Is there a “consensus” on global warming among the scientists participating in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To find out, I conducted the first-ever survey of scientists participating in the most recent IPCC report.
In early October, I e-mailed a six-question survey on climate change to 345 U.S. scientists involved in the IPCC’s 2007 report. By month’s end, I had received responses from a surprising 95 scientists (28%).
Some of the responders claimed that the survey questions were flawed and declined to participate. Some wanted to know, ironically enough, what was meant by the term “climate change” even though the term is part of the IPCC’s name.
One IPCC-er declined to participate because, he said, the climate science debate was over. Another who acknowledged that current climate had probably just resulted from a “just a geological wiggle,” declined because it was wrong to deny that humans are “adding undesirable stress to natural systems.” Another refused to answer claiming that the IPCC report “is a much more powerful statement than any individual scientist can make.”
One survey refuse-nik said, “Science is not a vote or survey. It is not democratic. It is not debatable.” Another said he didn’t “see the point of frequently uninformed free-for-all style debates about topics that require diligent study instead.” Others accused me of having a biased agenda, being “reckless and irresponsible,” and wanting to misrepresent the IPCC’s work.
One National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist responded simply by dropping an f-bomb-laced insult into an e-mail. This particular response and any institutional intolerance for climate skepticism, so I am informed, is being investigated by NOAA chief, Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher.
In the end, 54 of the IPCC-ers completed the survey, including such alarmist big-wigs as the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley. Trenberth and several other survey participants are lead authors of the IPCC report.
The survey results are quite illuminating about the much-touted “consensus.”
The responses to the survey’s first four questions were predictable— 83% to 90% of the respondents favored the view that manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are driving global climate to unprecedentedly warmer temperatures and that limiting manmade CO2 emissions would reduce such climate change.
The responses to the last two questions, however, raise questions about the consensus’ credibility.
Less than 50% of the respondents said that an increase in global temperature of 1-degree Celsius—twice the level of warming occurring during the 20th century—is flatly undesirable. Half of the respondents said that such a temperature increase is desirable, desirable for some but undesirable for others, or too difficult to assess.
Only 14% said that the ideal climate was cooler than the present climate. Sixty-one percent said that there is no such thing as an ideal climate.
But if there’s no agreement on whether a target climate even exists, what precisely is the point of taking action on global warming?
Other notable results include the 20% who bizarrely said that human activity is the principal driver of climate change. So was climate a static phenomenon before the arrival of man? And if there was natural climate change before man, why not now also? And 44% percent don’t think that current global climate is unprecedentedly warm.
The survey indicates that when asked routine questions about the role of manmade CO2, the IPCC-ers respond in the Pavlovian fashion seemingly demanded of them by the global warming establishment. But when asked questions off the usual script, the supposed consensus falls apart.
Don’t forget that many scientists don’t participate in the IPCC because they perceive it as biased. The Pasteur Institute’s Dr. Paul Reiter, for example, resigned from the IPCC because he and a colleague found themselves “at loggerheads with persons who insisted on making authoritative pronouncements, although they had little or no knowledge of our specialty.” There’s also the Petition Project, where 19,000 scientists have endorsed a statement questioning the scientific basis of climate alarmism.
The whole idea of a consensus in science is dubious. As economist John Kay recently wrote in an op-ed entitled “Science is the pursuit of truth, not consensus” (Financial Times, Oct. 9), “Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them.”
This week, Al Gore attacked IPCC-er John Christy for a Nov. 1 Wall Street Journal op-ed in which Christy questioned the global warming orthodoxy. Appearing on NBC’s Today, Gore described Christy as an “outlier” who no longer belonged to the IPCC and who is “way outside the scientific consensus.” Gore also said that it was wrong for the media to pay any attention to opinions outside the consensus.
Christy told me that, as far as he knows, he remains part of the IPCC process. As to being an outlier, it just so happens that Christy’s survey responses were within the 50% who didn’t think that a 1-degree Celsius rise in global temperature was uniformly undesirable and the 86% who didn’t think there was any such thing as an ideal climate.
The “climate consensus” notion functions primarily as a marketing tool for converting the public to a political viewpoint, rather than as a valid scientific approach toward understanding global warming. But even then, the survey indicates that the claimed IPCC consensus is not nearly as monolithic as we’ve been led to believe. That alone is good reason for demanding that the IPCC scientists declare and defend their positions in a public forum.
Milloy holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore, and a Master of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Steven Milloy's most recent book is Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.
His prior offering is Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.
Before that, Steven Milloy wrote the much talked-about book, JunkScience Judo: Self-Defense Against Health Scares & Scams.
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