Sceptics denounce climate science 'lie' - Projections of climate changes are based on models and assumptions
By
Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent Feb. 25, 2002 - A group of scientists in the US and the UK says the accepted wisdom on climate change remains unproved. They say rising greenhouse gas emissions may not be the main factor in global warming. They argue that temperature rise projections this century are "unknown and unknowable". They claim it is "a media myth" to suppose that only a few scientists share their scepticism. The scientists, a group convened by the American George C. Marshall Institute, first published their report in the US. 'Political conclusions' It has been republished in the UK by the European Science and Environment Forum (Esef), entitled Climate Science and Policy: Making the Connection. Esef says it is "the result of an extensive review by a distinguished group of scientists and public policy experts of the science behind recent findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)". The US group included a former CIA director and defence secretary James Schlesinger, and Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The report says the IPCC's conclusions "have become politicised and fail to convey the underlying uncertainties that are important in policy considerations". Its detailed criticisms of the IPCC include:
Accused of lying Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, is a prominent British climate sceptic. He said: "The authors challenge
the key contradiction at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol, the global
climate agreement - that climate is one of the most complex systems
known, yet that we can manage it by trying to control a small set of
factors, namely greenhouse gas emissions. Scientifically, this is not
mere uncertainty: it is a lie."
Professor Stott told BBC News Online: "The problem with a
chaotic coupled non-linear system as complex as climate is that you can
no more predict successfully the outcome of doing something as of not
doing something. Kyoto will not halt climate change. Full stop."
Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate
Change, used to work at the State Department and helped to shape US
climate policy.
Heavyweight backing
She told BBC News Online: "This report dismisses the findings of
the IPCC as alarmist, yet they are widely accepted as representative of
the current state of scientific knowledge.
"A panel of the US's own National Academy of Sciences (which
included Richard Lindzen) expressed general agreement with the IPCC's
finding that warming is occurring, and that it is at least partly caused
by humans.
"Uncertainty cuts both ways. Some of the IPCC's scenarios have
been criticized as unduly pessimistic, others as unduly optimistic.
"What is important is that they reflect a balance of reasonable
futures, and that the scientific findings should be based on the
peer-reviewed literature. The IPCC has been able to accomplish exactly
that.
"And Kyoto was only intended to be a first step in a long
journey."
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