This Friday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be releasing a 2,000 page report on the current scientific opinion regarding climate change. Unfortunately, there has been a preponderance of evidence to suggest the report is being dishonestly composed. The Telegraph reported Saturday that while the IPCC report will suggest that the likelihood that man is the source of global warming has risen from 90 to 95 percent certainty, top climate scientists are struggling to explain why global warming has been slowing since 1998. Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter for The Telegraph writes, “Documents seen by the Associated Press (AP) show attempts at political interference in the final report,” and that “several governments that reviewed the draft objected to how the issue was tackled. The documents, according to AP, show Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted while the US urged scientists to include as its ‘leading hypothesis’ that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean.”
This new report offers corrections from the previous report published in 2007. The 2007 report, for which the IPCC was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, grossly overstated the effects of global warming, arguing the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. In addition, the new report will list a variety of scenarios, including one in which the average temperature rise will only be 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. The most damaging prediction is expected to envisage temperatures rising by 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit and sea levels rising by 3 feet by the end of the century. The report will correct the predicted rate of warming from 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade to 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade, and will note that scientists have now discovered that between 950 and 1250 AD, some areas of the world were as warm as they are now.
In another article, Hayley Dixon, writing for The Telegraph, said, “The 2007 report included predictions of a decline in Antarctic sea ice, but the latest document does not explain why this year it is at a record high.” Matt Ridley, writing for The Wall Street Journal, said, “Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC’s emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm.”
This article is in no way intended to deny the possibility of anthropogenic global warming. Given the current state of affairs, I think it is reasonable to believe human beings have been influencing the global climate to some significant extent. The problem with the kind of government influence that seems to be affecting the drafting of this new report, is that it’s inherently unscientific and utterly destroys the necessary objectivity that science demands.
Science is not “consensus,” but rather it is the continual ebb and flow of ideas as human beings use their minds to learn about and describe the world around them. It has no political agenda, it has only a penchant for unearthing truth. Russian-born American novelist Ayn Rand said that government science is a contradiction in terms, and while I don’t feel like this is a maxim, the rule certainly holds true in this case. If political agendas come into play, masking scientific reality, trust cannot be built between layman and scientist, voter and government official.
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