Credentialed, experienced critics declare that the UN’s climate panel is politicized – and that many of its conclusions are mistaken.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is at an important inflection point. Next year Rajendra Pachauri, its appalling chairman, will finally exit the stage and a replacement will be selected.
In a sane world, it would be obvious to everyone that this organization is rotten to the core. Many of its worst habits predate the current chairman, whose tenure began in 2002. The IPCC claims to be scientific, but is actually riddled with activism and politics (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
In other words, the appearance of scientific certainty is being used by the IPCC to sell philosophical and political ideas. That. Is. Wrong.
Anyone who cares about scientific integrity should be horrified by this UN-created monster. Instead, foolish people insist that to be critical of the IPCC is to be anti-science.
Today an important hearing is taking place in Washington, D.C. The US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is examining the IPCC process. It is receiving written and oral testimony from four prominent IPCC experts, each of whom has had played some role in the IPCC process:
- economist Richard Tol [written submission]
- astrophysicist Michael Oppenheimer [written submission]
- biologist Daniel Botkin [verbal testimony]
- meteorologist Roger Pielke Sr. [written submission]
There are plenty of disturbing and thought-provoking comments to be found in this material. Tol – who says he favours “reform of the IPCC rather than its abolition” – nevertheless observes that the IPCC often attracts scientists with political motivations rather than open-minded curiosity.
He points out that people are rarely nominated to work on IPCC reports by “purely scientific” bodies. Instead, environment agencies run by bureaucrats with a vested interest in expanding their own budgets and prestige have a great deal of influence over who writes IPCC reports. The result, in Tol’s view, is an “alarmist bias” amongst IPCC personnel.