The IPCC’s Perversion Of Science

The IPCC’s heralded Synthesis Report is supposed to accurately synthesize the best information about human beings’ climate impacts in order to rationally guide policy.

Instead, it severely distorts science to advance a corrupt political agenda. [some links added]

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently published, to great fanfare, its “Synthesis Report” (SR)—the culmination of its lengthy 6th “Assessment Cycle” of reports on various aspects of human being’s climate impacts and their implications for policy. 1

The Synthesis Report is supposed to accurately synthesize the best info about human climate impacts—including the threats of dangerous temps, storms, floods, etc—to rationally guide policy, above all what to do about fossil fuels, the leading cause of climate-warming GHGs.

Because of the Synthesis Report’s prestige, the world took it very seriously when they heard about its dire claims. E.g., UN Chief Antonio Guterres saying we can’t have a “liveable future” if we don’t take “urgent climate action”—above all, rapidly eliminating fossil fuel use. 2

Even skeptics of the IPCC Report’s drastic calls for rapidly eliminating fossil fuels—often via means that give enormous power and money to favored politicians—may feel uncomfortable questioning a “scientific” Report.

But a common-sense reading reveals that it’s total garbage.

A proper climate synthesis report must cover two key issues:

1. An evenhanded (covering minuses and pluses) and precise account of our climate impacts.

2. An account of our ability to master climate danger, including the use of fossil fuels to neutralize its own negative climate impacts.

1. An evenhanded and precise account of our climate impacts.

With rising greenhouse gasses we must consider both negatives (e.g., more heat waves) and positives (e.g., fewer cold deaths, global greening from CO2). And we must be precise, not equating some climate impact with a huge impact.

1. An account of our ability to master climate danger.

Any valid climate synthesis must account for climate mastery, because the same fossil fuels that impact climate can also neutralize negatives—e.g., via fossil-fueled air conditioning to alleviate heat and irrigation to alleviate drought.

You don’t need to be a scientist to know that a proper climate synthesis report should include both an evenhanded and precise account of our climate impacts and an account of our ability to master climate danger.

And if you read the IPCC Synthesis Report, it’s obvious it fails at both.

I recommend just skimming the IPCC Synthesis Report, linked below—this report that is supposed to be so brilliant—and just ask yourself if it is remotely evenhanded about human impact on climate, or if it accounts for our mastery of climate.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_LongerReport.pdf

Instead of an evenhanded and precise account of our climate impacts, the IPCC SR gives us a blatantly biased view of exaggerated negative impacts, with no mention of positives like global greening thanks to CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere or decreasing cold-related deaths.

Instead of accounting for our climate mastery ability, the IPCC SR ignores our ability to neutralize negative climate impacts, despite the fact that we’ve driven climate disaster deaths down by 98% over the last century!

This is like a polio report omitting the polio vaccine. 3

By exaggerating our negative climate impacts and ignoring our ability to master climate danger, the IPCC Synthesis perpetrates a 3-part perversion of science:

“A: Current Status and Trends”
“B: Long-Term Climate and Development Futures”
“C: Near-Term Responses in a Changing Climate”

“A: Current Status and Trends” distorts the present state of climate danger

“B: Future Climate Change, Risks, and Long-Term Responses” distorts the evidence about future climate danger

“C: Responses in the Near Term” calls for huge power and money for an anti-fossil-fuel agenda

The IPCC’s “Synthesis Report” has been criticized intelligently by various experts, including Roger Pielke and Patrick Brown.

But this isn’t enough. All experts in the field should unequivocally condemn this dangerous piece of garbage and the process that produced it. 4

How the IPCC severely distorts the present state of climate danger:

By exaggerating negative impacts and ignoring climate mastery, the IPCC portrays the world as suffering “widespread adverse impacts… and related losses and damages” when climate danger is lower than ever!

Any honest “Current Status and Trends” report on climate would start by acknowledging that any negative climate changes so far have been far outweighed by our increasing climate mastery ability, which led to plummeting climate deaths thanks to our fossil fuel-powered technology. 5

Insofar as a climate report addresses the overall state of the world, it should acknowledge that human life has never been better. E.g., extreme poverty (~$2/day) plummeted from 42% in 1980 to <10% today. And it should recognize fossil-fueled industrialization as a root cause. 6

The IPCC’s “Current Status and Trends” 100% falsely portrays fossil fuels as making climate, and life, worse than ever, even though they’ve made both better: “Climate change has adversely affected human physical health globally… and is contributing to humanitarian crises.”

Any honest “Current Status and Trends” on climate would also acknowledge the impressively stable level of economic losses from climate—vs. an expected catastrophic increase–despite the increasing accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone spots like coastal areas. 7

Instead of acknowledging flat or declining climate damages, the IPCC portrays things as worse than ever: “Individual livelihoods have been affected through, for example, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and loss of property and income, human health and food security.”

Any honest “Current Status and Trends” report should acknowledge that while everyone has become safer from climate, the most developed countries are safest.

And thus the path to increasing safety is more development, which will largely require more fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. 8

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