IPCC needs revised stats

 

Letter

Australian Financial Review

17th August 2007

 

John Quiggin suggests ("Denial industry in full cry", 16 August) that the many dissenters from those Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believers in human activity being the main cause of temperatures increases have not survived scientific scrutiny. 

 

In particular, he claims that the two decades since 1988 have been shown by the IPCC to have been "warmer than any since instrumental temperature records began in the 19th century, closely fitting the predictions of climate modelers like James Hansen of NASA".

 

As it happens, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has recently been forced to acknowledge errors in its temperature measurements that change the IPCC scenario radically. The correct figures now show that for the United States it was the 1930s, not eleven of the twelve years to 2006, that were the hottest since 1850. This is of some significance as, historically, the US has been the major emitter of CO2 and 80% of man-made emissions occurred after 1940.

 

In similar vein, Swedish sea level expert Nils-Axel Morner has pointed out that, contrary to IPCC claims that the global sea level increased between 1961 and 2003 by an average of 1.8mm a year, no upward trend is shown when examined by sea level specialists not imbued with IPCC doom and gloom perspectives. His assessments are based on observation not on models that incorporate "correction" factors.

 

Quiggin appears to acknowledge that new information has not been taken into account by the IPCC. Perhaps that group needs to go back to the drawing boards: it clearly does not reflect any consensus.