the working group itself, the NAS report provided ammunition for both supporters and critics of the IPCC. Working Group I's SPM, concluded the NAS, is "consistent with the main body of the report". But the NAS report agreed that the SPM had failed to explain adequately the caveats on which some of the uncertainties it referred to were based.
"We found some understatements of uncertainties, but generally changes made from the technical chapters to the SPM didn't affect the impact of the statements very much, which was very impressive," says Ralph Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist and chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, who chaired the NAS panel. Cicerone adds that his panel conducted a quick survey of IPCC authors in the United States and found that those who responded said unanimously that the SPM accurately represented what they wrote in the main text.
But Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the NAS report, does not see it the same way. "Within the confines of professional courtesy," Lindzen wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times, "the panel essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide suitable guidance for the US government." Lindzen has long argued that evidence for climate change is too shaky to justify the costly strategies mooted to tackle it.
Some critics of the IPCC believe that removing politicians from the process could be one way of ending the arguments. "Let the scientists tell the world what the scientists said," says Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University in Tempe. Although Balling contributed material to the Working Group II report, he is a prominent global-warming sceptic and a vocal critic of the IPCC.
But most participants in the IPCC process believe that the presence of national delegates is crucial. "If you didn't have that then the report wouldn't be so important. It's as simple as that," says Michael Grubb, an energy economist at Imperial College London and a Working Group III lead author. He argues that involving government officials in the IPCC process forces politicians to take a close look at the report and the underlying science, rather than simply putting it on the shelf.
Michael Oppenheimer, chief scientist with the New York-based NGO Environmental Defense, and a lead author for Working Group I, agrees. "If the price paid to get there is some discomfort among some of the players and criticism because it's not purely a product of scientists, I think that's a price worth paying," he says.
Panel beating
In the past, revisions to the working groups' full reports subsequent to SPM approval have caused problems. When substantial additions are made to the draft of the SPM, authors must sometimes supplement the main report to ensure that a given point is adequately covered. After the IPCC's second assessment was published, Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project alleged that this process had proceeded largely unchecked, with some authors adding material to the main report without giving others the chance to comment. To deflect such criticism of the third assessment, every change to the main report was logged, whether it resulted from the formal review process or the plenary sessions.
Some critics allege that problems of bias lie not with the SPMs or the IPCC process, but with the climate research community as a whole. They argue that many climate scientists hold environmentalist views, and so tend to stress the importance of research that paints the most worrying picture of climate change in order to spur politicians into action.
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC), based in Washington, which styles itself as a "voice for business in the climate debate", draws attention to remarks made by Stephen Schneider, a climate-change researcher at Stanford University in California and a lead author of the Working Group II report.
In a 1989 Discover magazine article, Schneider discussed the dilemma facing scientists who wanted to draw attention to climate change while remaining true to current scientific knowledge of the subject. "We need to capture the public's imagination," he noted. "That entails getting loads of media coverage, so we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified and dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have." Although Schneider went on to say that he hoped climatologists could be both effective and honest, the remarks were seized on by bodies such as the GCC as evidence that scientists were exaggerating the consequences of climate change.
Tempered view
John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a lead author for Working Group I, believes that researchers who are new to climatology, many of whom have been attracted to the field because of its 'green' associations, are more likely to back extreme climate-change predictions. But he argues that they are largely countered by more experienced researchers who tend to make more conservative judgements because they place less stock in the long-range climate forecasts.
The fact that the IPCC's consensus is backed by Christy, whose views on climate change have on occasion provided ammunition for global-warming sceptics, provides one indication that - despite its critics - the organization is working effectively. But where the IPCC goes from here is still being debated. A fourth assessment will almost certainly take place, but Watson says it might focus on new information rather than attempt another full review.
Some researchers, meanwhile, suggest that the IPCC model should be applied to other thorny issues. Christy, for example, would like to see a similar effort devoted to the environmental problems threatening developing nations, such as deforestation and the lack of suitable fresh water. And the UK House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee recently suggested that the IPCC model could be applied to ocean pollution and genetic modification. "It's the only long-term successful example of how a complex scientific issue can be brought to the decision makers," says Stocker.
Whether or not the model is applied elsewhere, the fact that IPCC reports are accepted as the scientific guide for the Kyoto Protocol negotiations is, for many involved, proof enough that the process is working as well as can be hoped. It might look like a circus at times, but a global response to climate change would probably be impossible without it.
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group
Volume 412(6843), 12 July 2001, pp 112-114
Consensus science, or consensus politics?
Schrope, Mark
Mark Schrope is a freelance writer in Melbourne, Florida.
To some, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the pinnacle of scientific collaboration. To others, it is a victory for politics over science. Mark Schrope talks to the experts debating our planet's future.
Rarely does a single scientific document have such far-reaching consequences for international politics. The report - together with two companions produced by the IPCC's other working groups, dealing with the consequences of climate change and strategies for mitigating them - will be a key reference for delegates who meet in Bonn next week in an attempt to revive the Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse-gas emissions.
Most experts view the IPCC's reports as a huge success story - the first serious attempt to reach a global consensus on a complex scientific issue. But others claim that the involvement of government officials in writing the vital summaries for the reports undermines normal scientific peer-review procedures. Some critics even allege that climate researchers have themselves skewed the reports by expressing their own environmentalist views.
Whatever the truth, such criticisms cannot be ignored. The IPCC aims to provide information to policy-makers without endorsing specific policies. As such, it can only work if it is widely perceived to represent a highly credible and unbiased consensus.
This year's series of reports was the IPCC's third comprehensive assessment of climate change since it was established in 1988. The arduous process of producing an assessment begins with the assembly of a team of authors for each working group. Ensuring wide international participation is important, because climate change means different things to different countries. A small-island state that risks flooding if sea levels rise may not see eye-to-eye with an oil-exporting nation, for instance. So the IPCC Bureau, the panel's governing body of 30 leading climate experts, invites every one of almost 200 eligible countries to nominate individuals for the working groups. The bureau then makes the final choice so that the lead authors reflect an appropriate international selection while having strong scientific credentials.
Data detectives
The authors then start combing the literature for important papers, and calling on other scientists to submit research that is awaiting peer review or publication. They face the Herculean task of condensing the hundreds of individual submissions into a single report - the inclusion of important new findings continues almost right up to the final deadline.
The working groups' draft reports are reviewed by a second team of experts appointed by the bureau. Individual countries also have a chance to comment - the first, but not the most controversial, opportunity for politicians to influence the report. For the first and second IPCC assessments, the authors were left to incorporate these revisions. But after complaints that some suggestions were not adequately taken on board, whereas other changes were not reviewed by the original authors, this time a third body of scientific experts - the review editors - was appointed by the bureau to oversee the revision process.
Given the reports' size - the third full assessment covers about 2,500 pages - few people ever read a full working-group report, much less an entire assessment. Instead, most rely on the 'Summary for Policymakers' (SPM) that accompanies each working-group report. For many critics of the IPCC process, the SPMs, and the way in which they are interpreted in the media, are the key problem.
Drafting an SPM is extremely difficult. When circulated for comment, the draft SPM for Working Group I's third assessment attracted roughly 20 words of comment for every word of the original. Once these comments have been incorporated, the fun really begins. Each working group's SPM has to be approved by a special plenary meeting. This time, roughly 50 authors attended each plenary, along with representatives from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) - but both the scientists and NGOs are there only to advise. The final word rests with 400-odd delegates from the participating countries, who may or may not have a strong background in a relevant scientific discipline.
A literary circus
Every word has to be agreed on unanimously before it enters the SPM. With discussions translated simultaneously into five different languages, the approval of Working Group I's summary for the third assessment - originally just seven pages long - took four days. By the time the delegates to the plenary, held in Shanghai in January, had finished, the document had more than doubled in length.
"You've got an almost circus-like atmosphere," says Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and a Working Group I lead author who was present in Shanghai. "It's hard... very hard."
As government representatives, delegates may arrive with goals for what the summary should say that are based on policy objectives rather than science."They are trying to perhaps weight certain things based on their national interests," says Cynthia Rosenzweig, a Working Group II lead author who heads the Climate Impacts Group at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
Kevin Trenberth, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and a lead author for Working Group I, says that the wrangling in Shanghai began with the first paragraph. Saudi Arabian delegates, whom some allege are keen to play down the threat of global warming to protect their country's oil exports, objected to a sentence that read: "Many hundreds of scientists contributed to its preparation and review." The Saudis felt this implied that all of these scientists endorsed the report in every respect. After some verbal wrestling, the line was altered to read: "Many hundreds of scientists from many countries participated in its preparations and review." In the days of discussion that followed, says Trenberth, the process was repeated over and over again. FIGURE 2
The most difficult negotiations, according to Trenberth, related to the connection between human activity and climate change. One contentious line began as: "Despite these uncertainties, it is likely that increasing concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases have combined substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years." By the end of the plenary, it had become: "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
To the untutored eye, these slight differences in wording may seem of little significance. And to Rosenzweig, the fact that such protracted negotiations result in relatively limited changes is a testament to the quality of the IPCC scientists' work. By defining the scientific consensus between narrow limits, she argues, there is little room for bias in the summary. Rosenzweig says the biggest problem was coping with scientists pushing to have their own results included.
Indeed, despite the unusual nature of a process that involves political appointees agreeing on how a scientific study should be summarized, most of the IPCC's authors are satisfied with the way it works. But many say that the SPMs should be marked to indicate that they are not solely the work of scientists. Robert Watson, director for the environment at the World Bank and chair of the IPCC Bureau, says he would not object to some words of explanation being included.
Clarity or bias?
John Houghton of Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, west of London, and co-chair of Working Group I, believes the plenary meetings actually improve the final SPMs. "It's more clear and more relevant," he says. "You might think it would make it worse, but it doesn't."
But speak to critics outside the IPCC's fold and you hear a different story. Fred Singer is a long-standing sceptic of the threat posed by global warming, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a pressure group in Arlington, Virginia. Singer thinks the main reports are sound, but he argues that the SPMs fail to adequately acknowledge the uncertainties in climate-change science. According to Singer, the process that gives rise to the SPMs plays down uncertainties so as to force governments to take climate change seriously. "It is selective in the facts that it uses from the report," says Singer. "It slants things. It puts a spin on things. It starts out with a given conclusion and then selects those facts which support that conclusion."
Most climate researchers argue these charges should be laid at the door of Singer's group, not the IPCC. Thomas Stocker, a climate modeller at the University of Bern in Switzerland and one of Working Group I's lead authors, takes serious issue with Singer's broadside. "That's completely unfounded," he says. "If you read our SPM you will find plenty of sentences that explicitly state where there are uncertainties." He views the agreement between the full report and its précis in the SPM as impressive.
Reflected glory
Exactly how accurately the SPMs reflect the underlying reports was investigated last month by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) as part of a request from President George W. Bush to examine climate-change research (see Nature 411, 725; 2001). The NAS report focused on Working Group I - the most contentious, as the other two working groups depend in large part on its conclusions. Like the working group itself, the NAS report provided ammunition for both supporters and critics of the IPCC. Working Group I's SPM, concluded the NAS, is "consistent with the main body of the report". But the NAS report agreed that the SPM had failed to explain adequately the caveats on which some of the uncertainties it referred to were based.
"We found some understatements of uncertainties, but generally changes made from the technical chapters to the SPM didn't affect the impact of the statements very much, which was very impressive," says Ralph Cicerone, an atmospheric scientist and chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, who chaired the NAS panel. Cicerone adds that his panel conducted a quick survey of IPCC authors in the United States and found that those who responded said unanimously that the SPM accurately represented what they wrote in the main text.
But Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the NAS report, does not see it the same way. "Within the confines of professional courtesy," Lindzen wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times, "the panel essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide suitable guidance for the US government." Lindzen has long argued that evidence for climate change is too shaky to justify the costly strategies mooted to tackle it.
Some critics of the IPCC believe that removing politicians from the process could be one way of ending the arguments. "Let the scientists tell the world what the scientists said," says Robert Balling, director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University in Tempe. Although Balling contributed material to the Working Group II report, he is a prominent global-warming sceptic and a vocal critic of the IPCC.
But most participants in the IPCC process believe that the presence of national delegates is crucial. "If you didn't have that then the report wouldn't be so important. It's as simple as that," says Michael Grubb, an energy economist at Imperial College London and a Working Group III lead author. He argues that involving government officials in the IPCC process forces politicians to take a close look at the report and the underlying science, rather than simply putting it on the shelf.
Michael Oppenheimer, chief scientist with the New York-based NGO Environmental Defense, and a lead author for Working Group I, agrees. "If the price paid to get there is some discomfort among some of the players and criticism because it's not purely a product of scientists, I think that's a price worth paying," he says.
Panel beating
In the past, revisions to the working groups' full reports subsequent to SPM approval have caused problems. When substantial additions are made to the draft of the SPM, authors must sometimes supplement the main report to ensure that a given point is adequately covered. After the IPCC's second assessment was published, Singer's Science and Environmental Policy Project alleged that this process had proceeded largely unchecked, with some authors adding material to the main report without giving others the chance to comment. To deflect such criticism of the third assessment, every change to the main report was logged, whether it resulted from the formal review process or the plenary sessions.
Some critics allege that problems of bias lie not with the SPMs or the IPCC process, but with the climate research community as a whole. They argue that many climate scientists hold environmentalist views, and so tend to stress the importance of research that paints the most worrying picture of climate change in order to spur politicians into action.
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC), based in Washington, which styles itself as a "voice for business in the climate debate", draws attention to remarks made by Stephen Schneider, a climate-change researcher at Stanford University in California and a lead author of the Working Group II report.
In a 1989 Discover magazine article, Schneider discussed the dilemma facing scientists who wanted to draw attention to climate change while remaining true to current scientific knowledge of the subject. "We need to capture the public's imagination," he noted. "That entails getting loads of media coverage, so we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified and dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we might have." Although Schneider went on to say that he hoped climatologists could be both effective and honest, the remarks were seized on by bodies such as the GCC as evidence that scientists were exaggerating the consequences of climate change.
Tempered view
John Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and a lead author for Working Group I, believes that researchers who are new to climatology, many of whom have been attracted to the field because of its 'green' associations, are more likely to back extreme climate-change predictions. But he argues that they are largely countered by more experienced researchers who tend to make more conservative judgements because they place less stock in the long-range climate forecasts.
The fact that the IPCC's consensus is backed by Christy, whose views on climate change have on occasion provided ammunition for global-warming sceptics, provides one indication that - despite its critics - the organization is working effectively. But where the IPCC goes from here is still being debated. A fourth assessment will almost certainly take place, but Watson says it might focus on new information rather than attempt another full review.
Some researchers, meanwhile, suggest that the IPCC model should be applied to other thorny issues. Christy, for example, would like to see a similar effort devoted to the environmental problems threatening developing nations, such as deforestation and the lack of suitable fresh water. And the UK House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee recently suggested that the IPCC model could be applied to ocean pollution and genetic modification. "It's the only long-term successful example of how a complex scientific issue can be brought to the decision makers," says Stocker.
Whether or not the model is applied elsewhere, the fact that IPCC reports are accepted as the scientific guide for the Kyoto Protocol negotiations is, for many involved, proof enough that the process is working as well as can be hoped. It might look like a circus at times, but a global response to climate change would probably be impossible without it.
© 2001 Nature Publishing Group
Tebi,a i svim poliglotama-molim pišite da i ostali razumeju,malo na srpskom,ili prevod
#71
Indy
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Posted 29 October 2006 - 02:20
QUOTE(ljubitelj @ 29 Oct 2006, 03:42)
Tebi,a i svim poliglotama-molim pišite da i ostali razumeju,malo na srpskom,ili prevod
Vazi, poslacu ti broj mog racuna na koji mozes da mi uplatis 50 evra po stranici prevoda. (Cijena - prava sitnica). EDIT - sto je najsmesnije, kad i prevedem nesto, niko ni 'fala da kaze.
Edited by Indy, 29 October 2006 - 02:40.
#72
ljubitelj
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- Banned
- 205 posts
Posted 29 October 2006 - 13:30
QUOTE(Indy @ 29 Oct 2006, 02:20)
Vazi, poslacu ti broj mog racuna na koji mozes da mi uplatis 50 evra po stranici prevoda. (Cijena - prava sitnica). EDIT - sto je najsmesnije, kad i prevedem nesto, niko ni 'fala da kaze.
Bog će da ti plati a od mene imaš hvala
#73
balu
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Posted 30 October 2006 - 02:12
Kada se majcica Zemlja otarasi ljudi sve se vraca u normalu, pa i klima. Za Zemlju je 100.000 godina otprilike kao nedelju dana u zivotu coveka. A mislim da coveku u vr' glave ostaje jos 1000. I to je mnogo, kojim pravcem se krecemo. Sa "slobodnim" trzistem, ostaje nam jos jedva par stotina.
Elem majcica ce da prezivi, a mi cemo sami sebe da skenjamo.
Lep pozdraU
Elem majcica ce da prezivi, a mi cemo sami sebe da skenjamo.
Lep pozdraU
#74
Indy
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Posted 30 October 2006 - 04:14
QUOTE(balu @ 30 Oct 2006, 11:12)
Elem majcica ce da prezivi, a mi cemo sami sebe da skenjamo.
E bre cika balu, ti kad ga udaris u tanke zice, dodje mi da iskocim kroz prozor (jes' da sam u prizemlju, ali kapiras sta 'ocu da kazem).
Bolje se pridruzi akciji "Movember" koju sprovodim sa kolegama (doduse, ako si ti to na tvom avataru, onda si vec ostvario pola cilja akcije, utoliko bolje)...
----------------
During Movember (the month formerly known as November) our team will be growing moustache's (mo's).
That’s right, they will be bringing the Mo back because we are passionate about changing the state of men’s health.
Male health is a major issue, did you know:
- Men are far less healthy than women. The average life expectancy of males is 6 years less than females.
- Every year in Australia 2,700 men die of prostate cancer – more than the number of women who die from breast cancer.
- Depression affects 1 in 6 men… (jes cuo cika Balu?) Most don’t seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide. Rates of suicide are more than double the national road toll.
Please go to http://www.movember.com.au/au/sponsor, enter our Rego number which is xxxx and your credit card details.
The money raised by Movember will be used to change the face of men's health by creating awareness and funding research into prostate cancer and male depression.
Or come & see one of our team to sponsor and we can give you an official receipt for your tax.
Cheers!
Edited by Indy, 30 October 2006 - 04:16.
#75
balu
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- Members
- 896 posts
Posted 30 October 2006 - 19:38
QUOTE(Indy @ 30 Oct 2006, 05:14)
E bre cika balu, ti kad ga udaris u tanke zice, dodje mi da iskocim kroz prozor (jes' da sam u prizemlju, ali kapiras sta 'ocu da kazem).
Sir Indy nisu tanke zice, casti mi. Ja stvarno verujem u to, da cemo da se sjebemo. Covek je jedno poprilicno beslovesno bice, a umislja da je nenadjebiv. Glavni motivi su mu gramzivost i sujeta, a borba protiv sveopceg zagrevanja, promene klime i tako tih tricarija mu nisu svojstvene. Tu nema zarade.
Inace na avtaru mi je jedan cika koji samo po sedoj bradi lici na mene. Cak je i mnogo bolje pisao od mene, pogotovo na anglosaksonskom. A da smo mi muskinje bioloski slabiji pol tu nema dvojbe. Da li nas treba spasvati, tu vec postoji dvojba. U prirodi je obicno jedna muskinja na vise zenskinja tako da broj muskinja moze i da se prepolovi i nista bitno se nece promeniti. Jedino sto bi to pospesilo vracanje planete u normalu. Sa 4,5 milijardi pucanstva lakse bi se disalo.
Lep pozdraU.
