Post by robertcunningham on Sept 18, 2013 7:16:34 GMT
Cool Down: It appears the United Nations' climate change panel might finally admit later this month what any open-minded person should have already acknowledged — Earth isn't on its way to a fiery end.
When the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues its Fifth Assessment — after its "findings" have been fully negotiated — it's likely to declare that it's 95% certain man is causing Earth to warm. But a British newspaper says it will also confess that its warming projections have been wrong.
The Daily Mail says it has obtained a leaked copy of the final report and discloses that the IPCC "makes the extraordinary concession that the world has been warming at only just over half the rate claimed by the IPCC in its last assessment, published in 2007."
Reporting for the Daily Mail, David Rose writes that "back then," the IPCC said "the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade — a figure it claimed was in line with the forecasts made by computer climate models.
"But the new report says the true figure since 1951 has been only 0.12C per decade — a rate far below even the lowest computer prediction."
Some scientists have reportedly said that Rose's conclusion is incorrect, that in 2007 the IPCC said that since 1951 the warming was actually 0.13C per decade.
If that is indeed true, that's not much of a change. But then it's equally true that a 0.13C increase per decade isn't much to get worked up over in the first place.
Even though it has revised down its warming estimate, the IPCC is expected to raise its level of certainty that man is causing the globe to warm from a "very confident" 90% certainty to an "extremely likely" 95% certainty. That strikes us, as well as Georgia Tech climate science director Judith Curry, as "incomprehensible."
It's hard to be 95% certain about anything, especially a thing as tricky as climate science. Yet the IPCC persists, even as researchers such as Bjorn Lomborg say the models it's basing its certainty on "are running way too hot."
"Over the past 30 years," he wrote Monday on wattsupwiththat.com, "they are at least predicting 71% too much heat. Maybe 159%.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/091713-671413-ipcc-said-earth-warmed-twice-as-fast-as-it-has.htm#ixzz2fE5nFRkx