The International Panel on Climate Change can no longer be considered a scientific organization. It was established in 1989 to provide comprehensive scientific information about climate and make science-based recommendations. Its rules have required all assertions in its assessment reports to be based on published papers in refereed scientific journals. That procedure was flagrantly violated in its Fourth Assesstment Report (AR4), the most recent one. That report listed the World Wildlife Fund as the source for sixteen of its assertions, including that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. The WWF is an environmental advocacy group with no refereed journal but a well-deserved reputation for exaggerated, unsupported claims. India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said the glacial melting claim “was clearly out of place and didn't have any scientific basis.” Dr. Murari Lal, who was the coordinating lead author of the IPCC report's chapter on Asia, says he knew the glacier-melting statement lacked scientific verification but included it anyway to encourage politicians to act. He thereby demonstrated more concern with political activism than scientific accuracy.
The
AR4 report also claimed climate change was causing coral reef
degradation. The sole source the IPCC cited for this claim is a
Greenpeace report entitled “Pacific in Peril.” Other
noteworthy sources cited in AR4 include a mountaineering magazine and
a student paper. Not the sort of thing you would expect from a Nobel
Prize-winning report, from the organization that is proclaimed to be
the definitive word on climate science. And hardly “as solid as
careful science can make it,” as the IPCC stated in 2009. (For
more on the exaggerated, inaccurate claims of the IPCC AR4, see The
IPPC-led Global Warming Hoax Implodes Link
Instead
of reaffirming its adherence to science by agreeing to forgo
questionable sources in the future, the IPCC promises to use more of
them. On June 24, 2012 it said whatever it chooses to post will be
considered as peer reviewed. In other words, the IPCC's position of
“authority” is now to be considered as equal to, and a substitute
for, the scientific rigor of peer review in a scientific journal.
Whatever it says, counts—simply
because it says so.
It gets
worse. The IPCC has also decided to impose gender and geographical
quotas on IPCC membership. Under the new rules, Africa will have
five members on the IPCC and North America will have only four. Does
anyone really think Africa has more top-flight climate scientists
than the USA and Canada combined? The USA alone produces 32% of the
world's science. The IPCC also said each of its three working groups
will require at least one person from each continent on its each of
these 8-person working groups. (One wonders how this staffing
requirement will be met with residents of Antarctica.) There will
also be a push to have more women represented.
So you
see, the IPCC isn't about science—if it ever was. A member of the
Stockholm Environment Institute told New Scientist journalist
Fred Pearce that the announced policies are mostly a formalization of
current practices: “Membership has always been based on expertise,
geographical balance and gender. Link”
This is tantamount to saying the IPCC never did have the best
scientists because of its accommodation for political agendas,
diversity in this case. Or global warming in the case of Himalayan
glaciers.
Obviously,
the IPCC would not be using unscientific sources if it could find
scientific ones. The inescapable conclusion is that the IPCC cannot
make a valid case for human-caused global warming with scientific
evidence. So why should anyone believe the IPCC claims? Many
people have been misled by the IPCC, but if they now continue to
accept IPCC assertions they will be putting doctrine ahead of science and truth, just as the IPCC has done. Why?
Well, one reason could be to use the IPCC and its assertions to
support political agendas. Untold billions of dollars are being
spent by EPA and other Washington bureaucrats on social engineering
to reshape out cities, the economy, industrial methods, and the lives
of all Americans. What would happen to all these government programs
if anthropological global warming were not true?
