UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol Rips IPCC at Congressional Hearing: ‘The IPCC leadership has in the past been very adept at putting troublesome authors in positions where they cannot harm the cause. That practice must end’
Full Committee Hearing – Examining the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process
2318 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 | May 29, 2014 11:00am
Examining the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process
I have been involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1994, serving in various roles in all three working groups, most recently as a Convening Lead Author in the economics chapter of Working Group II.
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Academics who research climate change out of curiosity but find less than alarming things are ignored, unless they rise to prominence in which case they are harassed and smeared. The hounding of Lennart Bengtsson is a recent example. Bengtsson is a gentle 79 year old. He has won many awards in a long and distinguished career in meteorology and climatology. He recently joined the advisory board of an educational charity and felt forced to resign two weeks later. As an advisor, he was never responsible for anything this charity did, let alone for the things it had done before he joined. For this, the was insulted by his peers. A Texas A&M professor even suggested he is senile.4
Strangely, the climate “community” did not speak out when one of its own was elected for the Green Party; nor does it protest against close ties between IPCC authors and the
Environmental Defence Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace or the World Wide Fund for Nature. Other eminent meteorologists have been treated like Bengtsson was – Curry, Lindzen, Pielke Sr. Pielke Jr has been mistreated too, merely for sticking to the academic literature, as reflected by the IPCC, that there is no statistical evidence that the impact of natural disaster has increased because of climate change. I have had my share of abuse too. Staff of the London School of Economics and the Guardian now routinely tell lies about me and my work.
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Governments nominate academics to the IPCC – but we should be clear that it is often the environment agencies that do the nominating. Different countries have different arrangements, but it is rare that a government agency with a purely scientific agenda takes the lead on IPCC matters. As a result, certain researchers are promoted at the expense of more qualified colleagues. Other competent people are excluded because their views do not match …
Scientist Dr. Daniel Botkin Tells Congress why he reversed his belief in global warming to become a skeptic: ‘There are several lines of evidence suggesting that it (AGW) is a weaker case today, not a stronger case’ — Rips Obama climate report as ‘filled with misstatements contradicted by well-established and well-known scientific papers’
Full Committee Hearing – Examining the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process
2318 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 | May 29, 2014 11:00am
Examining the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Process
WRITTEN TESTIMONY TO THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY.
MAY 29, 2014
Dr. Daniel Botkin, Professor Emeritus, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara (Full Bio here)
Selected Excerpts: (Full Testimony here)
Since 1968 I have published research on theoretical global warming, its potential ecological effects, and the implications for people and biodiversity. I have spent my career trying to help conserve our environment and its great diversity of species. In doing so I have always attempted to maintain an objective, intellectually honest, scientific approach in the best tradition of scientific endeavor. I have, accordingly, been dismayed and disappointed in recent years that this subject has been converted into a political and ideological debate.
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I want to state up front that we have been living through a warming trend driven by a variety of influences. However, it is my view that this is not unusual, and contrary to the characterizations by the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment, these environmental changes are not apocalyptic nor irreversible.
2. My biggest concern is that both the reports present a number of speculative, and sometimes incomplete, conclusions embedded in language that gives them more scientific heft than they deserve. The reports are “scientific-sounding” rather than based on clearly settled facts or admitting their lack. Established facts about the global environment exist less often in science than laymen usually think.
3. HAS IT BEEN WARMING? Yes, we have been living through a warming trend, no doubt about that. The rate of change we are experiencing is also not unprecedented, and the “mystery” of the warming “plateau” simply indicates the inherent complexity of our global biosphere. Change is normal, life on Earth is inherently risky; it always has been. The two reports, however, makes it seem that environmental change is apocalyptic and irreversible. It is not.
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The extreme overemphasis on human-induced global warming has taken our attention away from many environmental issues that used to be front and center but have been pretty much ignored in the 21st century.
Nine Environmental Issues that need our attention now
Energy
Fresh water
Phosphorus and other essential minerals
Habitat …
Obama to unveil historic climate change plan to cut US CO2 emissions: ‘The most significant action on climate change in American history’
John Holdren burned again: Piling On: More New Research Shows No Link Between ‘Polar Vortex’ and Global Warming
Piling On: More New Research Shows No Link Between “Polar Vortex” and Global Warming
Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
This is getting embarrassing.
Another scientific paper has just been published that again finds no association between Arctic sea ice loss and extreme cold and wintery conditions across the U.S.—White House Science Advisor John Holdren’s favorite mechanism for tying last winter’s persistent “polar vortex” over the eastern US to anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
We wonder just what it will take for the White House to publicly admit that it was grossly wrong. At the very least, it needs to disavow a widely-disseminated YouTube video featuring Holdren explaining the link between last winter’s polar vortex and human-caused climate change. There is no such link. Of course, this won’t happen, as Holdren was simply engaging in a publicity stunt relying on tenuous science to scare up support for President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. The President is hell-bent on an endless string of executive actions aimed at manipulating the energy market and reducing our energy choices along the way.
As we reported when the video was first released last January, the science linking human-caused climate change to the southward excursions of the polar vortex was a stretch to begin with. It was then dealt a major blow by a study led by Colorado State climate researcher Elizabeth Barnes that was coincidentally published a few days after Holdren’s YouTube video. Barnes’s found that natural variability dominates the observed record, making it impossible to detect any human-caused global warming signal even if one were to exist in the vortex data (which there is no proof of). Shortly after that, a collection of very prominent climate scientists specializing in research into atmospheric circulation patterns wrote a letter to a prominent journal stating that drawing the type of connection that Holdren did was not scientifically advisable
Spurred by all of this, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) sent a petition to the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) to force Holdren issue a correction under the terms of the Data Quality Act. According to CEI, “OSTP guidelines require the agency …
Congressional hearing: Scientists say UN IPCC puts politics before science, needs reform – IPCC Lead Author Tol: ‘Competent people are excluded because their views do not match those of their government’
Hey Mr. President, Even The UN Says Extreme Weather Isn’t Caused By Global Warming
Hey Mr. President, Even The UN Says Extreme Weather Isn’t Caused By Global Warming
Have you ever noticed that every time there is an extreme weather event the Global Warming “mafia” blames the bad weather on their flawed theory. In recent months the polar vortex, the horrible typhoon that hit the Philippines, the lack of rain in California an other weather events were blamed on global warming. But the IPCC, the UN’s committee invented to sell the world on the global warming theory doesn’t agree with the fear-mongers. When the administration started pushing a $1 billion dollar slush fund the Administration’s Science Adviser John Holdren told reporters, without any doubt, the severe drought plaguing California and a number of other states across the country is tied to climate change. He added, “Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change.”Of course John Holdren also once said, “Giving “natural objects” — like trees — standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment.” Holdren’s advocacy for the legal rights of trees may make more sense than his claim that the west coast drought and “weather practically everywhere” is caused by global warmingOne of Germany’s leading meteorologists, Dominik Jung slammed this kind of reaction when it was made about Typhoon Haiyan:For many ‘climate expert’ this recent event is a feeding frenzy that allows them to pound the drums of ‘evil climate change’. And here not a single one of these ladies and gentlemen are able to show that such storms never existed over the past hundreds of years, let alone that this storm is connected to a man-made climate change. A study published in the July 2012 Journal of the American Meteorological Society concluded unequivocally there is no trend of stronger or more frequent storms: “We have identified considerable inter-annual variability in the frequency of global hurricane landfalls,” the authors state, “but within the resolution of the available data, our evidence does not support the presence of significant long-period global or individual basin linear trends for minor, major, or total hurricanes within the period(s) covered by the available quality data.” Even the UN’s IPCC the holy authority of the Church of Global Warming, doesn’t agree with Holdren’s climate change causes everything theory. …In its [IPCC]newly released Fifth Assessment Report, the panel backed away from connections between current droughts and climate change. As it …
Watch Live: Congressional Global Warming Hearing on UN IPCC
Former UN IPCC Lead Author Dr. Richard Tol: ‘One of the startling facts about climate change is that there are very few facts about climate change. Climate change is mainly something of the future so we are really talking about model projections’
CO2-induced global starvation update: ‘Almost a third of the world is now fat’
CO2-induced global starvation update: “Almost a third of the world is now fat” #actonclimate http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_MED_FAT_WORLD?SITE=AKFAI&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Global warming vs climate change: ‘The most important ‘technical’ difference between global warming and climate change is that the former (global warming) isn’t happening while the latter (climate change) is always happening’
Global warming vs climate change
The Guardian and everyone else in the MSM write about a poll among 1,600 Americans that concluded that they’re turned off by “climate change” but intrigued by “global warming”. They are 13% more likely to say that “global warming is a bad thing” than in the case of “climate change”, and so on.So what is the right term to use for “the thing”?Now, a subtle problem with the question is that “the thing” doesn’t exist or it is ill-defined or vacuous or nonsensical. It is stupid to talk about “any thing” that is similar to “this thing”. Moreover, the two terms – even if they are ill-defined – clearly mean different things.Suzanne Goldenberg included one sentence that made me LOL:Scientists often prefer climate change to global warming for technical reasons.What are these “technical reasons”? The most important “technical” difference between global warming and climate change is that the former (global warming) isn’t happening while the latter (climate change) is always happening and has been happening for billions of years. It’s pretty funny to call this difference – the difference between the truth and untruth – a “technical reason”.Aspects of the term “global warming”The global mean temperature is sometimes going up, sometimes it’s going down. It’s been like that for billions of years. From 1900, the global mean temperature went up and this observation is popular. From 1810, it also went up. From 20,000 AD, it went up. We may include the ice ages to obtain the changes in both directions. But from 1998, it went slightly down. In recent millions of years, it went down, too. The Earth is currently very cool if compared to some of those eras.There has been no significant change of the global mean temperature for 20 years or so. The concept of “global warming” as an urgent threat would be catchy. The only problem is that one may prove that nothing of the sort is happening.If you merge the words “global” and “warming”, you surely mean some increase of some temperatures over time. The adjective “global” should specify which temperatures. It may be basically interpreted in two different ways: either only the global average – global mean temperature, whatever is your definition of this problematic term – goes up. Or “every place of the globe” is getting warmer – the warming is really global.Both of these interpretations of “global …