The Anti-Science IPCC Global Warming Report 5

Fundamentally, the IPCC has never had any solid evidence of measurable man-made global warming caused by man's emissions of carbon dioxide.  The newest report about to be issued apparently does not change this according to those who have read the drafts.  Yet, the Summary Report issued to the press and politicians claims that catastrophic man-made global warming is now known to be more certain than ever.  This claim is made on the basis of General Circulation Model (GCMs) computer models interpreted with an embarrassing flight of fancy.

In the light of that claim, let us examine the predictions of such GCMs used in the prior reports, when we were informed that the science was already settled and well-known.  The draft report that was sent out to actual scientists for review had the following graph in it.  The various shaded areas show the range of certainty of the average global temperature according to the body of computer models.

The FAR was the first report of 1990, the SAR was the second report of 1995, the TAR was the third report of 2001, and the AR4 is the fourth report of 2007.  Over this period the U.S. government alone spent about $150 billion funding climate change related phenomena.  Each IPCC report claimed a higher level of confidence in catastrophic man-made global warming.  So we should expect to be able to look at the range of expected temperatures from each report for 2015 and see that the range of each successive report falls within the range of the previous report, but is narrower.  This is both because the claim is that the science is better known and because the prediction time is becoming shorter.

Because the colored ranges overlap, it is easiest to quickly see how the certainty of the predictions of the settled science actually changed from report to report by looking at the brackets on the right side of the graph which are color-coded.  These represent the range of the prediction for 2015 for each report.

So what actually has happened is that the settled science did claim a smaller temperature range in the second report than in the first report, but its prediction range did not lie entirely within the range claimed in the first report.  No, it admitted that the temperature increase might be smaller.  In the third report the 2015 temperature range was much wider than in the second report.  The 2015 temperature might be much higher than that predicted in the second report, or a bit lower.  This represented a large increase in the scientific uncertainty being claimed.  The fourth report claimed that knowledge had improved and the range shrank compared to that of the third report, but apparently the knowledge was not as good as that of the second report whose range was narrower.  While the range of the fourth report prediction does lie entirely within that of the third report prediction and that of the first report, it excludes the lower part of the range of the second report on the settled science.

Unfortunately for the IPCC, the fourth report prediction of the temperature did not allow for such low temperatures as have been measured in the meantime.  The black and red dots of recent years are well below the predicted range of the fourth report and even below the range by a bit from any of the reports.  The only conclusion a rational person can make is that the settled science incorporated into the many computer models was wrong.  This presents a major problem for the fifth report which is about to be issued in January.

So, the predictions of the computer models will be presented in a way to obscure these failures.  Instead of averaging the results of the 162 or so model predictions and then using an uncertainty range that is claimed to be narrowed by the average result, some individual computer model predictions will be given on the graph.  Since a few of the models do predict a smaller increase in temperature by 2015, a few lines representing those outlier predictions will pass through the actual measured temperature data points or just below them.

This will not change the fact that almost all of the computer model results still predict higher temperatures than are actually observed.  It will not change the fact that the science clearly has not been well-understood and should never have been claimed to be settled.  The implication of the fifth report will once again be one of a widening range of predictions and therefore an increasing level of uncertainty when compared to the fourth report of 2007.  Apparently, the upcoming report will claim the same upper range on the temperature prediction, but include lower temperatures that were ruled out by the settled science of the fourth report.

The actual measurements have to be kept in the range of the predictions, so some sleigh of hand is needed to make them appear to be so.  This is not how science is done, but it is how politics is done.

This is all very much a circus of clowns, not scientists.  This is becoming recognized by more and more scientists and even by more and more non-scientists.  One no longer even needs to know much science to see that this has been a very expensive farce.

Far worse than the $150 billion largely wasted on this science is the huge damage done politically with such misguided policies as green energy subsidies, ethanol mandates and earlier subsidies, electricity source mandates, the vendetta against coal and the Keystone XL pipeline, and a host of anti-fossil fuel laws and regulations which have cost people their jobs and forced them to spend much more on energy which is also less dependable.

As a scientist, I am also very angry that so many so-called scientists have done so much to undermine the credibility of science and scientists.  Just as bad money drives out good money, so does bad science drive out good science, especially when the politicians and bureaucrats dive into the mess and use it to hurt the People to the advantage of special interest groups and to increase their own control over our lives.