The IPCC has become to science what FIFA is to soccer (Time to axe both)

You don’t need a science degree to see how weak the evidence is.

Nick Cater, author, journalist, editor, writes in The Australian about the contradictions and failed predictions of climate experts. He lists the “own goals” — like the Himalayan Glaciers, The Hockeystick, Antarctic Sea ice (which is at another record high) and The Pause.

For two-and-a-half decades, the planet has been defying the experts’ expectations. At the 1988 Toronto conference experts warned temperatures would rise by between 1.5C and 4.5C by 2050. With 27 years gone and 35 to go the rise is barely a quarter of a degree. The world had better roll its sleeves up.

There is a pattern to these mistakes:

No one expects experts to be perfect, but as Robert Watson – a former IPCC chairman – has pointed out, the errors follow a pattern. “The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact,” he observed after the failure of the Copenhagen conference. “That is worrying.”

The IPCC has become to science what FIFA is to soccer; bloated, un-accountable and out of touch. Its reluctance to address the 15-year warming pause is “a symptomatic of a failure of leadership,” says author Rupert Darwell. “The IPCC is un-reformable and the Fifth Assessment Report should be the IPCC’s last.” Yet both the science and the process have become too big to fail; countless experts have invested their professional reputations in the theory and countless more in the quest for a symbolic international agreement.

When science is “too big to fail”, it is too big to succeed:

Yet both the science and the process have become too big to fail; countless experts have invested their professional reputations in the theory and countless more in the quest for a symbolic international agreement.

I want Rupert Darwall’s line to catch on:

We have reached a global warming paradox. “The science is weak but the idea is strong,” writes Darwall. “Global warming’s success in colonising the Western mind and in changing government policies has no precedent.

Read the rest in The Australian, or at Nick Cater’s blog



Nick Cater is Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre.

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