Sustainability, Matt Damon, Leonardo, and whole lot of coffee chitter-chatter |

Disclaimer: These are excerpts from our staff’s coffee-break time so if you expect to find the usual wised-up and all-sophisticated talk on environmental issues on this messenger window, don’t say we did not warn you.

Shash_CC: Tring!

Prat_the brat: Hi..sup?

Shash_CC: 5 pm n d works…jus wrapped sm headlines, wat u up to?

Prat_thebrat: Congrats, m still midway a story…btw, send me dat song list I asked pls

Prat_thebrat: Helllllllo, u there?

Prat_thebrat: where d heck hv u vaporised?

Prat_thebrat: is smone there? Hullllllo

Shash_CC: oopsy..sry..was jus scrollin a nice video

Prat_thebrat: Aha;) I thot ur coffee machine broke again..so wat u watching? hope smthin interesting n not a cat video

Shash_CC: u wish…no yaar, a Matt Damon thing on water, n a Leonardo Caprio film on climate change

Prat_thebrat: Who? Matt n Leo? Those Hollywood boys…they do all this too..u nvr tell me all this dope…grrr

Shash_CC: Ya, the same chaps…wat’s d point…it’s not as if u gals ’ll stop drooling over Jake Gyllenhaal or the ‘bout-to-be-knotted’ Clooney;)

Prat_thebrat: ha ha ha. Laugh all u can..u don’t hv to twist d knife further..so wat if Clooney is tkn..Jake’s still out n bout

Shash_CC: Ya ya, but Matt has started a Water.org. Score! shutterstock_212688508

Prat_thebrat: Jake starred in ‘The Day After Tomorrow’! Double score!

Shash_CC: Seriously u argue wid dat?

Prat_thebrat: come on..Dint u like d movie but?

Shash_CC: u knw when it comes to movies, I…

Prat_thebrat: I thought he really looked gorgeous in dat

Shash_CC: ah, n u cut me mid-sentence again

Prat_thebrat: u hv to give in on this..he picks diff movies no?

Shash_CC: did u even watch d movie or jus him?

Prat_thebrat: well, it’s hard to ..but ya, d movie kinna put d whole D-day thing in full zoom

Shash_CC: ice melting, cities freezing, ya

Prat_thebrat: do u buy it though?

Shash_CC: buy what?

Prat_thebrat: like although there is so much science n lot of signs already but jus for d sake of letting d nightmare rest, won’t it be a gud idea if smone told us dat it’s not gonna happen

Shash_CC: r u turning into a sceptic? Or r u chickening out?

Prat_thebrat: no m not..mostly v ppl r on d fence anyways…but it wud b a cozy feeling to knw dat things r not as scary as those fortune tellers r supposedly hinting

Shash_CC: hv u bn reading bout d hockey stick again?

Prat_thebrat: ya, bumped into it last nite..n then there r those Climategate email leaks dat pop up too

Shash_CC: what leaks

Prat_thebrat: u knw dat 2009 mess bout lots of pvt emails btw climate change scientists…Univ of East Anglia n CRU I guess..

Shash_CC: Wasn’t it sm one called Mann who v knw for the IPCC fame stick graph?

Prat_thebrat: yes, but the graph used reconstructions n dats where CRU n its head Phil Jones come in coz they were doin records of past temperatures from proxy n thermometer data

Shash_CC: Oh that, ya, the emails talked of manipulation right?

Prat_thebrat : dey ‘suggested’ in a way apparently dat data was bein hidden n access to data

Shash_CC: Rings a bell, ya ..n prevention of non-fitting journal papers was also in question

Shash_CC: n skeptics scampered to decode all this as the part they want to hear that the sky is not falling n global warming is not gonna happen

Prat_thebrat: it’s curious bit though

Shash_CC: wat

Prat_thebrat: dat hockey paper thingy dat came in 1998 by Michael Mann had used lot of sources… corals, stalagmites, tree rings, boreholes, ice cores n d whole fare…it boiled down into a sign dat global temperature gradually cooled over the last 1000 years with a sharp upturn in the 20th Century…but if their inch tape was not correct ?

Shashoo7: ?

Prat_thebrat: Like their hockey stick graph doodling warming patterns for all centuries n then showing that 20th century is the warmest in the last 1000 years easily comes into a foggy spot if they used a shoddy calculator?

Shash_CC: guess tree rings as a measurement thing also came into controversy by skeptics?

Prat_thebrat: in fact some of d later reconstructions show smthing else…like dat critique that popped in 2004 or smthin where McIntyre argued how hockey stick shape was coz of the statistical method used , or principal components analysis n this whole hockey stick shape was not statistically significant

Shash_CC: now dat u remind me of dat, there was even smthing taken up by National Center for Atmospheric Research by Wahl in 2007 I guess where they found slightly different temperatures in the early 15th Century, but even they were ok with the broad idea n principal conclusions of the original hockey stick – about d warming patterns. So it’s not all wrong I guess

Prat_thebrat: may b d whole thing blew out of bounds coz IPCC used it in its 2001 report n dats y so many claims of the paper’s essence bein a fraud n bein flawed

Shash_CC: Like bout the accuracy of past temperature reconstructions so dat it’s not an evidence for global warming. Yet, if u see some subsequent surface temperature reconstructions n other proxy factors like ice caps and the retreat of glaciers more or less flock around a similar argument

Prat_thebrat : Well when smone says it’s definitely hotter now than it has been for at least 1000 yrs, how do v knw or compare that with if not for our science friends n stats folks

Shash_CC: U don’t like astro n geo stuff when it comes to books much do u?

Prat_thebrat: no, I wud prefer Stephanie Meyer for horror anyday.. but m sure do r bout to flaunt ur latest degree..so go on

Shash_CC: I wont but do look up some info on Quazars

Prat_thebrat: Physics! Argh! Sm other day may be..but since u hate Statistics with equal passion, I wonder how Stats helps ppl love to throw tomatoes on d graph coz of so-called collation errors, bad truncation or extrapolation of source data, data being obsolete data, sloppy component calculations etc

Shash_CC: well, stats is not easy, my son wud vouch for dat..LOL

Prat_thebrat: He he. Cudnt agree more, but talking of scientists, v journos shud respect objectivity d same way no?

Shash_CC: where r u goin wid dat?

Prat_thebrat: m jus sayin dat this whole ‘benefit of doubt’ part is not so obsolete

Shash_CC: I knw, I was reading d other day how some scientists were working on a big U.N. report on climate change n now wrestling with a new confusion as to y global warming has slowed down in last 15 years

Prat_thebrat : Really, but hvn’t v humans raised greenhouse gas emissions a lot in this period only?

Shash_CC: We have for sure but skeptics r not goin to let go of lull in surface warming since 1998

Prat_thebrat: What if this warming-slowdown is connected to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean? US has argued dat. Or natural climate variations or volcanic cooling or jus another solar activity phase?

Shash_CC: well dat n El Nino or La Nina ocean cycles r there too but it wont come to dat as long as statisticians r in d ring coz acc to them, v need to sort out the very 1998 as a starting year for any statistics

Prat_thebrat: Y

Shash_CC: Coz it was exceptionally hot so a wrong ref point

Prat_thebrat: Well

Shash_CC: What well?

Prat_thebrat: m chewing a gum now

Shash_CC: Gums r always a waste

Prat_thebrat: Nah, I mean wats d point

Shash_CC: Point of what?

Prat_thebrat: u knw all this debate n study after another, one proving d earlier one wrong n the whole hairball

Shash_CC: everythin has a point, sm reason, except eigh-inch stilettos

Prat_thebrat: ROFTL, u lesser mortals n ur ignorance bout d virtues of heels

Shash_CC: I don’t care a mouse’s ass bout those…as to d graph, see it’s not bout whether Mann, the hockey stick guy was right or wrong or was it right to leak emails n etc etc

Prat_thebrat: Then?

Shash_CC: Shud smone wait for a scary ECG before they start cutting down on junk food n start eating more greens n healthy stuff? Detoxing body without any alarms is not a bad idea right?

Prat_thebrat: Correct, so?

Shash_CC: So y shud v b caught up in a debate btw the graph is right or wrong when it comes to making better, saner choices as a consumer or society? Does it not help us on many other levels – financially, economically, ecologically, psychologically, biologically?

Prat_thebrat: I get wat u mean, plus at least scientists shud stop one-upmanship fights, v already hv so many other conflicts goin on

Shash_CC: They shud agree?

Prat_thebrat: Agree to disagree rather

Shash_CC: Ya, I recall seeing this Memorandum by the Institute of Physics (CRU 39) on d disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia

Prat_thebrat: And?

Shash_CC: It showed this good concern beyond those emails being proved to be forgeries, and it jumped right onto the integrity of scientific research in this field and for the credibility of the scientific method. It stressed dat scientists shud be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others

Prat_thebrat : n dat boils down to open exchange of data n procedures which was in question w/ Mann’s paper on historic temperature reconstructions from measurements of tree rings as proxies

Shash_CC: Ya, the rejected requests for further information part is what is troublesome, when it comes to scientific community

Prat_thebrat: Coz contemporary instrumental temperature measurements and direct instrumental measurements of land and ocean surface temperatures such as the CRU, GISS and NOAA data sets cannot be ignored

Shash_CC: this is not a big barrier if there is enuf transparency n peer review