Promoting international cooperation among climate realists

‘Consensus’ in climate science: an unsubstantiated urban myth

Presentation by: Terry Dunleavy, Executive Vice-Chairman, ICSC

Prepared by: Tom Harris, Executive Director, ICSC

Based on an analysis of IPCC's AR4 by New Zealand Climate Science Coalition’s John McLean, climate data analyst, Melbourne, Australia

Do world climate scientists really agree that our emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing a global

warming crisis?

• Humanity is causing it, and all serious scientists agree

• Claimed evidence:– ‘2,500 scientists’ from the UN’s

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

– Joint statements from science bodies– Many individual scientists

Popular opinion:

• “a report released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries, said climate changes are "very likely" caused by human activity.”

– Feb 3, 2007 - Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/03/layton-climate.html?ref=rss

Media reports

U.S. Senator Barbara BoxerChairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:

“… 2500 scientists from around the globe participated in the development of the report, which found that the warming of the planet is “unequivocal” and that there is a 90% certainty that most of the warming is due to human activity.”

… Feb 14, 2007 http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Majority.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=c243e4b3-802a-23ad-4a50-

be712b734185&Region_id=&Issue_id=

Consensus is not science

“Scientific integrity is not determined by a show of hands”

Dr Tim Ball, Canada

“Many experiments may prove me right, but it takes only one to prove me wrong”

Dr Albert Einstein

IPCC is not a meaningful indicator of ‘World scientific opinion’ on the causes of, or the

future of, climate change

• Most climate scientists are outside of IPCC• The “2,500 scientists” who supposedly reviewed

and endorsed overall IPCC conclusions includes many who do not (& “2,500 scientists” is misleading).

IPCC numbers breakdownIPCC is divided into three ‘Working Groups’:

1. WG I: Assesses available scientific information on climate change – its causes and future forecasts

2. WG II: Assesses impacts of climate change

3. WG III: Formulates response strategies

IPCC numbers breakdownAnd a total of:

• 850+ contributing authors• 400+ Lead Authors• 2500+ Scientific Expert Reviewers

Note: There is a total of 2890 individual contributors since some authors are also reviewers and the IPCC lists authors or reviewers more than once when they deal with more than one Working Group: Ref: John McLean.

IPCC numbers breakdown• Concerning these 2,890 individual contributors, Dr. William

Schlesinger, IPCC Lead Author and former dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, said that he thought, “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.”

February 12, 2009, Hickory, N.C., in a forum co-sponsored by the John Locke Foundation and the Reese Institute for Conservation of Natural Resources

IPCC numbers breakdownScientific Expert Reviewers assigned to each WG:

– WG I: Causes and future forecasts of climate change• ~600 expert scientific reviewers

– WG II: Impacts of climate change– WG III: Response strategies

These 1,900 assume the conclusions of WGI are correct.

~1,900 expert scientific reviewers

IPCC numbers breakdown

• But don’t these hundreds of independent expert reviewers study the drafts of the report and provide extensive feedback to the editing teams, who then incorporated their comments into the reports?

IPCC numbers breakdown (cont.)

No! That is an illusion.• Australian climate data analyst John McLean found*:

– Only 308 of the official IPCC expert reviewers commented on the final draft before the report was taken over by governments;

– Contrary to IPCC implications about 600 reviewers of every word of the WG1 report, only five commented on all 11 chapters.

* “An Analysis of the Review of the IPCC 4AR WG I Report”, 24/10/07: http://mclean.ch/climate/docs/IPCC_review_updated_analysis.pdf

IPCC numbers breakdown (cont.)– Only 62 reviewers (eight of whom are designated

as “government of xxxxxx”) gave any comments at all on the crucial Chapter 9

– 55 of them had serious vested interests (they were authors or editors of the report or the papers referenced to support it, or worked for establishments that likely received government funding for projects focused on a human-influence on climate).

IPCC numbers breakdown (cont.)

– Of the remaining seven independent reviewers

who commented on Chapter 9, five made just

one comment on the entire chapter and only

one explicitly endorsed the most significant

statement of the chapter, and then only within a

brief generalised expression of support for the

complete 11-Chapter report.

• The IPCC’s editors often rejected reviewers’ comments, a reversal of the normal practice in scientific peer-review. Many rejected with little or no justification for doing so.

• Peer-reviewers had to justify amendments put forward, but the responding editors were under no obligation to justify their rejections of the reviewers’ proposals.

McLean analysis of IPCC rejections:

To read John McLean’s analysisof IPCC endorsers see :

“An

Analysis of the

Review of the IPCC 4AR

WG I report”:

http://

mclean.ch/cli

mate/docs/IPCC_review_updated_analysis.pdf

And McLean’s climate change home page at:

http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm

IPCC Reviewer Dr. Gray: • “All [the UN IPCC does] is make ‘projections’ and

‘estimates’. No climate model has ever been properly tested, … and their ‘projections’ are nothing more than the opinions of ‘experts’ with a conflict of interest, because they are paid to produce the models.”

• “There is no actual scientific evidence for all these ‘projections’ and ‘estimates’.”

Dr. Yury Izrael, Director of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and IPCC vice president:

• “there is no proven link between human activity and global warming ." 

The ‘Summary for Policymakers’• Supposedly an executive summary of science

reports• Only documents read by media, politicians and

activists

The ‘Summary for Policymakers’• Supposedly an executive summary of science reports• Only documents read by media, politicians and activists

• Problems with SPM:1. Selectively reports on the science2. Only 51 scientists worked on a draft version:  • 33 Drafting Authors + 18 Draft Contributing Authors

SPM Drafting Authors:

Richard B. Alley, Terje Berntsen, Nathaniel L. Bindoff, Zhenlin Chen, Amnat Chidthaisong, Pierre Friedlingstein, Jonathan M. Gregory, Gabriele C. Hegerl,

Martin Heimann, Bruce Hewitson, Brian J. Hoskins, Fortunat Joos, Jean Jouzel, Vladimir Kattsov, Ulrike Lohmann, Martin Manning, Taroh Matsuno,

Mario Molina, Neville Nicholls, Jonathan Overpeck, Dahe Qin, Graciela Raga, Venkatachalam Ramaswamy, Jiawen Ren, Matilde Rusticucci, Susan

Solomon, Richard Somerville, Thomas F. Stocker, Peter A. Stott, Ronald J. Stouffer, Penny Whetton, Richard A. Wood, David Wratt

SPM Draft Contributing Authors:

J. Arblaster, G. Brasseur, J.H. Christensen, K.L. Denman, D.W. Fahey, P. Forster, E. Jansen, P.D. Jones, R. Knutti, H. Le Treut, P. Lemke, G. Meehl, P. Mote, D.A. Randall, D.A. Stone, K.E. Trenberth, J. Willebrand, F. Zwiers

The ‘Summary for Policymakers’• Supposedly an executive summary of science reports• Only documents read by media, politicians and activists

• Problems with SPM:1. Selectively reports on the science2. Only 51 authors worked on the draft version

3. Final SPM written at a plenary session primarily of government bureaucrats and representatives of environmental and industrial organizations 

The ‘Summary for Policymakers’• Supposedly an executive summary of science reports• Only documents read by media, politicians and activists

• Problems with SPM:1. Reports on science reports selectively2. Only 51 authors worked on a draft version  3. Final SPM written at a plenary session primarily of government

bureaucrats and representatives of environmental and industrial organizations 

4. Signed by 51 individuals and “represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists”, says IPCC lead author Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT

Problems with SPM• Vast majority of scientists who wrote main science report did

not see SPM before the public • Many IPCC scientists openly disagree with the SPM• The SPM was published three months BEFORE the

science report :• “Changes [to the main science reports] … made

after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers …” – IPCC procedures (section 4)

Professor Lindzen’s Conclusion

• “The SPM, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto, is commonly presented as the consensus of thousands of the world's foremost climate scientists. In fact, it is no such thing.”

• “The SPM has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.” 

Independent Summary for Policymakers (ISPM)*

• a detailed overview of the state of climate change science as laid out in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report WGII second draft report.

• Reviewed by 10 climate experts around the world and their views on its balance and reliability are tabulated.

* See http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/ispm.html

Their conclusion:

• IPCC scientists are highly uncertain about future climate change or the impacts of human CO2 emissions.

You can download the ISPM at:http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/ispm.html

Climate Realists’ Open Letters, etc.1. Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Petition Project signed by 31,072

scientists, engineers and other technically trained professionals (next slide)

2. Bali Open Letter by 103 world climate experts to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, December 2007 – http://tinyurl.com/3bjoxk

3. Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, now with over 1,300 fully checked endorsers from around the world – http://tinyurl.com/6znkpn

4. U. S. Senate Minority Report that more than 650 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims - http://tinyurl.com/6oqu3m

5. Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), both the Summary for Policymakers and the main report released at this conference.

Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) “Petition Project”Signed by 31,072 scientists, engineers and other

technically trained professionals, including:

• 3,697 scientists trained in environmental specialties.• 903 scientists trained in computer and mathematical

methods• 5,691 scientists trained in physics and aerospace• 4,796 scientists trained in chemistry

Download the Petition Project at: http://www.petitionproject.org/

OISM Petition, Bali Open Letter and Manhattan Declaration all signed by such luminaries as

Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ

‘Consensus’ conclusion

• There is no known consensus among climate experts about the causes of the past century’s modest warming.

• Forecasts of future change are even less certain.

World climate scientists do not agree that our emissions of CO2 are causing a

global warming crisis Contact:

or