Climate Intelligence Group Finds the IPCC’s ‘Summary for Policymakers’ Little Convincing

Aug. 9, 2021 (EIRNS)—The climate intelligence group CLINTEL put out a statement today, “New IPCC Report Provides Little Objective Basis for Policymaking,” issued over the authorship of Guus Berkhout, President of CLINTEL and Jim O’Brien, Irish CLINTEL ambassador, Chair of the Irish Climate Science Forum (ICSF), which makes the following substantive points:

1. The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) seems to be exaggerating as in previous reports, and so provides little objective basis for policymaking.

2. The SPM seems to be ignoring that only last week IPCC circles admitted that their new AR6 generation of climate models are “overheated” and therefore too alarmist.

3. “Insanely Scary—and Wrong.” Independent observations had already indicated that CMIP5-models were too sensitive to greenhouse gas increases, probably by a factor of two. The combination of too high climate sensitivity and too high emissions projections resulted in implausibly high temperature forecasts. IPCC scientists themselves are beginning to doubt whether their models can be trusted as a policy instrument. “It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this admission,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the journal Science of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Schmidt also said, “You end up with numbers for even the near-term that are insanely scary—and wrong.”

4. The SPM graphic of global temperatures over the last 2,000 years inspires little confidence, to put it mildly, since in that it airbrushes out of climate history the Roman and Medieval Warming Periods, when temperatures were similar to or higher than now, and also the Little Ice Age.

5. Global mean sea level projections appear similarly exaggerated. CLINTEL points out that tide gauge data since 1900 would increase sea level by about 10 inches between now and 2100.

6. The alleged increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events appear to be inconsistent with previous IPCC reports; whereas many current independent observations actually indicate fewer extreme weather events today than in the past.

CLINTEL has consistently argued that, while the climate is changing, partly due to anthropogenic influences, there is no climate crisis, and that climate policy should be based on prudent, cost-effective adaptation rather than unaffordable, ineffective mitigation. The new SPM provides little objective evidence to change those strongly held convictions.