Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
In a remarkable example of scientific malfeasance, it has become apparent that the IPCC knew a lot more than it revealed in its 2013 climate compendium about how low the earth’s climate sensitivity is likely to be.
The importance of this revelation cannot be overstated. If the UN had played it straight, the “urgency” of global warming would have evaporated, but, recognizing that this might cause problems, they preferred to mislead the world’s policymakers.
Strong words? Judge for yourself.
The report “Oversensitive—how the IPCC hid the good news on global warming,” was released today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)—a U.K. think-tank which is “concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated” regarding climate change (disclosure: our Dick Lindzen is a member of the GWPF Academic Advisory Council).
The new GWPF report concluded:
We believe that, due largely to the constraints the climate model-orientated IPCC process imposed, the Fifth Assessment Report failed to provide an adequate assessment of climate sensitivity – either ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] or TCR [transient climate response] – arguably the most important parameters in the climate discussion. In particular, it did not draw out the divergence that has emerged between ECS and TCR estimates based on the best observational evidence and those embodied in GCMs. Policymakers have thus been inadequately informed about the state of the science.
The study was authored by Nicholas Lewis and Marcel Crok. Crok is a freelance science writer from The Netherlands and Lewis, an independent climate scientist, was an author on two recent important papers regarding the determination of the earth’s equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS)—that is, how much the earth’s average surface temperature will rise as a result of a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.
The earth’s climate sensitivity is the most important climate factor in determining how much global warming will result from our greenhouse gas emissions (primarily from burning of fossil fuels to produce, reliable, cheap energy). But, the problem is, is that we don’t know what the value of the climate sensitivity is—this makes projections of future climate change–how should we say this?–a bit speculative.