THE United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850. The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years making 1998 the hottest year of the last thousand years, has for example, been based on reconstructions from tree-ring data.
In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa, from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.
Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the development of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed.
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