By Stephen Murgatroyd
EDMONTON, AB / Troy Media/ The unravelling of the claims with respect to global climate change began in earnest during the first month of 2010, so much so, in fact, that those who protest that the science is settled are now being ridiculed by the mainstream press.
It all began during the Copenhagen summit, when US President Barack Obama and other world leaders sidelined the United Nations process and the signing of the Copenhagen accord. The accord signalled the end of the UN process, which had been taking place since 1998, as the primary process for the development of an internationally binding treaty curtailing certain emissions, notably CO2. To all intents and purposes, this process is now dead there are no realistic prospects of a treaty being agreed during 2010 at the Mexico summit in December.
Loss of credibility
The focus quickly then moved to three issues: The first is the credibility of the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a body offering serious scientific analysis of the known science. The second is the analysis of other scientific claims, notably the evidence base for the global temperature. Finally, there has been a great deal of attention paid to the antics of the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri.
Many of seen the IPCC reports as a summative and authoritative statement of our knowledge of the climate, its behaviour and the future of the climate. Their assumption was that over two and a half thousand scientists participated in a highly structured process of reviewing peer reviewed scientific literature, offering an analysis of this literature and providing an authoritative review of the science. It now appears that many of the scientists were in fact environmental activitists and that some of the findings were based not on peer review but on magazines, comments and environmental literature. It also appears that some of the data was manipulated to produce the expected results such as the hockey stick graph showing temperature changes over time. The IPCC now admits that its findings, with respect to the Himalayas being ice free by 2035, was incorrect. Some 15 other such claims are under review all of them based not on peer review science but other materials.
So discredited is the process, especially the process by which the summary for policymakers is developed, that some inside the IPCC are calling for major revisions in how the work gets done. They are also calling for more disclosure of the limits to the science, the cautions with respect to interpretations and the caveats with respect to the quality of the evidence.
But now other scientific issues arereceiving a lot of attention. The most significant of these relates to the way in which global temperatures are measured, analyzed and reported. The basic problem is simple: The number of temperature gauges used to calculate the temperature of the lower atmosphere is now so reduced and selective as to be problematic.
Canada, for example, has just six sites that get used in the analysis all of them near the US border and not a single site in the colder parts of the country, despite the fact that Canada has several hundred gauges placed appropriately for use. By being selective about which sites are analysed and which are excluded, warming trends can be created.
It gets worse. Many of the sites used do not confirm to agreed standards for their location they are located near heat sinks or in locations likely to inflate temperature. But even that is not the end of it. The data is also adjusted to take into account a variety of issues but the adjustment process is poorly documented, inconsistent and appears to always point to temperature increases, not decreases. This issue has reached the point where several scientists are concerned that we do not have a stable, reliable and thoroughly documented and accessible system for temperature measure by land and sea instruments.
Satellite data on the other hand clearly shows that there has been no warming for many years and that many of the assumptions about the current warming cycle are problematic to say the least.
The sexy Dr. Pachauris days as head of the IPCC may be numbered
Finally, there is the sexy Dr Pachauri, the railway engineer turned climate change expert who Chairs the IPCC. It is now OK to think of him as sexy he has written a novel featuring a sixty year old Indian climatologist which has been described by many as, if not soft porn, titillating. But launching a sexy novel is the least of Dr Pachauris problems.
He has been accused of conflict of interest in that he is actively promoting a view of the climate which leads countries to want to invest in products and services which match his own business interests. He has denied these claims, but not convincingly. The British Government, it is reported, has declined to fully support the renewal of his IPCC appointment and many others, including some US officials, are calling for a new Chair to signal a new approach to the work of the IPCC.
As the US backs down from any commitment to cap and trade and sets very modest climate change goals for the next decade (Canada will follows suit so as to create a level playing field for North America), the worlds ambitions for emissions cuts are reduced to a modest and appropriate level. The heat appears to have gone out of the climate change agenda, at least for now. This is seen by some as a victory for the sceptics, but it is in fact a victory for science.
