AN ANALYSIS OF SOME KEY QUESTIONS

2007

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The Panel is recognized today as a pioneer in providing policy-relevant science to global policy: it has conducted the most comprehensive orchestration of scientific knowledge to date and has managed to include experts from around the world in assessment activities. In doing so it has spoken on behalf of global science with one voice, thereby acquiring a reputation as the epistemic authority in knowledge matters relevant for climate policy. It was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with former US Vice President Al Gore. The previous IPCC assessment report in 2007 had already signaled that scientific controversies over the existence of global warming have effectively been settled and that human influences on the climate system are real and significant. The IPCC has thus accomplished a core part of its original mission, namely to provide sound scientific evidence about the causes of human-induced global climate change. Nevertheless, many of the characteristics and consequences of future climate change at sub-global scales, as well as their interactions with other drivers of change in the world, are still poorly understood. Because much has changed since the establishment of the IPCC in the late 1980s, discussions about the need for, and design of, future assessments beyond 2014 are back on the agenda of the IPCC plenary sessions (Stocker 2013). In the following we discuss the responsiveness and organizational reflexivity of the IPCC. We briefly illustrate how the IPCC has responded to particular challenges, such as demands for political relevance, the integration and representation of diverse and distributed knowledge and calls for public accountability and participation. We thus propose more substantial changes to constructively address the realities of climate change and to meet the changing geopolitical and public conditions of its debate. We make suggestions for more substantial changes to ensure that future assessments of climate change knowledge are more representative, reflexive and accountable. How Knowledge is Never Neutral For Policy The 'global average temperature' has long been the organizing device for the IPCC around which both scientific knowledge has been assessed and different policy options evaluated. Framing climate change in this way, as a universal risk that can only be reduced through collective action, creates the need for consensus-based knowledge production and decision support. It has been difficult, if not impossible, for the IPCC to break away from the early framing of climate change around global average temperature as the pre-eminent indicator of risk. The IPCC thereby reduced the diversity of political drivers of climate change and the complex breadth of values underlying climate policy to a singular index of change and policy ambition: limiting global warming to no more than 2°C above nineteenth century temperature with its respective carbon budget. Climate Change and the Assessment of Expert Knowledge: Does the IPCC Model Need Updating?

2011

The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives policies, including doing nothing.

Weather, 2002

Quaestiones Geographicae, 2013

The threat of dangerous climate change from anthropogenic global warming has decreased. Global temperature rose from 1975 to 1998, but since then has levelled off. Sea level is now rising at about 1.5mm per year based on tide gauges, and satellite data suggests it may even be falling. Coral islands once allegedly threatened by drowning have actually increased in area. Ice caps cannot possibly slide into the sea (the alarmist model) because they occupy kilometres-deep basins extending below sea level. Deep ice cores show a succession of annual layers of snow accumulation back to 760,000 years and in all that time never melted, despite times when the temperature was higher than it is today. Sea ice shows no change in 30 years in the Arctic. Emphasis on the greenhouse effect stresses radiation and usually leads to neglect of important factors like convection. Water is the main greenhouse gas. The CO 2 in the ocean and the atmosphere are in equilibrium: if we could remove CO 2 from the atmosphere the ocean would give out more to restore the balance. Increasing CO 2 might make the ocean less alkaline but never acid. The sun is now seen as the major control of climate, but not through greenhouse gases. There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate. Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions but what politicians get are projections based on computer models. The UN's main adviser, the IPCC, uses adjusted data for the input, their models and codes remain secret, and they do not accept responsibility for their projections.

2001

Climatic Change, 2000

This essay discusses several issues that have been overlooked in the U.S. National and IPCC assessments. These include the effect on the climate system of anthropogenic land-use change, and the biological influence of enhanced concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Evidence is presented to demonstrate the important role of these human disturbances to the earth’s climate. Several hypotheses are proposed to test which are based on our research results. These include whether human-caused landscape change has an effect at all time scales on local, regional, and global climate that is at least as important as currently expected to be caused by the radiative effect of the anthropogenic doubling of the effective greenhouse gas concentrations. In addition, since landscape (and other atmosphere-surface) interactions involve complex, nonlinear feedbacks, accurate prediction of climate variables beyond seasonal time scales may not be possible. As an alternate paradigm, a vulnerability a...

2007

2004

This edition of Our Changing Planet includes a review of the Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) from 2003 and outlines how the CCSP is moving forward to implement the Strategic Plan during FY 2004 and FY 2005. As a part of this implementation, the report announces the production of 21 scientific syntheses and assessments on a range of topics to support informed discussion of climate variability and associated issues by decision makers and the public.