Scientists have long known that atmospheric convection in the form of hurricanes and tropical ocean thunderstorms tends to occur when sea surface temperature rises above a threshold. The critical question is, how do rising ocean temperatures with global warming affect this threshold? If the threshold does not rise, it could mean more frequent hurricanes.
According to a new study by researchers at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), this threshold sea surface temperature for convection is rising under global warming at the same rate as that of the tropical oceans. Their paper appears in the Advance Online Publications of Nature Geoscience.
In order to detect the annual changes in the threshold sea surface temperature, Nat Johnson, a postdoctoral fellow at IPRC, and Shang-Ping Xie, a professor of meteorology at IPRC and UHM, analyzed satellite estimates of tropical ocean rainfall spanning 30 years. They find that changes in the threshold temperature for convection closely follow the changes in average tropical sea surface temperature, which have both been rising approximately 0.1C per decade.
“The correspondence between the two time series is rather remarkable,” says lead author Johnson. “The convective threshold and average sea surface temperatures are so closely linked because of their relation with temperatures in the atmosphere extending several miles above the surface.”
The average tropical sea surface temperature (black) and an estimate of the sea surface temperature threshold for convection (blue) have risen in tandem over the past 30 years. Credit: IPRC/SOEST/UHM
The change in tropical upper atmospheric temperatures has been a controversial topic in recent years because of discrepancies between reported temperature trends from instruments and the expected trends under global warming according to global climate models. The measurements from instruments have shown less warming than expected in the upper atmosphere. The findings of Johnson and Xie, however, provide strong support that the tropical atmosphere is warming at a rate that is consistent with climate model simulations.
“This study is an exciting example of how applying our knowledge of physical processes in the tropical atmosphere can give us important information when direct measurements may have failed us,” Johnson notes.
The study notes further that global climate models project that the sea surface temperature threshold for convection will continue to rise in tandem with the tropical average sea surface temperature. If true, hurricanes and other forms of tropical convection will require warmer ocean surfaces for initiation over the next century. Read more here.
More information: N.C. Johnson and S.-P. Xie, 2010: Changes in the sea surface temperature threshold for tropical convection. Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/ngeo1004
By CFACT
An Australian software developer grew tired of debating climate realists on Twitter so he created spambot to wear down his opponents. The bot responds to anyone who expresses skepticism about man-made global warming by posting one of hundreds of canned replies in an attempt to frustrate skeptics.
Nigel Leck, an Australian software developer, grew tired of debating climate realists on Twitter so he created a spambot to “wear down” his opponents. The bot, @AI_AGW, scans Twitter every five minutes looking for key phrases commonly used by those who challenge the global warming orthodoxy. It then posts one of hundreds of canned responses hoping to frustrate skeptics. CFACT’s Twitter account @CFACT (follow us!) often receives many of these unsolicited messages each day. Since the bot became active on May 26, 2010, it has sent out over 40,000 tweets, or an average of more than 240 updates per day!
Technology Review gushed that Leck’s bot “answers Twitter users who aren’t even aware of their own ignorance.” Leck claims that his little bit of trollware is commonly mistaken as a genuine Twitter user leading the unsuspecting to sometimes debate it for days. Eventually it wears people down.
Leck’s bot is an innovative, yet appalling new tactic in the ongoing campaign by global warming proponents to stifle debate and end discussion of climate science and policy. Spamming Twitter users is a tactic that is likely to backfire, as have so many of the ploys alarmists have tried in the past. There is nothing internet users find so annoying as trolls using spam to shut down online discussions.
Over the last year we have witnessed the large-scale collapse of public trust in global warming science and policy. The warmist’s Climategate emails, relentless propagandizing, refusals to debate, carbon profiteering and lecturing by celebrities who lead lavish lifestyles while preaching austerity for the rest of us, have offended people’s intelligence and sense of fair play. Using a spambot to harass climate realists will do nothing to ingratiate the warming argument with anyone with an open mind.
Should climate realists put up a bot of their own? Should we let the two bots debate each other and leave it to the machines? CFACT knows better. When you interact with our @CFACT account on Twitter, you are talking with a live human being. Science demands an open, honest give and take. So does public policy making in a free republic. Harassment and spam is not the answer. Mr. Leck, tear down this bot!
If you are a real live person, whatever your viewpoint, be sure to follow CFACT on Twitter.
Read more here.
By Darren Samuelsohn and Robin Bravender
Environmentalists are trying to stomp out the suggestion that they had anything to do with the tidal wave that washed away House Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
A day after Republicans netted a 60-vote swing to recapture the House, greens brandished polls and statistics showing voters overwhelmingly endorsed both Democratic and GOP lawmakers who voted in June 2009 to pass a cap-and-trade bill.
They even went so far as to suggest that about two dozen Democrats may have lost Tuesday because they didn’t support the measure crafted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi that would have placed a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions. But more than anything, they insisted the wave wasn’t their fault. “Bottom line: The biggest liability in Tuesday’s election [was] having a ‘D’ behind one’s name,” said Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund Federal Communications Director Ed Chen in an e-mail to POLITICO.
This isn’t just about pride. Environmental groups struggled to be heard in Washington after the Republicans’ 1994 House takeover, which came in part because of a vote the previous year to raise energy taxes based on the Btu content of fossil fuels. And U.S. opponents of unilateral action on climate change still remind them of the unanimous 1997 Senate vote to reject core pieces of the Kyoto protocol.
“It’s very dangerous branding for them,” said Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and a skeptic on global warming science. “There will never be another vote on a Btu tax in my lifetime for the reason of 1993. I suggest if cap and trade is similarly thought of, there will also never be a vote on cap and trade.”
Indeed, directly after the cap-and-trade vote - which itself was delayed for an hour while Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) held the floor to decry the bill - House Republicans taunted Democrats with chants of “Btu, Btu.”
President Barack Obama is already trying to distance himself from the Democrats’ unsuccessful climate bill (a measure the White House celebrated at the time). “Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat,” he said at a press conference Wednesday. “It was a means, not an end, and I am going to be looking for other means to address this problem.”
Obama also acknowledged that the political noise surrounding the House climate change bill has helped to stymie its momentum for some time to come. “I think there are a lot of Republicans that ran against the energy bill that passed in the House last year,” he said. “And so it’s doubtful that you could get the votes to pass that through the House this year or next year or the year after.”
Indeed, many of those Republicans who ran against climate change legislation found the issue useful in attacks against incumbents. Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher, for example, lost his campaign in part because he couldn’t get any traction trying to explain his work negotiating key details of the climate bill, said Andy Wright, a former Boucher chief of staff. Boucher also didn’t get any help from Sen - elect Joe Manchin, his Democratic neighbor in West Virginia, who ran campaign ads on the same local TV stations firing a rifle at the climate legislation.
“When you’ve got a Democrat literally shooting the bill, it implies there’s some damage,” said one environmental advocate. In New Mexico, freshman Democratic Rep. Harry Teague had made a fortune before running for Congress as an oil supply executive. But he angered his industrial constituents after taking office by voting for the global warming measure, which was widely portrayed in the district as Pelosi driven.
On Tuesday, Teague lost to former Republican Rep. Steve Pearce by a nearly 5-1 margin in Lea County, a heavy industrial region that both call their home, and he couldn’t make up for the deficit in more liberal parts of his sprawling district.
“It was the symbolic example of Pearce’s message, the allegation of whether Harry Teague was representing the best interest of the district,” said Brian Sanderoff, president of the nonpartisan Research & Polling Inc. in Albuquerque. “The people on the east side [of the district], they were receptive. They were looking for a message for that. Once given, they bought it. They went to the polls with it. And the rest is history.”
Several environmentalists argued Wednesday that Boucher and Teague are unique examples with stories that don’t translate into a national referendum on global warming legislation. Yes, there are 41 Democrats who voted for the House bill who lost, retired or saw their seat fall into GOP hands.
But Ryan Cunningham, from the Glover Park Group public affairs shop, argued, “Most if not all of the losing Dems, of course, also voted for health care, financial reform, the stimulus and dozens of other ‘Nancy Pelosi’ policies targeted by Republican campaigns.” On top of that, Cunningham noted that 27 of the 43 House Democrats who voted against the climate bill also lost their races, suggesting that those members were three times more likely to lose on Tuesday than the legislation’s supporters. Officials at the Natural Resources Defense Council cited polls it conducted last month in every close race where Democrats voted for the climate bill, asking about the impact of the global warming proposal. It found troubling results for only two members: Teague and Rep. Zack Space of Ohio, who also lost.
Big picture, it found that more than 80 percent of the 211 Democrats who voted for the climate bill will be coming back for the 112th Congress. On top of that, the five House Republicans who supported the 2009 climate bill and ran for another term won their races: Reps. Mary Bono Mack of California, Leonard Lance of New Jersey, Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, Dave Reichert of Washington and Chris Smith of New Jersey.
“We did lose a lot of our very good friends in the United States Congress,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. “Big Oil and some of their allies in Congress may try to claim that this was a rejection of clean energy policies. Quite frankly, that’s insulting to voters, and it’s just not true.”
Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, agreed with the environmentalists that the climate bill had only ripple effects in some races, namely in coal states like West Virginia. “That vote on cap and trade in the House alone I’m not sure would have brought down these candidates,” he said. “It’s part of a picture.”
But Jim Connaughton, former top White House environmental adviser under President George W. Bush, said greens are missing an important lesson by shining the spotlight on the Democrats who won another term. Many of those were safe seats compared with the seats of losers, who had always been nervous about how their climate vote would sell back home. “The point is the races at the margin,” he said.
Connaughton said environmentalists are also mistaken if they think the 27 Democrats who opposed the House bill and lost on Tuesday would have had better luck if they had voted the in other direction. “Who did they lose to? They lost to Republicans who are also against it,” he said. “But they were tagged as being part of the agenda that was being advanced.”
Not all greens agreed with the argument that the climate bill didn’t belong in the discussion when dissecting the reasons for Tuesday’s election outcome. One environmental advocate said his colleagues are trying to shift the blame, like all the other interest groups that played a role in the Democrats’ agenda.
“You can’t have the experience of the last couple of years and honestly in your gut believe that this was not detrimental to some Democrats,” the advocate said. “We lost badly. We lost control of the narrative. We lost control of the debate.” Read more here.
By Chris Horner, American Spectator
In a November 2006, interview with the Financial Times, Al Gore acknowledged “I worked as vice president to enact a carbon [sic] tax. Clinton indulged me against the advice of his economic team. . . . One House of Congress passed it, the other defeated it by one vote then watered it down… Even that turned out too much for some. That contributed to our losing Congress two years later to Newt Gingrich.”
And now we know that the energy tax (according to CBO and OMB) known as cap-n-trade did turn out to be BTU, redux. The House passed it upon assurance from the Senate that they would not leave their counterparts hanging out there alone on a tough vote—this time expressly assuring the House Democrats they would not ‘BTU them’. Only to later remind us of the line in Animal House when Otter tells Flounder “You [messed] up. You trusted us.”
This went down just as some of us here (and elsewhere) noted would be the case, a few times, including back before the House even dared to vote. It was inescapably obvious. If not to certain lawmakers soon looking for work in these tough times they helped bring about, and then extend.
And now that opposition gives way to leadership, Republicans, please remember why you don’t just sigh and agree to ‘something’. If last night was not reminder enough.
Unfortunately, however, the progression among wise men in DC goes something like this:
Well, you can’t just say ‘no’
It’s inevitable
You have to “do ‘something’”.
Besides, we need ‘certainty.’
It should go without saying by now that it is not inevitable. The people, who were not at the table as their wealth was redistributed, saw to that. The only certainty Members of Congress and naive industry reps will ensure if they fall for that tired line—whispered in their ear by lobbyists for Screwtape Associates (’here’s how you sound smart in Washington, Mr. Freshman Member/new leadership’
—is that the noose gets tightened fairly regularly once your opponent has talked you into agreeing ‘something’ must be done.
Ask the oil guys about ethanol standards—how’s that certainty workin’ out for ya?—or the auto fellas about CAFE. No, not the current demand. Not the one before that. The one before that, when you agreed to sit down and accept ‘something’ because it would bring you ‘certainty’.
Exactly.
Agreeing to capntrade—when you should instead promptly pass one-liners cleaning up the courts’ mess in the Clean Air Act, NEPA and ESA by asserting that the act is not intended to serve as a greenhouse gas regulation regime—simply unleashes further assaults. Roll their agenda-creep back. You don’t enable it out of fear some lobbyist will pout because he didn’t get his goodies or a reporter will be mean and insist you ‘just say no’. “No” on capntrade won you the election, I submit. ("No" on the massive debt that is ‘green jobs’ schemes will be similarly benefiical both economically and politically, so long as Members properly point out that it only worsens “the spending, stupid!” problem, further delaying recovery and creating new entitlements, and their constituencies demanding to be fed.)
Listening to industry lobbyists’ siren songs—and/or deciding you can’t just say ‘no’ to a bad idea because, after all, something was proposed so we have to agree to some portion of that—would prove an exceedingly bad and politically costly idea.
See post here.
Posted by David Lungren
What is harm? For that matter, what is “irreparable harm”? In an economic sense, one would think unemployment, production cutbacks, or even bankruptcy would qualify. Not according to EPA.
The issue is more than academic. It is now before the DC Circuit. Recently, industry and the state of Texas moved to block implementation of EPA’s rules while the court determines their legality. This “stay motion” can succeed only if petitioners demonstrate, among other things, “irreparable harm” from EPA’s rules. In its reply brief, EPA offered a curious definition of what that means.
“Economic loss,” EPA pronounced, “does not constitute irreparable harm” (emphasis in the original). As proof, EPA cites Wisconsin Gas Co. v. FERC. In that case, the court ruled: “Mere injuries, however substantial, in terms of money, time, and energy necessarily expended in the absence of a stay are not enough.” So what is irreparable harm? The court explained: “[r]ecoverable monetary loss may constitute irreparable harm only where the loss threatens the very existence of the movant’s business” (emphasis added). In other words, don’t complain to us unless your business faces extinction. No harm, no foul.
The agency further argues that its greenhouse gas regulations will actually increase certainty. The proof lies, according to EPA, in its tailoring rule, which unilaterally redefines the emissions thresholds for major sources under the CAA. The rule helps “by clarifying for numerous entities potentially covered for the first time by the PSD and Title V stationary source permit provisions when and under what circumstances they will face regulation.” The agency adds, apparently without irony, “at least until 2016.” In other words, your investment is safe, at least for the next five years. There’s certainty for you.
This, of course, is not to mention the uncertain outcome of the pending litigation - filed by industry, states, and environmental groups - and what it might hold for potentially regulated businesses. Will the DC Circuit vacate the tailoring rule? On what grounds? Will it be remanded back to the agency for further tweaking? Will the endangerment finding get tossed altogether or thrown back on procedural grounds? Further, what constitutes Best Available Control Technology for new and modified sources of GHG emissions?
Only time will tell. In the meantime, EPA’s greenhouse gas regime is threatening jobs and compounding business uncertainty, neither of which bodes well for the nation’s economic recovery.
Charles Battig, M.S.,M.D.
Presented at “National Issues Forum” in the county office building auditorium, Charlottesville, Virginia on October 29, 2010:
• These issues are more than about traditional science; they combine political/sociological belief systems, dogma, and one-sided government funding; proper caring for the environment does not equate with radical environmentalism/climatism.
• Club of Rome 1991: “in searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming...would fit the bill… the real enemy then is humanity itself.” The one-world-government, U.N. agenda has employed manmade global warming scares as its political tool for wealth redistribution.
• Scientists have biases/ agendas: climatologist Stephen Schneider: “we have to offer scary scenarios...decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.” The 2009 “climategate” scandal exposed the scientific misconduct of those involved as they sought academic notoriety, governmental grant funding, while they promoted fears of manmade climate change to build support for imposed political solutions of wealth redistribution via control of energy and its cost.
• Since the “little ice age” (A.D. 1300-1800) ended, global temperatures have risen about 1.5 F; the exact amount and causes are in doubt because of numerous reinterpretations of the raw temperature data; the major increases are in cities (urban heat islands); satellite temperature data covers only the last 30 years; surface stations cover only 30% of the earth’s surface...modest global warming is beneficial to society and nature; cold is the historical killer, not warmth.
• The warmest recent year is 1934; the Medieval Warm Period (A.D. 900-1300) was warmer than now; carbon dioxide levels were much lower then...the more recent temperature record shows an average 30 year cycle of cooling and warming. Since 1998 the earth has been in a cooling trend, even as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. There is no valid “carbon dioxide up/temperature up” proven correlation.
• Climate models and computers cannot predict the future climate; no one knows all the variables and their interactions; evidence of global warming does not prove it is manmade; any human component is buried in the massive effects of nature.
• Carbon dioxide is absolutely essential to your life; it is not a biological pollutant; it is necessary for plant life, which produces oxygen and food for us carbon-based humans. Atmospheric carbon dioxide increases have fed the re-growth of the Amazon and eastern U.S. forests. Water vapor is the number one greenhouse gas.
• In 2007, a British court ruled that 9 out of the 12 catastrophic climate events in Mr. Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” were unfounded; the film was judged “political propaganda”, and had to be so announced, if shown in public schools.
• Petroleum oil, natural gas, and coal are the original “bio-fuels” and are plentiful; the only shortage is the one imposed on their use by the government. Present governmental policies aimed at restricting domestic energy production send “green jobs” overseas; we are forced to import more foreign oil rather than develop our own plentiful resources with American labor. The U.S. gets most of its petroleum oil from Canada and Mexico. China is drilling for oil off the U.S. coast in areas prohibited to U.S. companies. The eastern U.S. is the new “Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”
• Corn ethanol gasoline is more polluting and less efficient than basic gasoline; it carries a 45 cent tax cost and a 54 cent import duty on Brazilian sugar cane ethanol...a boon to Iowa mega-farm interests at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.
• China is set to build 100 nuclear plants over the next 20 years, even as they add one new coal-fired plant each week; they control the rare earths needed for electric cars and solar panels. Sweden and Germany are planning new nuclear power plants.
• Wind turbine and solar energy are not “free energy”...they require huge land areas, destroy large areas of native habitat, and consume disproportionate amounts of concrete and building resources for the amount of energy produced; they require the construction of additional conventional power plants to produce electricity when the wind stops or the sun sets...they survive only because of massive governmental subsidies and costly, imposed-mandates for their use…solar and wind receive about 20x the subsidies for nuclear, for the same energy produced. Wind turbine power farms are more polluting than conventional gas power plants.
• Read the “2010 Virginia Energy Plan” to see how your VA taxes fund these projects. “Renewable resources” depend on governmental subsidies, and mandates for their use; these are monies borrowed from China as the U.S. Treasury is broke. Since 1989, over 79 billion dollars of governmental subsidies have been the new “green” for industry, federal bureaucracies, universities, and Wall Street “cap-and-tax.”
• The Federal EPA bureaucracy is imposing energy destroying policies by edict.
• Our local government has signed on with the “International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives” (ICLEI), now “Local Governments for Sustainability”...this activist group has entree to your local government via a $1200 yearly fee, and has an effective seat in county government deciding your energy/property/freedom rights. Your county government has funded the population control group ASAP.
By Claire Snegaroff
AFP
Global warming exists and is unquestionably due to human activity, the French Academy of Science has said in a report written by 120 scientists from France and abroad.
“Several independent indicators show an increase in global warming from 1975 to 2003. This increase is mainly due to the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide,” the academy said in conclusion to the report.
“The increase in carbon dioxide, and to a lesser degree other greenhouse gases, is unquestionably due to human activity,” said the report, adopted unanimously by academy members and published on Thursday.
Advertisement: Story continues below The report contradicts France’s former education minister Claude Allegre, a geochemist, who published a book, The Climatic Deception, which claimed carbon dioxide was not linked to climate change.
The report was commissioned in April by Minister for Research Valerie Pecresse in response to hundreds of environmental scientists who complained that Allegre, in particular, was disparaging their work.
Allegre is a member of the Academy of Sciences and also signed off on the report.
“He has the right to evolve,” the academy’s president Jean Salencon said.
Pecresse said: “The debate is over.”
But Allegre told AFP the document was a compromise and “I have not evolved, I still say the same thing, that the exact role of carbon dioxide in the environment has not been shown.
“Of course it’s a compromise, but it’s a satisfactory compromise because what I defend - that is, the uncertainty in our knowledge about climate change - is explicitly mentioned; the word uncertainty appears 12 times.”
In his book, Allegre questioned the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and criticised worldwide mobilisation around “a myth without foundation”.
He disagreed with linking climate change and an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and said clouds or solar activity had more of an influence.
The IPCC, established to sift through scientific research and produce the most authoritative report possible on climate change for world leaders, has been hit by a raft of criticisms and the UN has said it needs a major overhaul.
Glaring errors were revealed in the panel’s landmark 2007 Fourth Assessment Report - notably that Himalayan glaciers which provide water to a billion people in Asia could be lost by 2035, a claim traced to a magazine article.
The Academy’s report said: “Solar activity, which has dropped slightly on average since 1975, cannot be dominant in warming observed during this period” even if the mechanisms involved “are not yet well understood”.
“Major uncertainties remain on how to model clouds, the evolution of marine ice and the polar caps, the connection between the oceans and the atmosphere, the biosphere’s evolution and the carbon cycle,” the report said.
Allegre wrote that it was impossible to predict the climate’s long-term evolution, but the Academy said: “Climate evolution predictions of 30 to 50 years are little affected by uncertainties on modelling slow evolution processes.”
“These predictions are particularly useful in responding to society’s current concerns, worsened by the predictable population growth.”
The IPCC’s deputy head, Frenchman Jean Jouzel, welcomed the report.
“Even if in this text lots of space is given to the arguments put forward by climate change sceptics, I note that the document clearly reaffirms the IPCC’s broad conclusions,” he told AFP.
“Clearly sceptics will find some things to make their case. It says that not all is clear about the sun’s role. The debate is never over.”
The report was the result of written contributions as well as closed-door discussions held at the Academy on September 20 and subsequent exchanges, the Academy said. See post here.
By Tom Harris and Bryan Leyland
"The authority of the United Nations is being undermined by the incompetence exposed within its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], and ultimately the buck has to stop with UN Secretary General,” asserted International Climate Science Coalition Chief Science Adviser Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia.
Observers may be tempted to forgive Secretary General Ban ki-Moon for his failure to properly oversee the IPCC, only one of dozens of UN agencies. However, it seems strange that Mr. Ban has received no criticism whatsoever for years of damaging bias within an influential UN panel for which he is ultimately responsible. Instead, the IPCC Chairman, Indian economist Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, has taken all the heat.
Going into the IPCC meeting in South Korea earlier this month, there was worldwide pressure to dismiss Pachauri since many people considered him to have biases and conflicts of interest inappropriate for the IPCC Chair. Citing a loss in credibility on Pachauri’s part, Tim Yeo, chairman of the UK House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, said point blank, “...I think Dr. Pachauri should resign.” The eminent British climatologist Professor Sir Brian Hoskins said that he too believed that the IPCC Chair had to step down. Even John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, joined in the calls for Pachauri to be replaced for the sake of the UN’s climate change body’s credibility.
All to no avail. The IPCC simply postponed a decision on the InterAcademy Council review recommendation that chairs be limited to one term, thereby letting Pachauri continue. Even though he has already been in the job for eight years, it is clear that any term-limit decision won’t apply to Pachauri anyways, leaving the controversial and discredited academic in charge of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report to be completed by 2014. Pachauri told delegates at the IPCC plenary in Korea, “I feel grateful and very fortunate to have received an unprecedented measure of support in this period from the Panel. Your support has been a great asset during all kinds of weather, both fair and foul.”
While Pachauri’s continuance atop the IPCC pyramid pleases India, it will further erode public confidence in the climate panel’s conclusions. Perhaps India is happy with the prospect of a toothless IPCC since there will then be less pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are, unjustifiably, blamed for most climate change. If so, it is a good thing Pachauri was not fired so that developing nations can increase their focus on poverty alleviation instead.
The IPCC is so fundamentally flawed - scientifically, economically and procedurally - that no political leader should have ever taken their recommendations seriously in the first place. But governments are usually slow to correct their mistakes, so, even after recent revelations of serious IPCC problems, the climate policies of developed nations may well continue to be based on IPCC proclamations for a few more years. In time, however, the panel will almost certainly be abandoned by national governments that, belatedly, will be forced to react to their citizenry’s growing skepticism. The IPCC will then become irrelevant.
The fact that Pachauri was not dismissed raises some important questions, however. If he is not held seriously responsible for the IPCC’s shortcomings, then who is? Did Pachauri’s superiors know what was going on and, if so, when did they know it?
During the 2007 UN Bali climate conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was sent an open letter signed by 100 leading experts in the field in which he was alerted to IPCC process problems. The experts also asserted “it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions.” The Secretary General failed to acknowledge the letter and also failed to address the concerns raised.
During the UN’s 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, Mr. Ban was sent The Copenhagen Climate Challenge signed by 195 climate and related experts. The letter told the UN chief that “there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change ...” The scientists challenged the UN “to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming....” Among the IPCC problems brought to Mr. Ban’s attention were the IPCC’s approach to forecasting climate violated 72 principles of forecasting” and “The claims of the IPCC...with respect to sea level changes is deeply biased and not based on actual observation.” The scientists’ submission was tracked and confirmed as being delivered to the Secretary General’s office. Once again, Mr. Ban failed to acknowledge the letter and failed to address the concerns.
So there can be absolutely no doubt that, for several years, the Secretary General has been aware of serious problems inside the IPCC. Yet Mr. Ban continued to promote its conclusions as if they were beyond dispute. It was not until unrelenting media coverage of the various ‘gates’ - Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate, Kiwigate, etc. - that the UN Chief finally ordered an inquiry.
Members of the United Nations must launch their own investigation into why Mr. Ban and others at the top of the UN let these problems fester for so many years. If they don’t have some very good explanations to offer, then heads should roll.
Tom Harris is the Ottawa-based Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition. Bryan Leyland is ICSC’s Founding Secretary and Energy Issues Advisor; he is based in Auckland, New Zealand.