UN climate agencies primarily only lobbyists

Most people probably believe that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are honest UN agencies with great integrity.

I see them as something very different.  The IPCC is primarily a lobbyist and the UNFCCC exaggerates the IPCC’s work and pressures governments into action.

Let me explain.

The IPCC describes its role as … “to assess … information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

It therefore has a single focus, man-made climate change, rather than a broader look at all plausible reasons why the climate might change. No discernible risk would mean no need for an IPOCC.

It was established following higher temperatures in the 1980s, probably due to the sudden appearance of some El Nino events after a long period with very few. 

It was also established on the back of output from climate models predicting dire things.  Those models were woefully primitive.  Carbon dioxide was one of few things the modellers thought they knew, so higher temperatures were blamed on that, never mind that carbon dioxide levels had been monitored since late 1958 and no warming occurred until the late 1970s.

Like all lobbyist organizations the IPCC falsely claims or implies that the issue is important and that its reports tell the truth.  In fact it exaggerates, only shows data that supports its claims, twists its facts, doesn’t check the data and science in its sources, some of which are very dubious, and ignores the potential benefits of what it rails against.

The latest IPCC report says that the 2011-2020 average global temperature was just 1.1 °C above the 1850-1900 average global temperature, which if we take the middle of each period is over 140 years.   The temperature data has been adjusted so much that even this warming might be an exaggeration, but no matter, the IPCC wants us to believe this shows a serious threat.

Its 2001 report showed the “hockey stick” temperature graph eight times but this was exposed as false just a few years later.  In similar fashion its 1994 report cited an unpublished paper that claimed evidence of manmade warming had been identified but the paper was roundly criticised when it was eventually published.

IPCC reports ignore papers that argue about natural forces causing climate change, which implies that the human influence is small.  This is surely “information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change” but it’s ignored.

The latest IPCC report ignored eight papers that said there was no increasing trend in the occurrence of US hurricanes but cited the only paper that said there was.

When asked in the review of the 2013 report whether IPCC authors checked the temperature data that the reports and the modelling cited in the reports relied upon, the answer was “no”.

And on modelling, no model used by IPCC reports has ever been validated (i.e. thoroughly tested and continually found to be correct).  The 2013 report even showed that 97% of climate model runs (as in run a computer program) predicted greater warming over the previous 15 years than data from temperature observations indicated. Despite this IPCC reports cite the output of models and average that output as if to imply that the results are credible.

We hear claims that the IPCC only relies on peer-reviewed papers.  Many people will testify that that’s no guarantee of credibility.  The IPCC in fact also cites books, reports by government and other agencies, and as the false claims about melting Himalayan glaciers showed, even articles in magazines.

The reports also make fundamental mistakes with the scientific arguments.  They show the “global Warming Potential” for each greenhouse gas, leading to comments like methane causing greater warming than carbon dioxide, but they calculate this on gases in isolation.  The atmosphere is a mix of gases and the “greenhouse” action of some overlaps with what other gases would do.  If one gas will absorb 90% of the energy at a certain wavelength, then no matter how active another gas is or how much of it there is, there’s only 10% more energy at that wavelength that can be absorbed.  Treating gases in isolation doesn’t recognise this.

Incidentally greenhouse gases do not trap heat in any normal meaning of the word “trap”.  They absorb the energy pass it around, and if it gets to a gas molecule that can radiate it and has time to do so, it will be emitted (i.e. radiated).

Don’t expect the IPCC reports to cite the many benefits of mild warming, such as a large decrease in deaths from extreme temperatures or an increase in the area of land available for agriculture, or the additional carbon dioxide increasing the growth of vegetation.  These can’t be stated or the power of the IPCC’s narrative will be lost.

To cap it all off, IPCC reports claim to have multiple lines of evidence but most are only evidence of warming that are speculatively linked to human activity and the others lacking confirmation and credibility.

All up it’s not a pretty picture.  It’s just typical unethical lobbying.

And after IPCC reports are published the UNFCCC exaggerates the claims with the help of UN Secretary Generals and pressure gullible governments into acceding to demands like the Paris Climate Agreement and the push for Net Zero.

Incidentally both are based on the predictions of the unvalidated climate models mentioned earlier, the kind of predictions that the IPCC has been reluctant to publish ever since they failed spectacularly.

On top of that, the Paris Climate Agreement refers to warming above the pre-industrial global average temperature, which is unknown with an accuracy because only three weather stations operated in 1850, the year the Industrial Revolution began.  All three weather stations were in Europe, which was in the Little Ice Age at the time.

Both the IPCC and UNFCCC have access to a powerful way to spread their false claims – the might of the United Nations media machine, which churns out media releases in many languages.  Is it any wonder that the world’s media seem to support the beliefs of these UN agencies and reject any scepticism?

As your energy costs rise and you are pushed more and more towards electric vehicles just remember that this is all due to UN-endorsed lobbying rather than good science.