The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a political agency that uses science to make a particular political case for change. It is not an independent scientific agency. It does not conduct research. It does not consult with all of the worlds leading climate scientists. It makes use of non-peer reviewed materials to justify some its claims. It makes significant mistakes. It is actively pursuing an agenda. Not all of those who contribute to its work are free of conflict of interest – several work or are senior consultants to the World Wild Life Fund, which also has an agenda. Its Summary for Policy Makers is edited from the original science based submission to reflect the agenda of UN member governments.
This week the IPCC will begin the release of its fifth assessment of the state of the worlds climate. It will accept that no significant increase in surface temperatures have occurred for between fifteen and twenty years and that the climate models it uses for its scenarios are flawed – constantly overestimate both the rate and degree of warming. Nonetheless, it will stick to its guns that the primary cause of warming in the current age is man and that CO2 emissions are what we should focus on. It will issue dire warnings that urgent action is needed.
IPCC vice chair Francis Zwiers, director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at the University of Victoria in Canada, co-wrote a paper published in Nature Climate Change that said climate models had "significantly" overestimated global warming over the last 20 years — and especially for the last 15 years, which coincides with the onset of the hiatus in rising temperatures.
Judith Curry, a climatologist who heads the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was involved in the third IPCC assessment, which was published in 2001. But now she accuses the organization of intellectual arrogance and bias. "All other things being equal, adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will have a warming effect on the planet," Curry said. "However, all things are never equal, and what we are seeing is natural climate variability dominating over human impact."
Roger Pielke Jr., a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder is also a vocal critic of the climate change establishment in general and the IPCC in particular. He asks this simple question: “how is it that this broad community of researchers -- full of bright and thoughtful people -- allowed intolerant activists who make false claims to certainty to become the public face of the field?”. He cites IPCC in particular (see here).
We have been here before. Governments through the IPCC are pursuing an agenda that seeks to give them permission to introduce new taxes, to make strategic investments in “green energy” and penalize the oil, gas, coal, energy and mining industries. They seek a license for carbon taxes and opportunistic investments that fuel the wind, solar and renewable fuels lobbies - despite the consistent failure of wind and solar to produce affordable, market-based solutions. It is an agenda for wealth transfer – with developed countries being asked to pay a premium to developing countries for their “past carbon sins”. It is also an agenda for increased energy poverty in the developed world.
So I for one will not be surprised to hear that unless we act now we are all doomed. We should name Friday – the day of the publication of the Summary for Policy Makers – Al Gore Day in memory of the inconvenient un-truths associated with his documentary. It will be a suitable commemoration.