An Honest Climate Debate

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article January 30, 2010

UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and magazine article

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent and Rebecca Lefort
The Telegraph, 30 January 2010

The United Nations’ expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world’s mountain tops on a student’s dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global warming.

The IPCC’s remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master’s degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC’s report about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

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Terence Corcoran: Heat wave closes in on the IPCC January 28, 2010

Terence Corcoran: Heat wave closes in on the IPCC

Financial Post, January 26, 2010

A catastrophic heat wave appears to be closing in on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How hot is it getting in the scientific kitchen where they’ve been cooking the books and spicing up the stew pots? So hot, apparently, that Andrew Weaver, probably Canada’s leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform.

If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it’s a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years. He is Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis at the University of Victoria, mastermind of one of the most sophisticated climate modelling systems on the planet, and lead author on two recent landmark IPCC reports. For him to say, as he told Canwest News yesterday, that there has been some “dangereous crossing” of the line between climate advocacy and science at the IPCC is stunning in itself.

Not only is Mr. Weaver an IPCC insider. He has also, over the years, generated his own volume of climate advocacy that often seemed to have crossed that dangereous line between hype and science. It is Mr. Weaver, for example, who said the IPCC’s 2007 science report — the one now subject to some scrutiny —“isn’t a smoking gun; climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles.”

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At last, some cool heads on global warming January 27, 2010

At last, some cool heads on global warming

The Australian, January 28, 2010

HAS the UN climate change panel run its course as a useful player in global negotiations? Is it time for a less political body to take the lead in assessing the scientific evidence on global warming? These are questions that must be asked as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change faces serious challenges to its credibility. The intervention yesterday by UK chief scientist John Beddington may have sealed the fate of the IPCC, the body set up more than 20 years ago by the UN and since positioned as the authoritative body on climate change data. Throw in Beijing’s doubts yesterday on whether climate change is man-made or natural and it’s clear that scientists are now under intense pressure to prove their claims.

The IPCC will doubtless continue, but public faith in its declarations is evaporating as evidence emerges of the dodgy reporting practices and unsubstantiated claims made in its 2007 report. The document that underpinned the recent Copenhagen climate change summit has been found wanting in its claims on glaciers and the connection between global warming and natural disasters. As Professor Beddington says, “certain unqualified statements have been unfortunate”.

There has long been criticism of the IPCC as a body that has posited certainty when it should have emphasised the caveats to its findings. The Australian has consistently warned against claiming too much authority for the panel, given its composition, its processes and its role as a synthesiser of disparate research findings from thousands of scientists. We have always believed the IPCC reports need to be read with a healthy dose of realism even as we have backed action against the risk of climate change. Three years ago, when the IPCC report was issued, we wrote: “Let there be no mistake: all the signs suggest the need for action . . . but cool heads are essential.” We noted the big story from the report was the “higher level of implied scientific certainty” about anthropogenic warming and predicted the debate would be pushed out of the laboratory and into the political arena.

It has proved to be so, with politicians unwilling to manage the uncertainties and gaps in science as they push their constituencies to action. Still, nothing prepared us for the sloppy reporting, including the extraordinary process by which claims on the melting of glaciers were based on a third-hand news report. Our planet deserves better than that.

Where to from here? There seems little doubt we will see more examples of IPCC exaggeration: finding holes in the report is beginning to feel like shooting fish in a barrel. These investigations are important. The premise behind global action – that the world is heating at a dangerous rate and that we can do something about it – needs to be rigorously tested. If we are to sign up to systems such as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, let’s do it on the facts.

Much of what is in the IPCC report still stands, but its flaws can no longer be glossed over in the search for a workable consensus on global action. The good news from this debacle is that climate change science and the claims made on its behalf, will now receive proper scrutiny. After the hyperbole leading up to Copenhagen, a more rational analysis is emerging.