by John McLean, Quadrant

January 17, 2013

The media at large and the public that the media influences seem to believe that the IPCC is an international authority on all aspects of climate.  This is a popular but false notion.  The IPCC is, in fact, no more than a craftily assembled government-supported lobby group, doing what lobby groups usually do.

Its charter gives the game away:

“The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

Or, put more simply, the IPCC is to report on the magnitude of man-made climate change and what can be done to reduce its impact, the existence of man-made climate change being assumed from the outset.

The IPCC was established through the urgings of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The former is a shadowy organisation that conducted scientific projects for UNEP and wrote in-house reports. Given the amount of work it undertook, those reports probably aligned closely with UNEP thinking.

The latter is well known for blaming human activity for every change to the environment—a stance seemingly based on the assumption that the environment never changes naturally and/or that we fully understand every natural force which might make it change. By this logic any and every deviation must be man-made.  The UNEP relies heavily on the finger-wagging Calvinism of the “precautionary principle”, which in essence says “we might not have any evidence that you did it but we think you did it so we’ll take action”.

When the average global temperature appeared to be rising in the late 1980’s the ICSU, the UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) pushed for the creation of the IPCC.  It is not clear whether the WMO was a reluctant partner, dragged in to provide some credibility, or if it was enthusiastic as the other two, spurred along by people like John Houghton, then head of the UK Met Office and leader-to-be of IPCC Working Group I, which focussed on the science.

The IPCC was not established to investigate why temperatures were rising because the ICSU, UNEP and WMO figured they already knew that it was the work of dastardly humans.

And therein lies the problem—the only intergovernmental agency on climate was created to investigate the extent and influence of the one climate force presumed to be significant.

To the lay person, and quite likely to politicians, the IPCC’s main procedure sounds impressive. I wonder, however, whether its mission was defined by intelligent people who fully understood the implications, or by naive people who thought the approach sounded fine but had no idea what it implied.

The IPCC’s task is to create reports that summarise the current level of knowledge on climate matters. To do this it relies heavily on “peer-reviewed and internationally available literature”.

There is not a word in the IPCC “Procedures” document about IPCC authors first reviewing the peer-reviewed papers they cite, verifying that the processes they describe produce the claimed results, or checking that the papers’ conclusions are consistent with the rest of the paper. If something is written in a peer-reviewed paper the IPCC peers no closer—this despite many papers being accepted by reviewers but savaged by the wider scientific community.

With a charter directing it to deal only with the pre-supposed human influence on climate, the IPCC tries to find evidence and peer-reviewed papers to confirm that assumption.  The IPCC can hardly be accused of cherry-picking to support the claim of significant man-made warming when its very charter directs it to focus exclusively on that subject.

Incidentally, there is no sign either that the IPCC audits or otherwise verifies the data it cites. In the widely referenced HadCRUT3 dataset used by the IPCC one location in Russia has also no data for the 1990s save for two Januaries, when temperatures can and do vary widely depending on winds. Two warm Januaries thus produce two warm annual averages and a rising temperature trend, compared to the 1980s when more data was supplied.

In typical UN fashion, government representatives are dragged in to give the literature review, which is basically all the IPCC assessment reports are, the formal seal of approval.  Governments of the world thereby implicitly endorse the flawed assumption on which the IPCC was created, after which representatives unelected by you and I sign off on the reports’ findings. Ultimately, the UN’s special brand of peer pressure—both carrot and stick varieties—pressures governments into action in response to agreements reached by government representatives. Put simply, governments are both co-lobbyists and the targets of that lobbying.

The IPCC is under no obligation to report on all fields of climate research. Indeed, it would be stepping beyond its remit were it to do so. It is not required to report on research that refutes the IPCC’s position nor, like most lobbyist groups, does it seem keen to provide information that undermines its own argument.  The second Draft of the Working Group I contribution to AR5, (due for release in 2014) took until Chapter 8 before mentioning that there has been no statistically significant warming since 1997.

The mistaken belief that the IPCC is an authority on all aspects of climate occurs in part because its charter directs it to present material that supports a highly publicised hypothesis, and because, even 25 years after the establishment of the IPCC, there exists no single global agency that deals with all aspects of climate variability, its consequences and counter strategies.

We can be certain that climate will change in future. But no matter the direction of that change, if science and the public are to be served a global agency dealing with these issues is a necessity. Many years ago the WMO could have been extended to cover climate as well as weather, but now it’s been hopelessly compromised by its co-sponsorship of the IPCC, a much-hyped mono-focused lobby group.

In the absence of a global agency we can only watch the IPCC’s acolytes, the media, the CSIRO, the Australian Climate Commission and others faithfully reproduce, without challenge, the latest utterances from the lobbyist organization as if it is that global authority.

John McLean was co-author with Chris de Freitas and Bob Carter of a paper that became the centre of controversy when submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research. Their experience with the censors of science can be read here.

Source:  Wash Times

Last summer’s headlines blared, “Hottest July in the history of the United States.” The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of theU.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said so, so it must be true.

This week, the NCDC is reporting the same, with the added alarm that 2012 was the warmest year on record and one of the top two years for extreme weather in America.

Climate activists are linking this to man-made global warming, ignoring the fact that the area covered in theNCDC reports, the contiguous United States (excluding Alaska), comprises only 2 percent of the Earth’s surface. Trends that may manifest in the United States in no way indicate global phenomena. In fact, the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office has said that there has been no global warming for 16 years and this week announced that temperatures are expected to stay relatively stable for another five years.

Regardless, all NCDC temperature proclamations must be taken with a large grain of salt. Here’s why.

Until the use of thermocouple temperature indicators became common in the U.S. climate network, temperatures were determined with mercury thermometers that are, at best, only accurate within 0.9 degree Fahrenheit. Even today, many U.S. stations only record temperatures to the closest whole degree. Thus, breaking the 1936 high temperature record by 0.2 degrees F, as NCDC claimed occurred last July, is not meaningful. This change falls within the uncertainty of the measurement. It is akin to being alarmed that the moon has moved a millimeter closer when we can only measure the Earth-moon distance to within a few centimeters.

All that was recorded for most of the United States was minimum and maximum temperature for each day. TheNCDC’s so-called average daily temperatures were derived by simply computing the average of the minimum and maximum temperatures. This is not a true average, however, since it does not take into account how temperatures varied throughout the day.

Trusting the NCDC averaging method to reach “hottest ever” conclusions is a mistake, because higher minimums at night will yield a higher daily average, even if daytime highs do not rise.

This is what happened in July 2012. Then, NCDC records indicated that the United States was less cool at night than in July 1936, therefore, the average they computed for July 2012 was higher than in 1936. Yet, Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville demonstrated that NCDC records show daytime high temperatures in July 1936 far surpassed those of 2012. July 2012 was not the warmest month in the American 118-year instrumental record.

This week, NCDC’s credibility was further damaged when meteorologist Anthony Watts of Chico, Calif., announced that he had discovered huge differences between their “State of the Climate” (SOTC) reports released each month and the actual database of NCDC temperatures. For example, the July 2012 SOTC report, issued in early August, announced that a new record had been set with the average July temperature for the contiguous United States at 77.6 degrees, one-fifth of a degree higher than in July 1936. However, the NCDC now says the July 2012 average was actually about 76.9 degrees, nearly 0.7 degrees less. This is almost 0.5 degrees cooler than the 77.4 degrees claimed as the previous monthly record in 1936. What is going on?

It turns out that the NCDC does not wait for all the data to be received before computing and very publicly announcing the U.S. average temperature and its rank compared to other months and years. While some stations, such as those at airports, send the data quickly via radio links and the Internet, other stations use old paper forms that arrive by mail considerably later.

When the printed data finally arrive, the NCDC updates its temperature database, typically “cooling” the country when all the data are used.

Neither the NCDC nor NOAA tells the public and the press that the temperature announcements in previous SOTCs are no longer correct when the complete data set is analyzed.

Strangely, NCDC changes temperature data even from the distant past without notification. For example, NCDCnow asserts that the average temperature in July 1936 was 76.4 degrees, a full degree cooler than the 77.4 degrees that they claimed for the month in the July 2012 SOTC report. This allows them to continue to say that July 2012 set a record.

Mr. Watts found that in the 23 monthly SOTC reports between October 2010 and November 2012 (three SOTC reports did not list average temperatures), 22 of them do not match the NCDC database, presumably due to later updating when all the data are received and analyzed. In all cases except one, the country cooled when all the data were incorporated.

Mr. Watts concludes: “It is mind-boggling that this national average temperature and ranking is presented to the public and to the press as factual information and claims each month in the SOTC, when in fact the numbers change later.”

We don’t really know how much, if any, warming has occurred in the United States over the past century. Since the American record is considered to be the most accurate part of the Global Historical Climatology Network, we really don’t even know that global warming has occurred at all in the past century.

NOAA has not responded to questions from the International Climate Science Coalition about this issue.

SPPI Blog Source: Pravda, By Stanislav Mishin

For years, the Elites of the West have cranked up the myth of Man Made Global Warming as a means first and foremost to control the lives and behaviors of their populations. Knowing full well that their produce in China and sell in the West model and its consequent spiral downward in wages and thus standards of living, was unsustainable, the elites moved to use this new “science” to guilt trip and scare monger their populations into smaller and more conservative forms of living. In other words, they coasted them into the poverty that the greed and treason of those said same elites was already creating in their native lands.

What better way to staunch protests at worsening economic and life conditions than to make it feel like an honourable job/duty of the people to save “Gaia”. At the same time, they used this “science” as new pagan religion to further push out the Christianity they hate and despise and most of all, fear? Gaia worship, the earth “mother”, has been pushed in popular culture oozing out of the West for a better part of the past 1.5 decades. This is a religion replete with an army of priests, called Government Grant Scientists.

Various groups have fought back. This is including Russian hackers, who published a huge database of UK government, scientific and university emails depicting the fixing of data to sell Global Warming, er Climate Change (as if it never changed on its own). And while taking hit after hit, the beast, like Al Qaida, will not die. As a matter of fact, the beast is on a steady come back, as it is quite useful during the down times recession. The US alone spends $7 billion each year on warming “studies”, which is, in truth, nothing but a huge money laundering operation, as no real science is conducted and vapid alarmist reports the only product generated.

Amongst the newest claims of pending disasters, is a cry that icepacks are now melting at three times the rate of the 1990s, even though there has not been any significant warming in the past 20 years. Greenland’s icepack melt off, has been linked to volcanic activity under the ice, heating it. Must be the magmamen and their SUVs. These facts, however, do not faze the Gia crowd and their Elite/Governmental backers. The fact that a super storm hit the NE US is also being played as evidence of GW. Thank God that before GW no such things ever happened. How are they to explain that Russia and Eastern Europe are projected to have the coldest winter in 20 years? Oh, but I doubt my Western readers are even aware of that.

Now, with their economies in a spiral of debt laden, non-manufacturing recession (if not out and out depression), the Elites, who sense they are loosing their grip or toe hold on key economic regions outside their home regions, are once again calling out their inquisitors of Global Warming and sending them towards the developing world.

The first salvo has been fired by a British Warming dandy named Lord Nicholas Stern of Brantford, who as an academic at Whitehall, has made a career and quite a bit of money off of this scam. Lord Stern, a former World Bank chief economist and author of the landmark Stern review of the economics of climate change, was a close associate of Gordon Brown and the Leftists, who with the Tory counterparts and in parallel to the American Democrats/Republicans set up the grand and self destructive economic schemes that have plunged their own nations and many many others into the abyss of poverty.

The good Lord Stern, in commentary on why countries such as Russia, China, India and Brazil, in other words, the BRICs, have to pony up cash and depress their own growth, made this statement for the Guardian paper: “It’s a brutal arithmetic - the changing structure of the world’s economy has been dramatic. That is something developing countries will have to face up to.”

His premise is that even if you take out the deindustrialized West, run away Global Warming will not stop due to the industrialized world. Its now all the fault of those raising themselves up for the destruction of the world, from the phantom joke of GW. Lord Stern tried to assure that the opening salvo was not a salvo, by stating: “I am not pointing the finger at the developing world, just looking at what is necessary. I am not accusing or proposing, just calculating what is needed [to meet scientific estimates of the emissions cuts needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change]”. More like a calculated accusation.  After all, this is not some light weight of the GIA cult, but the movement’s chief economist who enjoyed the ear of the UK government: a perfect tool of the Western Elites.

Expect the cries to get louder and more shrill in the months to follow.