The worst thing about the latest climate report (Assessment Report 6 or AR6) of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not that it is atrocious nonsense but that it is an assault on science. It attacks the foundation of the science. That this rubbish is accepted with uncritical faith by politicians and the media is cause for grave concern.
The IPCC poses as a scientific body studying the climate. In fact it is a political body promoting the fear that rising CO2 is changing the climate in a dangerous way. The more fear it presents, the more funding it will receive from politicians, who take money from taxpayers to give to an international army of activists, academics, bureaucrats and embedded scientists. The IPCC got off to a bad start in 1988 and has gone downhill ever since. It collects scientific studies, some good, some bad, selects those that promote fear and rejects those that do not. It manipulates them and presents them in a series of papers. The worst is The Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). This came out last week.
The latest SPM has changed the climate mood from alarm to hysteria. The reason is obvious. Contrary to predictions of the IPCC, there is no climate crisis. Dangerous warming has not happened. The present warm period is less warm than the previous natural warm period a thousand years ago, when CO2 was lower than now. Rising CO2 is having no effect on the climate but a beneficial effect on plants. The climate alarm industry is threatened by non-crisis, and probably has no alternative but hysteria. This SPM is replete with mad predictions of alarm, distortions of data, vague and unsupported claims, and outright lies. In its 41 pages, I only came across one statement that was completely true.
It says, “In 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were higher than at any time in at least 2 million years”. That’s true. CO2 concentrations have averaged about 2,000 ppm in the last half a billion years but dropped to frighteningly low levels about 5 million years ago, threatening plants. This was probably because of an increase in shell-forming marine organisms that sequester carbon. Mankind, by burning fossil fuels, pushed them up to about 430 ppm now, much too low, but out of the danger zone. CO2 is a weak greenhouse gas; above 150 ppm, its warming effect is negligible.
The IPCC, making ludicrous predictions of doom, says they are “likely”, “very likely” or “extremely likely” but never gives solid justification for these terms. It relies on climate models rather than the real world. Its past computer models of dangerously rising temperatures have proved spectacularly wrong. Far from deterring the IPCC, these failures spur it on to even sillier predictions.
It says, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” This is a lie. The slight warming of the last 150 years is no different from previous warm periods, before human influence, when CO2 was lower than now. There is nothing to suggest that human influence has caused any recent warming. The recent warming and the previous warmings can best be explained by changes in the Sun’s emission of charged particles. There is not one word about this in the SPM.
Figure SPM.1, History of global temperature change and causes of recent warming, contains two graphs. The left hand one, showing global temperatures over the last two thousand years, is a lie. It shows temperatures fairly steady until the 20th Century when they suddenly shoot up to “unprecedented” highs. In fact, temperatures were higher than now a thousand years ago (the Mediaeval Warm Period) and two thousand years ago (the Roman Warm Period). This bogus graph is a repeat of the notorious Hockey Stick graph of the IPCC’s 2001 report, which was proved fraudulent. The excellent climate website, Climate Audit, right now gives a detailed account of how they faked this latest graph.
The right-hand graph shows “observed” temperature for the last 150 years and “simulated” temperatures if there had been no human influence. It is nonsense. The two should be the same, for the reasons I have given.
Sea levels have been measured for 150 years. They show a steady rise of about 3 mm/ year – a natural recovery from the cold of the past. Increasing CO2 has had no effect. From 2021 to 2100 sea levels should rise by about 240 mm (9.5 inches). Yet the IPCC says they might rise by over a metre. If you look at the record of any extreme weather event over the last 100 years, including droughts, floods, hurricanes, storms, heat and cold, you find no increase in frequency or severity. Yet the IPCC screams that they are increasing catastrophically.
Science demands evidence, proof and criticism. Every good scientist puts up his theory and says, “Prove me wrong.” The climate alarmists don’t like this. They demand blind faith rather than evidence. Any criticism is “denialism”. Climate alarm is not science but a perverted religion.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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