IPCC and the Politics of Global Warming

The findings of the 1996 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that man has made significant contribution to global warming. Ironically, these were not the original findings of the scientists who contributed to the report. Unfortunately, politics has so far gotten the best of the global warming debate.

Fairly recently, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson was a guest host for the Bob Lonsberry show on KNRS AM 570. He spent a significant portion of the show discussing global warming and the unassailable 'facts' of the findings of the Intergorvernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cover me, I'm about to assail them!

There are some things that I agree with Mayor Anderson about, and there are some things I don't. The mayor seems to be a reasonable guy, so I hope at some point he can admit to the politicized 'findings' of the IPCC.

The final report of the IPCC in 1996 stated that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." The problem is, that statement is at best ambiguous and does not express the sentiment of the scientists who participated in the project.

Dr. Frederick Seitz, who had been very unjustly caricatured in the American press, said of the IPCC process

I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.

Climate scientist, S. Fred Singer, co-author of the book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, points out that the statement that there was a "human fingerprint" with regard to global warming

was inserted in the executive summary of the IPCC's 1996 report for political, not scientific, reasons. Then the "science volume" was edited to take out five different statements--all of which had been approved by the panel's scientific consultants--specifically saying no such "human fingerprint" had been found.

The author of the IPCC science chapter, a U.S. government employee, publicly admitted making the scientifically indefensible "back room" changes. He was under pressure from top U.S. government officials to do so. (page 10)

This is me just speculating here, but...Al Gore was vice president of the United States in 1996.

There is a great deal to the warming of the globe that can be answered by science. Global warming is a fact. But so is global cooling. It all happens on a cyclical basis, and it can be attributed to natural variations in solar activity, and it can be measured in naturally occurring phenomena, as Unstoppable Global Warming points out with clarity but in great detail.

What is not a fact (although mankind should do everything it can to be stewards of its environment) is that man is a significant cause of global warming.

Science is a fascinating study. But not when it gets overtaken and stifled by politics.