Do three errors mean breaking point for IPCC?
Just A Guy
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Do three errors mean breaking point for IPCC?
By Li Xing (China Daily) Updated: 2010-01-28 07:07
While covering the United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Copenhagen, I took a morning away from the main venue to attend a
forum of "climate skeptics".
The speakers presented political, economic, and scientific analyses to
counter the series of assessments by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).
A few of the skeptics went so far as to suggest that the current
international drive to tackle global warming would eventually lead the
world into some kind of "energy tyranny". One even showed a video clip
of how "energy police" would invade private homes in the American
suburbs, unplugging and removing the owners' microwave ovens,
television sets, and other appliances.
misc.survivalism, rec.crafts.metalworking, alt.global-warming,
sci.environment
I left the forum before the morning session ended. I felt that most of
the speakers were too emotional and politically charged to be
considered objective.
But I was impressed by the presentation of Dr Fred Singer, an
atmospheric physicist and founding director of the US Weather
Satellite Service, who challenged the IPCC findings with his research
data.
In the next few days, I talked with several scientists, including Dr
Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chair, and asked them about Singer's data.
All of these scientists brushed aside Singer's arguments, saying that
the IPCC's primary finding is indisputable: "Warming in the climate
system is unequivocal".
I believed the IPCC reports, which summarize the research of some
4,000 scientists, but I had some serious reservations. For one thing,
the IPCC reports contained very little data from Chinese researchers.
I was told the IPCC refused to consider Chinese data because the
Chinese research was not peer-reviewed.
China is not a small country. Its landmass spans several climate zones
and includes the roof of the world. I have to wonder how data from
China would affect the IPCC's findings.
Several Chinese scientists who have gone over the IPCC report believe
that the IPCC may have overstated the link between global temperature
and CO2 in the atmosphere.
In a paper published in the December issue of the Chinese language
Earth Science magazine, Ding Zhongli, an established environmental
scientist, stated that the current temperatures on earth look normal
if global climate changes over the past 10,000 years are considered.
Ding's paper highlighted the fact that in its policy suggestions, the
IPCC offered solutions that would give people in rich countries the
right to emit a much higher level of greenhouse gas per capita than
people in developing countries. It in effect set limits on the
economic growth of developing countries, which will result in
furthering the gap between rich and poor countries."
A series of "climategate" scandals now add more reason to give the
IPCC research closer scrutiny.
Last November, hackers revealed that some scientists had favored data
which supports the case for "global warming" in order to enhance their
grant proposals.
Just last week, the IPCC announced that it "regrets the poor
application of well-established IPCC procedures" in a claim that
glaciers in the Himalayas could melt away by 2035. Instead of coming
from a peer-reviewed scientific paper, the statement was sheer
speculation, the IPCC conceded.
Then over the weekend, the media revealed that the IPCC had
misrepresented an unpublished report, which it said linked climate
change with an increase in natural disasters. However, the author of
the report, Dr Robert Muir-Wood, clearly stated the opposite: "We find
insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between
global temperature increase and catastrophe loss." Muir-Wood is not a
climatologist, but a researcher in risk management.
I am particularly troubled by the fact that top IPCC officials do not
seem to take these revelations seriously. Interviewed by the BBC, Jean-
Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, dismissed the matter
as a "human mistake".
Ancient Chinese considered three a breaking point. They could forgive
two errors, but not a third. Now that the IPCC has admitted three
"human" errors, isn't it time scientists gave its work a serious
review?
E-mail: lix...@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 01/28/2010 page9