The AGW Debate

The 2008 International Conference on Global Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, has been going on in New York for the last couple of days. You can read about the conference here. A highlight of the conference is the release of the Summary for Policymakers of a report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). The document is, among other things, a rebuttal of the reports released by the United Nation's heavily politicized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You can access the NIPCC report here.

From the NIPCC report's introduction by Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences:

The IPCC is pre-programmed to produce reports to support the hypotheses of anthropogenic warming and the control of greenhouse gases, as envisioned in the Global Climate Treaty. The 1990 IPCC Summary completely ignored satellite data, since they showed no warming. The 1995 IPCC report was notorious for the significant alterations made to the text after it was approved by the scientists – in order to convey the impression of a human influence. The 2001 IPCC report claimed the twentieth century showed ‘unusual warming’ based on the now-discredited hockey-stick graph. The latest IPCC report, published in 2007, completely devaluates the climate contributions from changes in solar activity, which are likely to dominate any human influence.

Here is a graphic from the report which shows the whole picture, not a truncated picture of the recent climate of the Earth. This temperature record is taken from Greenland ice core boreholes. Click image for a full detail view.

Ever wonder why the graphs you see in the drive by media are of such a short timeframe that it makes the problem appear so much worse? Such is the ways of the hoaxers.

The most important quote to come out of the meeting Monday in New York, which was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, was that of Fred Singer:

"Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled," said Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

"Proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive," he said.

Best statement of the skeptic's argument yet.