IPCC's warming scare

Feb. 5, 2001
Brush-beaters for the climate change issue have shrugged off their November setback in The Hague and resumed their hunt for planetary central planning.

Brush-beaters for the climate change issue have shrugged off their November setback in The Hague and resumed their hunt for planetary central planning. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Jan. 22 released a new assessment concluding that the world is warming faster than previously suspected and that evidence of human culpability is stronger than before.

Entitled Summary for Policymakers, the report preceded the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) of Working Group I. The main conclusions, in IPCC's words:

  • An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system.
  • Emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols due to human activities continue to alter the atmosphere in ways that are expected to affect the climate.
  • Confidence in the ability of models to project future climate has increased.
  • There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.
  • Human influences will continue to change atmospheric composition throughout the 21st century.
  • Global average temperature and sea level are projected to rise under all IPCC...scenarios.
  • Anthropogenic climate change will persist for many centuries.
  • Further action is required to address remaining gaps in information and understanding.

The TAR, says the summary, finds that the global average surface temperature increased during the 20th century by 0.6

In a news conference in Shanghai, IPCC Chairman Robert T. Watson declared, "This adds impetus for governments of the world to find ways to live up to their commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases." He was referring to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which calls on industrialized countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Watson gave a preview of the new summary at the fateful November meeting in The Hague, where negotiators failed to produce an implementation strategy for the unratified Kyoto accord. The new report comes before the Second Global Ministerial Environment Forum of the UN Environment Program Feb. 5-9 in Nairobi, Kenya, which aims at "effective implementation of, compliance with, and enforcement of environmental law."

Kyoto opponents rebuffed the IPCC's new summary as a political document. Timing of the leaks and of release of the summary itself certainly raises suspicion. Questions more important than that relate to the accuracy with which the summary represents the 1,000-page TAR and scientific soundness of the larger report. It is too soon now to attempt answers.

It is not too soon, however, to observe tilts in the summary findings and IPCC comments surrounding them. The summary strengthens the case against carbon dioxide as warming's main cause, although scientific doubt has grown recently about the relationship. The summary also assumes minimum influence of solar variation; some scientists consider the sun, not radiative gases, to be the principle warming factor. And the summary makes very little of the possibility that warming fits a natural cycle at the end of a minor ice age.

Watson himself betrayed bias toward the worst case, if not unscientific allegiance to a political agenda, in a speech at the meeting in The Hague.

"One of the major challenges facing humankind is to provide an equitable standard of living for this and future generations: adequate food, water, and energy, safe shelter, and a healthy environment," he said. "Unfortunately, human-induced climate change, as well as other global environment issues such as land degradation, loss of biological diversity, and stratospheric ozone depletion, threatens our ability to meet these basic human needs."

That doesn't sound like science. It doesn't even comport with observation: More people enjoy health and prosperity now than ever, and a warmer environment richer in CO2 should sustain life better than the current one does.

Watson's pronouncements sound too much like the official crisis-mongering that always precedes attempts to limit human freedom. Where might that rank on his list of basic needs? Consciously political or not, the IPCC's reports should be read through a lens of healthy doubt.