Monday, February 8, 2010

More Bogus Climate Change "science"

The U.N.'s controversial climate report is coming under fire -- again -- this time by one of its own scientists, who admits he can't find any evidence to support a warning about a climate-caused North African food shortage. The statement comes from a key 2007 report to the U.N., and asserts that by 2020 yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% in some African countries thanks to climate change.

This revelation follows a continuing trend of bogus claims, now being disputed, by this 2007 report. Earlier the IPCC retracted a claim, that was widely hyped, that the Himalayan glaciers could all melt by 2035. It turns out the glacier claim had no scientific basis, but was included in the IPCC climate change publication. And Dutch environment ministry spokesman Trimo discredits the U.N.'s climate change panel’s assertion that more than half of the Netherlands is below seal level. Dutch authorities explain that, in fact, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, not 55% as was claimed in the IPCC report. And the 26% is holding steady, not increasing, as climate models suggest.

The newest discredited claim comes from the IPCC's report on climate change, and is also repeated in its "Synthesis Report." That report is the IPCC's most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers.

The report states, "In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020." In a speech last July, Ban said: "Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years."

Speaking this weekend, Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC's climate impacts team, said: "I was not an author on the 'Synthesis Report,' but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines."

This sort of claim should be based on hard evidence, said Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the U.K.'s department for environment food and rural affairs, who chaired the IPCC from 1997 to 2002. "Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature... I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report," he said. Wow.

The pattern is becoming all too clear. The U.N. IPCC is based not on science, but politics, it would appear. Authors are able to slip in single, undocumented sentences, not reviewed by other authors, or paragraphs are included making wild claims, but without scientific documentation. Even, completely unscientific data is included, such as the Himalayan glacier melting claim, which came from an outdoor enthusiast, that was quoted in a magazine–then it ends up in the IPCC report as scientific research. This is pretty bad.

It’s time for a complete review, and overhaul, of the U.N. procedures. Their credibility is shot, gone, down the toilet. Their science is not science at all, but political manipulation at its worse. And we should not forget that the entire thrust of the “global warming” hoax came from a single sentence slipped into the first IPCC report. I quote from a news report here, “In 1996 the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) of the United Nations, published it’s now famous report. The report was “approved” on November 30, 1995. But the only significant line in the 586 page report, a last minute change, made after midnight, with most of the delegates gone from the room, and without the knowledge of most of those who contributed to the report, stated “the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.”

The only problem? There was no evidence in their entire 586 page report to support that claim, and none of the other authors to that 586 page document had the opportunity to review the statement and either confirm or dispute the assertion. So a phony beginning by the U.N. leads to a string of bogus scientific claims, lacking peer review, that leads to governments around the planet making political decisions based on nonsense. And most governmental legislation is so draconian that, if implemented, would radically change life on the planet, from rich nations and poor nations alike.

It’s time for political leaders to admit they’ve been duped, and start basing their decisions on real science, common sense and truth.

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