Bad Science

“While human-induced global warming is not going to turn present-day Earth into present-day Mars, global warming is dire enough that our most distinguished scientists recently concluded that as many as 1 million species on the planet could be extinct by 2050 if affairs do not change.”- Jay Inslee

When Former VP Al Gore Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, he shared the prize with the “distinguished scientists” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their published reports have been filled with stories of the Himalayan glaciers melting, African farm lands drying up, rain forests disappearing, polar bears without ice, and so on. Now it appears that much of the evidence for this is of low quality or non-existent. Though ignored by the U.S. Mainstream Media, the papers in London have daily front-page news of IPCC scandals. See The Great IPCC Meltdown Continues.

1. The IPCC has claimed that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020. Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, have repeated this in speeches. Now Professor Chris Field, the lead author of the IPCC’s climate impact team, tells reporters that he can find “no evidence” to support the claim.

2. IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers ...The claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was based upon a flimsy chain of events. The source was not peer-reviewed scientific literature – but a media interview with a scientist conducted in 1999. An offhand quote by a scientist was picked up the World Wildlife Conservancy and then became “common knowledge”. India is so upset that it has set up it’s own scientific group to study the glaciers since it has lost all faith in the IPCC.

3. The Dutch government has demanded that the IPCC correct its erroneous assertion that half of the Netherlands is below sea level. Actually, it’s only about a quarter.

4. An IPCC prediction about the impact of sea level increases on people living in the Nile Delta was taken from an unpublished student dissertation.

5. The IPCC report contained inaccurate data about generating energy from waves and about the cost of nuclear power (this information was apparently taken without being checked directly from a website supported by the nuclear power industry).

Now scientists make mistakes, sometimes really big mistakes (like seeing canals on Mars). But the purpose of the IPCC is to peer-review other scientists and separate the wheat from the chaff. To identify climate claims that are accurate and true so the United Nations can act upon facts instead of opinions. They have failed miserably in this job.

Bottom Line

I’m not opposed to the idea of global warming. I am opposed to bad science. When you ask nations to change the global way of life and spend billions or even trillions of dollars, you had better have your facts right. You must accountable and completely open to scrutiny and verification. Instead we’ve seen refusal to release data in FOI requests, data deletion, loss of original data sets, loss of verifying documentation, and so on.

I fear we are not seeing science but rather scientists with an advocacy agenda. Some may have the best of motives at heart, but others have profited greatly with millions in dollars of research grants to “save the glaciers”. Either way, the climate scientists have crossed a line and their unscrupulous behavior may weaken public respect for science for a generation.