An Open Letter from Scientists in the United States on the Intergovernmental Panel on

[Michaelangelica]

An Open Letter from Scientists in the United States on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Errors Contained in the Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007

 

[Note: Over 250 scientists have already signed this open letter and signatures are still being collected. For a full list of signers please visit this page. On March 13, 2010, the letter was sent to federal agencies. The vast majority of the signers are climate change scientists who work at leading U.S. universities and institutions. They include both IPCC and non-IPCC authors. Additional signers include professionals from related disciplines, including physical, biological and social scientists. If you are a scientist wishing to sign the letter, please fill out the form on the this page. If you have any questions, please contact the letter's authors, contact information is below.]

 

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Many in the popular press and other media, as well as some in the halls of Congress, are seizing on a few errors that have been found in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in an attempt to discredit the entire report. None of the handful of mis-statements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements) remotely undermines the conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Despite its excellent performance for accurately reporting the state-of-the-science, we certainly acknowledge that the IPCC should become more forthcoming in openly acknowledging errors in a timely fashion, and continuing to improve its assessment procedures to further lower the already very low rate of error.

 

It is our intention in offering this open letter to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world. We first discuss some of the key messages from climate science and then elaborate on IPCC procedures, with particular attention to the quality-control mechanisms of the IPCC. Finally we offer some suggestions about what might be done next to improve IPCC practices and restore full trust in climate science.

 

 

The Climate Challenge

Our understanding of human contributions to climate change and the associated urgency for humans to respond has improved dramatically over the past two decades. Many of the major components of the climate system are now well understood, though there are still sources of significant uncertainty (like the processes that produce the observed rapid ice-sheet melting and/or collapse in the polar regions). It is now well established, for example, that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from human sources have increased rapidly since the Industrial Revolution. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reduce the heat going out of the climate system, i.e., the radiation balance of the Earth – and so first principles of physics tell us to expect, with a very high likelihood, that higher temperatures should have been observed.

more at Open Letter from U.S. Scientists on the IPCC - Home

 

When was the last time we had one of these? The Atomic bomb?

Much commentary in the press

See for eg

AccuWeather.com: Global Warming News, Science, Myths, Articles

[Pyrotex]

There are millions of people in the USA who believe that if they don't understand something, then it must be bogus. And they don't understand science. Unfortunately, it appears that most of these people vote Republican.