You have a fever with jaundice, feel crappy, and are vomiting.
You go to the emergency room at the local hospital.
The ER doctor does not run any tests, but based on the symptoms his diagnosis is acute alcoholism and prescribes abstinence or you will drink yourself to death.
“What about some tests, or a second opinion?” you ask. The doctor informs you that “the administration in this hospital has two rules: firstly, the only diagnosis we give out for these symptoms is chronic alcohol abuse; and secondly, we delete any data to the contrary from your file.”
You check into rehab but the fever, jaundice, and nausea persist. Six days later you die from acute fulminant viral hepatitis (Hep B). But sober.
A reasonable person would not accept a diagnosis dictated by the hospital administration and the deletion of conflicting data. Especially if you knew acute alcoholic hepatitis and acute viral HBV hepatitis present the same symptoms and it takes blood tests to differentiate them with certainty.
And that’s why you should ignore the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report because two similar rules govern their analysis and reporting. The cure is also similar: Net Zero CO2 by 2050.
The IPCC Report Cycle
The IPCC’s 1988 mandate from the United Nations was to review, “The state of the knowledge of the science of climate and climatic change”.
In that mandate, the UN expressed “concern that human activities could change global climate patterns, threatening present and future generations…” and also includes the conjecture “…emerging evidence indicates that continued growth in ‘greenhouse’ gases could produce global warming…”
For the last 35 years, the IPCC has developed this mandate into an industry of perpetual reporting on a six-year cycle designed to instill constant fear of human-caused global warming.
The foundation of each reporting cycle, which in its whole is termed an Assessment Report (AR), is the report from Working Group I (WG I) as that is the physical sciences basis addressing the UN mandate.
It is then followed by a report from Working Group II (WG II) which assesses the impacts of climate change and then Working Group III (WG III) dictates what needs to be done to mitigate the damages caused by climate change.
Each of these reports consists of between two thousand to three thousand pages, and each is condensed into a Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). Ultimately a Synthesis Report combining all three Working Groups is issued, again with its SPM.
A single AR cycle involves the release of these four separate reports over almost two years, and then the cycle starts all over again. An annual Conference of the Parties (COP) is held to fill in the press-release gaps between reports and cycles.
Sitting on top of the reporting pyramid is the short version (36 pages) of the Summary for Policy Makers of the Synthesis Report. That was just issued for AR6. Here is why you, a reasonable person, should ignore it.
Everything else is wrong if the science is wrong in WGI.
Following the Science: Working Group I
Given the UN’s 1988 concern that human-emitted greenhouse gases will threaten future generations, one might reasonably suspect that over 35 years it has caused considerable confirmation bias in the IPCC. A finding to the contrary would eliminate the IPCC and the industry built up around it.
Many leading scientists, engineers, meteorologists, and environmentalists have taken exception to the reports from WG I.
I found the AR6 WG I report to be deceptive and an alteration of climate history, while their proposed planet-saving carbon budget did not balance and their temperature forecasts to be quite dodgy. Altogether it represents a credibility crisis at the IPCC.
However, it wasn’t until I read an analysis from Dr. Richard Lindzen (Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at MIT and Lead Author of AR3), Dr. William Happer (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former White House senior advisor), Gregory Wrightstone (MSc, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition and Expert Reviewer for AR6) that I became aware that it is much more than confirmation bias.
Two Unreasonable Rules Which Nullify IPCC Science
The all-important Summary for Policy Makers of the Synthesis Report (and also the reports for WG I, II, and III) is governed by this truly well-hidden rule (see paragraph 4.6.1) as paraphrased by the authors above:
All Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) Are Approved Line by Line by Member Governments.
And then is followed up with also this equally obscured rule (see definition of “Acceptance”) to ensure the other 8,000 pages don’t conflict with the member government-approved statements (also paraphrased):
Government SPMs Override Any Inconsistent Conclusions Scientists Write for IPCC Reports
The first rule above states that political appointees of member governments have to agree with line by line on what the all-important Summary for Policy Makers says. The second rule says the scientists have to modify their report so it does not conflict with the Summary for Policy Makers.
The politicians are not “following the science”, the scientists must follow the politicians.
The Worst-Case Scenario
A particularly extreme climate-alarmist politician in one country can influence the entire IPCC process. Canada, for example.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau owes his three electoral wins to a large degree to his climate alarmism instilling existential fear in voters. Trudeau passed his fight against climate change to his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Mr. Steven Guilbeault.
His qualifications include being a professional environmental activist that resulted in four arrests, including climbing the CN Tower in Toronto while employed at Greenpeace. Guilbeault’s radical past has earned him the nicknames “Green Jesus” and “Uneven Steven”.
For Guilbeault “Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” It could be reasonably argued that is also normal weather, but the IPCC’s science by political consensus means Guilbeault must be accommodated.
AR6 Synthesis Report Summary for Policy Makers Paragraph A
Six years of new work and 35 years of accumulated work are condensed into the 36-page short version of the AR6 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers politicians and the news media to digest. Paragraph A.1.2 represents the damning conclusions of WG I, the physical sciences basis, which includes:
“The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010– 2019 is 0.8°C–1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C.”
Note to reader: I have added the bolding, and it likely means a 66% or greater probability. From ice cores, we know that the Little Ice Age was the coldest period in the last 10,000 years, and 1850 was the beginning of the end of it.
We can reasonably agree that the planet is 1°C warmer than 1850, but here is a short but incomplete list of causes that should be considered and evaluated:
- Warming is caused by increased solar activity causing increased radiation output and decreased cloud cover on Earth, both of which increase the energy reaching the Earth’s surface. Evidence suggests that the inverse of this caused the Little Ice Age.
- Warming is caused by cyclical variations in ocean oscillation events such as El Nino, which would transfer existing energy from the oceans to the atmosphere.
- A linkage of the above two factors; or
- Human emissions of carbon dioxide, which the IPCC acknowledges have a very limited global warming capacity that has already been reached.
The IPCC political appointees in charge of reviewing the SPM only allow the last point to be included (and only up to the comma) and all other evidence to the contrary is deleted from all other reports.
And that’s why reading the rest of the AR6 Synthesis Report is simply pointless. The IPCC is not a scientific institution run by scientists; it is an intergovernmental organization run by politicians.
Many thanks to Brock Pullen, MD! Ron Barmby (ronaldbarmby.ca) is a Professional Engineer with a Master’s degree, whose 40+ year career in the energy sector has taken him to over 40 countries on five continents. His book, Sunlight on Climate Change: A Heretic’s Guide to Global Climate Hysteria (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), explains in layman’s terms the science of how natural and human-caused global warming work.
Ron, I agree with most of this, but this part is wrong:
“Human emissions of carbon dioxide, which the IPCC acknowledges have a very limited global warming capacity that has already been reached.”
Most obviously, the IPCC does NOT acknowledge that CO2 emissions “have a very limited global warming capacity that has already been reached.”
The warming effect from CO2 emissions and consequent rising CO2 levels is logarithmically diminishing, but it is not zero. Learn more here:
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html?0=physics#physics
That unfortunate Skrable paper, to which you linked, is completely wrong. But it is paywalled, which makes that fact challenging to recognize. However, I found a preprint, and several rebuttals, all of which I’ve archived here:
https://sealevel.info/Skrable2022/
Dave; Thanks for your well stated comments; allow me to clarify. The IPCC models rely, to a great extent, on the amplification of global warming by increased water vapour, which is an assumption that is highly contetested and may soon be proven wrong. Increasingly (since AR5) they also attribute more global warming to methane, which has too low a concentation in the atmosphere and growing too slowly to have the future effects they attribute in the models (for clarity I am not endorsing putting more methane in the atmosphere.) When water amplification and methane are removed from the IPCC models (as stated by Dr Lindzen and Dr Happer in other works) the remaining global warming attributed soley to future increases in only CO2 is small and unalarming (but I agree with you is not zero) and rapidly diminishing due to the logaratihmic effect (which the IPCC also acknowledge.) The written part of the IPCC reports may be silent on admitting this, but the models referred to in the reports provide the evidence. What the IPCC has not admitted (to my knowledge) is that the models still run too hot.
I agree, except that I don’t think there’s any doubt that so-called “greenhouse warming” from water vapor is a positive feedback, which must help to amplify the warming effects of other GHGs.
However, it is unclear whether ALL effects of evaporation and water vapor, taken together, have a net-positive or net-negative effect on temperature. Higher absolute humidity should also reduce the lapse rate, and the predicted slight acceleration in the water cycle should increase evaporative cooling of the surface. Both of those are negative feedbacks, which attenuate the warming effect of other GHGs.
Probably even more important are feedbacks involving clouds. Increased daytime cloudiness would generally have a sharp cooling effect, but increased nighttime cloudiness would have a warming effect. Cirrus clouds are thought to have a net warming effect, because they’re made of ice crystals, which makes them much more nearly opaque to outgoing longwave infrared than to incoming visible and near-IR solar radiation. Clouds are immensely important, but also complicated, and poorly understood. It is not known whether cloud feedbacks are net positive or net negative.
Re: “The warming effect from CO2 emissions and consequent rising CO2 levels is logarithmically diminishing, but it is not zero.”
Let’s put this pearl of wisdom in perspective, Dave. The warming effect from additional CO2 emissions is at least 10 times closer to zero than it is to anything that any honest, intelligent, and scientifically informed person would even deem “measurably significant”. The argument that it is not zero is nothing more than a disingenuous attempt to scare the scientifically uninformed public that CO2 emissions are a concern. Any future increases in atmospheric CO2 levels are of absolutely NO CONCERN. In fact, any such increase would be most beneficial to the environment and to life on Earth. ALL life.
Russ, when I say that the warming effect from additional CO2 is not zero, I am not attempting to “to scare the scientifically uninformed public that CO2 emissions are a concern.” I consistently say that warming from manmade GHG emissions is modest and benign, and higher CO2 levels are beneficial, rather than harmful, both for mankind and natural ecosystems.
The IPCC would have you believe that it is imperative to limit additional warming to less than 0.35°C, and that a mere 0.9°C of additional warming would be a catastrophe. That’s preposterous. 1°C is less than the hysteresis (a/k/a “dead zone” or “dead band”) in your home thermostat, which is probably 2 to 3°F (1.1 to 1.7°C). Your home’s “constant” indoor temperatures are continually fluctuating that much, and you probably don’t even notice it. Such a tiny temperature change is even less consequential outdoors.
Graham, Yes, and it’s worth repeating until the message reaches all voters!
Ron,
Yes it’s worth repeating. And repeating it loudly and far and wide. But when the despicable media has control of all the bullhorns (that the public listens to anyway) and the media doesn’t want the public to know the truth, how do honest folks even reach the public? Having said that, let’s keep trying!
“The IPCC is not a scientific institution run by scientists; it is an intergovernmental organization run by politicians.”
The ‘Final Report’ is written by politians for politians.
Didn’t I comment to that effect a couple of weeks ago?
The same goes for the Union of Concerned Scientists since their concerns are mostly political
The IPCC is total waste of our taxes to continue to fund these Globalists group of can men and Snake Oil Salesmen besides who needs to oil a snake.
The IPCC is just another UN globalists group who gets funding and comes out with the latest’s in this whole Global Warming/Climate Change scam