John McLean PhD
Most people probably believe that the IPCC and UNFCCC are honest UN agencies with great integrity. In effect, the IPCC as a lobbying co-ordinator and publiciser, and the UNFCCC as taking the IPCC’s lobbying and trying to pressure governments into political decisions, with both agencies using the might of the UN’s media machine to further their aims.
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.”
The outcome of this is that we have a lobbyist organisation with a single focus, in this case man-made climate change rather than the larger picture of why the climate might be changing.
Lobbying organisations often make distorted or deceptive claims, and fail to mention other important information. The IPCC is no exception; its reports have the characteristics of dishonest lobbying:
- Claiming the issue is very important
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. That’s less than 0.8 °C/century, which is no threat whatsoever (and is arguable exaggerated). The evidence that there is a threat is weak to non-existent.
- Falsely claiming to have thoroughly assessed the relevant literature
There’s no evidence that IPCC reports assess the relevant literature in any way other than whether it supports the IPCC’s basic premise of human-induced climate change. We see this in, to give just two examples, the “hockey stick” temperature graph, cited eight times in the IPCC’s 2001 report but proven false by MacIntyre and McKittrick a few years later, and in its second report (1995) citing an unpublished paper, written mainly by authors of the IPCC’s report, that was widely criticised when it was finally published.
- Ignoring material that undermines the lobbyists’ claims …
The IPCC ignores papers that find that natural forces play a major part in climate change and, by implication, that the human influence is small. These are important findings regards the risks associated with human-induced climate because they indicate that the risk is negligible.[1]
- … and cherry-picking material that supports them
For example, the IPCC’s sixth report (AR6, 2021) cited a single paper that implied that there had been an increasing trend in US hurricanes and ignored eight other papers that found there was no increase.[2]
- Failing to verify data fundamental to the lobbying
The IPCC admitted this in a response to my comments when I reviewed the IPCC’s 2013 report. My 3017 PhD thesis and my 2018 audit of the HadCRUT4 temperature dataset revealed more than 70 problems. This implies that earlier, highly influential, IPCC reports were based on false temperature data.
- Ignoring the potential benefits of what the lobbyists are against
The IPCC reports contain very little discussion of the multiple benefits of warming. These include reducing the number of fatalities from extreme cold, increasing the area of land suitable for agriculture and boosting the growth of vegetation.
- Using unproven methods to support one’s claims
The IPCC cites many studies that used climate models to do one or more of the following
- Estimate past temperatures
- Estimate the human influence on temperatures
- Predict future temperatures (ceased in the fifth IPCC report after repeated failures)
No climate models have been formally validated (i.e., proven correct in a range of situations) and the record of models is poor. Worse, most climate models used in the IPCC’s 2013 report exaggerated the warming during 1998-2012[3], and the latest generation of climate models, the CMIP6 set, produce a wider range of output than the earlier CMIP5 models.[4]
- Presenting false or distorted science
IPCC reports habitually present false or distorted science. The concept of Global Warming Potential (GWP) is false both because it considers each gas in isolation rather than mixed with others as they are in the atmosphere. Sometimes in combination those gases already absorb 100% of the infrared radiation at a given wavelength, so adding more of those gases can’t absorb more.
The IPCC reports also false claim that greenhouse gases trap energy but all they do is slow the the energy’s escape into space and the energy budget diagrams in each IPCC report misleadingly over-simplify what happens in the atmosphere and have little value.
- Making false claims about the accuracy and applicability of certain data
IPCC reports imply that the global average pre-industrial temperature in known to fractions of a degree but only four weather stations, all in Europe, recorded the temperature before the start of the Industrial Revolution. In a similar fashion, the reports have implied that rings from just a few trees are accurate guides to the northern hemisphere average temperature.
- Making false claims about the strength of one’s “evidence”
Many IPCC reports claim to have multiple lines of evidence for man-made warming but those lines of evidence are a mixture of the facile (e.g., that warming has occurred), claims based on the output of climate models, instances of correlations that by themselves don’t prove cause or are just speculation.
- Implying that the material it cites is the truth
The IPCC reports cite findings made in reports, books and published papers (sometimes single papers) as if they were proven truths. A remarkable number of scientific papers make findings that cannot be replicated and some, probably only a small proportion, are withdrawn/retracted.[5]
After the main text of the reports have been drafted and refined via the review process, the IPCC presents government representatives with a draft Summary for Policymakers (SPM), written by selected authors of chapters of the main text. These representatives, some of which might know little about the subject, negotiate the wording of the SPM within the framework presented to it, and eventually formally approval the document[6]. Governments would find it difficult to reject IPCC claims after their representatives have been coerced into approving the document.
About this time the UNFCCC exaggerates the IPCC’s claims even further by talking about “the threat of climate change”, urgent action being required and there being a “climate emergency”. None of this is true but the UNFCCC pressure governments into acceding to demands for international agreements such as the Paris Climate Agreement and Net Zero.
Lobbying is easy when the opposition is greatly handicapped. Both the IPCC and UNFCCC use the huge United Nations media machine to spread their claims around the world in a multitude of languages. Papers that present counter-arguments and counter-claims to the IPCC’s reports don’t have that level of reach and don’t have a similar ability to plant stories in the local media. These alternative views struggle for exposure and are probably rarely seen by governments or the public.
Governments have been pressured into funding climate research that supports IPCC beliefs and supporting, via subsidies to certain bodies, the UNFCCC’s baseless push towards renewable energy and Net Zero.
The IPCC probably learnt to lobby from one of its co-sponsor UN agencies, the UNEP. From 1975 to 1992, across a period that saw several contentious environmental issues, the UNEP was headed by microbiologist Mustafa Tolba. He is on record as saying that the success of one of the UNEP’s lobbying exercises could be attributed to
- A core group of countries that wanted the ban
- Strong personalities – scientists and others – endorsing the claims and ban
- Mobilising public opinion, and that opinion pressuring governments into action
(The second and third points are particularly relevant to IPCC and UNFCCC lobbying.)
But what happened with the contentious issues that the UNEP lobbied hard for during Tolba’s reign?
- Its claim in the 1970s that acid rain was killing trees was proven false everywhere except for a small and very heavily polluted region of eastern Europe.
- Its lobbying to discourage the use of DDT, as a prelude to an outright ban, probably caused about 20 million people to die from malaria[7]. Only a last-minute effort by over 300 doctors, who pointed out that DDT was a cheap and effective countermeasure against malaria, prevented that ban being put in place.
- Its claim, based on a single scientific paper, that CFCs were damaging the ozone layer seems highly unlikely. After almost 30 years and billions of dollars spent switching to alternatives, there’s no sign that the ozone hole is shrinking. Many scientists have pointed out that the occurrence and magnitude of the hole are inconsistent with the UNEP’s claims[8].
The UNEP’s lobbying of false claims has entrenched certain information so deeply in the minds of the public and governments that counter-claims are very rarely considered. Even now some branches of the media are still supporting the UNEP’s beliefs and in doing so, manipulating public opinion.
On each matter the UNEP jumped to conclusions long before scientists had properly investigated the subjects, then forced those assumptions onto the world. The establishment of the IPCC was also driven by assumptions and conclusions before scientists had the chance to consider all the issues and potential causes of warming. (The IPCC was created, in part, as a consequence of the warming in the 1980’s but the sudden increase in El Nino events after 1977 can explain that warming.)
UN Secretary-General Guterres could be described as a strong personality who endorses the lobbying claims of the IPCC and UNFCCC. His recent nonsense about the Earth boiling is just wild exaggeration that’s inconsistent with the IPCC’s statement of about 1.1 degrees C warming in about 140 years.
Unfortunately, Guterres been joined by various so-called scientists who are lobbying perhaps not so much for the IPCC as to protect their incomes and reputations.
Ultimately the scare about man-made warming is not based on science but on lobbying by the IPCC and UNFCCC, and flawed lobbying at that. The Paris Climate Agreement and the push for Net Zero, and the associated issues like forcing electric vehicles onto us all, are very weak on scientific justification but the result of lobbying that manipulates global media outlets and pressures governments.
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[1] Roger Pielke Jr. makes a similar point when he says “The IPCC is supposed to review the scientific literature. All of it – that means including more than just a subset of studies which its authors wish to use to construct a narrative. It also means that the IPCC can’t ignore the research of those who its authors may find inconvenient.” (see https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/misinformation-in-the-ipcc )
[2] As above
[3] IPCC AR5 2013, WGI SPM, p5 and in synthesis report p SYR-6p
[4] see IPCC AR6, Fig 3.4 p435., Also, several comparisons of models and the equivalent data from observations have been made, especially by John Christy and Roy Spencer. For one of Spencer’s most recent comparisons, see https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/global-warming-observations-vs-climate-models
[5] See http://retractionwatch.com/ where a database search with subject field “(ENV) Climate Change” returns 131 items
[6] Those representatives were given just one hour to read the final draft of the SPM for the Working Group I component of IPCC report AR6 before voting for its approval. See https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2022/09/FINAL-REPT-P-54.pdf p 2
[7] I have seen estimates of 8 million and 40 million, plus a number between these two extremes, so I’ve taken an approximate middle value. In 2006, the WHO declared DDT to be safe if the basic guidelines were followed and the number of deaths plummeted (see article in the UNEP’s magazine for Africa, https://www.unep.org/resources/report/africa-environment-outlook-2-our-environment-our-wealth .
[8] See “New clues to ozone depletion”, online at http://www.physorg.com/news104666673.html as well as https://newsblaze.com/thoughts/opinions/scientists-disprove-theory-of-cfc-link-to-ozone-depletion_38964/ , http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp067660w and http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~qblu/Lu-2009PRL.pdf
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