Sexed up documents, personal attacks on their critics.. no it’s not Iraq.. it’s Global Warming
A cause for celebration! Reports that the the Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 have been greatly exagerated. Well totally made up in actual fact. 
I thought hard before deciding to post on this. I have posted on this subject before (“I am trying very hard not to be a climate change denier “). My concerns have surrounded the over-reliance on “computer models” to predict apocalyptic circumstances; the lack of clarity on what assumptions have been input into these models, based on what ground research and with what level of confidence ? These questions have not been answered. And not only have they not been answered – but those asking these and other questions have been accused of being “flat earthers”, ”climate change deniers” and worse. We have been told that there is a total scientific concensus on global warming and those that speak out are mad, malicious or on the payroll of some multinational.
But in reality I did not have to think about it very long. Indignation got the better of me. Because I do actually care about this planet and think the way to getting to the right course of action on the issue of climate change is with hard science, reasoned debate and honesty. Not by governments or its institutions thinking that they can short cut this because they know the problem and the answer and the rest is just media management.
So it was with fury and frustration, not satisfaction, that I learned that the scientist behind the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report in 2007 has finally publicly admitted that the line about disappearing glaciers was nothing more than a bit of “sexing up” to put political pressure on world leaders. No evidence at all to support the notion. Nada.
This makes old Alistair Campbell’s attempts during the Iraq affair look positively amateurish by comparison. If you missed the coverage over past few days, it went something like this… Two magazine articles appeared in 1999 stating that glaciers were set to disappear by 2035. This information was then recycled by WWF in 2005 without any fact checking. The IPCC then used the WWF report as the sole basis for its assertions in 2007 because they thought it would “impact policy makers and politicians to take some concrete action“. Never mind the truth.
This was a report from the revered IPCC (“the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences”), involving an esteemed working group and reviewed by 500+ external reviewers. So what went wrong?
Well the Global Warming Policy Foundation (Nigel Lawson’s new group) will publish an analysis of those 500 or so formal review comments tomorrow. But in essense a good number of highly regarded indidivuals and institutions did raise questions, ask for clarification, query the level of confidence and indeed urge the IPCC group to withdraw the assertion of glacier melting as patently untrue. As far as one can tell from the information available to date, they were simply ignored.
Worse than that. And here’s another bit of indignation… A report published by the Indian Government just last November written by geologist Vijay Kumar Raina, stating that “Himalyan glaciers have not in anyway exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat” was dismissed as “voodoo science” by the chairman of the IPCC who said “With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago.”
Last week the IPCC was forced to withdraw its claim over the melting glaciers as it has no scientific foundation. The WWF has likewise issued a retraction.
Heads should roll over how these claims of glacier melting ever found their way into the IPCC report. But what is almost worse is the assertion by the IPCC when questioned that “everything has been established years ago”.
Yet again it calls into question the whole issue. Who should we trust? How do we even know who we should trust? How much more of the “scientific concensus” on global warming and its causes is built on so-called science “established years ago”. As I post this I learn that another IPCC claim linking global warming to natural disasters has now also come under question. Oh dear…….
Tags: climate change, glaciers melting, global warming, Global Warming Policy Foundation, IPCC, WWF
With all eyes on the UN summit at Copenhagen this month, keen observers are wondering whether collaborations are possible to mitigate climate change. Yet some proposals would do more harm than good, with “green” protectionism the most dangerous of all.
In today’s debut edition of It’s global warming wot done it, we bring you:
