Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
December 05, 2007
http://www.nationalpost.com/related_links/Story.html?id=145246
As this week's Bali climate circus gets underway, the science of climate
change has long been left behind, presumably "settled" in thousands of
pages of re****ts produced over the past year by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. The proof is solid, they say, and the risks are
real. There's nothing left to do but get on with the business of
controlling carbon emissions.
But as we've shown on this page in the past, the IPCC -- a United
Nations bureaucracy that literally dictates the world view on climate
change--may not be the most reliable or trustworthy of agencies. It is,
above all, a government-controlled body with a political mission that
IPCC officials pursue with religious and dogmatic fervour. The IPCC
distorts, exaggerates and manipulates its science, producing conclusions
that are aimed at generating a political response and raising public
awareness.
To doubt IPCC science is considered sacrilegious. We are required to
"believe" anthropomorphic climate change is real, or otherwise face
ridicule. For scientists, it can mean excommunication.
One of the IPCC's earlier blunders was to claim, as part of its proof of
carbon-caused warming, that the 20th century was the hottest in 2,000
years. A graph showing the trend, shaped like a hockey stick, dominated
scores of IPCC do***ents. But the science behind the claim was wrong.
The latest IPCC re****ts no longer make the claim or show the graphic.
The latest rough version of the Earth's temperature over 2,000 years
(prepared by non-IPCC scientists) suggests the Earth was a lot warmer
about 1,000 years ago, long before man began driving Fords and Chevys.
Not much propaganda value in that, so the IPCC dropped the whole idea.
The new version of the 2,000-year temperature record (reproduced below)
corrects some of the main problems with the original hockey stick. Above
all, it attempts to plot temperature change without using flawed
tree-ring data as major indicators of temperature.
Stripped of its 2,000-year sensation, the IPCC now trumpets a new chart
as the official Global Temperature Record. This is the first graphic in
the IPCC's latest official pre-Bali "synthesis" re****t on climate
science. It's another scientific icon that pur****ts to show temperatures
soaring over the last 25 years. The recent jump, the IPCC says, is "very
likely" due to man-made carbon emissions.
But a new paper by Ross McKitrick of Guelph University and Patrick
Michaels of the Cato Institute suggests the latest IPCC climate-change
icon could be as flawed as the hockey stick. One of the main problems
with the 2,000-year graphic is that it wiped out a well-known Medieval
Warm Period from 1,000 years ago. The McKitrick/Michaels analysis looks
at the other end of the time spectrum and finds that much of the recent
warming trend may be a function of faulty, contaminated data. It may
simply be wrong.
The trick IPCC treatment of problems associated with 20th-century
temperature measurements are spelled out in Mr. Mc-Kitrick's commentary
at right. The short version is that the IPCC ignored findings related to
the heat effect of people living in urban areas, and the degree to which
measures of urban temperatures have been compromised over the years.
It's hotter in cities not because of climate change, but simply because
cities are hotter. "Claims about the amount of warming since 1980 ...
should be re*****sed using uncontaminated data," Mr. McKitrick says.
Most revealing, however, is the scientific runaround Mr. Mc-Kitrick
experienced when, as an official IPCC external reviewer, he presented
his evidence on the degree of contamination in the IPCC's official
Global Temperature Record. Not only is IPCC science in question, but on
display is the IPCC's domineering bureaucratic methodology, state
monopoly science in action.
So now the IPCC temperature scares have been corrected at both ends.
First, warming periods of the distant past were wrongly eliminated or
diminished. And now the warming periods of the present have been
exaggerated. What's left as proof that unprecedented anthropomorphic
climate change is taking place as predicted? Something to wonder about
on the beaches of Bali.
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
". researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany
re****t the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years,
accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over
the last 100 years."
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