Climate Honesty - 320

Climate Science Truth, the IPCC

Or “The Rest of the Story”

 

If you have read my column over the last few years, you may have noticed that I occasionally analyze disinformation and misinformation. My life experiences have allowed me to gather insight. The course load at the USAF Academy was heavy on science and I was taught to think critically on science topics. I have had the privilege of flying biologists, geologists, and other professionals and whenever there was a chance, I asked people to explain their work. I still travel today to engage directly with climate scientists. 

 

The study of climate science requires a person to study critical thinking, the roots of disinformation, and how logical fallacy stories are assembled to deceive us.

 

In short, my BS meter functions well, and a local opportunity has arisen for me to defend both truth and mainstream science.  

 

A fellow contributor to this newspaper recently penned a letter to the editor titled "Climate Honesty."

 

In his LTE, he attacked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), threw his support behind a climate pariah, and made misleading climate assertions. His writing style is called the Gish Gallop. It is a shotgun style of blasting out multiple cherry-picked and weak assertions, hoping some of the manufactured mud sticks in someone's mind.

His first target was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the LTE, the author asserted that the IPCC is hypocritical. His evidence came from one paragraph in one report: "The climate system is a coupled, non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."

 

To a reader unaware of the context in which the IPCC wrote this quoted paragraph, it sounds like figuring out climate change is an insurmountable challenge.

 

If you focus only on this one cherry-picked paragraph from the thousands of pages of IPCC reports, then you might have to ask yourself why the IPCC even exists, and find yourself agreeing with the author of the LTE.

 

 Here is the “rest of the story”:  The IPCC still exists and never said climate solutions are impossible.

 

To understand this paragraph, you must know its context and timeline. One clue to the context is that the IPCC wrote it Twenty-three years ago.  The IPCC was only formed in 1988 and in 2001 they needed the science community to furnish them with more and better data before their working groups could make definitive statements on global warming. The paragraph did not say climate physics would remain impossible to understand. In the context of the 2001 report, they did not have all the information they wanted. If you read the complete report, it was a call out for more science-driven information. To understand the context of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) in 2001, here is the closing paragraph making the callout to the science community clear:

 

"In summary, there is a need for: • more comprehensive data, contemporary, historical, and palaeological, relevant to the climate system; • expanded process studies that more clearly elucidate the structure of fundamental components of the Earth system and the potential for changes in these central components; • greater effort in testing and developing increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated Earth system model and new efforts in understanding the fundamental behavior of large-scale non-linear systems.

These are significant challenges, but they are not insurmountable.

 

The challenges to understanding the Earth system including the human component are daunting, and the pressing needs are significant. However, the opportunity for progress exists, and, in fact, this opportunity simply must be realized. The issues are too important, and they will not vanish. The challenges simply must be met."  End TAR3 2001"

 

Here is my reader's digest version of TAR 3:  "At this point, we do not have the means to understand all aspects of climate change fully. The potential threat from climate change is massive. Understanding the climate system(s) is daunting but attainable. You must solve it. The fate of the planet lies with you. Failure is not an option."

For the IPCC, this was the situation in 2001. Even today, every aspect of the climate system is not entirely understood.  However, the world's understanding is far greater today than in 2001, and there is more than enough information for the IPCC teams to make definitive statements.

 

Today, the IPCC is confident (highly confident is the science lingo) in identifying the primary reasons we are warming. In March of 2023, after 22 years of hard-won science progress, the IPCC printed this: 

 

"Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 in 2011-2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals (high confidence)."  IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).

 

In 2001, the IPCC admitted that it could not fully determine the causes of global warming with high scientific confidence. Twenty-two years later, in 2023, after an unprecedented scientific effort, the world's best scientists came together and, in no uncertain terms, told us the cause of climate change: It is "unequivocally" us.

Is that hypocrisy? No, that's just good, honest, common-sense science.

References:

IPCC Third Assessment Report 2001                                                                                                      IPCC Sixth Assessment Report 2023