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December 23, 2008

IPCC: We Don't Predict ... We Project!

Eileen McDevitt and Larrey Anderson
Dr. Tim Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg, has written a stunning piece on the politics of global warming that have taken place in the IPCC's summaries and reports. His article appeared in yesterday's Canada Free Press.

His major contention is that the process used by the IPCC is politically, not scientifically, motivated:

Unlike procedure used elsewhere, they [the IPCC] produce and release a summary report independently and before the actual technical report is completed. This way the summary gets maximum media attention and becomes the public understanding of what the scientists said. Climate science is made to appear what it is not. Indeed, it is not even what is in their Scientific Report.

The article goes into considerable historical detail describing this pattern of politicization.

Dr. Ball criticizes the IPCC for ignoring a fundamental fact about the relationship of all previous warming trends on the planet to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere:

The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models. In every record of any duration for any time period in the history of the Earth, temperature increase precedes CO2 increase. So an incorrect assumption that a CO2 increase will cause temperature increase is built into the computer models.

IPCC projections (the IPCC claims that it is not in the weather prediction business -- it releases "projections" not "predictions") have been inaccurate to date. (There have been four such projections in the IPCC reports stretching over a twenty-year period.) Ball explains:

A simple single word definition of science is the ability to predict. It is not used by the IPCC, yet they present their work as scientific predictions. Media and the public generally believe the IPCC is making predictions and that is clearly the assumption for government policies. Sadly, members of the IPCC do nothing to dissuade the public from that view. All previous "projections" were wrong. The most recent example is the period from 2000 to 2008. IPCC predicted warming but temperatures went down while CO2 increased. Finally, the IPCC AR4 itself explains why IPCC model projections fail.

"Models continue to have significant limitations, such as in their representation of clouds, which lead to uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change." (AR4, Chapter 8. p.600)

The IPCC makes projections not predictions just like denial is a river in Egypt.

This is a meat and potatoes report on what is really going on in the IPCC. Well worth the read.

Hat tip: Otis Glazebrook (IV!)

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