Why do scientists disagree about climate change?

There is a lot more in this paper, and others might have picked on other aspects. But these will do for me. Each of them is supported carefully with references. I agree with nearly all of what I have set out above. The point is that no one is arguing across the table. Take Arctic freezing/melting. While that is a matter where we need to look at the data we have precious little that is of much consequence. Much attention is paid by the warmists to the satellite period (1979 to the present), whereas the sceptics point to a hard-to-deny warm period in the 1920s based on reports from governments and newspapers, not on satellite data - how could there be any from that time? We have little data that are comparable, let alone global, for more than fifty years relating to temperature or precipitation. What do the data tell us? I shrug my shoulders. The last fifty years? What about the last five hundred? The last ten thousand?

So much of the warmist argument depends on models, and GCMs have not been shown to be accurate. Since forecasts began to be made thirty or so years ago, it is not hard to track the forecast against what actually happened. The NIPCC objections to the use of models seems to me to be sound, and they have led to many attempts by warmists to show that if you look hard enough, the forecasts have been accurate. I shake my head. I don't think so. Again, that is one of those things where a serious debate, using the arguments and data from both sides, is essential. It hasn't happened.

As I argued in my last essay, it hasn't happened because the warmists have won the political argument. They have convinced governments and the media that they're right. That began to happen a long time ago, and we are trapped in the outcome. In areas such as energy we are doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. True, governments are talking about what has to be done by 2050, not by 2020, and what will happen by 2050 will be determined much more by energy prices and blackouts than by plans set out now.

But how I wish for a leader prepared to say that we need a fresh look at some of these issues. The NIPCC papers - there are a number of them, all worth your attention - suggest the basis for a serious discussion. And my thanks to and admiration for the late Emeritus Professor Bob Carter, who directed me to the IPCC third assessment report as the first thing to read if I were to come to terms with the issue of climate change. That was nearly twenty years ago.