CLIMATE SCIENCE CORRUPTED
How the IPCC’s sponsor, the UNEP, and key IPCC individuals have misled Governments into supporting the notion of manmade warming
by John McLean
SUMMARY FOR POLICY MAKERS
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established under the sponsorship of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The UNEP’s belief in manmade warming in the late 1970’s led to a stage-managed conference in Villach in 1985, which in turn led to the political decision to form the IPCC.
The IPCC rose to prominence because people with clear bias were appointed to key positions where they could influence the development of the entire organization. Bert Bolin, the first chairman of the IPCC was already heavily committed to the notion of manmade warming having worked previously for the UNEP, WMO, the Brundtland Report, the SCOPE 29 report (on which the first IPCC report was largely based) and, very crucially, having documented that the Villach conference reached a consensus that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide were to blame for variations in climate. John Houghton, the first chairman of the IPCC working group that attributes blame for climate change, was assisted in his assertions by his staff at the UK Met Office and by a very supportive UK government.
The other key factor for the IPCC was the adoption of the UNEP’s methods of coercing governments and the general public. Those methods included (a) the use of the environmentalists’ catch-all the “precautionary principle”, (b) a penchant for creating models based on partially complete scientific understanding and then citing the output of those models as evidence, (c) the politicisation of science through the implied claim that consensus determines scientific truth, (d) the use of strong personalities and people of influence, and (e) the manipulation of the media and public opinion. Directly and indirectly these methods greatly influenced political parties whether they held government or not
None of these UNEP techniques provide scientific justification of the IPCC’s principal claim, which considered dispassionately is very weak. Not only is it based on the output of climate models, that the IPCC shows us are built according to incomplete knowledge and therefore cannot be accurate, but also on the opinions of those who use such models as if somehow the models were credible and scientific truth should be determined by consensus and opinion.
It is long overdue that the IPCC was called for what it is – a political body driven not by the evidence that it pretends exists but by the beliefs and philosophies of the UNEP, the IPCC’s sponsor, and by the initial holders of key IPCC positions.
Since the publication of its Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been severely criticized by several writers, myself included. These writers have highlighted the IPCC’s use of questionable data, weak evidence, wild assertions, failure to abide by its own procedures, distortion of the normal peer review process, mendacious statements of some of its senior people and, overall, its attitude of advocacy and the continued defence of a dubious and discredited hypothesis.
To understand how these attitudes became an integral part of the IPCC we need to look at the influence of its two sponsoring organizations on both the creation of the IPCC and its ongoing operations.
One sponsor is the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a body whose focus until recently was on the observation and measurement of meteorological phenomenon; the other is the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), whose position on several subjects has been tantamount to activism and whose advocacy on key issues has been subsequently proven to be exaggerated, doubtful or downright wrong.
The roots of the IPCC can be traced back to a conference in Villach, Austria, in 1980, hosted by the WMO, UNEP and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), with the aim of providing a “carefully prepared scientific assessment of the CO2 question to provide them with guidance in their future activities and advice to nations”. According to Franz1, this conference concluded that the scientific uncertainties were so significant that no CO2 management plan could be proposed.
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