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

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concentrations” (emphasis in the original).However, as the present report will show, it ignoredavailable evidence against a human contribution tocurrent warming and the substantial research of thepast few years on the effects of solar activity onclimate change.Why have the IPCC reports been marred bycontroversy and so frequently contradicted bysubsequent research? Certainly its agenda to findevidence of a human role in climate change is amajor reason; its organization as a governmententity beholden to political agendas is another majorreason; and the large professional and financialrewards that go to scientists and bureaucrats whoare willing to bend scientific facts to match thoseagendas is yet a third major reason.Another reason for the IPCC’s unreliability isthe naive acceptance by policymakers of ‘peerreviewed’literature as necessarily authoritative. Ithas become the case that refereeing standards formany climate-change papers are inadequate, oftenbecause of the use of an ‘invisible college’ ofreviewers of like inclination to a paper’s authors.[Wegman et al. 2006] (For example, some leadingIPCC promoters surround themselves with as manyas two dozen coauthors when publishing researchpapers.) Policy should be set upon a background ofdemonstrable science, not upon simple (and oftenmistaken) assertions that, because a paper wasrefereed, its conclusions must be accepted.Nongovernmental International Panel onClimate Change (NIPCC)When new errors and outright falsehoods wereobserved in the initial drafts of AR4, SEPP set up a‘Team B’ to produce an independent evaluation ofthe available scientific evidence. While the initialorganization took place at a meeting in Milan in2003, ‘Team B’ was activated only after the AR4SPM appeared in February 2007. It changed itsname to NIPCC and organized an internationalclimate workshop in Vienna in April 2007.The present report stems from the Viennaworkshop and subsequent research andcontributions by a larger group of internationalscholars. For a list of those contributors, see page ii.What was our motivation? It wasn’t financialself-interest: No grants or contributions wereprovided or promised in return for producing thisreport. It wasn’t political: No government agencycommissioned or authorized our efforts, and we donot advise or support the candidacies of anypoliticians or candidates for public office.We donated our time and best efforts to producethis report out of concern that the IPCC wasprovoking an irrational fear of anthropogenic globalwarming based on incomplete and faulty science.Global warming hype has led to demands forunrealistic efficiency standards for cars, theconstruction of uneconomic wind and solar energystations, the establishment of large productionfacilities for uneconomic biofuels such as ethanolfrom corn, requirements that electric companiespurchase expensive power from so-called‘renewable’energy sources, and plans to sequester,at considerable expense, carbon dioxide emittedfrom power plants. While there is absolutelynothing wrong with initiatives to increase energyefficiency or diversify energy sources, they cannotbe justified as a realistic means to control climate.In addition, policies have been developed thattry to hide the huge cost of greenhouse gas controls,such as cap and trade, a Clean DevelopmentMechanism, carbon offsets, and similar schemesthat enrich a few at the expense of the rest of us.Seeing science clearly misused to shape publicpolicies that have the potential to inflict severeeconomic harm, particularly on low-income groups,we choose to speak up for science at a time whentoo few people outside the scientific communityknow what is happening, and too few scientists whoknow the truth have the will or the platforms tospeak out against the IPCC.NIPCC is what its name suggests: aninternational panel of nongovernment scientists andscholars who have come together to understand thecauses and consequences of climate change.Because we are not predisposed to believe climatechange is caused by human greenhouse gasemissions, we are able to look at evidence the IPCCignores. Because we do not work for anygovernments, we are not biased toward theassumption that greater government regulation isnecessary to avert imagined catastrophes.Looking AheadThe public’s fear of anthropogenic global warmingseems to be at a fever pitch. Polls show most peoplein most countries believe human greenhouse gasemissions are a major cause of climate change andvi
that action must be taken to reduce them, althoughmost people apparently are not willing to make thefinancial sacrifices required [Pew 2007].While the present report makes it clear that thescientific debate is tilting away from globalwarming alarmism, we are pleased to see thepolitical debate also is not over. Global warming‘skeptics’ in the policy arena include Vaclav Klaus,president of the Czech Republic; Helmut Schmidt,former German chancellor; and Lord Nigel Lawson,former United Kingdom chancellor of theexchequer. On the other side are global warmingfearmongers, including UK science advisor SirDavid King and his predecessor Robert May (nowLord May), and of course Al Gore, former vicepresident of the U.S. In spite of increasing pressuresto join Kyoto and adopt mandatory emission limitson carbon dioxide, President George W. Bush in theUnited States has resisted – so far.We regret that many advocates in the debatehave chosen to give up debating the science andnow focus almost exclusively on questioning themotives of ‘skeptics’ and on ad hominem attacks.We view this as a sign of desperation on their part,and a sign that the debate has shifted toward climaterealism.We hope the present study will help bringreason and balance back into the debate overclimate change, and by doing so perhaps save thepeoples of the world from the burden of paying forwasteful, unnecessary energy and environmentalpolicies. We stand ready to defend the analysis andconclusion in the study that follows, and to givefurther advice to policymakers who are openmindedon this most important topic.S. Fred SingerPresident, Science and Environmental Policy ProjectProfessor Emeritus of Environmental Science, University of VirginiaFellow, American Geophysical Union, American Physical Society, American Association for theAdvancement of Science, American Institute of Aeronautics and AstronauticsArlington, VirginiaFebruary 2008Acknowledgments: I thank Joseph and Diane Bast of The Heartland Institute for their superb editorial skillin turning a manuscript into a finished report.vii
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Page 3 and 4: ForewordIn his speech at the United
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