IPCC Disqualifies Itself, Gives Up On Science

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?