Energy Musings - August 28, 2023

CLINTEL finds biases in the IPCC AR6. It ignored data and climate studies that would challenge its narrative of man-made CO2 being the only explanation for our changing climate. Read this book!

The Frozen Climate Views Of The IPCC

In May, the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) published a book analyzing portions of the latest climate assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  We recently completed reading the 181-page book, The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, and recommend everyone should read it for a more balanced assessment of the state of the climate change issue.  The book illuminates scientific evidence and studies ignored by the IPCC because they might undercut the narrative of CO2 single-handedly destroying the planet’s climate.  The book is available at the usual spots – Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc., but you also can download a copy from the foundation’s website. 

CLINTEL’s book provides a treasure trove of analysis highlighting IPCC biases and ignoring climate data and studies that substantiate an alternative to the narrative that only man-generated CO2 is causing our climate problems.

Netherlands-based CLINTEL was founded in 2019 and currently has 1600+ scientist members who have signed the foundation’s World Climate Declaration stating that there is no climate crisis.  The foundation’s objective is to generate knowledge and understanding of the causes and effects of climate change as well as the effects of climate policy.  The listed objectives of CLINTEL include:

1. Communicating objectively and transparently what facts are available about climate change and climate policy and identifying where facts turn into assumptions and predictions. 

2. Conducting and stimulating public debate about the issues along with carrying out investigative reporting in this field. 

3. Functioning as an international meeting place for scientists with different views on climate change and climate policy. 

4. Carrying out or financing its own scientific research into climate change and climate policy. 

I am sure some readers are going to say – climate deniers.  But that is far from the truth, as many of CLINTEL’s members are recognized experts in climate science and many have participated as reviewers of previous IPCC assessments, although not AR6.  These scientists understand the IPCC process, as well as being intimately familiar with climate science research. 

IPCC assessment cycles, of which there have been six, are multi-year periods when thousands of scientists and policymakers collaborate to evaluate the current state of the global climate and forecasts for its future.  The Sixth Assessment cycle began in 2015 and resulted in three special reports being issued – Global Warming of 1.5ºC (October 2018); Climate Change and Land (August 2019); and Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (September 2019). 

These three reports were followed by three Working Group (WG) reports.  WG I – Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (August 2021); WG II – Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (February 2022); and WG III – Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (April 2022).  The assessment cycle was completed in March 2023 with the publication of the AR6 Synthesis Report, Climate Change 2023. 

During the assessment cycle, two meetings of the Conference of the Parties (COP) were held, the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  These meetings enable the body to assess the emissions reduction pledges of nations as well as how they are doing in meeting them.  These meetings allowed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to stir a pot of fear about the dangers of climate change and the failures of governments to commit to rapid transitions from fossil fuels to wind and solar power.  The most significant low-carbon, baseload energy source ‒ nuclear ‒ never seems to be part of the conversation. 

The scientist members of CLINTEL have questioned the existence of a “climate crisis.”  They believe that the biases of the people in charge of the IPCC assessments lead to cherry-picking the data and studies that magnify the future dangers of climate change.  Moreover, they have found numerous inconsistencies among the various reports, especially between the scientific conclusions and the Summary for Policymakers report. 

The Working Group reports are written by scientists involved in climate research, while the policymakers’ report is written and approved by politicians, often getting the science wrong because they need stronger arguments for their recommended climate change policies, or they do not understand it or maybe even read the reports.  By ignoring contrary peer-reviewed research and studies, along with emphasizing the worst outcomes of the climate scenarios, the IPCC leaders are promoting the climate crisis and associated fearmongering.  Guterres is a key player in stirring up this climate emergency rhetoric.  He recently amped up his fearmongering by claiming climate change is leading to “global boiling.” 

Guterres Fans Flames Of Climate Crisis

Although trained as an engineer and thereby presumably knowledgeable about the “science” of climate change and its solutions, Guterres was also the president of the Socialist International, and secretary general of the Socialist party in his native Portugal before arriving at the U.N.  He is a celebrity for the Time magazine cover photo of him standing knee-deep in the water off the beach of the island of Tuvalu to highlight how rising sea levels are threatening Pacific Ocean nations.  Unfortunately, several studies by scientists, using current and historical satellite imagery of the atolls and islands in the Pacific nations of the Marshall Islands, the Gilbert Islands in Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, as well as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean show them growing and not sinking below the waters. 

CLINTEL cited two Canadian scientists who wrote in a book about climate change that the IPCC should be referred to as the “Big Panel.”  Over time, the IPCC has transitioned into multiple Big Panels given the scope of the various committees and their reports.  Unfortunately, they often have little interaction.  The Big Panel working groups produce volumes running into the thousands of pages, limiting readership.  The latest WG I report was 2,409 pages in length; while WG II was 3,068 pages, and WG III was 2,913 pages, pushing the total count to nearly 8,500 pages.  When you include the other volumes, the page count climbs to nearly 10,000 pages. 

As the authors of the CLINTEL report noted about their study:

“We didn’t check all – almost 10,000 – pages of the AR6 report of course.  That would be beyond the scope of our possibilities.  We looked at topics that we know – based on our long experience with the climate debate – are highly relevant.  Think of trends in extremes, disaster losses, sea level rise, climate sensitivity, scenarios etc.  Even though we limited our effort to 13 topics, it turned out to be a very heavy project.  It also generated very interesting internal discussion, some of which is reflected in the report.” 

The fact that other climate scientists reviewing the IPCC reports cannot always agree shows that the science of climate is not “settled” despite the popular mantra.  The team of climate scientists CLINTEL assembled to conduct the review admit that their “conclusions are quite harsh.”  Although acknowledging readers might question some of their criticisms, the team “documented biases and errors in almost every chapter” reviewed. 

More importantly, the team pointed out the cherry-picking of data and studies by the IPCC to support its narrative that “the current warming is unique or their favorite word unprecedented, climate change is all bad and it’s caused by CO2.”  It is this narrative that led the CLINTEL team to conclude the IPCC suffers from “tunnel vision” and for them to title their report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC. 

The following list reflects the 13 chapter headings from The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC report addressing subjects of the IPCC reports that the CLINTEL team reviewed.  As can be seen, they cover a wide range of topics ranging from the resurrection of the infamous hockey stick temperature chart that suddenly to sea level rises, hurricanes, and climate models.  

1 No confidence that the present is warmer than the Middle Holocene  

2 The Resurrection of the Hockey Stick  

3 Measuring Global Surface Temperatures  

4 Controversial Snow Trends  

5 Accelerated Sea Level Rise: not so fast  

6 Why does the IPCC downplay the Sun?  

7 Misty Climate Sensitivity  

8 AR6: More confidence that models are unreliable  

9 Extreme scenarios  

10 A miraculous sea level jump in 2020  

11 Hiding the good news on hurricanes and floods  

12 Extreme views on disasters  

13 Say goodbye to climate hell, welcome climate heaven 

Many of these topics are ones we have been aware of or have questioned.  For example, on the issue of global losses from climate disasters, we were familiar with the IPCC relying on a single study from the 54 papers submitted to the science committee studying the issue to support its view that contradicted the committee’s view.  The committee concluded that there was no increase in losses attributable to greenhouse gas emissions.  This particular subject involved climate scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., who the CLINTEL team referred to as “a ‘Voldemort’, the Harry Potter villain ‘whose name shall not be named’”. 

Although a firm believer in climate change and the need to eliminate CO2, Pielke, Jr. is an expert in disaster loss analysis and a critic of the IPCC view of losses attributable to greenhouse gases.  He has found through his years of research that it is not climate change that drives the increase in the dollar amount of disaster losses.  Rather, it is the increased populations living along the coasts and the significant infrastructure necessary to support them that boosts the amount of the losses.  When storm damage is normalized for population growth, there is no noticeable upward trend.  This research, substantiated by others, is contrary to the IPCC narrative, so Pielke’s views are not welcome. 

In the case of sea level rise, CLINTEL notes that the reported recent acceleration is largely due to the switch from tidal gauges to satellite measurements.  The former produces a century of linear trends, but the recent satellite data with its very short history and questionable accuracy is used by the IPCC to project sharp rises in sea levels.  When the IPCC sea level model was applied to four Scandinavian ports, it became evident to the CLINTEL team that the sharp change in trend had not been modeled using the longer history of sea levels from tidal gauges that would have highlighted the discrepancy in their other forecasts.  This would seem to have been a “quality control” issue, but given the importance of the IPCC report, one would have thought such a discrepancy would warrant greater attention. 

While we could go into other revelations from the CLINTEL report, suffice it to say that there are many and all are worthy of study by people curious about the state of climate change.  While CLINTEL found numerous errors, biases, and shortcomings in AR6, this group of scientists does not disavow climate change and the involvement of human-caused CO2.  One thing they do believe, however, is that nature plays a role in climate change.  That issue arose in CLINTEL’s chapter discussing the resurrection of the hockey stick temperature graph 20 years after it first appeared and was prominently featured in AR3, only to be debunked soon after. 

The original hockey stick graph was created by Michael Mann and was criticized for both the quality of the data used in the graph’s preparation as well as the statistical technique employed to create it.  After the controversy led to the hockey stick graph being discredited, it suddenly reappeared in AR6 as an explanation for why nature does not play a role in the IPCC’s study of climate change. 

In attempting to explain how the IPCC modelers could not replicate pre-industrial temperatures, the CLINTEL team wrote the following:

“The discrepancy could be resolved by two possible solutions.  In the first case, climate modelers could have added stronger natural forcings to their simulations, in order to replicate the documented pre-industrial climate change.  However, this would mean that the warming effect of greenhouse gases likely would be reduced.  That is because the temperature rise of the past 170 years would have to be shared with anthropogenic and natural causes.  However, this was complicated, because in its special report on the 1.5°C target the IPCC had claimed in 2018 that 100% (!) of the observed modern warming was anthropogenic (IPCC, 2018).  Natural climate factors play no significant role, says the IPCC nowadays.  This was a major shift for the IPCC because only five years earlier in its AR5 report, the organization still found it reasonable that “more than half” of the observed warming was man-made, leaving theoretically up to 49% to natural causes (IPCC, 2013).” 

Suggesting that nature plays an important role in climate change would force the IPCC to alter a key tenet in its narrative.  The IPCC would have to consider the role of the sun, which the CLINTEL team believes does play a role in climate change.  They point to the many scientific research studies of the potential relationship.  So, while the latest hockey stick graph enables the IPCC to continue with its 100% reliance on human-caused greenhouse gases, accepting any contribution from natural forces would seriously undercut the climate change narrative. 

Climate change is much more complex than the IPCC and its climate emergency supporters would have you believe.  By tilting the playing field of research, the IPCC is making matters worse in finding realistic and affordable solutions for climate change, which is an issue.  The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC will help you understand how unlevel the climate change research field has become in today’s highly politicized world and why it leads to onerous policy recommendations.  Understanding that reality is important if change is to happen.