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The Chinese 'get it' on climate change
John McLaughlin
The blogsite IceCap includes a fascinating article by a Mr. Li Xing published in China Daily under the headline "Do three errors mean breaking point for IPCC?".
Mr. Xing recounts his attendance at the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. He writes of attending a panel featuring various skeptics concerning work done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He came away particularly impressed by a talk given by Dr Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist and founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service, who, as Xing reports, "challenged the IPCC findings with his research data."
Xing tells of meeting with IPCC chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri and others about skeptic views and seeing those views brushed aside without serious appraisal. He also inquired why IPCC reports included very little data from Chinese researchers.
China is not a small country. Its landmass spans several climate zones and includes the roof of the world. I have to wonder how data from China would affect the IPCC's findings.
Several Chinese scientists who have gone over the IPCC report believe that the IPCC may have overstated the link between global temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere.
In a paper published in the December issue of the Chinese language Earth Science magazine, Ding Zhongli, an established environmental scientist, stated that the current temperatures on earth look normal if global climate changes over the past 10,000 years are considered.
Xing then cites the recent revelations of significant problems in the IPCC work. These include how "some scientists had favored data which supports the case for ‘global warming' in order to enhance their grant proposals," the announcement that an IPCC claim of total glacier melt in the Himalayas by 2035 was based on "sheer speculation" -- not peer-reviewed scientific work, and revelation that the IPCC had misrepresented an unpublished report linking climate change with an increase in natural disasters even when the report's author, Dr Robert Muir-Wood, a researcher in risk management not climatology, had explicitly stated the opposite.
Mr. Xing concludes:
I am particularly troubled by the fact that top IPCC officials do not seem to take these revelations seriously. Interviewed by the BBC, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, dismissed the matter as a "human mistake".
Ancient Chinese considered three a breaking point. They could forgive two errors, but not a third. Now that the IPCC has admitted three "human" errors, isn't it time scientists gave its work a serious review?
It is amazing that Chinese media examine what has recently come out revealing IPCC "mistakes" and conclude more serious examination of its work is in order. Yet the American mainstream media brush aside such concerns seeking to keep an obvious political agenda alive.
John McLaughlin
