Stumble it!Bob Carter’s Mythology: The IPCC
posted in Global Warming by themaiden |This article covers the last of the points made in “The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change (PDF)”, Bob Carter’s frontal assault on the science of global warming. First, a recap.
- Part I is a fairly light introduction.
- Part II digs into Carter’s claim that we have no theory of climate and hence can’t deal with what climate information we do have.
- In Part III, I addressed Carter’s statements about carbon dioxide.
- Carter then takes up the issue of general circulation modeling– that is, computer modeling– of global climate
- Followed by “Is there a consensus?“.
- Part VI concerns the meaningfulness of ‘global average temperature‘.
- In Part VII, “Is Global Average Temperature Rising or Falling?“
In Part VIII, “Are Temperatures Changing at a Dangerous Rate, of Have They Reached a Dangerous Level?”
“Is the IPCC a Scientific of Political Body? How good is its Scientific Advice?”
As for the first question, “The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters. It bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific/technical literature.” The IPCC is a body organized specifically to advise governments about issues of climate change. Does that make it a scientific body or a political one?
Ask the same question of any of the advisory committees that produce reports for various government? Was the President’s Science Advisory Committee a scientific or a political body? Is the Scottish Science Advisory Committee a scientific body? How about the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee? A little reflection reveals, I think, that “is it political” isn’t really a very fruitful question. A better question is Carter’s next question “How good is its scientific advice?”.
But why ask the first question at all? If I may speculate, people in general do not trust politician and have a disdain for politics. Consequently, associating the IPCC with politics is a bit like associating it with dishonesty, with something not to be trusted. Associating the IPCC with politics is a backhanded means of discrediting it, and placing this question first on the list means readers are front-loaded with distrust in the IPCC.
To make his point that the IPCC is in fact political and not scientific, Carter writes “many distinguished scientists refuse to participate in the IPCC process, and others have resigned from it, because in the end the advice that the panel provides to governments is political and not scientific”. I’ve found numerous assertions that numerous refuse to participate in the IPCC process. What I can’t find is any real information. To be fair, I’m sure quite a few scientists do refuse to participate. The next question ought to be “Why?” The mere fact that a scientist does not participate actively does not demonstrate that 1) the IPCC is political or that 2) the IPCC reports are bad science. Yet, these are the conclusions drawn.
It is also true that ‘others have withdrawn’. I found several names– Chris Landsea, Paul Reiter, Dr. Tad Murthy, Dr. Vincent Bray, John Christy, and Richard Lindzen. Of these Chris Landsea withdrew over particular statements made to the media by someone representing the IPCC, but does not seem to object to the bulk of the IPCC’s output. Never mind the connection of the other names to the oil soaked Friends of Science or to the travesty of a documentary titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle“. Assume they each withdrew for valid reasons. I am tempted to ask somewhat flippantly, “So what?” Inside an organization as large as the IPCC, it is no surprise that some people disagree and it is no surprise that some disagree strongly enough to resign. How does one weigh such information? Well, of 1500 to 2500 participants, I found the names of six who resigned. That is around 0.3 percent. Hardly as damaging as I imagine Carter hopes. Actually, to be very honest I’m stunned– jaw-dropping stunned– that I did not find more names. Please point me too them if you know of any. When I started looking I expected several percent at least, but that isn’t what I found.
So how good is the science? To discredit the IPCC’s science Carter here reiterates some of the point I’ve dealt with in previous articles in this series– global temperature(global average temperature and Is Global Average Temperature Rising or Falling?), climate modeling (general circulation modeling)– but he also introduces something else. He objects to the use of circumstantial evidence in climate change arguments. This is an interesting objection because ‘circumstantial evidence’ is dangerously close to the ‘empirical’ evidence he argues for when discussing general circulation modeling. In that section he argues for using things like ice core data and sea floor core data. These he tends to call ‘temperature records’ but doesn’t explain that in fact they are records of circumstantial effects that can be used to reconstruct past climate. Ice cores do not record temperature. They indicate things like snowfall, periodic melting, and perhaps most usefully contain trapped atmospheric gas. They are, arguably, circumstantial evidence over a long term. Carter can’t have it both ways.
Nonetheless, he writes “Every such circumstantial argument ignores two basic facts. The first is that all environmental phenomena fluctuate in their rate, frequency or intensity as part of the normal working of our dynamic planet. The second, which follows, is that whether a particular short-term change over, say, the early 21st century has any human causation can only be assessed when all causes of natural environmental change are fully understood.” The first point is asinine. No one working in climate science ignores the fact that the climate has non-human caused cycles. Suggesting so is simply dishonest. The second point is a reiteration of an error he made much earlier when talking about our not having a theory of climate. My response there fits here as well.
We don’t have full and complete theories of a lot of things. In fact, we don’t have fully fleshed out and internally consistent theories for most things, yet we manage alright with what we have. In fact, we have no choice but to manage with what we have, and I’d say we are honor bound to make the most of what we have. How many people refuse chemotherapy because doctors don’t have a theory of cancer equivalent to the theory of Newtonian mechanics?
If we were to restrict ourselves to Carter’s conditions we would be committing ourselves to near absolute skepticism, and practical impotence. If we need all causes to be fully understood before me make decisions we’d be able to make damned few decisions at all. See Bob Carter’s Mythology: Some Talking Points for the fleshed out argument.
Carter states also that “in no case yet has any climate-sensitive environmental parameter been shown to be changing at a a rate that exceeds its historic natural rate of change…” As an example he cites tide gauge records over the last 200 years. Two hundred years? Isn’t that the period during which suspected human-caused warming would be occurring? Curious. You can’t argue against the claim that human caused warming has been occurring by point to the period of alleged change and calling it natural. Imagine that a factory is charged with polluting a lake over the course of fifty years. Would it really make sense for researchers to take pollution measurements from that lake over those fifty years, declare the trends in those measurement to be ‘natural’ and argue that the factory can’t be blamed? No. Such is absurd. It also looks like what Carter has done. I looked into glacier retreat/advance records and those too seem to span the same few hundred years. Of course we know of earlier glacier advances and retreats but Carter needs at least decade by decade detail, if not year by year detail, to support his claim and as far as I can tell we don’t have that kind of resolution anywhere but the recent– and possibly human influenced– past. This seems to me a fatal flaw in his position.
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