UTHMAN AKINBOLA [23/07/12]
The Consensus on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body tasked with evaluating the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations.
National and international responses to climate change generally regard the UN climate panel as authoritative and so the panel has become the ultimate authority on climate science.
The view of IPCC is that human activities have been causing climate changes that threaten the survival of the human race.
IPCC has published four assessment reports (as at 2010) stressing the need for urgent action to combat the ‘observed human-made’ climate change.
The Panel in its last report, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) which was completed in early 2007, concluded that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that this warming is due to human activities. This is the concensus of opinions on climate change.
However there are some people (researchers) who strongly disagree and are therefore critical of the view of the IPCC, and have come up with 'strong' arguments to support their point. Below are some of their reasons for the criticism.
The Criticisms
1. Himalayan Glacier
A paragraph in one of the four reports of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) included a projection that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.
‘…Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).’
This projection was not included in the final summary for policymakers.
Some researchers found out that the projection was not correct. They found out that the IPCC quoted a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report which misquoted its own source, using the date 2035 instead of 2350.
The IPCC has since acknowledged that the date is incorrect, while reaffirming that the conclusion in the final summary was okay.
2. The “Hockey Stick Graph”
The third assessment report (TAR) of the IPCC prominently featured a graph titled “Millennial Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction" from the work of Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes often referred to as the "Hockey Stick Graph".
The "Hockey Stick Graph" was widely construed as demonstrating that the current warming period is exceptional in comparison to temperatures between 1000 and 1900. The methodology used to produce this graph was criticized by some researchers, foremost among whom are Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.
A National Academy of Sciences inquiry requested by the United States Congress agreed that there were some statistical failings, but these had little effect on the graph which was generally correct.
In a 2006 letter to Nature, a prominent British scientific journal, the authors of the graph, Mann, Bradley and Hughes pointed out that their original article had said that "more widespread high-resolution data are needed before more confident conclusions can be reached" and that the uncertainties were "the point of the article."
3. “Global warming not due to Human Activities…”
… it is by Natural Variability
Scientists generally accept that the Earth has been much warmer than today, for instance, in the period between ice ages, just 125,000 years ago, the Earth also was much warmer than today and the sea level much higher - by about 13 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) (IPCC). Thus, the primary driver of the past climate shifts is believed to be natural variability, and therefore this period of our existence is not an exception.
Though, it is known that the Earth's temperature and the level of CO2 rise and fall roughly together, but the precise influence of mankind's contribution to CO2 on the Earth's temperature is hard to analyse because the weather system is so complicated that one cannot merely conclude that this is a cause-effect scenario. This is why the modelling system of the IPCC in this regard has been questioned.
ClimateGate
Skeptics of the climate change successfully hacked the emails among the IPCC elite modellers and data gurus, and found what they have suspected for a long time when they couldn't replicate IPCC results. They found out the IPCC was hiding some facts.
‘The IPCC has always presented the observed temperature rise of this period as an "unprecedented" global warming scenario. They did this by suppressing the Medieval Warm Period record and thus the present relative stabilization (or perhaps cooling) was hidden.’
From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick [This is how the Medieval warmth was hidden] of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the [present] decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray. Cheers Phil Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX University of East Anglia.
The mainstream scientific view is that unless we take drastic measures climate changes our own activities have set in motion over the past 150 years will, within a comparatively short time, threaten the survival of the human race. It is hard to persuade people of the need to act unselfishly now so that future generations in a world that we will never know may survive. Science [...] does not deal in certainties. The best it can do is convince us on the basis of strong probabilities, and that depends on trust. So the mishandling of data on climate change by the IPCC [...] is particularly damaging. It becomes difficult to resist the blandishments of the sceptics [...] if a purportedly scientific document cannot be wholly relied on.
– Lisa Jardine, A Point Of View, BBC Radio 4, 5 February 2010
References
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