Tuesday 1 April 2014

EcoRamble: The ‘New IPCC Report’ Edition

“No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor
to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither
may a government determine the aesthetic values of artistic creations, nor
limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on
the validity of economic, historic, religious or philosophical doctrines. Instead
it has a duty to its citizens to maintain their freedom, to let those citizens
contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.”

- Richard Feynman, 1965 Nobel Prize Winner, Physics

As you may have heard, the UN’s alarmist IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has issued a new report, part two of a series of reports forming AR5 (Assessment Report 5). The first of which, what’s called Working Group One, “acknowledged a 17-year pause in global temperature rises” which the IPCC’s models struggled to  explain, and now this one has emerged, from Working Group Two, whose aim is to talk up and politicise the problems caused by the temperature rises supposed to have been predicted by Working Group One.
    Here’s a ramble around the reaction to Part Two, preceded by an update on Part One…

“Publication of the IPCC Assessment Report 4 in 2007 was received with international acclaim....Six and a half years later and a week before the release of the IPCC 5thAssessment Report (AR5), substantial criticisms are being made of leaked versions of the Report as well as of the IPCC process itself... What happened?
    “The IPCC was seriously tarnished by the unauthorised release of emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009, known as Climategate. These emails revealed the ‘sausage making’ involved in the IPCC’s consensus building process, including denial of data access to individuals who wanted to audit their data processing and scientific results, interference in the peer review process to minimize the influence of skeptical criticisms, and manipulation of the media.
    “Climategate was quickly followed by the identification of an egregious error involving the melting of Himalayan glaciers. These revelations were made much worse by the actual response of the IPCC to these issues. Then came the concerns about the behaviour of the IPCC’s Director, Rachendra Pachauri, and investigations of the infiltration of green advocacy groups into the IPCC. All of this was occurring against a background of explicit advocacy and activism by IPCC leaders related to CO2 mitigation policies.
    “The IPCC does not seem to understand the cumulative impact of these events on the loss of trust in climate scientists and the IPCC process itself... Based upon early drafts of the AR5, the IPCC seemed prepared to dismiss the pause in warming as irrelevant ‘noise’ associated with natural variability. Under pressure, the IPCC now acknowledges the pause and admits that climate models failed to predict it...
    “If the IPCC attributes to the pause to natural internal variability, then this begs the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural internal variability. Not to mention raising questions about the confidence that we should place in the IPCC’s projections of future climate change.”
The IPCC's Inconvenient Truth – scientist Judith Curry, CLIMATE ETC.

Everything you need to know about the dilemma the IPCC faces is summed up in one remarkable graph” from Part One. The coloured strips show the predictions of the IPCC’s models in each report (First Assessment Report, FAR, etc.), the bars show the temperature range across the period, ie., what actually happened according to the warmists; own figures. (The big grey patch is there to make a correlation between the two look persuasive):

IPCC

MORE REACTIONS TO PART ONE:

Consensus?
Contrary to reports, global warming studies don’t show 97% of scientists fear global warming – THE HOCKEY SCHTICK

Oops. Again.
Global warming is just HALF what we said: World's top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong – SUNDAY MAIL

Get the report with integrity, before the UN issues the one that won’t. “The number one antidote to the corrupt alarmist cabal is the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change.”
A realistic view of the climate – POWER LINE

The whole pseudo-scientific scare story amounts to a claim that parts of the world will get submerged in water unless governments force carbon reduction upon us.  “But a look at natural ocean variation shows that official sea level measurements are nonsense.”
Sea level rise: Climate change and an ocean of natural variability – Steve Goreham, WASHINGTON TIMES

They are unproven computerised hypotheses with zero predictive power.
New paper finds current climate models are 'unable to reproduce present or future climate accurately' – THE HOCKEY SCHTICK

So … what’s the mainstream’s reasons for the pause in global temperature rise?
Article in Nature offers 3 natural explanations for the halt in global warming – THE HOCKEY SCHTICK

So...what is the cost of reducing global temperatures by a measly one-fourth of one degree?
Those Stubborn Facts: The Gargantuan Cost of Reducing Global Temperature By Measly 0.25°C - C3

Any body of scientists that adopts pressure group tactics is endangering its
status as the guardian of principles of scientific philosophy that are worth keeping.”
- New Zealander Charles Fleming (1916–1987), distinguished ornithologist and avian palaeontologist

REACTIONS TO PART TWO:

The new report marks a “formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon ‘mitigation’ to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.”
If People Are Like Polar Bears, We’ll Be Fine – Patrick Michaels & Chip Knappenberger, CATO

“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls itself a scientific body… But a document prepared for the current IPCC meeting in Japan utterly obliterates those claims.”
The IPCC: Providing ‘Hope for Our Earth’ – NO FRACKING CONSENSUS

“The economic costs of 'global warming' have been grossly overestimated, a leaked report - shortly to be published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - has admitted.
    “Previous reports - notably the hugely influential 2006 Stern Review - have put the costs to the global economy caused by 'climate change' at between 5 and 20 percent of world GDP.
    “But the latest estimates, to be published by Working Group II of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, say that a 2.5 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of the century will cost the world economy between just 0.2 and 2 percent of its GDP.”
Global Warming Will Not Cost the Earth, Leaked IPCC Report Admits – James Delingpole, BREITBART LONDON

If the lower estimate is correct, then all it would take is an annual growth rate of 2.4 percent (currently it's around 3 percent) for the economic costs of climate change to be wiped out within a month

The story of scientist Richard Tol, who asked his name to be removed from the report’s draft because of rampant alarmism that has been inserted:
“[Tol] was involved in drafting the summary but has now asked for his name to be removed from the document.
    "The message in the first draft was that through adaptation and clever development these were manageable risks, but it did require we get our act together," he told BBC News.
    "This has completely disappeared from the draft now, which is all about the impacts of climate change and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. This is a missed opportunity."
Dissent among scientists over key climate impact report – BBC NEWS

“Even while it exaggerates the amount of warming, the IPCC is becoming more cautious about its effects.”
Climate Forecast: Muting the Alarm – Matt Ridley, WALL STREET JOURNAL

“The human impact on global climate is small, and any warming that may occur as a result of human carbon
dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions is likely to have little effect on global temperatures, the
cryosphere (ice-covered areas), hydrosphere (oceans, lakes, and rivers), or weather.”
Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts: Summary for Policymakers [20-page PDF] – NONGOVERNMENTAL INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

“In 2007, the IPCC predicted that rising global temperatures would kill off many species. But in its new report, part of which will be presented next Monday, the UN climate change body backtracks. There is a shortage of evidence, a draft version claims.”
IPCC admission from new report: ‘no evidence climate change has led to even a single species becoming extinct’  - Anthony Watts, WATTS UP WITH THAT

“Natural disasters are costing more and more money… it’s tempting to think that it must be because more storms are happening. They’re not. All the apocalyptic “climate porn” in your Facebook feed is solely a function of perception. In reality, the numbers reflect more damage from catastrophes because the world is getting wealthier. We’re seeing ever-larger losses simply because we have more to lose — when an earthquake or flood occurs, more stuff gets damaged. And no matter what President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron say, recent costly disasters are not part of a trend driven by climate change. The data available so far strongly shows they’re just evidence of human vulnerability in the face of periodic extremes.”
Disasters Cost More Than Ever — But Not Because of Climate Change –Roger Pielke, Jr., FIVE THIRTY EIGHT SCIENCE

“A paper published today in Biogeosciences finds that prior claims about the effects of ocean "acidification" on calcifying plankton are highly exaggerated…”
New paper finds no effect of "acidification" on plankton from CO2 levels 8 times higher than today – HOCKEY SCHTICK

A lengthy post explaining some of the weaknesses in the models and some of the self-serving pronouncements of the IPCC.
A Different Perspective – Tim Ball, TIM BALL.COM

“They will adapt,” [resigning IPCC author]
Mr. Tol said, “Farmers are not stupid.”
- “U.N. climate author withdraws because
the report has become ‘too alarmist’
,”
Washington Times

[Hat tip On Liberty Street, Bishop Hill, Science and Environmental Policy Project, Watts Up With That]

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