War of Wits

The evidence is in. The headlines proclaim:

“Global Warming Man Made, Will Continue”.

“Scientists Agree: Humans Causing Global Warming.”

Democrats are screeching “SEE… I told you so!” People are throwing around words like absolute and unequivocal to describe the evidence. The noses of Jacques Chirac and the US Senate have turned upwards in their indignation towards the fuel consumption habits of the American people, and someone - somewhere is probably saying “There ought to be a law.”

The recently publicized conclusions about global warming and the hysterics that followed were based on an executive summary released February 2nd by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This latest report is one in a series from the IPCC that has been released every few years.

A thorough examination of the documentary evidence in this case reveals that thus far there is no basis in proclaiming that the actions of mankind are the “unequivocal” cause of rising Earth temperatures, regardless of how many hundreds of experts that Al Gore and the media claim said so.

The evidence I will submit in this series of articles will show that the phenomenon of “global warming” is a highly politicized subject entirely capable of being manipulated for personal gain or political power. It will also show that global warming is a wedge; a tool being utilized by globalists at the UN and in the media for a variety of socialist reasons, not the least of which is the transfer of technology from the “haves” to the “have-not’s”.

It will also serve as an object lesson in the tendencies of the mainstream media to gloss over a story without digging deep enough for the facts.

Finally, it is a sad testament to the US education system and its failure to teach critical thinking to our nation’s youth, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people who are thoroughly convinced that man is the primary reason for global climate change, despite the questions that remain over the methodologies used to reach that conclusion.

What this series is NOT, is an attempt to say that the Earth isn’t getting warmer, or the consequences of that warming aren’t catastrophic. It is. They are.

Part I (this article) is an examination of the IPCC itself, allowing you to draw your own conclusions about the objectivity of it’s report. Part II is where the actual science will be scrutinized; where we will take a detailed look at the methodologies used to produce the reports. We will also uncover the various disclaimers peppered throughout the report, regarding data quality, and the shortcomings of the approaches used to compile that data. Part III will summarize the findings.

At the conclusion of this series, I sincerely hope that you will come away with a much firmer understanding of the forces at work in the debate over global warming, and resolve not to be swayed by hype and speculation that is rampant in the mainstream media today.

Disclaimer: Nowhere in this series do I question the underlying science behind the IPCC’s conclusions. Nor do I question the qualifications or knowledge of those producing this summary. I question the conclusions themselves due to the politicized system that they were produced under.

Part I. The UNIPCC
Introduction.

First and foremost, the climate change “report” that everyone is citing is not the IPCC report itself, but an executive summary of the soon-to-be released report designed for policymakers. It is a layman’s explanation of the IPCC’s conclusions. It contains no evidence and it does not explain the methodology used to reach the conclusions that it reached.

The full report won’t even be available until May 2007, and is not a single report, but a series of documents. Before we’ve even examined the science, the rampant media circus surrounding the report’s release proves unwarranted, at least until the full report is available.

IPCC Mission and Organization:

Let’s start with the facts. What is not in scientific dispute is that the Earth is getting warmer.

Surface and sea temperatures are rising. Sea ice is receding, This is upsetting sea temperature and salinity, and wreaking multifaceted environmental havoc on large populations of fish, marine mammals, and plant life, which cascades up and down the food chain. Many critical species, such as polar bears and arctic krill are threatened by these changes. Recent evidence points to the fact that these trends have increased in the last 50 years or so. There is no doubt that if this continues, our planet will be in serious trouble. There is no dispute.

What has been in dispute for the last couple of decades is whether or not mankind -by burning and polluting- is a significant contributor to the warming of the Earth, or whether these upswings in temperatures are the result of cyclical changes to the Earth’s climate over cosmic time scales that we just don’t understand.

Global warming as a physical phenomenon DOES exist. Our planet is getting warmer. The question then, is whether there is enough observable, quantifiable, verifiable evidence. Evidence that is free of political interference. Evidence that shows conclusively that man is causing the temperature to rise.

This is a complex debate with lots of evidence to examine. But before we can even get into the substance of the report’s conclusions, we must learn what the IPCC is, and clarify the misconceptions held by the mainstream media while breaking this story.

Just what is the IPCC? I was surprised to learn that it doesn’t do any research, monitoring, or experimentation itself [1]. It is a UN organization created by two other UN organizations [2] that is open to all UN and World Meteorological Organization member countries.

It does consist of scientists, and various other experts in their fields, but also authors, engineers, and reviewers. A look at the member selection and report drafting processes reveals that it is hardly scientific, and is by nature, actually political.

The IPCC was created as early as 1988 by the UN to study the impact of climate change. From a practical scientific standpoint, this had immense value. As a result of the first IPCC Assessment Report released in 1990, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established. This was an international treaty to consider what could be done to reduce global warming, and mitigate it’s impacts.

Since then, the countries that signed on to the UNFCCC, in large part, have also become signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, a natural extension of the UNFCCC, which we will not discuss here, but nonetheless needs to be pointed out to reveal the full context in which this latest report was created.

The First IPCC Assessment Report was out of print and unavailable for evaluation.

The Second Assessment Synthesis in 1995 cited considerable progress in pinning the cause of global warming on man, but offered nothing in the form of evidence. It came with the disclaimer that the ability to measure temperatures across multiple centuries was just beginning to emerge, as was their ability to establish man as the cause vs. natural variability. It was more a treatise on social justice [3] than a scientific document contributing to solving the riddle of man’s influence on his environment.

The IPCC is subdivided into working groups, much like congressional subcommittees. The first working group concentrates on the scientific aspects of climate change; the physical effects, the substance of the argument at hand. The other groups won’t be addressed here, because they deal with the socioeconomic impact, mitigation, and other aspects of climate change that don’t concern the cause, and are not germane to this discussion. Suffice it to say that all working groups concentrate on developing their contributions to the final report in their various areas of expertise, and then meet to draft the report.

A disclaimer on the Working Group I website states very clearly that the full report must undergo final revision and release, and that speculation regarding it’s contents has been unhelpful [4]. Apparently the entire international press corps missed that one, but I digress…

In another document overlooked by the media on the IPCC’s website, the IPCC outlines the semantic differences between the terms “transfer”, “cooperation” and “diffusion” when describing the effort to get western nations to forfeit our technology to poorer nations in the interests of mankind’s quest to end global warming. It then sets out describing ways to make that happen. [5]

Finally, the IPCC report drafting process consists of creating an outline that identifies specific issues to be addressed by the panel. Once the outline is approved, teams of authors are assembled for each chapter. A draft report is created and approved by the IPCC panel, then sent to the governments who are signatories to the UNFCCC, and then once the language is agreed to by international consensus, the report is released.

Thus the IPCC organization and operating principles themselves are suspect. Yes, there are scientific experts in climatology and related sciences involved in crafting the report, but the authors did not conduct the research, only interpreted it’s meaning. In addition, the drafting process was conducted in a manner consistent with the absurdity with which the UN approaches all matters. A resolution, reached on UN member consensus, in search of a problem. In this manner, it is entirely possible that hard, scientific absolutes were watered-down in the interest of reaching consensus on this matter of global importance.

Conclusion: Since the early 90’s, the IPCC -at the behest of the UN- drafted a series of reports that consisted of outlines with preordained conclusions. They then broke off into study groups, compiled the scientific research of others to support their conclusions, researched ways to redistribute the technology of the “haves” to the “have-nots” in support of those conclusions under the guise of solving the supposed crisis and then released these reports as concrete evidence that man is bringing about the impending doom of the planet by driving SUVs.

Nothing but the summary of the latest report is today being used -without any supporting evidence - by Jacques Chirac and the leaders of 46 other nations in their call to adopt a new layer of international bureaucracy, and threatening the US with a carbon tax if we do not sign global warming treaties.[6]

The language of the most recent report has yet to be finalized by international consensus, but if you ask the mainstream media or many US Senators (none of whom have seen anything but an executive summary), and we’re screwed.

Each IPCC attempt, i.e. each assessment report builds on the previous one, straining to reach closer and closer to the golden ticket; the conclusion that mankind is the cause of rising Earth temperatures. It is by advancing these arrogant conclusions that the UN can scare the world population into believing that they have the answer to something that could have been around since he earth was created 4.5 billion years ago.

But despite the politics involved in producing this latest report, the basis of my argument lies not in my opinions about the motives of the UN, shallow conspiracy theories, or subjective measures such as political considerations, but on the interpretation of hard science. A detailed analysis of the methodology for the 2001 IPCC report reveals to anyone with a high school science background a series of holes that together make this report anything but conclusive.

Notes:

1. http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm

2.The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP)

3.IPCC Second Assessment Report: Climate Change 1995 - Second Assessment Synthesis of Scientific-Technical information relevant to interpreting Article II of the UNFCCC - Summary for Policymakers. Scope of the Assessment - page 45 #4. Equity and Social considerations.

4.http://ipcc-wg2.org/index.html - Working Group I: The Physical Basis of Climate Change “Release of the IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment Report”.

5.Methodological and Technical issues in Technology Transfer - Chapter 1 Managing Technological Change in support of the Climate Change Convention. A framework for decision making 1.3 Background.

6.”46 Nations Back Body To Protect Planet”- Angela Charlton and Seth Borenstein - AP