IPCC No Longer Trusted By U.S. Policy Makers
CCNet – 21 February 2011
The Climate Policy Network
Climategate Fallout
IPCC No Longer Trusted By U.S. Policy Makers
America is to cut off all funding to the United Nations climate science panel (IPCC) under sweeping Republican budget cuts that seek to gut spending on environmental protection. –The Guardian, 21 February 2011
The Climategate scandal played a role in the passage of the amendment, introduced by Republican Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer, who successfully made the case that the Climategate emails discredit the UN’s claims to scientific integrity: “emails publicly released from a university in England showed that leading global scientists intentionally manipulated climate data and suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewed journals,” he stated. “Researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails so that a small number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmental agenda.” --Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 20 February 2011
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for at a time of out-of-control spending and historic debt, which is why I am extremely pleased that my amendment passed. -- Blaine Luetkemeyer, House of Representatives, 19 February 2011
The most vocal climate scientists defending the IPCC have lost their objectivity. Yes, they have what I consider to be a plausible theory. But they actively suppress evidence to the contrary, for instance attempts to study natural explanations for recent warming. That’s one reason why the public was so outraged about the ClimateGate e-mails. ClimateGate doesn’t prove their science is wrong…but it does reveal their bias. Science progresses by investigating alternative explanations for things. Long ago, the IPCC all but abandoned that search. –Roy Spencer, 19 February 2011
1) U.S. Policy Makers Cut Funding For IPCC - The Guardian, 21 February 2011
2) House Passes Luetkemeyer Amendment to Halt Taxpayer Financing of UN Climate Panel - Blaine Luetekemeyer, 19 February 2011
3) Roy Spencer: On the House of Representatives Vote to Defund the IPCC - Global Warming blog, 19 February 2011
4) David Whitehouse: Extreme Events Mean Nothing Without Uncertainties - The Observatory, 21 February 2011
5) Matt Ridley and Indur Goklany: Context Is All - The Rational Optimist, 19 February 2011
1) U.S. Policy Makers Cut Funding For IPCC
The Guardian, 21 February 2011
America is to cut off all funding to the United Nations climate science panel under sweeping Republican budget cuts that seek to gut spending on environmental protection.
The funding ban to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – stripping $2.3m (£1.31m) from an international organisation that relies heavily on volunteer scientists – was among some $61bn (£38bn) in cuts voted through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Saturday.
If enacted, the cuts package would reduce spending on environmental protection by nearly one-third, or about $3bn (£1.85bn), advancing a key objective of the conservative Tea Party of dismantling government regulation.
The cuts also exhibit the strong hostility to climate science among the Tea Party activists with funding bans on the IPCC and a newly created climate information service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – a reorganisation which was to be funded out of existing budgets.
The weekend budget measure was designed to fund the government through to September. But the White House and Senate Democrats say the cuts – which go far deeper than those put forward by Barack Obama last week – are extreme, setting the stage for a confrontation between Democrats and Republicans.
In proposing the ban on IPCC funding, Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican, called the UN panel "nefarious".
"The IPCC is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for," Luetkemeyer said in a statement.
He claimed the US funds to the IPCC were $13m, but Henry Waxman, the California Democrat, told Congress the figure was $2.3m. He argued that the contribution helped the US get access to global scientific body of work – that would not exist without American support.
Chris Field, a Stanford scientist who heads one of the IPCC working groups, said US funds to the IPCC were about $3m last year. Field said: "It's a real tragedy that the issue is so poorly understood that it doesn't have the support I think it deserves given how important it is."
Overall, the bill would cut 29% from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) budget, or nearly $3bn (£1.85bn). In addition, it contains more than 15 separate measures that were tacked on to the bill that will block funds for specific environmental programmes. Several of those funding vetoes involve the EPA's recent moves to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The measures would cut $8.4m in funds to the EPA's greenhouse gas registry. They would also prohibit the EPA from using any funds to enforce emissions rules on power plants and cement manufacturers, or from increasing the use of ethanol.
But they would also block the EPA and other government agencies from using funds to enforce regulations on the highly destructive method of coal mining, mountaintop removal. Other measures block funds for enforcing air quality standards, including mercury emissions from cement kilns.
There were bans on funds for protection of fragile rivers in Florida and Missouri, and for enacting a protection plan for the Chesapeake Bay.
Even the White House was not left unscathed. The spending package would cut funds for the White House climate change advisor. Carol Browner, the current adviser, recently announced her resignation.
The Guardian, 21 February 2011
2) House Passes Luetkemeyer Amendment to Halt Taxpayer Financing of UN Climate Panel
Blaine Luetekemeyer, 19 February 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a major victory for American taxpayers, the House of Representatives today passed a budget amendment offered by U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) that would prohibit $13 million in taxpayer dollars from going to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization fraught with waste and engaged in dubious science.
The amendment, which is identical to a separate bill sponsored by Luetkemeyer, was passed in a direct challenge to the president’s request to fund the IPCC, which has provided information that purports to support the administration’s call for job-killing cap-and-tax legislation. Luetkemeyer’s amendment was one of 19 amendments highlighted this week by the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.
“The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for at a time of out-of-control spending and historic debt, which is why I am extremely pleased that my amendment passed,” Luetkemeyer said. “It is time for Washington to combat this year’s record budget deficit and fast-growing national debt. This amendment is part of that effort.”
The IPCC advises governments around the world on climate change, and supporters of cap-and-tax legislation have used questionable findings by the IPCC as reason to support onerous legislation. Criticism of this science intensified over the last two years when emails publicly released from a university in England showed that leading global scientists intentionally manipulated climate data and suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewed journals. Researchers were asked to delete and destroy emails so that a small number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmental agenda.
More than 700 acclaimed international scientists have challenged the claims made by the IPCC. These 700-plus dissenting scientists are affiliated with institutions like the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, the U.S. Air Force and Navy, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
3) Roy Spencer: On the House of Representatives Vote to Defund the IPCC
Global Warming blog, 19 February 2011
The climate change deniers have no one but themselves to blame for last night’s vote.
I’m talking about those who deny NATURAL climate change. Like Al Gore, John Holdren, and everyone else who thinks climate change was only invented since they were born.
Politicians formed the IPCC over 20 years ago with an endgame in mind: to regulate CO2 emissions. I know, because I witnessed some of the behind-the-scenes planning. It is not a scientific organization. It was organized to use the government-funded scientific research establishment to achieve policy goals.
Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But when they are portrayed as representing unbiased science, that IS a bad thing. If anthropogenic global warming – and ocean ‘acidification’ (now there’s a biased and totally incorrect term) — ends up being largely a false alarm, those who have run the IPCC are out of a job. More on that later.
I don’t want to be misunderstood on this. IF we are destroying the planet with our fossil fuel burning, then something SHOULD be done about it.
But the climate science community has allowed itself to be used on this issue, and as a result, politicians, activists, and the media have successfully portrayed the biased science as settled.
They apparently do not realize that ‘settled science’ is an oxymoron.
The most vocal climate scientists defending the IPCC have lost their objectivity. Yes, they have what I consider to be a plausible theory. But they actively suppress evidence to the contrary, for instance attempts to study natural explanations for recent warming.
That’s one reason why the public was so outraged about the ClimateGate e-mails. ClimateGate doesn’t prove their science is wrong…but it does reveal their bias. Science progresses by investigating alternative explanations for things. Long ago, the IPCC all but abandoned that search.
Oh, they have noted (correctly I believe) that a change in the total output of the sun is not to blame. But there are SO many other possibilities, and all they do is dismiss those possibilities out of hand. They have a theory — more CO2 is to blame — and they religiously stick to it. It guides all of the research they do.
The climate models are indeed great accomplishments. It’s what they are being used for that is suspect. A total of 23 models cover a wide range of warming estimates for our future, and yet there is no way to test them for what they are being used for! climate change predictions.
Virtually all of the models produce decadal time scale warming that exceeds what we have observed in the last 15 years. That fact has been known for years, but its publication in the peer reviewed literature continues to be blocked.
My theory is that a natural change in cloud cover has caused most of the recent warming. Temperature proxy data from around the world suggests that just about every century in the last 2,000 years has experienced warming or cooling. Why should today’s warmth be manmade, when the Medieval Warm Period was not? Just because we finally have one potential explanation – CO2?
This only shows how LITTLE we understand about climate change…not how MUCH we know.
Why would scientists allow themselves to be used in this way? When I have pressed them on the science over the years, they all retreat to the position that getting away from fossil fuels is the ‘right thing to do anyway’.
In other words, they have let their worldviews, their politics, their economic understanding (or lack thereof) affect their scientific judgment. I am ashamed for our scientific discipline and embarrassed by their behavior.
Is it any wonder that scientists have such a bad reputation among the taxpayers who pay them to play in their ivory tower sandboxes? They can make gloom and doom predictions all day long of events far in the future without ever having to suffer any consequences of being wrong.
The perpetual supply of climate change research money also biases them. Everyone in my business knows that as long as manmade climate change remains a serious threat, the money will continue to flow, and climate programs will continue to grow.
Now, I do agree the supply of fossil fuels is not endless. But we will never actually “run out”…we will just slowly stop trying to extract them as they become increasingly scarce (translation – more expensive). That’s the way the world works.
People who claim we are going to wake up one morning and our fossil fuels will be gone are either pandering, or stupid, or both.
But how you transition from fossil fuels to other sources of energy makes all the difference in the world. Making our most abundant and affordable sources of energy artificially more expensive with laws and regulations will end up killing millions of people.
And that’s why I speak out. Poverty kills. Those who argue otherwise from their positions of fossil-fueled health and wealth are like spoiled children.
The truly objective scientist should be asking whether MORE, not less, atmospheric carbon dioxide is what we should be trying to achieve. There is more published real-world evidence for the benefits of more carbon dioxide, than for any damage caused by it. The benefits have been measured, and are real-world. The risks still remain theoretical.
Carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth. That it has been so successfully demonized with so little hard evidence is truly a testament to the scientific illiteracy of modern society. If humans were destroying CO2 — rather than creating more — imagine the outrage there would be at THAT!
I would love the opportunity to cross examine these (natural) climate change deniers in a court of law. They have gotten away with too much, for too long. Might they be right? Sure. But the public has no idea how flimsy – and circumstantial – their evidence is.
In the end, I doubt the IPCC will ever be defunded. Last night’s vote in the House is just a warning shot across the bow. But unless the IPCC starts to change its ways, it runs the risk of being totally marginalized. It has almost reached that point, anyway.
And maybe the IPCC leadership doesn’t really care if its pronouncements are ignored, as long as they can jet around the world to meet in exotic destinations and plan where their next meeting should be held. I hear it’s a pretty good gig.
4) David Whitehouse: Extreme Events Mean Nothing Without Uncertainties
The Observatory, 21 February 2011
For many years it seems to have been the desire of some scientists to look at a series of extreme events and say they are directly due to global warming. It would be an important piece of observational evidence as climate theories suggest that as the temperature increases so does the moisture carrying capacity of the atmosphere. This would increase the amount of precipitation.
However, it has always struck me as poor logic to say that while any individual extreme weather event such as a heat wave or severe precipitation cannot be attributed to the effects of global warming, when taken as a whole they demonstrate a trend that is consistent with predictions as theories say their likelihood increases in a warming world.
Stated like this, it is logical nonsense. If no single extreme event in an ensemble is due to a warming world then when taken together they cannot be taken as evidence for the contrary. Perhaps then only some of them are due to global warming and the others are what would have happened anyway? But which ones? What distinguishes the two groups? Such questions bring out the absurdity in this logic.
Weather is complex and variable and so is climate. Weather is influenced by large amplitude short-term events and has lots of ‘noise.’ But then so does climate, long-term trends, noise and so-called decadal fluctuations all influence it as well as the weaker anthropogenic signal. If anyone doubts the natural fluctuations in the climate just consider what the global temperature has been doing in the past decade, and that in a world that is ‘getting warmer’ most global temperature databases give 1998, twelve years ago, as the warmest year on record (due to a natural fluctuation, an El Nino.)
Reporting of extreme events has never been easier. Our electronic world is wired for catastrophe. Events that just a few decades ago would have been poorly reported, if at all, with sketchy information, witnessed by victims but not by scientists, are now scrutinised by flotillas of satellites, ground stations and reporters sending back instant information via the internet. Great care must be taken with such a severe selection effect. We know about the recent floods and heat waves in far more detail than we do of past events.
Two papers in Nature on the relationship between extreme events and man-made global warming have attracted a lot of attention. They have been uncritically described in some quarters as being the first time a clear link between global warming and extreme precipitation.
One of them, by Seung-Ki Min et al links rising CO2 levels to the intensification of rain in the Northern Hemisphere finding a result that has been reported as being worse than the models predicted. The researchers say that nothing can explain their results except the slow steady rise in temperatures caused by greenhouse gasses.
In the other Pall et al looks at the 2000 severe flooding event in the UK and its relationship to global warming. They use a series of simulations of the weather in 2000 with and without an increase in temperature caused by global warming and they conclude that global warming had an effect. One’s confidence is a little dented by the fact that the simulations are based on seasonal forecast simulations made by Met Office scientists – the kind that were withdrawn from circulation to the public because their either were not accurate of because the public couldn’t understand them, depending upon your point of view.
However, being consistent is far from proof. The idea that something is consistent with a theory is a scientific statement of very limited usefulness that many media commentators and reporters have taken at face value. Is it really a discovery to be reported with no caveats, as many media outlets did, if the majority of a series of computer simulations cannot reproduce real world data without greenhouse gas warming. Remember these are computer models with all the limitations that implies. And remember also this is the climate we are talking about, with all its unknowns an unpredictability.
Looking in detail at this research paper there are uncertainties in the modelling, the observations, their reduction and knowledge of other factors that might influence the climate in the same way.
But reading the abstract of the papers give no hint of the true nature of these uncertainties. This is Seung-Ki Min et al’s abstract’
“Extremes of weather and climate can have devastating effects on human society and the environment. Understanding past changes in the characteristics of such events, including recent increases in the intensity of heavy precipitation events over a large part of the Northern Hemisphere land area is critical for reliable projections of future changes. Given that atmospheric water-holding capacity is expected to increase roughly exponentially with temperature—and that atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical expectation — it has been suggested that human-influenced global warming may be partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation. Because of the limited availability of daily observations, however, most previous studies have examined only the potential detectability of changes in extreme precipitation through model–model comparisons. Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming.”
The paper by Pall et al is little better;
“Interest in attributing the risk of damaging weather-related events to anthropogenic climate change is increasing. Yet climate models used to study the attribution problem typically do not resolve the weather systems associated with damaging events such as the UK floods of October and November 2000. Occurring during the wettest autumn in England and Wales since records began in 1766, these floods damaged nearly 10,000 properties across that region, disrupted services severely, and caused insured losses estimated at £1.3 billion (refs 5, 6). Although the flooding was deemed a ‘wake-up call’ to the impacts of climate change at the time, such claims are typically supported only by general thermodynamic arguments that suggest increased extreme precipitation under global warming, but fail to account fully for the complex hydrometeorology associated with flooding. Here we present a multi-step, physically based ‘probabilistic event attribution’ framework showing that it is very likely that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000. Using publicly volunteered distributed computing we generate several thousand seasonal-forecast-resolution climate model simulations of autumn 2000 weather, both under realistic conditions, and under conditions as they might have been had these greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting large-scale warming never occurred. Results are fed into a precipitation-runoff model that is used to simulate severe daily river runoff events in England and Wales (proxy indicators of flood events). The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.”
The abstract is, of course, a technical shorthand summary of the paper’s findings written for a scientific audience who should be well aware of the associated caveats. Some journalists and commentators however are not. Abstracts are almost always restricted in length by the journal concerned so it could be argued that there is no space for equivocation. Besides journals want definite results and don’t want them diluted (in the abstract at least) with ifs and buts.
This is a problem because even in scientific circles when reviews of research are conducted positive statements are lifted from abstracts and passed on with none of the accompanying qualifications to be found in the depths of the paper. We have seen this in the way the IPCC gathered data and summarised it. Positive results are selected, uncertainties suppressed and then the results are amplified and simplified to produce a false certainty devoid of uncertainty.
No scientific statement based on observational data, let alone based on a series of computer ‘simulations,’ should be made without a statement of uncertainty, and this includes the abstract of research papers. If the journal in question thinks it makes the abstract to uncertain, too long, or just isn’t house style then it should change such things.
Likewise when preparing press releases based on research papers more care should be given to the uncertainties. This is Nature’s press release;
“Anthropogenic greenhouse gasses have significantly increased the probability of heavy precipitation and local flood risk, report two papers in Nature this week. The findings are among the first formal identification of human contribution to extreme hydrological events. It has previously been suggested that human-induced global warming may be partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation. However, because of the limited availability of daily observations, most studies to date have only examined the potential detectability of changes in precipitation through model-model comparisons. Francis Zwiers and colleagues studies rainfall from 1951 – 1999 in Northern Hemisphere land areas, including North America and Eurasia (including India). They show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gasses have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy-precipitation events found in approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.”
The problem is that the results of scientific research enter the canon of commentators and policy makers without their associated uncertainties. In many cases such uncertainties are forgotten altogether and anyone who subsequently raises them is called a denier, rather than what they are which is being scientific.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
5) Matt Ridley and Indur Goklany: Context Is All
The Rational Optimist, 19 February 2011
There is a lot of fuss about two new papers arguing, from mathematical models, that extreme downpours have become and will become more common in the northern hemisphere and specifically in Britain as a result of man-made climate change.
Let's ignore the fact that this looks awfully similar to the habit of blaming specific weather events on climate trends, something we `lukewarmers’ (who think climate change is real but slow enough to adapt to through the foreseeable future) are reprimanded for doing when we point out that an especially cold winter or cool summer weakens the case for the alarming version of the theory. So now we can do that too, can we?
Let's ignore the fact that neither paper comes up with any actual evidence that greenhouse gases have caused more extreme downpours – other than circumstantial correlation. Their sole argument is that they cannot think of any other explanation for the increase in downpours. Or as the BBC puts it:
The researchers suggest there is nothing that can explain this trend except the slow steady increase in temperatures caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
I'm sorry but when I was a scientist correlation was not considered a proof of causation.
Let's ignore the fact that these are only two studies and that another recent study concluded the opposite. According the summary of this study by Anne Jolis in the Wall Street Journal,
In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict.
Let’s ignore the fact that 2010—one of the hottest years in recent memory—saw the fewest tropical cyclones (including hurricanes) since 1970, and that the global cumulative energy in these cyclones was among the lowest , which is inconvenient, to say the least.
Let's instead assume these two papers are right, that there is an increase in extreme downpours and that it is caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions.
How lethal are downpours compared with, say, cold winters? We all agree that global warming will create fewer cold winters, right? And since more people die in cold weather than in hot weather, global warming will reduce deaths. Is that effect bigger or smaller than the extra deaths from downpours? Answer: much, much bigger.
Here are some numbers. The annual excess mortality in winter is over 100,000 in the US, 50,000 in Japan, 25,000 in Britain and even 23,000 in Spain. Just a 10% drop in those numbers and you are saving tens of thousands of lives, far more than die in floods.
By contrast, ask yourself how many people died as a result of excess precipitation in Britain in the wet autumn of the year 2000, the episode on which one of the above papers focuses. According to the BBC,
That autumn saw the highest rains in England and Wales since records began in 1766.
The Hampshire village of Hambledon was underwater for six weeks, and insurers put the final cost to the country at more than £1bn.
But, as far as we can make out, nobody died.
As it happens, the number of people dying from extreme weather events has gone down by 93% since the 1920s.
Was this because we controlled the weather? No. It was because we adapted to it. So even if extreme downpours do increase, death rates as a result of them will continue to decline so long as we continue to get more people access to roads, telephones, houses and information. It’s like malaria: it retreated rapidly in the twentieth century despite rising temperatures, and it will retreat rapidly in the twenty-first century despite rising temperatures.
As the above figure shows, globally the average annual death toll from all extreme weather events is about 35,000. Compare this to the hundreds of thousands of excess winter deaths that occur annually. Perhaps we should try to control winter before we tackle climate change! Oddly enough, while we may not be able to control the weather, in the U.S., millions have done the next best thing—they have migrated from colder northeastern climes to the warmer southwestern states. This, according to a paper in MIT Press’s Review of Economics and Statistics by econometricians Deschênes and Moretti, is responsible for 8%–15% of the total gains in life expectancy in the U.S. population from 1970 to 2000.
So even if it is true, the downpour argument does not even begin to help make the case for carbon mitigation policies.
