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The role of the IPCC is to assess climate change not advocate Kyoto

By Ian Castles - posted Monday, 19 April 2004


Hansen et al (2002) used the GISS model to explore the effect on global temperature of various natural and anthropogenic forcings. They conclude that the observed global temperature change during the last 50 years is primarily the result of these forcings. They also note that the ocean temperatures lag behind these forcings, such that additional global warming of about 0.5 degrees C is already "in the pipeline". (p. 26)

Most readers would infer from this that Dr Hansen and his colleagues were acutely concerned about the dire prospects for the planet arising from the prospective warming in the present century and a further warming which would still be "in the pipeline" in 2100. But nothing could be further from the truth. Under Hansen's alternative scenario, the maximum projected global warming above 2000 levels would be only about 1 degree C. This increase, which is projected to occur between 2125 and 2150, is far below that projected in any of the IPCC scenarios.

The study of past and prospective climate forcings that was cited in the AGO Guide had been foreshadowed in a companion paper by Hansen in the leading journal Climatic Change (52: 435-440, 2002) under the significant title "A Brighter Future". In the latter paper, Hansen explicitly rejected the claim that the actions needed to avoid a "gloom and doom scenario" were "economically wrenching", and argued that, on the contrary, they "made sense independent of global warming".

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A striking chart in "A Brighter Future" shows that the greenhouse gas climate forcing that Hansen and his colleagues now project for 2050 under their "alternative scenario" is no greater than the forcing that had been projected for 2010 under a GISS scenario (styled "business as usual" or "fast growth") that had been published at about the time of Hansen's influential appearance before a US Senate Committee on 23 June 1988. Hansen's evidence received extensive media coverage and contributed to the wave of concern about global warming that led to the establishment of the IPCC later that year.

Hansen is critical of "the IPCC predilection for exaggerated growth rates of population, energy intensity and pollution", and of its "failure to emphasise data". He gives a number of reasons for believing that the IPCC scenarios are "unduly pessimistic", and questions whether those scenarios are necessary or even plausible. He argues that "global warming can be slowed, and stopped, with practical actions that yield a cleaner healthier atmosphere", and argues that the focus of international action, at least in the short run, should be directed towards the reduction of air pollution through concerted efforts to develop and share clean technologies.

Hansen contends that this approach would unite the interests of developed and developing countries, and that the benefits (not least in the saving of human lives) would accrue immediately rather than in 100 years.

In a hearing before a US Senate Committee in May 2001, Hansen was asked whether he felt that his results had been reviewed and properly considered as part of the IPCC process He responded as follows:

No. IPCC's size and review procedures make it inherently lethargic, so responding to a mid-2000 paper is difficult. However, the real problem is probably the close binding between the IPCC and the Kyoto Protocol discussions. Kyoto excludes consideration of air pollution (such as tropospheric ozone and black carbon), for example, so IPCC basically ignores these topics and downgrades them. The only IPCC "review" of our paper was by the IPCC leaders ... who saw our paper as potentially harmful to Kyoto discussions ... When I had difficulty publishing a response in Nature, I wrote an open letter that is available at http://naturalscience.com/ns/letters/ns_let25.html.

My experience with the IPCC has been regrettably similar. I met the Panel's newly-elected Chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, during his first official visit to Australia in July 2002. At his invitation, I wrote to him to outline criticisms I had made of the economic work of the IPCC, especially its emissions scenarios. He assured me that my concerns were being taken seriously, and that my letters had been made available to all members of the IPCC Bureau. In October 2002, Professor David Henderson, a former Head of the Economics and Statistics Department of the OECD, wrote to Dr. Pachauri to support my criticisms.

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At the IPCC's invitation, Henderson and I gave presentations to an IPCC Expert Meeting in Amsterdam in January 2003. Here and subsequently, we argued that the economic aspects of the Panel's work needed to be placed on a professionally sounder basis.

So far as I know, none of the papers presented at the expert meeting has been published by the IPCC. Our criticisms have been published in the journal Energy & Environment, and have been rejected in intemperate articles in the same journal by teams of authors involved in the work on emissions scenarios for the IPCC. In December 2003 the IPCC itself issued a special press release dismissing our arguments. It described Henderson and me as "so-called 'two independent commentators'" and as originators of "some disinformation [that] has been spread questioning the scenarios".

Meanwhile the Panel has published a 340-page volume entitled Integrating Sustainable Development and Climate Change in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (pdf, 162Kb), being the proceedings of an Expert Meeting held in Sri Lanka in March 2003. The volume purports "to communicate the latest results on the topic to the lead authors of the IPCC fourth assessment report (AR4) and the general scientific community". Although five of the six editors are members of the IPCC Bureau, the "latest results" include a repetition of several of the "material errors" to which I had drawn attention in my letters to Dr Pachauri in August 2002, which had been sent to all members of the Bureau at his direction. Most of the papers fall lamentably short of the minimum standards that could reasonably be expected in the publications of a scientific body.

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About the Author

Ian Castles is a Visiting Fellow at the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. He is a former Head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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