Another day, another ‘new’ climate report. This one is something about oceans and ice.
There’s nothing new in this report (see commentary from Roger Pielke here, here and here) so what’s the point?
The answer is, of course, that the constant stream of climate reports is an attempt to keep the climate scare at the top of the news.
So it’s amusing that the IPCC failed on this occasion, thanks to the big news stories of Bumbling Boris being forced to come back to Parliament, and the attempt to impeach Donald Trump.
Even the BBC, which would normally be expected to make an IPCC report the top news story, only had a short half-hearted piece way down the order on the Ten O’clock News, with David Shukman going to Hull to worry about sea-level rise.
But what I noticed with today’s report was this, from the IPCC’s co-chair, Valerie Masson-Delmotte:
Key messages from the @IPCC_CH Special Report on the 🌊❄️Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate #SROCC
Final sentence of the Summary for Policy Makers :
“This highlights the urgency of prioritising timely, ambitious, coordinated and enduring action” pic.twitter.com/Q1uLyQILP3
— Val. Masson-Delmotte (@valmasdel) September 25, 2019
The full final paragraph of the approved SPM is as follows:
This assessment of the ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate reveals the benefits of ambitious mitigation and effective adaptation for sustainable development and, conversely, the escalating costs and risks of delayed action. The potential to chart Climate Resilient Development Pathways varies within and among ocean, high mountain and polar land regions. Realising this potential depends on transformative change. This highlights the urgency of prioritising timely, ambitious, coordinated and enduring action. (very high confidence)
This struck me as odd, since, as any fool knows, the IPCC reports are supposed to be policy-neutral.
The two-page document on the Principles Governing IPCC Work states that:
IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy.
So either the IPCC is unaware of its own guiding principles, or it has quietly decided to abandon them. I’ve asked Masson-Delmotte and the official IPCC twitter account what’s going on here.
Needless to say, they haven’t replied.
Another piece of breaking news that is embarrassing for ocean alarmists is that a notorious “It’s worse than we thought” paper in Nature has been retracted today. Congratulations to Nic Lewis who repeatedly pointed out errors in the paper.
Read more at CliScep
The IPCC has always been an advocacy organization. From the very beginning that is why it was formed. The difference is it did it advocacy via reports timed to influence conferences rather than directly saying that something should be done. It is interesting that the latest report, the one on oceans is clearly junk science. This is the same with their climate computer models which collectively are running four times hotter than the real world.