AustralianClimateMadness.com
17 Feb 2010
Bjorn Lomborg writes in The Australian on the woes of the IPCC. Now remember, Lomborg is a believer in man-made global warming, but he has realised, unlike most of his fellow believers, that sweeping the IPCC’s errors under the carpet is precisely the wrong thing to do, if you are ever to regain public confidence:
Climate evangelism is an apt description of what the IPCC has been up to, for it has exaggerated some of the ramifications of climate change in order to make politicians take note. Murari Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the section of the IPCC report that contained the Himalayan error, admitted he and his colleagues knew the dramatic glacier prediction was not based on any peer-reviewed science. Nonetheless, he explained, “we thought that if we can highlight it, it will [influence] policymakers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.”
The concrete action they had in mind was getting governments to mandate drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.
Activists have been pursuing this approach to tackling global warming without success for nearly 20 years, most recently at December’s failed climate summit in Copenhagen. The problem is that it is too expensive a solution for politicians and the public to swallow easily, which is why many well-meaning climate scientists have apparently concluded that instead of relying on reasoned discussion, they might as well try to scare us witless.
Consider what the IPCC had to say about extreme weather events such as intense hurricanes. The cost of such events in terms of destroyed property and economic disruption has been rising steadily. Every peer-reviewed study has shown this is not because of rising temperatures but because more people live in harm’s way.
Read it here.
