Climate Research Mess – Politics And Science Not A Good Mix

This so-o-o-o-o complex topic continues to confound. Today, as our federal government recognises that its support for solar roof panels is stopping the development of other renewables it is reported in London that

“The two most influential advisory bodies on climate change are planning independent reviews of their research to regain public trust after revelations about errors and the suppression of data.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to appoint an independent team to examine its procedures after admitting having made errors that exaggerated the severity of the impact of global warming.

Britain’s Met Office, which supplies the global temperature trends used by the IPCC, has proposed that an international group of scientists re-examine 160 years of temperature data. The Met Office proposal is a tacit admission that its previous reports on such trends have been marred by their reliance on analysis by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Two inquiries are being held into allegations that the unit tried to hide raw data from critics and exaggerated the extent of global warming.”

CAN So Many Scientists Be Wrong? DID Politics Influence The IPCC?

• Can we disregard the consensus of 4000 of the planet’s most eminently qualified people?
• WAS the IPCC Report seriously watered down on what the real science says (that it’s undoubtedly human caused, they have evidence, and its a serious problem) because it wanted to be conservative?
• Was the IPCC Report claim (error?) that all Himalayan glaciers would that disappear by 2035, (while most glaciologists believe this will take 300 years) some type of human ‘transcribing/writing’ error, as it IS currently being observed that ice in the Antarctic IS disappearing very quickly…?

“According to a new report in Nature, glaciers are getting thinner all around the perimeter of Greenland, and in western Antarctica as well. It’s not so much that they’re melting, says lead author Hamish Pritchard, of the British Antarctic Survey; it’s that their seaward motion is accelerating. And, says Pritchard, “that’s a much more rapid way of losing ice than through melting alone.”

Read more here

• If climate change wasn’t such an ‘inconvenient truth’ and hadn’t been so politicised and treated more like the hole in the ozone layer problem (Montreal protocol), would we be handling the situation better?
• Will the proposed re-examination of 160 years of temperature data – all freely available to the public – still find that the warming of the planet is ‘unequivocal’ and re-establish public faith in our scientists?

Some Other Views

Some years ago now Rupert Murdoch’s approach was:

“Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction”

and

The Weekend Australian 27-28 February 2010 reported that IPCC scientists say that:

“they sometimes faced an institutional bias toward oversimplification”

BBC Interview With Prof Phil Jones University Of East Anglia

Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which has been at the centre of the row over hacked e-mails answers a BBC News Q & A session here.

The BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics. The questions were put to Professor Jones with the co-operation of UEA’s press office.

The science is undeniably important but while we await the IPCC review is it possible to we take the Murdoch approach?