The only way that global populations can be persuaded to embrace the insane policy of removing irreplaceable fossil fuel energy from human society within less than 30 years is to be kept in a perpetual state of fear. The climate must be seen to be tipping, collapsing and generally behaving in a way to turn Mother Earth into an uninhabitable fireball. Step forward the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that bases over 40% of its climate impact predictions on the implausible suggestion that temperatures will rise up to 4°C in less than 80 years (current rate of progress over last 25 years – about 0.2°C). Step forward climate scientists who use similar temperature projections to back 50% of their impact forecasts, and step forward trusted messengers in mainstream media who hide behind ‘scientists say’ as a cover for promoting almost any scary clickbait nonsense.
The distinguished academic and science writer Roger Pielke Jr. has been a fierce critic of using a set of temperature and emission assumptions in climate models known as RCP8.5. This scenario suggests temperatures could rise in short order by 3-4°C, and it is responsible for producing much of the propaganda messaging that backs the collectivist Net Zero project. Pielke recently said that the continuing misuse of scenarios in climate research had become pervasive and consequential, “so much so that we can view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the 21st Century so far”. Now Pielke has returned to the fray trying to understand how such obvious corruption of the scientific process has been allowed to stand for so long – the short explanation being “groupthink fuelled by a misinformation campaign led by activist climate scientists”.
Pielke starts by noting that he cannot explain why the “error” has not been corrected by the IPCC or others in authoritative positions in the scientific community. In fact, he says, “the opposite has occurred – RCP8.5 remains commonly used as a baseline in research and policy”.
Last March, the BBC ran a story claiming that Antarctica Ocean currents were heading for collapse. To drive home the scare, there was even a reference to the 2004 climate disaster film The Day After Tomorrow. The scientists’ claims were based on computer models fed with RCP8.5 data – a fact missing from the BBC’s imaginative story.
The above graph shows the progress the IPCC made from 2000 to 2014 in upping its baseline scenario to RCP8.5. Watts per square metre (W/m2) refers to the difference between incoming and outgoing radiation, or energy waves, at the top of the atmosphere. The RCP8.5 scenario takes its title from the W/m2 number. Interestingly, it might be noted that climate model temperature forecasts also started to go haywire from the middle of the 2000s, a fact that suggests activist scientists started work in earnest on producing the correct results needed to ferment the exploding green agenda.
Pielke observed that in 2000, the IPCC presented 40 baseline scenarios that described an envelope of possible emission futures. In 2014 it published its fifth assessment report (AR5), and although an earlier draft noted a majority of scenarios were above 6.0 the final report mentioned only RCP8.5. Since then, the IPCC has pulled back a little – noting in the latest assessment report (AR6) that the massive temperature rises are of “low likelihood”. But this admission is not to be found in the widely-distributed ‘Summary for Policy Makers’. A recent highly critical report on AR6 by the Clintel Foundation found that the IPCC was still using RCP8.5 that was “completely out of touch with reality”.
Despite the IPCC appearing to pull back a little, Pielke notes it still has many champions. Recently, the AR5 working group co-chair Chris Field and Marcia McNutt, President of the U.S. National Academy of Science, wrote that RCP8.5 had long been described as a ‘business-as-usual’ pathway with a continued emphasis on energy from fossil fuels with no climate policies in place. This was said to remain “100% accurate”.
How things change in just two decades of relentless green propagandising. In 2000, the authors of the UN’s Special Report Emissions Scenario (SRES) said:
The broad consensus among the SRES writing team is that the current literature analysis suggests that the future is inherently unpredictable and so views will differ as to which of the storylines and representative scenarios could be more or less likely. Therefore, the development of a single ‘best guess’ or ‘business-as-usual’ scenario is neither desirable or possible.
Such is the debate in 2000 of scientists working their way through the scientific process. But little evidence of such questioning can be found within the ranks of scientists following the agenda that has been ‘settled’ for them by political operatives. Today, RCP8.5 is deeply woven into the fabric of climate research and policy, observes Pielke. “Understanding how we got here should provide a cautionary warning for how science can go astray when we allow self-correction to fail,” he hopes. A less charitable view might be, don’t believe a word the IPCC, the legions of activist climate scientists and their useful idiots in the mainstream media say until they rid themselves of the RCP8.5 corruption.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Climate modelling is a cult not a science.
Actually it is modelling that is the cult – and it whore’s itself to any political or ideological objective that needs ‘The Science’ on its side.
The difference between forecasts, prediction and scenarios:
‘Forecasts are constructed by applying quantitative data and trends to predict one probable future scenario’
Everyone clear?
Me neither.
In fact a scenario is (quite obvious to anyone with a basic grasp of the English language) a predicted situation based on certain assumptions.
Modellers hide behind ‘scenario’ because ‘all models are wrong’
Every modeller should be subjected to a ‘personality test’ for levels of humility, the results of which should accompany their every ‘scenario’
Many thoroughly evil sets of dogma: communism, fascism, national socialism, started by manipulating language.
Nut zero is but the latest in a long line, just as dangerous as the rest.
The IPCC only few weeks ago admitted that their worst case “scenarios” are highly implausible and not likely to occur. Yet our dumb UN lackey politicians have been basing energy policy on this politicised trash for years, and silly activists are out gluing themselves to the road based on this junk science that they have allowed themselves to become brainwashed by. —-One day these silly brainwashed dreamers might actually realise how easily manipulated they have been and see what fools they are.
I don’t believe a single word coming from the $cientists regarding so-called “climate change” because whatever BS they come out with it is all lies. I am wholly “vaccinated” against their propaganda and unlike other well-known “vaccines” mine is 100% safe and effective
I see what you mean. You maybe vaccinated against the junk science but the governments using that “science” are going to take away your petrol or diesel car, your gas central heating and they are going to fob you off with a heat pump. They are going to restrict everything you do and remove all affordable energy and force unaffordable energy on you. ——–You vaccination only works against opinion. It won’t stop the Eco Socialism stealing your prosperity.
And the Statue of Liberty is nowhere near as big as the illustration suggests, either. AI strikes again?
We can go back to 1995 where we see a big turning point in the climate change issue (then known as global warming because a little bit of warming seemed to be occurring from 1976-1998). In the main body of the UN IPCC report in that year the scientists involved concluded that they could see no direct evidence up till then that human emissions of CO2 were causing changes to climate. But the SPM (Summary for Policy Makers) written by politicians and bureaucrats decided to say that a discernible human impact had been detected. ———– So, the scientists reported being unable to detect a human signal at this time, but the politicians ignored that and changed it into a clear human influence. This led to a lot of resignations from contributors to IPCC reports and to Patrick Seitz (Physicist and US Head of the National Academy of Sciences) to say he had “never witnessed such a corruption of the peer-review process”. It was really at this time that the worlds politicians who mostly would only be influenced by the Summary for Policymakers written by bureaucrats that did not reflect the true state of the science began to get on board with this reshaping of science to meet broader political goals. This idea that there was indeed a “discernible human influence” on climate by industrial activity led to the Kyoto Protocol. ——- It was now the case that instead of being a body that was supposed to about science, the IPCC was now entirely about politics. It has been the case ever since with the output from climate models used to determine energy and climate policies and to help achieve the UN goal of Sustainable Development. —There is only one problem with this post normal “Official Science”———-Models are NOT science, and they are NOT evidence of anything. Despite that fact, we now have policies in place in the western world like NET ZERO which feed of the irrational fear about climate to lower living standards and impoverish the citizens of the west by removing the use of fossil fuels because we have deemed to have used up more than our fair share in becoming prosperous, not because there is a climate crisis, because in reality there is NO real science at all that supports that idea.
Upto a point you are right. However I think one of the big problems with IPCC reports is the politcal summary, which is not written by scientists, but by politicians. Go figure!
Up to a point I am right? ——Which point would that be? Then you say that the problem with the IPCC is “the political report”——-But that is exactly what I said. It is called the Summary for Policymakers, and is often written before the scientists have finished their reviews. In other words the politicians have already decided what is to appear in their summaries. ——–I don’t want to be disrespectful but there isn’t much I need to “go figure” on this issue.
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.
I think Professor John Christy in this lecture points out that the models do not match real measurments- satelite and weather balloon to confirm in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttNg1F7T0Y0&t=2669s
Long video. Go to 12:11, but whole video worth watching. The models do not match on the warming in the upper atmosphere either- a lot less than predicted. Note the UN tag line- reminds me of the BBC and Bridgen’s debate.
There’s a lot of money invested in all that modelling, a lot of tenures and funding for research and reputations to maintain. And it follows that very few so called climate scientists are brave enough to come forward and say the truth. It’s money basically. Same as the medical establishment’s blindness to the ongoing excess deaths travesty. If only these cowards would see the bigger picture and be courageous, everything would change and we’d hear no more about it. But mortgages, college funds for the kids, alimonies, holidays, that nice wristwatch, the country club, that car, the wife/husband’s Christmas presents, …etc.etc
“Official Science”, NOT SCIENCE
During my chequered career, I worked in a well know UK based big pharma organisation in a company wide top down ‘change management’ project. The methodology required the identification and communication of a ‘burning platform’ to create the motivation to change across the organisation, ie if you don’t change in the way we want you to, you won’t have a job. And that is what the climate hoax is, a methodology where the burning platform is literal. But it’s a fiction based on lies, bad science, unproven modelling, greed and lust for political power.
Exactly
Science requires funding- they can either raise this from anyone with enough money to be able to say to them “just do research, don’t worry about the outcome, your objective is simply to find the truth” or it needs to produce something useful that can be commercialised or it has to find crises that it is imperative to solve
If the message from “climate science” was along the lines of “nothing much going on” it would remain a relative backwater
But you will find that most climate science is funded by governments, not by “anyone with enough money”. ——-The very same governments that want to impose Net Zero on you. ——-or as someone once pointed out—“Never buy medicine from the same doctor that diagnosed your malady”
It’s hard to know whose hand is up whose backside or whether they are all in it together
And of course it’s our money
It is a symbiotic relationship between government and their “scientists” that they fund. —They need each other. Then when the years pass and things don’t turn out as their “science” predicted government get off the hook by saying they were only following the science.
Yup, exactly like the “public health” industry
££££££££££££££££££££
At a guess….
The simple answer to the headline is hubris.
The Clintel.org book is a good resource, and not overly expensive. If anyone’s interested, I review it here.
“Why Are Scientists So Slow to Abandon Their Failed Climate Models?“
I wasn’t expecting comedy, but thanks I really did laugh out loud when I saw the headline.
Answer: it is unlikely that any scientist whose livlihood, status, glory, will abandon what this depends on.
If someone wants to pay you money to look for a purple horse you will likely not be in a big hurry to say you cannot find any. ———As you point out, it really is that crude.
97% of climate scientist would be out of a job if they admitted “carbon” did not drive temperature.
(after about 280 ppm, or thereabouts).
Why Are Scientists So Slow to Abandon Their Failed Climate Models?
That’s a real “do bears shit in the woods ?” question.
Common sense tells you that if there was a real climate crisis, efforts to reduce CO2 emissions in Western Countries is futile. These countries could stop all emissions and there would be no effect since they produce so little of the total emissions. If there was a real crisis these activists would be in China where the vast amount of CO2 emissions are taking place and increasing at a huge rate. There is no climate crisis.
David Attenborough assured us in his latest series that the temperatures are rising, sea levels are destroying coasts, and to top it all the absolutely pristine oceans he showed us do not really exist and were really full of plastic and pollutants.