A quite extraordinarily scathing attack on the IPCC has just been published by four leading Australian scientists.
The Australian Federal Parliament's Standing Committee on Science and Innovation recently completed a report entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, on the subject of "Geosequestration of Carbon Dioxide". However, four members of that committee have issued a "Dissenting Report" which devastates the Committee's major premise — that mankind causes global warming.
The dissenting MPs are former CSIRO scientist Dr. Dennis Jensen, Hon Jackie Kelly, Hon Danna Vale and Mr. David Tollner. Their report was compiled with the assistance of a number of leading scientists, including climate scientist Dr. John Christy, former lead author of the IPCC.
They state at the very outset that,
"We disagree with the report's unequivocal support for the hypothesis that global warming is caused by man—so-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). We are concerned that the Committee's report strays well outside its terms of reference.'
Their objections are as follows;
Conclusion
Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has always been with us, and always will be. Whether human activities are disturbing the climate in dangerous ways has yet to be proven. It is for this reason that we strongly disagree with the absolute statements and position taken in this review regarding AGW. We have taken no evidence regarding the science of AGW, yet a strong position has been taken regarding this.
i) The science related to anthropogenic global warming is not, despite the assurances of some, settled in the scientific community. In particular, Yuri Israel, Vice Chairman of the IPCC, has stated ‘There is no proven link between human activity and global warming’.
ii) The critical area of the fallibility and shortcomings of computer modelling is not mentioned anywhere. iii) There is no detectable warming in the lower troposphere, the place where the enhanced greenhouse effect is claimed to be evident. iv) The observed surface warming that is highlighted by the IPCC must therefore have a different cause, which is probably the biasing of the records by urban heat effects. v) The full IPCC report ...represents a consensus of government representatives rather than of scientists. vi) There are also other scientific factors that contribute to climate that are not even considered by the IPCC, such as the role of cosmic ray activity in cloud formation. vii) Warming has also been observed on Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Pluto, Neptune and others. It is the natural property of planets with fluid envelopes to have variability in climate. Thus, at any given time, we may expect about half the planets to be warming. This has nothing to do with human activities. viii) Science is a discipline which relies on testing hypotheses and exposing flaws, not on consensus, in order to further scientific understanding. Scientific fact is not a democracy. The laws of physics are not subject to the democratic vote of a group of scientists; they cannot be repealed by a popular vote. ix) The report on geosequestration also gives a false impression of the importance of carbon dioxide on the greenhouse effect. All of the gases mentioned in section 2.5 are minor contributors to greenhouse. Between 75%-95% of the greenhouse effect is the result of water vapour and cloud. The understanding of the influence of the latter is low, by the IPCC’s own admission. x) Doubling CO2 will only increase the natural greenhouse effect less than 2%. This would produce warming of the order of 1 degree Celsius in the absence of negative feedbacks which are the norm in sustainable physical systems. xi) The IPCC does not explain how that despite the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increasing fairly rapidly following the Second World War, the period between 1940 and 1975 was associated with a reduction in global surface temperatures. xii) Or why in the nine years since 1998, global temperatures have been relatively stable despite rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. xiii) IPCC states that snow cover and ice extent have decreased. [But] it is generally accepted that the main Antarctic ice cap is, in fact, both cooling and increasing its ice mass. xiv) Sea levels all over the globe have been rising for centuries; this is not due to anthropogenic global warming, but merely a recovery from the last ice age. A recent analysis has found that no statistically significant ocean warming has occurred over the late 20th century. xv) It is a pity that the report uses the Stern Review as a basis for the scientific understanding of anthropogenic global warming. Not only has this report been thoroughly debunked in a scientific and economic sense, but Stern acknowledges that he had zero understanding of the issue less than one year before the Stern Review. xvi) Also it is worth noting that the Stern Review was commissioned because UK Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown did not like the findings of the House of Lords Report into climate change. xvii) It is a matter of public record that some scientists have withdrawn from the IPCC process because of dissatisfaction with its probity and methods. xviii) Most of the public statements that promote the dangerous human warming scare are made from a position of ignorance—by political leaders, press commentators and celebrities who share the characteristics of lack of scientific training and lack of an ability to differentiate between sound science and computer-based scaremongering.
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