Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate - Science ...

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PrefaceBefore facing major surgery, wouldn’t you want asecond opinion?When a nation faces an important decision thatrisks its economic future, or perhaps the fate of theecology, it should do the same. It is a time-honoredtradition in this case to set up a ‘Team B,’ whichexamines the same original evidence but may reacha different conclusion. The NongovernmentalInternational Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)was set up to examine the same climate data used bythe United Nations-sponsored IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change (IPCC).On the most important issue, the IPCC’s claimthat “most of the observed increase in globalaverage temperatures since the mid-20th century isvery likely (defined by the IPCC as between 90 to99 percent certain) due to the observed increase inanthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations,”(emphasis in the original), NIPCC reaches theopposite conclusion – namely, that natural causesare very likely to be the dominant cause. Note: Wedo not say anthropogenic greenhouse (GH) gasescannot produce some warming. Our conclusion isthat the evidence shows they are not playing asignificant role.Below, we first sketch out the history of the twoorganizations and then list the conclusions andresponses that form the body of the NIPCC report.A Brief History of the IPCCThe rise in environmental consciousness since the1970s has focused on a succession of ‘calamities’:cancer epidemics from chemicals, extinction ofbirds and other species by pesticides, the depletionof the ozone layer by supersonic transports and laterby freons, the death of forests (‘Waldsterben’)because of acid rain, and finally, global warming,the “mother of all environmental scares” (accordingto the late Aaron Wildavsky).The IPCC can trace its roots to World EarthDay in 1970, the Stockholm Conference in 1971-72,and the Villach Conferences in 1980 and 1985. InJuly 1986, the United Nations EnvironmentProgram (UNEP) and the World MeteorologicalOrganization (WMO) established theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)as an organ of the United Nations.The IPCC’s key personnel and lead authorswere appointed by governments, and its Summariesfor Policymakers (SPM) have been subject toapproval by member governments of the UN. Thescientists involved with the IPCC are almost allsupported by government contracts, which pay notonly for their research but for their IPCC activities.Most travel to and hotel accommodations at exoticlocations for the drafting authors is paid withgovernment funds.The history of the IPCC has been described inseveral publications. What is not emphasized,however, is the fact that it was an activist enterprisefrom the very beginning. Its agenda was to justifycontrol of the emission of greenhouse gases,especially carbon dioxide. Consequently, itsscientific reports have focused solely on evidencethat might point toward human-induced climatechange. The role of the IPCC “is to assess on acomprehensive, objective, open and transparentbasis the latest scientific, technical andsocio-economic literature produced worldwiderelevant to the understanding of the risk ofhuman-induced climate change, its observed andprojected impacts and options for adaptation andmitigation” (emphasis added) [IPCC 2008].The IPCC’s three chief ideologues have been(the late) Professor Bert Bolin, a meteorologist atStockholm University; Dr. Robert Watson, anatmospheric chemist at NASA, later at the WorldBank, and now chief scientist at the UK Departmentof Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; and Dr.John Houghton, an atmospheric radiation physicistat Oxford University, later head of the UK MetOffice as Sir John Houghton.Watson had chaired a self-appointed group tofind evidence for a human effect on stratosphericozone and was instrumental in pushing for the 1987Montreal Protocol to control the emission ofchlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Using the blueprint ofthe Montreal Protocol, environmental lawyer DavidDoniger of the Natural Resources Defense Councilthen laid out a plan to achieve the same kind ofcontrol mechanism for greenhouse gases, a plan thateventually was adopted as the Kyoto Protocol.From the very beginning, the IPCC was apolitical rather than scientific entity, with its leadingscientists reflecting the positions of theirgovernments or seeking to induce their governmentsto adopt the IPCC position. In particular, a smalliv
group of activists wrote the all-important Summaryfor Policymakers (SPM) for each of the four IPCCreports [McKitrick et al. 2007].While we are often told about the thousands ofscientists on whose work the Assessment reports arebased, the vast majority of these scientists have nodirect influence on the conclusions expressed by theIPCC. Those are produced by an inner core ofscientists, and the SPMs are revised and agreed to,line-by-line, by representatives of membergovernments. This obviously is not how realscientific research is reviewed and published.These SPMs turn out, in all cases, to be highlyselective summaries of the voluminous sciencereports – typically 800 or more pages, with noindexes (except, finally, the Fourth AssessmentReport released in 2007), and essentially unreadableexcept by dedicated scientists.The IPCC’s First Assessment Report [IPCC-FAR 1990] concluded that the observed temperaturechanges were “broadly consistent” with greenhousemodels. Without much analysis, it arrived at a“climate sensitivity” of a 1.5º to 4.5º C temperaturerise for a doubling of greenhouse gases. TheIPCC-FAR led to the adoption of the GlobalClimate Treaty at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio deJaneiro.The FAR drew a critical response [SEPP 1992].FAR and the IPCC’s style of work also werecriticized in two editorials in Nature [Anonymous1994, Maddox 1991].The IPCC’s Second Assessment Report [IPCC-SAR 1996] was completed in 1995 and published in1996. Its SPM contained the memorable conclusion,“the balance of evidence suggests a discerniblehuman influence on global climate.” The SAR wasagain heavily criticized, this time for havingundergone significant changes in the body of thereport to make it ‘conform’ to the SPM – after itwas finally approved by the scientists involved inwriting the report. Not only was the report altered,but a key graph was also doctored to suggest ahuman influence. The evidence presented to supportthe SPM conclusion turned out to be completelyspurious.There is voluminous material available aboutthese text changes, including a Wall Street Journaleditorial article by Dr. Frederick Seitz [Seitz 1996].This led to heated discussions between supporters ofthe IPCC and those who were aware of the alteredtext and graph, including an exchange of letters inthe Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society[Singer et al. 1997].SAR also provoked the 1996 publication of theLeipzig Declaration by SEPP, which was signed bysome 100 climate scientists. A booklet titled “TheScientific Case Against the Global Climate Treaty”followed in September 1997 and was translated intoseveral languages. [SEPP 1997. All these areavailable online at www.sepp.org.]In spite of its obvious shortcomings, the IPCCreport provided the underpinning for the KyotoProtocol, which was adopted in December 1997.The background is described in detail in the booklet“Climate Policy – From Rio to Kyoto,” publishedby the Hoover Institution [Singer 2000]. The KyotoProtocol also provoked the adoption of a shortstatement expressing doubt about its scientificfoundation by the Oregon Institute for Science andMedicine, which attracted more than 19,000signatures from scientists, mainly in the U.S. [Thestatement is still attracting signatures, and can beviewed at www.oism.org.]The Third Assessment Report of the IPCC[IPCC-TAR 2001] was noteworthy for its use ofspurious scientific papers to back up its SPM claimof “new and stronger evidence” of anthropogenicglobal warming. One of these was the so called‘hockey-stick’ paper, an analysis of proxy data,which claimed the twentieth century was thewarmest in the past 1,000 years. The paper was laterfound to contain basic errors in its statisticalanalysis. The IPCC also supported a paper thatclaimed pre-1940 warming was of human origin andcaused by greenhouse gases. This work, too,contained fundamental errors in its statisticalanalysis. The SEPP response to TAR was a 2002booklet, “The Kyoto Protocol is Not Backed byScience” [SEPP 2002].The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC[IPCC-AR4 2007] was published in 2007; the SPMof Working Group I was released in February; andthe full report from this Working Group wasreleased in May – after it had been changed, onceagain, to ‘conform’ to the Summary. It is significantthat AR4 no longer makes use of the hockey-stickpaper or the paper claiming pre-1940 human-causedwarming.AR4 concluded that “most of the observedincrease in global average temperatures since themid-20th century is very likely due to the observedincrease in anthropogenic greenhouse gasv
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