IPCC scientists outline a harrowing summary of climate impacts already hurting people and species. The Guardian says it is clear that not enough is being done to head off a climate disaster. Up to 14% of species on land face extinction if the temperature rises another 0.3°C. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres describes the abdication of leadership by world powers as “criminal”.
Welcome to the latest IPCC report, painting its usual grim picture of future ecological and societal disaster, and claiming to provide “scientific evidence” for all its key findings. In its summary for policymakers, it notes that “human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability”. Furthermore, the report says with “high confidence” that if the temperature rises more than 0.35°C, it would cause “unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and present multiple risks to ecosystems and humans”. In fact, since about 1800 the global temperature has risen about 1.1°C, seemingly without catastrophic consequences.
So back in the real world, it is ‘Spot the Scientist’ among the 330 listed authors of the latest IPCC report. The Daily Sceptic took a sample consisting of all the British authors listed down to number 120. This is what we found.
The first to appear is Mike Morecroft who runs ‘climate change’ at the Government body, Natural England. Professor Camille Parmesan holds the National Aquarium Chair in Understanding Oceans and Human Health at Plymouth University. Jeff Price works at the University of East Anglia, and holds a PhD in animal psychology. Marie-Fanny Racault has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of East Anglia. According to her web page, she is a Biological Oceanographer whose PhD was in Environmental Science. She returned to UEA in November last year, “to take the lead on the next stage of developments on the ecosystem component of the PlankTOM model series”.
The Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office, Professor Richard Betts, does actually have a degree in physics. Nevertheless, in January his organisation promoted a climate impacts report that warned of future societal collapse and armed gangs roaming a U.K. ravaged by climate change. Philip Thornton works for CGIAR, a non-profit food researcher and has a BA in agriculture. James Morison is described as a “senior climate change scientist” at the Forestry Commission. Mark Pelling is a Geography Professor at King’s College, while Richard Dawson is a Professor of Earth Systems Engineering at Newcastle University. Vanessa Castan Broto is a Professor of Climate Urbanism, having joined Sheffield University in 2017 following her appointment as a Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Dr. Helen Adams is a senior lecturer at King’s College in Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. Her PhD concentrated on the “role of the environment in migration decision-making in rural Peru”. It was the BBC that said the IPCC scientists had outlined a “harrowing” summary of climate impact. It quoted Dr. Adams saying it was “really, really clear” that things are bad, “but actually the future depends on us, not the climate”.
The final two scientists/authors are Emily Boyd, a Professor of Sustainability at Lund University in Sweden, where she is also described as a “leading social scientist”, and Lindsay Stringer, another Geography Professor, this time at York.
The definition of science is obviously somewhat elastic these days and geography departments have been successful in reinventing themselves under names such as Earth Sciences. Nevertheless, the lack of involvement from ‘pure’ scientists – people who study chemistry and physics – is noteworthy. Ultimately all the speculative disaster prose arises from the hypothesis that humans are causing the climate to change by burning fossil fuel and creating extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The effect of CO2 is hotly disputed in atmospheric science circles, although much of the debate is ignored under the ‘settled’ science agenda. In fact, there is not yet one single, peer-reviewed science paper that proves conclusively that humans cause all or most global warming. Nobody knows how much the atmosphere warms if CO2 levels are doubled. Climate model guesses range from 1-6°C.
Meanwhile, much of the disaster prose that is endlessly recycled has been debunked. Coral reefs are not doomed – it seems the Great Barrier Reef has rarely been in better health; Pacific islands are increasing in size; the oceans are not turning into an acid bath. Declaring a climate emergency and basing all the warnings on something called global warming is starting to wear thin. Global temperature rises started running out of steam two decades ago. In fact, according to accurate satellite data, they haven’t budged for the last 88 months. No plausible link between temperature and CO2 has been established in the current, historical or geological record.
Professor Roger Pielke from the University of Colorado has been a long time critic of the politicisation of science. His initial view is that the latest UN report “is more heavily weighted to implausible scenarios than any previous IPCC assessment”. In particular, he notes that RCP8.5 accounts for 57% of scenario mentions. According to Pielke, this alone accounts for the apocalyptic tone and conclusions throughout the report.
RCP stands for Representative Concentration Pathways. There are four pathways and the worst case RCP8.5 assumes an improbable rise in global temperature of 5°C in less than 80 years. “Remarkably, RCP8.5 is characterised in the report as a ‘business as usual future’,” said Pielke. “In reality, RCP4.5 [quoted in only 17.5% of scenario mentions] is currently thought of as an upper bound trajectory under current or stated policies, and RCP8.5 is implausible,” he added.
The climate writer Paul Homewood has spent years debunking many of the disaster tall tales. In characteristic blunt fashion, he notes that the IPCC, “relies heavily on studies written by grant-funded activist scientists. Many of these are easily debunked and they are usually based on very dodgy computer models”.
Finally comes news of a possible climate research strike. According to a recent paper from Bruce Glavovic: “Given the urgency and criticality of climate change, we argue the time has come for scientists to agree to a moratorium on climate change research as a means to first expose, then renegotiate, the broken science-society contract.” Glavovic is a Professor at the School of People, Environment and Planning at Massey University in New Zealand. Sometimes, a job title does not require any further comment.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic‘s Environment Editor.
Discussion
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Dear Chris Morrison, it’d be interesting if we understand what is the route by which some ‘scientist’ qualifies as a scientist for a government or an agency.
I believe, networking is far more relevant than scientific contribution.
Is this something we could explore more? The reason I’m asking is that I don’t get access to actual data.
Its happening all the time that those scientists who have taken a different and quite probably a more accurate view from those claiming a climate emergency are being shut down or shut out from putting the alternative case by people who have no knowledge of the subject, but just want to max,-up the popular belief by the ignorant. This has happened in so many issues recently that it seems in the intersets of the main-stream media to promote hysteria in as many things as they can.
To summarise Para A.1.2. from the IPCC ‘Summary for Policymakers‘:
In other words, there has been no significant increase from 2001-2010 to 2011-2020. A tenth of one degree is well within the margin of error. Yes, the planet has warmed by 1 degree since the ending of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, which is hardly surprising. It has nothing to do with increasing CO2 and temperatures were warmer in 1300 AD. The increase in CO2 may be due to slight warming of the oceans and increased burning of fossil fuels, but has encouraged additional greening of the planet – more food and more oxygen from green plants.
So 14% of species will become extinct due to a 0.3deg C increase?
It is worth noting that for every 150Km nearer the Equator the temperature rises by 1deg C.
So 0.3deg C is what can be expected by travelling south 50Km.
So just more alarmist claptrap.
“Nobody knows how much the atmosphere warms if CO2 levels are doubled.”. The null hypothesis must be that the number is ZERO, and as stated, no evidence to the contrary exists.
Chris
Another great article. I’m a full blown climate change sceptic-in fact, I’m sure it’s all nonsense on stilts.
However-could we have a scientific comment on the satellite temperature graph? It appears to be sloping upwards, though in the commentary it’s said to show a standstill.
We all love a politically motivated computer model on DS, don’t we?! Will “lessons have been learned” re trusting these skewed, la la land distopian models and their authors? Probably not, when the b.s. they churn out suits the WEF globalist narrative. Viva common sense scientists and politicians!
When politicians and journalists hear someone is a “scientist” they seem to believe that they have the knowledge and right to proclaim expertise in a far wider field than they are likely to have in practice. Virtually all scientists spend their lives researching in an extremely narrow compass. A “climate” scientist for example may specialise in fluid dynamics, ocean currents, solar radiation, cloud formation, atmospheric chemistry, land use, thermodynamics, orbital dynamics, particulates, weather patterns, satellite telemetry etc (and possibly in even narrower sub-fields) . They will have little more expertise outside their specialism than most interested, well educated “generalists”. In reality then, there is no such thing as “climate science” other than as a portmanteau term or as a useful misdirection for journalists and politicians who are told modelling is science. A climate modeller has to make decisions how to incorporate the most appropriate recent reportage from the many and varied papers published within each of these specialisms, make judgements about their contribution, often neglect new research or data (sometimes deliberately) and predict how they will all inter react. The modeller must then incorporate all relevant forcings (with their own often activism driven and erroneous assumptions eg RCP 8.5 is… Read more »
Forecasts aka projections, in the financial world known as pious hope, are not and never will be science.
In the old days they might have been a hypothesis tested against facts.
Since most have failed the test against reality they have no credibility whatsoever
Fringe science informed the Covid lockdown, the Green loons would shut down society too if they could. Meanwhile this collection of worried social scientists are making a mint. It may be one minute to midnight for a while yet.
globel warming, you suffer so the elite don’t have to.
Maybe Professor Richard Betts’ prophecy may come about but for a quite different reason. The armed gangs he was referring to might be the last dregs of the human race left after an atomic WW3.
Professor Parmesan is obviously a big cheese, though s/he may have tanked.
I imagine there will be a vaccine to cure globl warming problem or is that the one they just pushed out?
Humans ‘think’ in images and stories, not words and reason. The IPCC has picked a few random ‘observations’, labelled them as facts, and presented the resulting ‘Climate Model’ as an apocalyptic tale. At present, Meteorologists, running their models on the fastest supercomputers, can’t predict the ‘weather in the UK’ five days from a front forming in New York – let alone model the ‘climate’. So, what to do? Proper science will need to measure and model many variables: the full range of electromagnetic intensities incident upon our little rock from that Big Yellow Ball in the sky; the absorption of these rays; the re-radiated spectrum; the various components that provide this absorption; how relative changes in the concentrations will change equilibrium temperatures in the atmosphere; and so many other variables that I am sure we can all think of given thirty-seconds of thought. When this ‘proper’ science has been completed, and quantum computing becomes available, a model using these many variables may be able to predict a range of possible scenarios. Only then will we have a proper model of the ‘climate’ (probably many models). Until then, I am not sure how to counter the hysteria the IPCC (and others)… Read more »
The one positive to come out of the Covid debacle is that teams of so called “experts” have been shown not only to be totally wrong in their predictions, but also that they are utterly blinkered to anything outside the tight parameters of their subject matter, leading to disastrous consequences as a result of their policies.
I can only hope that these climate change fanatics are gradually pushed to the sidelines before they cause even more harm to our future.
Scientists are more often wrong than they are right. Even they don’t believe themselves, or shouldn’t.
Ah no, you’re referring to old science there, recently replaced by “The Science” where there is only one definitive truth, and anybody who dares to question it is smeared or censored.
Agreed. Certainly with Covid, as actual experience has shown, computer models have proven to be wildly inaccurate – and information that quietly leaked out has confirmed that the modellers were only interested/instructed to model “worst-case scenarios”, which would appear to be the case with climate modelling too. One hopes that from now on hysterical predictions of “climate catastrophe” will be treated with a truck-load of salt by reputable scientists and reporters.
Wishful thinking unfortunately.
Howmany scientists … a scientist is someone who is sceptical until they have tested the evidence to prove something. The IPCC reports are totally alarmists BS where science is a thin veneer to camouflage their political rantings. So, no scientists would ever get involved in it.
Scientists don’t “prove” anything, they develop falsifiable theories.
Does anyone know how many volcanoes and fissures expelling CO2 lie on the seabed of the worlds Oceans?
I’ll give you a clue. In 2018 ninety one volcanoes were ‘discovered’ under the Antarctic ice. How many years has the Antarctic been explored by scientists?
Blaming humans for CO2 emissions, even if it did make much difference to the climate, is simply childish fantasy.
One must always remember that science is more often wrong than right, otherwise there would be no need for the scientific method and experiments. We would just go straight from a hypothesis (a guess) to a scientific theory avoiding all that wasted hard work in between.
Even scientists don’t believe their own work, if they are honest. That’s why we have scientific theory, the culmination of, often, years of hard work, that exists only to be falsified. That’s why it’s not called a scientific fact.
They couldn’t give a stuff about the planet except the financial benefits, as they alone use more of its resources, I’m guessing private jets for a couple of people don’t have emissions, they would love us locked up, to use the planet as their own playground.
If I was Chris Morris (DS article contributor) I might be disappointed that this was Lead Item for just one hour this morning.
Desolate – completely ruined my breakfast. There are just too many good writers on the Daily Sceptic.
😀
🤩
The scientists who believe in Climate Change DEMAND climate lockdowns, which would wreck lives and economies, The scientists who do NOT believe in Climate Change do NOT want climate lockdowns which would wreck lives and economies
I don’t think there’s a serious scientist who doesn’t believe in climate change.
It’s the cause that’s the question, and the IPCC has studiously failed to include the Sun in any of its pronouncements.
But they do believe in the fees to be gained by airing MMGW views in print and on the air. They get f*ck all offering opposing opinions in print or on the telly.
Nothing changes, same theses past 20 years or more but I haven’t recently spoken with a member of the public who had the slightest interest. Most prefer just to change the subject rather than risk disagreements.
“I don’t think there’s a serious scientist who doesn’t believe in climate change.”
You are talking Billy Bollox.
I only had time to check one of Morrison’s claims.
Marie-Fanny Racault has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of East Anglia.
No she doesn’t. She has a PhD but not in philosophy. Her thesis subject was:
“The impact of climate on phytoplankton phenology in the global ocean (2010). “
I suggest Morrison gets someone to review his articles for accuracy before publishing.
Presumably a confusion with “Doctor of Philosophy” which is what PhD means.
I would hope that Morrison knows the difference between a PhD and a degree in philosophy.
You lie. You desperately tried to find an inaccuracy. Well done, can’t win the argument so go for the man.
So which bit of what I wrote was false?
So you ‘only had time to check one of his claims’, but it seems you had enough time to attempt to make a desperate straw clutching smear festival out of it.
How about the rest of his claims? Like the Earth has warmed barely 1 degree in the past 200 years? That the Great Barrier Reef is in great health? That the Earth’s temperature has barely moved for almost 8 years? And the fact that all of these ‘studies’ and climate models are made by people with skin in the game? All during one of the lowest overall periods of CO2 in the Earth’s history.
Care to ‘check’ any of those?
I pointed out an error – in what sense is this a “ a desperate straw clutching smear festival”. It is relevant because Chris Morrison doesn’t seem to spend much effort checking his articles. E.g .this article which, as many of the sceptical commenters pointed out, suggested there was no warming trend when clearly there was. Compare Morrison to Mike Hearn who also contributes to DS. His articles are researched in detail and are always worth taking seriously. On the one occasion he made a factual error he recognised it and immediately asked for critical review to make sure it didn’t happen again.
The rest of Morrison’s claims have been made many times before and I have responded to some of them in the past.
The only warming trend is a mild temperature increase over 200 years of barely 1 degree – the difference between the upstairs and downstairs of your house. There hasn’t been any statistically significant warming since 1998 and nothing over the past 7 years. Anything else is computer modelling done by those whose careers depend on grants given specifically to find problems to justify more grants. And every one of these climate models has been proven wrong by reality every time.
Between the 1940s and the 1970s the global temperature fell significantly leading to media hysterics throughout the 70s of a global ice age. That’s all now been conveniently forgotten.
According to overwhelming historical temperature data, the Earth has been warmer at many points in the past without the intervention of anthropogenic CO2 and the “cancer” that is the human race [credit D. Attenborough]. Also established ice core data clearly shows a historic pattern of CO2 increases occurring after temperature increases, not the other way round – so it turns out the dog wags the tail after all.
Which part of all this is still keeping you up at night?
Nailed it. 👍
“Suggested there was no warming trend”. Suggest you read the article properly, rather than throw mud on the basis of what you think I have written.
You only had time to check one “scientist”, out of a list of 13, but it just happened to show something you believe to be inaccurate.
You’re as big a fraud as the climate change argument.
OK. Here is more detailed account of what I did.
I looked at Morrison’s list starting at the beginning. The first three appeared to have qualifications that were vaguely scientific but he seemed to be implying Marie-Fanny Racault was a philosopher not a scientist at all – I was about to go out (now back) so I knew I only had time to check out one case so I selected this one. It turned out Morrison had got it wrong and she is a scientist. Think of it as a sample of one out of thirteen. What is fraudulent about that?
You appear to have locked yourself into a ‘details war’ with other commenters. While details are clearly important, we need to keep the big picture in mind as well. What matters here, in my opinion, is whether the factual inaccuracies that you have pointed out, change the overall conclusion about the constitution of the IPCC? I can’t see that they do.
Fair enough. I was concentrating on the detail of an error because of what it illustrated about Morrison’s journalism. Turning to the overall constitution of the IPCC. The list of authors comes from working group two which assesses the impact of climate change and is divided into areas such as ” Terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and their services”. It seems to me that you would expect the majority of experts in these areas to be things like oceanographers and ecologists looking at systems rather than physicists and chemists.
If you look at the authors of working group 1 report (Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis) there are plenty of “pure” scientists involved e.g the first UK author listed is Prof Edward Hawkins who has a Ph D in astrophysics. The second is a native German working at the University of Edinburgh: Professor Gabriele Hegerl whose PhD was (translated from the German):
You’re easily impressed.
Some of them may be scientists in the broadest possible definition but that doesn’t mean they’re not A: immune from groupthink and corruption. B: Talking demonstrable horse shit.
So years ago they claimed that 14k Scientists supported a California University report bigging up MMGM until it was revealed that half of the signatures were from journalists and most of the rest Uni students.
It doesn’t surprise me. They try to fix everything because their arguments are so weak and they cannot handle alternative views.
They’re the sort who deliberately registered false signatories to the Great Barrington Declaration just to undermine its whole premise and distract from the eminent people who fully supported it.
Uni of East Anglia? There’s a surprise, the home of Global Warming scams and lies (“hide the hockey stick/medieval warm period” or somesuch).
University of East Anglia; it bounces off the tongue just like….oh ….
Imperial College, London.
Are they by any chance related?
She’s got a PhD in what? Basket weaving?
The title did not come out clearly in my post – so I will repeat it:
Numerical solution of the compressible two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations in a time-dependent domain using energy-reducing boundary conditions
Doesn’t sound like basket weaving to me.
What does it sound like to you then?
The only inaccuracy was writing “doctorate in philosophy” instead of doctor of philosophy. He also says her PhD is in environmental science. You make a rather sweeping condemnation of the man for what is basically a typo.
Fair enough. For some reason the sentence about her PhD being in environmental science escaped my notice when I first read the article.
However, surely to write “she has a doctorate in philosophy” is a bit more than a typo? If he just meant to state she had a PhD, most people would have written either “she has a PhD” or “she has doctorate” not “she is a doctor of philosophy”. Anyway – why write that she has a PhD? That is true of many of the authors.
The worrying thing is that, in order to cover up the global malfeisance over COVID they’re happy to start a nuclear war. So what will they have left when the climate change scam becomes obvious (apart from saying that it would have been too hot if nuclear winter hadn’t got in the way)?
I grew up with the constant threat of Global Cooling, new Ice Age and all that. Didn’t worry me too much as I was living within a Glacial Morrain (see earlier post today).
Lok, the whole 30 year scam has been predicated on saying ‘We have seven gears in this car – every five years we put it into the next gear higher’.
All the words on likelihood/probability have been ramped up in exactly this manner. No evidence for its justification is ever, ever given.
The IPCC has no legistative legitimacy, it is in effect a ‘Think Tank’ or a ‘Pressure Group’, depending on how you see it.
Like most think tanks, it lives in a bubble rendering it incapable of responding to conditions which refute its central dogmas.
But like most pressure groups, it has sufficient funding to start to blackmail politicians and to collude with billionaires who understand how to make fortunes by utilising its mantras, false or otherwise.
The IPCC was relegated to ‘junk status’ in my personal ‘Moodys ratings of political organisations’ about 5 years ago. It’s not been investment grade at any time in my rating system.
To name just one, how many times has Prince Charles predicted the end of the world because MMGW in X days, months or years yet they are still with us.
When I opened my Yahoo email account 12 or more years ago I put my location as Tuvalu since it was supposed to be sinking beneath the waves, yet likewise they are still with us.
The biggest indictment is that we are at COP 26 (of 26 so far), and COP 27 and COP 28 are already scheduled. So much for this is our last chance.
No doubt we will hear the same rhetoric, perhaps using slightly more hysterical hyperbole, but essentially the same voices giving the same forecasts of doom that yet again we have our last and final chance to do something, like we can control the climate of the planet as easily as we do our domestic heating thermostat. Still, nothing comes..
Nothing changes. I did a similar exercise about 15 years ago. Medical doctors, vets, social anthropologists, and so on heavily outnumbered atmospheric physicists.
The chairman of the IPCC at the time, Rajendra Pachauri, was a railway engineer. Nowadays the high priestess of the religion is an autistic teenager with no qualifications whatsoever but the true believers hang on her every utterance. If only Monty Python could make a film about The Life of Greta.
Same here, nothing changes. We had this same discussion 10-15 years ago and confirmed the same Sceptic conclusion.
To be honest I don’t have the time or inclination to go through it all again.
‘Nobody knows how much the atmosphere warms if CO2 levels are doubled’
You can boil the entire subject down to this one sentence: ‘Nobody knows… ‘ Some ‘scientists’ allege 8.5 C, some 1.5 C.
Coe et al, in a 2021 paper, put the figure at 0.5 C, and estimated the entire contribution of human-emitted CO2 to global warming since the beginning of the industrial revolution at 0.25 C.
Look in vain for any MMS coverage of the climate contrarian viewpoint, anything that counters the climate emergency narrative. The parallels with the vaccine-injury blank-out are not coincidental.
Heat-pumps are coming, massive increases in domestic energy bills, the end of cheap travel, mandatory veganism, and… de-population.
All on the strength of …’Nobody knows…’
The parallels with the vaccine-injury blank-out are not coincidental.
I agree, and when you include social scientists, (the very definition of an oxymoron), computer modellers, and ’emergency’ rhetoric, I get a very strong feeling of déjà vu.
This piece from The Highwire, regarding the suppression of Ivermectin and the influence of money on academia, is both illuminating and troubling.
https://thehighwire.com/watch/
I am not normally a supporter of strikes, but a climate research one is something I can get behind with enthusiasm.
If the science is settled, maybe the research departments can now be disbanded.
It’s been laughing at these tossers since before they got flooded out during COP (?) @ Coppenhagen sobmany years ago.
I meet a lot of students: the young generation (Z) grows up totally sold to this. They only can call it “climate catastrophe” and trying to question anything about it is like trying to question Christianity in a conversation with Holy Inquisition.
v 1.0. Global warming
v 2.0. Climate change
v 3.0. Climate catastrophe
v 4.0…?
Answers on a postcard to the IPCC.
v 4.Climate gotternamerung (if it fits).
v5. The heat death of the universe.
Jobs and livelihoods rely on this lie. Lots of jobs and livelihoods. Asking them to give it up and tell the truth is pretty pointless. This will go on for generations until it gradually fizzles out. Don’t think ‘Watergate’, think ‘Protestant Reformation’…
I’d rather think Krakatoa – with all those folking CC cultists holding hands around it, singing Kumbaya.
It’ll go on until the old money has complete control of the worlds spending with carbon tax.
Unless you’re part of the club, then you can keep your private jet and mullti-Billion Carbon Credit CBDC Yacht and spew as much as you like.
Without wishing to appear cruel or prejudiced, the same could be said for Christianity as a whole. At least the European version which is surely on its last legs.
Welibaby is doing his best.
He certainly isn’t helping, this from someone with happy memories of early High Church CofE and with a much loved CofE Nun(?) for an Auntie.