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Print E-mail del.icio.us 59 comment(s) - last by kondor999.. on Jun 27 at 11:26 AM

The image at the heart of the lawsuit
Altered Photographs of Sea Level Rise to Blame

A group of Spanish homeowners and real estate developers have filed suit against Greenpeace for its global warming campaign, which they say has caused a steep decrease in the price of their beachfront properties.

The suit -- which the developers plan to present unless Greenpeace agrees to a settlement of nearly $50M -- is over resort properties in La Manga del Mar Menor, in Southwest Spain. Greenpeace, in their recent book Photoclima, prominently featured digitally altered photographs of the resort, with only the tops of apartment buildings, hotels, and palm trees barely visible above a flooded sea. The book also showed before-and-after photos of Spain's lush lemon and orange growing region of Valencia, transformed into an arid desert. "We want[ed] to create alarm and a call to action", said Juan Lopez de Uralde, Greenpeace's director in Spain.

The photos created a sense of alarm in La Manga, with property values dropping by 50 percent after the book appeared. Jose Angel Abad, an attorney representing the property owners, says "Greenpeace manipulated the expected rise [to] cause alarm. It has sunk the real estate market: no one is buying and everyone has put their apartments up for sale". The UN IPCC predicts a 30 cm increase in sea level over the next century, a rise far smaller than the vast degree of flooding depicted in the book.

The group is seeking a EUR 27 million settlement, to cover the decline in their property values.

Greenpeace says the action is intended to "blackmail" them into footing the bill for the price drop, which they blame on an oversaturated real-estate market. However, home prices in Spain rose an average of 4% in 2007, though some regions saw declines of up to 8%.

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By Andy35W on 6/16/2008 2:46:06 AM , Rating: 3
His earlier blog on 12 months wiping out years of global warming is still misquoting the original source, see here

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/tw...

"When the DailyTech first posted this story and referenced my blog as the source of the compilation, without ever interviewing me or asking me a single question"

"This demonstrates how one story written in one place can often go repeated, without being challenged or double checked. This happens in many types of news reports. In my 25 years in TV, I’ve seen this happen at the local level, all the way up to the national level. We’ve seen it happen with global warming stories too. The ease of electronic immediacy in reporting often runs over the accuracy in reporting, be it blogs, websites, TV or radio, the issue is the same."

Good summary of why this blog loses accuracy for spin. Still an enjoyable read though.




By masher2 (blog) on 6/16/2008 10:19:27 AM , Rating: 3
> "His earlier blog on 12 months wiping out years of global warming is still misquoting the original source"

I'm sorry, but this isn't true at all. First of all, the "original source" of that article was the temperature data itself, directly from UAH, the Hadley Center, RSS, and NASA's GISS. Watts was the source of the graphics only. His remarks were posted because one major news agency that quoted the Dailytech story mistakenly attributed the article comments as his.

Immediately upon being contacted by Watts (a few hours after the story went live), we not only updated the story to clarify that he was related to the story only by the creation of the graphics, but we removed the word itself which so offended him -- a point he makes directly in the link your reference (and you conveniently left out):

quote:
There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied


By jbartabas on 6/16/2008 3:28:18 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
I'm sorry, but this isn't true at all. First of all, the "original source" of that article was the temperature data itself, directly from UAH, the Hadley Center, RSS, and NASA's GISS.


If the source is the data, you're still misquoting it. The data does not support "wipes out a century of warming". Did you at least bother to look at the data?


By masher2 (blog) on 6/16/2008 10:05:59 PM , Rating: 1
> "Did you at least bother to look at the data? "

The data demonstrated a 0.6C drop in one year's time-- even more if one uses the GISS dataset. Given the total warming of the past century is under one degree, a majority of it was eliminated by the cooling, yes.


By jbartabas on 6/17/2008 11:46:29 AM , Rating: 2
Again, you obviously have not looked at the data at all:

Jan 1908 : -0.479 (Hadley) -0.41 (GISS)
Jan 2007 : +0.632 (Hadley) +0.86 (GISS)
Jan 2008 : +0.053 (Hadley) +0.14 (GISS)

You fail to realize that the 0.6 C drop you're talking about was with respect with a local maximum (i.e. Jan 2007), which is not what actual scientists use to quantify the warming (i.e. your "under a degree warming"). If you really insist on using monthly data to qualify the warming, then the warming during the last 100 years in January 2008 was ~ 1.2 C.

So if you do the maths right, after the spectacular drop in temperature at the end of 2007- beginning of 2008, the warming since 100 years is still

Had = +0.53 C
GISS = +0.55 C

So much for wiping out a century of warming ... At best you could have argued about a wiping out of the warming of the last decades. That wouldn't make more sense intrinsically, but at least a superficial look at the data would give you an apparent support.


By masher2 (blog) on 6/17/2008 12:07:42 PM , Rating: 2
> "You fail to realize that the 0.6 C drop you're talking about was with respect with a local maximum "

Eh? Did you not read the article at all? The drop is specifically identified on the graph as occurring between Jan 07 and Jan 08, and further explained as such in the text -- as starting from a warm month (e.g. a local maximum) of January 2007.

> "...which is not what actual scientists use to quantify the warming "

"Actual scientists" quantify the warming pulse in many different manner -- from a monthly mean, yearly mean, sliding five-year average, normalized or not in many different manners, and against a variety of different baselined.

However, in this particular case, you cannot use anything but monthly means, as there isn't a full year's data for 2008 yet. The methodology chose was correct.

> "So if you do the maths right, after the spectacular drop in temperature at the end of 2007- beginning of 2008, the warming since 100 years is still"

I won't bother to correct your math, but I will point out that, even according to your own figures, a majority of the century's warming was erasd by that cooling trend. From 1.2C down to 0.53C is well over half the total warming experienced.

The fact remains the commonly accepted magnitude of industrial warming is *not* 1.2C, but more like 0.8C. And by that metric, nearly all the warming was indeed "wiped out".


By jbartabas on 6/17/2008 12:57:45 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Eh? Did you not read the article at all? The drop is specifically identified on the graph as occurring between Jan 07 and Jan 08, and further explained as such in the text -- as starting from a warm month (e.g. a local maximum) of January 2007.


That's not the point. The point is that you compare apples and oranges. The fact that you are self-conscious about it is irrelevant.

quote:
"Actual scientists" quantify the warming pulse in many different manner -- from a monthly mean, yearly mean, sliding five-year average, normalized or not in many different manners, and against a variety of different baselined.


The "warming pulse" ...

quote:
I won't bother to correct your math,


Please do so. However I hope you won't pretend to correct my maths when a typo is obviously the issue. The 1.2C increase is in reference to Jan 2007, before the drop you reference to occurs. I am sure that even with your flawed logic, you understand that's the point of interest.

quote:
The fact remains the commonly accepted magnitude of industrial warming is *not* 1.2C, but more like 0.8C. And by that metric, nearly all the warming was indeed "wiped out".


The fact is that you take an initial point that is above the level of global warming you are referring to, compute the difference with the T in Jan 2008 and conclude that most of the warming is wiped out. Actually most of the -0.6C just "wiped out" the additional T above the "accepted" level of warming. The residual is then subtracted to the long term average. To keep it simple,

T anomaly in 1908 : ~ -.45 C
T anomaly in 2008 : ~ +0.05 C

T in 2008 is larger by ~ 0.5C relative to the one 100 years ago. There's nothing close to "wiping of a century of warming".

Now of course you can spin it as much as you want to pretend that the wiping out of 100 years of warming was actually referring to a decrease of ~55%, which is bit more than half, but we know that's not what you meant.


By onelittleindian on 6/16/2008 11:11:51 PM , Rating: 2
How many buttsore enviromentalists are going to contradict real world data? Global warming stopped in 1998. Even the UN is admitting that we're not warming any more.


By littlebitstrouds on 6/17/2008 10:57:51 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Even the UN is admitting that we're not warming any more.

Just for my own curiosity... where is it that they say that?


By onelittleindian on 6/17/2008 1:28:31 PM , Rating: 1
By littlebitstrouds on 6/17/2008 1:48:33 PM , Rating: 2
Laughable. Take the time to parse the article.

quote:
"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year," he said. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming."


And again, before you slam, the question was: where does it say anywhere, like this fob before me stated, that the U.N. has announced they're new stance that Global Warming doesn't exist?


By jbartabas on 6/17/2008 1:54:56 PM , Rating: 2
It's a silly spin from someone who obviously know nothing about what he's talking about.

UN is just stating that natural variability for 2008 will offset the underlying GW signal. You can present as "we are not warming anymore", which is true, but irrelevant... or as relevant as any drop in temperature over a one year period in the last 150 years.


By onelittleindian on 6/17/2008 9:09:06 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
UN is just stating that natural variability for 2008 will offset the underlying GW signal.
Not just 2008. It's all the way back to 1998. And its expected to last at least another 10 to 15 years before warming begins again.

That's up to 25 years without warming. Learn what you're talking about before you try to debate it.


By littlebitstrouds on 6/18/2008 9:51:56 AM , Rating: 2
Quick question... When did the UN say it's changing it's view and instead saying, global warming isn't an issue. Are you mentally slow? Can you answer the question pulease.

Screw it, you're obviously not capable of not trying to draw your own damn conclusions from a misquoted one liner from Mr. Asher's sensationalistic reporting:
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
There, there you go. Doesn't look like they changed anything. So stop making egregious claims.


By onelittleindian on 6/18/2008 10:49:40 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
quick question... When did the UN say it's changing it's view
Learn to read. I didn't say they changed their view. They said it has stopped warming. Which is not only true, it's exactly what I said.

The UN believes it will start warming again at some point in the future. But it has stopped now.


By littlebitstrouds on 6/18/2008 11:18:10 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Even the UN is admitting that we're not warming any more.


Quoted.

The U.N. believes there is global warming - True
The U.N. shows data that for a period of time there are exceptions to this - True
The U.N. admits we're not warming anymore - False.
Trying to dodge it, is annoying, stop. Let me retype it for you and you can keep you damn argument. Just stop making sensationalistic claims that logic out but are still untrue.

"The U.N. Has shown we have cooled but maintain that we are in the process of Global Warming."