New report counters IPCC AR4

The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (N-IPCC - not to be confused with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC) will be published this week by the Heartland Institute.

It promises to be the most complete, up-to-date, authoritative summary of peer-reviewed critical positions with respect to "Anthropogenic Global Warming".

The report is titled Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate and is edited by S. Fred Singer. From the report's Forward:

In his speech at the United Nations’ climate conference on September 24, 2007, Dr. Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, said it would most help the debate on climate change if the current monopoly and one-sidedness of the scientific debate over climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were eliminated. He reiterated his proposal that the UN organize a parallel panel and publish two competing reports.

The present report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) does exactly that. It is an independent examination of the evidence available in the published, peer-reviewed literature – examined without bias and selectivity. It includes many research papers ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific results that became available after the IPCC deadline of May 2006.

The report is highly critical of the UN's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released last year. From the N-IPCC's Summary for Policymakers (SPM):

The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group-1 (Science) (IPCC-AR4 2007), released in 2007, is a major research effort by a group of dedicated specialists in many topics related to climate change. It forms a valuable compendium of the current state of the science, enhanced by having an index, which had been lacking in previous IPCC reports. AR4 also permits access to the numerous critical comments submitted by expert reviewers, another first for the IPCC.

While AR4 is an impressive document, it is far from being a reliable reference work on some of the most important aspects of climate change science and policy. It is marred by errors and misstatements, ignores scientific data that were available but were inconsistent with the authors’ pre-conceived conclusions, and has already been contradicted in important parts by research published since May 2006, the IPCC’s cut-off date.

In general, the IPCC fails to consider important scientific issues, several of which would upset its major conclusion – that “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations” (emphasis in the original).

The IPCC does not apply generally accepted methodologies to determine what fraction of current warming is natural, or how much is caused by the rise in greenhouse (GH) gases. A comparison of ‘fingerprints’ from best available observations with the results of state-of-the-art GH models leads to the conclusion that the (human-caused) GH contribution is minor. This fingerprint evidence, though available, was ignored by the IPCC.

The following is taken from the report's Conclusions:

The extent of the modern warming – the subject of the first question – appears to be less than is claimed by the IPCC and in the popular media. We have documented shortcomings of surface data, affected by urban heat islands and by the poor distribution of land-based observing stations.

(...)

This report shows conclusively that the human greenhouse gas contribution to current warming is insignificant. Our argument is based on the well established and generally agreed-to ‘fingerprint’ method. Using data published by the IPCC and further elaborated in the U.S.-sponsored CCSP report, we have shown that observed temperature trend patterns disagree sharply with those calculated from greenhouse models.

And finally, this statement on Policy Implications:

Our findings, if sustained, point to natural causes and a moderate warming trend with beneficial effects for humanity and wildlife. This has obvious policy implications: Schemes proposed for controlling CO2 emissions, including the Kyoto Protocol, proposals in the U.S. for federal and state actions, and proposals for a successor international treaty to Kyoto, are unnecessary, would be ineffective if implemented, and would waste resources that can better be applied to genuine societal problems [Singer, Revelle and Starr 1991].

Even if a substantial part of global warming were due to greenhouse gases – and it is not – any control efforts currently contemplated would give only feeble results. For example, the Kyoto Protocol – even if punctiliously observed by all participating nations – would decrease calculated future temperatures by only 0.02 degrees C by 2050, an undetectable amount.

In conclusion, this NIPCC report falsifies the principal IPCC conclusion that the reported warming (since 1979) is very likely caused by the human emission of greenhouse gases. In other words, increasing carbon dioxide is not responsible for current warming. Policies adopted and called for in the name of ‘fighting global warming’ are unnecessary.

It is regrettable that the public debate over climate change, fueled by the errors and exaggerations contained in the reports of the IPCC, has strayed so far from scientific truth. It is an embarrassment to science that hype has replaced reason in the global debate over so important an issue.

Contributors to the N-IPCC report are: Warren Anderson United States, Dennis Avery United States, Franco Battaglia Italy, Robert Carter Australia, Richard Courtney United Kingdom, Joseph d’Aleo United States, Fred Goldberg Sweden, Vincent Gray New Zealand, Kenneth Haapala United States, Klaus Heiss Austria, Craig Idso United States, Zbigniew Jaworowski Poland, Olavi Karner Estonia, Madhav Khandekar Canada, William Kininmonth Australia, Hans Labohm Netherlands, Christopher Monckton United Kingdom, Lubos Motl Czech Republic, Tom Segalstad Norway, S. Fred Singer United States, Dick Thoenes Netherlands, Anton Uriarte Spain, Gerd Weber Germany.

Related: Climate change not due to greenhouse gases, NYT: Global Warming Skeptics Convene in New York, The Earth Times: Research of Hundreds More Scientists Shows the Natural 1,500-Year Climate Cycle, Fox News: Global Warming: Is it really a crisis?