From Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Foundation

The IPCC's Great Dilemma

 

Row Over IPCC Report As Nations ‘Try To Hide Global Warming Pause’

 

The IPCC’s dilemma is this. How can it expect the public to believe that recent warming is mostly manmade when the models on which it has based this claim have been shown to be fatally flawed? --Andrew Montford, The Spectator, 23 September 2013

Scientists working on a landmark UN report on climate change to be published this week are at loggerheads over their explanation for why the earth’s surface temperature has stopped rising as rapidly as they previously predicted. The behind-the-scenes wrangling is likely to cast a shadow over the publication on Friday of the 2,000-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). --Robert Mendick, The Sunday Telegraph, 22 September 2013

For the first time, an assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be widely judged more for what it says about the IPCC than for what it says about the climate. It is not the climate that needs fixing but the climate models. --Rupert Darwall, National Review Online, 22 September 2013

Now that the global warming ‘pause’ has made the transition from sceptical to mainstream the exclusion of it from previous debates because of the ‘false balance’ argument can be seen for what it was. It actually kept the truth from the audience. It was censorship. It turned out to be the right idea, and journalism – the testing of viewpoints in the cauldron of debate – misled the audience. The handling of the ‘pause’ in global surface temperature has been a failure for science communication and science journalism. --David Whitehouse, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 23 September 2013

More than ever, scientists say they’re convinced the Earth’s climate is warming. Yet lawmakers are struggling to do anything about it because the pace of change has unexpectedly slowed. The data has caused a United Nations panel to lower predictions of the pace of global temperature increases by 2100, according to draft documents obtained by Bloomberg ahead of publication due on Sept. 27. The findings muddy the picture about how much carbon dioxide output is affecting the climate, giving ammunition to those who doubt the issue needs urgent action. Skeptics have succeeded in “confusing the public,” said Michael Jacobs, who advised the U.K. government on climate policy until 2010. --Alex Morales, Bloomberg, 23 September 2013

It's a climate puzzle that has vexed scientists for more than a decade. Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth's average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates. Now, as scientists with the IPCC gather in Sweden, they are finding themselves pressured to explain this glaring discrepancy. "The stakes have been raised by various people, especially the skeptics." --Monte Morin, Los Angeles Times, 23 September 2013