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First Published In The Hawaii Reporter

 - By Michael R. Fox Ph.D., - 

In case you missed it, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently took another major hit, likely to be fatal to its dwindling integrity, authenticity, and credibility. An earlier major hit was the famous Hockeystick chart fiasco, where the last 1000 years of global temperatures as presented by the IPCC were shown to be in error. (http://tinyurl.com/o3x6zt).

While the chart indicated a rapid temperature increase since 1900, the chart was created using inappropriate data and inappropriate computer algorithms. Nevertheless it was highly featured in the IPCC documents as well as in Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Recent detective work (http://tinyurl.com/yzevqqs) shows that some of the tree-ring data used to construct the “hockeystick” curve was “cherry-picked’ from a larger data set. The cherry-picked data indicated warming while the data that was ignored clearly showed cooling temperatures. Such arbitrary selection of data indicates bad science in several areas including the IPCC, and their inability to provide peer review.

Since its inception the IPCC has been pursuing a harmful political agenda, not an agenda of sound science. From the very beginning of the IPCC in July 1986, its agenda has been to justify the control of the emissions of greenhouse gases, and the energy sources which produce them. (See Climate Change Reconsidered, Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) p. iv, (http://tinyurl.com/ybfedph). The NIPCC continues “Consequently its (the IPCC) scientific reports have focused solely on evidence that might point to human-induced climate change.”

In the words of the IPCC, 2007 AR4, the role of the IPCC “is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open, and transparent basis, the latest scientific, technical, and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

A close reading of the above stated role of the IPCC emphasizes the fact that it was not in the pursuit and advancement of science, but one of political advocacy, and the acquisition of political power. To the extent that limiting the IPCC role to the search for “human-induced climate change”, necessarily leads the IPCC to a hugely incomplete understanding of our climate, much of which is driven by natural forces, such as the Sun and the oceans, to name two.

A more comprehensive understanding our climate would include dozens of other factors, including the determination of long term baselines of climate variations, identification of those variables which cause climate effects, and the determination of the relative magnitudes, signs, and interactions of such climate variables. We would also want to gain a better scientific understanding of the climate and its long history---with and without human involvements.

Even the role of the Sun is not well understood, involving sun spots, solar wind, solar magnetic fields, interactions with cosmic radiation, and interactions with water droplets, aerosols, and cloud formation. It is much more that a heated light in the sky.

Similarly, only recently science has recognized that the oceans are major contributors to climate change. The oceans contain 50 times more CO2 than the air above, with varying currents, temperatures, salinities, mixing ratios, and wind interactions. To claim that science knows all of this is nonsense. This situation is certainly no basis upon which to formulate national energy policies. In pragmatic terms the IPCC does not pursue a better scientific understanding of our climate, but instead pursues programs that are leading to ultimate control of the global energy, to justify global energy rationing, increased energy costs, and eliminating fossil energy sources---true economy killers. This is quite a different agenda from what is portrayed. This crippling agenda extends into 3rd world nations, where billions of people are being asked to forego fossil fueled energy, including electrical energy and the prosperity it brings.

Fossil fuels are not the problem of the 3rd world, nor are the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels the problem, either. Their problems are disease and horrendous poverty. Major supplies of energy, including coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, are their only way out of poverty and toward prosperity.

Being discouraged from using energy from fossil fuels and restricted to the use of “alternative” energy sources, some African nations must make Solomon-like energy choices. How shall a small rural African field hospital use its pittance of solar energy? Should solar energy be used for lighting, or should it be used to operate a refrigerator to preserve life-saving vaccines. In rural Africa and India there often is not enough energy to operate both.

Green elitists from London, to Paris, to San Francisco, with 6 figure salaries, walnut offices, and huge discretionary budgets insist that those poor citizens of the 3rd world learn to get by, live more efficiently, and try to be greener. Even a 10,000 year history of brutish and short tribal life, foraging for food and fuel (now called “biofuels”), somehow isn’t green enough.

This arrogance was been going on for years and includes the DDT fiasco of the 1970s (http://tinyurl.com/yzfk7kv). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and elitist supporters banned and continued to ban, the use of DDT, for over 30 years, directly causing more than an estimated 30 million preventable deaths, from malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. If body counts mean anything the greens in and out of government are just not that humanitarian and congenial to human life. (http://tinyurl.com/2xzquc).

Similarly in India tens of thousands are killed annually from snakebites, mostly in rural areas, a form of death our green elitists dutifully avoid. There are millions of Indians who know how to make electricity (including 9 nuclear reactors now under construction there). And others know how to make anti snake venom. Thousands of Indian lives could be saved annually if snakebite vaccines could be refrigerated for use in rural areas, but they lack the electricity to operate life-saving refrigerators.
It is small wonder that Indian government officials are not sympathetic to the energy rationing demands of the Kyoto Protocols. Energy rationing has life and death implications on a global scale. The green elitists have clearly understood this as a means for population control.

Scientific rigor at the IPCC was never intended as suggested above in their documents. This is becoming more widely recognized as these major league scandals unfold, and the Earth continues to cool. The basics of sound science, peer review, replication, and exchanges of both climate data and computer algorithms were never reduced to common rigorous practice by the IPCC. The collapse of credibility at the IPCC is well underway, and millions are recognizing it.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., is a nuclear scientist and a science and energy resource for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field.

He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows.

He can be reached via email at mailto:mike@foxreport.org