By Ron Barmby

You have a fever with jaundice, feel crappy, and are vomiting.

You go to the emergency room at the local hospital.

The ER doctor does not run any tests, but based on the symptoms his diagnosis is acute alcoholism and prescribes abstinence or you will drink yourself to death.

“What about some tests, or a second opinion?” you ask. The doctor informs you that “the administration in this hospital has two rules: firstly, the only diagnosis we give out for these symptoms is chronic alcohol abuse; and secondly, we delete any data to the contrary from your file.”

You check into rehab but the fever, jaundice, and nausea persist. Six days later you die from acute fulminant viral hepatitis (Hep B). But sober.

A reasonable person would not accept a diagnosis dictated by the hospital administration and the deletion of conflicting data. Especially if you knew acute alcoholic hepatitis and acute viral HBV hepatitis present the same symptoms and it takes blood tests to differentiate them with certainty.

And that’s why you should ignore the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report because two similar rules govern their analysis and reporting. The cure is also similar: Net Zero CO2 by 2050.

The IPCC Report Cycle

The IPCC’s 1988 mandate from the United Nations was to review, “The state of the knowledge of the science of climate and climatic change”.

In that mandate, the UN expressed “concern that human activities could change global climate patterns, threatening present and future generations…” and also includes the conjecture “…emerging evidence indicates that continued growth in ‘greenhouse’ gases could produce global warming…”

For the last 35 years, the IPCC has developed this mandate into an industry of perpetual reporting on a six-year cycle designed to instill constant fear of human-caused global warming.

The foundation of each reporting cycle, which in its whole is termed an Assessment Report (AR), is the report from Working Group I (WG I) as that is the physical sciences basis addressing the UN mandate.

It is then followed by a report from Working Group II (WG II) which assesses the impacts of climate change and then Working Group III (WG III) dictates what needs to be done to mitigate the damages caused by climate change.

Each of these reports consists of between two thousand to three thousand pages, and each is condensed into a Summary for Policy Makers (SPM). Ultimately a Synthesis Report combining all three Working Groups is issued, again with its SPM.

A single AR cycle involves the release of these four separate reports over almost two years, and then the cycle starts all over again. An annual Conference of the Parties (COP) is held to fill in the press-release gaps between reports and cycles.

Sitting on top of the reporting pyramid is the short version (36 pages) of the Summary for Policy Makers of the Synthesis Report. That was just issued for AR6. Here is why you, a reasonable person, should ignore it.

Everything else is wrong if the science is wrong in WGI.

Following the Science: Working Group I

Given the UN’s 1988 concern that human-emitted greenhouse gases will threaten future generations, one might reasonably suspect that over 35 years it has caused considerable confirmation bias in the IPCC. A finding to the contrary would eliminate the IPCC and the industry built up around it.

Many leading scientists, engineers, meteorologists, and environmentalists have taken exception to the reports from WG I.

I found the AR6 WG I report to be deceptive and an alteration of climate history, while their proposed planet-saving carbon budget did not balance and their temperature forecasts to be quite dodgy. Altogether it represents a credibility crisis at the IPCC.

However, it wasn’t until I read an analysis from Dr. Richard Lindzen (Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at MIT and Lead Author of AR3), Dr. William Happer (Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former White House senior advisor), Gregory Wrightstone (MSc, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition and Expert Reviewer for AR6) that I became aware that it is much more than confirmation bias.

Two Unreasonable Rules Which Nullify IPCC Science

The all-important Summary for Policy Makers of the Synthesis Report (and also the reports for WG I, II, and III) is governed by this truly well-hidden rule (see paragraph 4.6.1) as paraphrased by the authors above:

All Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs) Are Approved Line by Line by Member Governments.

And then is followed up with also this equally obscured rule (see definition of “Acceptance”) to ensure the other 8,000 pages don’t conflict with the member government-approved statements (also paraphrased):

Government SPMs Override Any Inconsistent Conclusions Scientists Write for IPCC Reports

The first rule above states that political appointees of member governments have to agree with line by line on what the all-important Summary for Policy Makers says. The second rule says the scientists have to modify their report so it does not conflict with the Summary for Policy Makers.

The politicians are not “following the science”, the scientists must follow the politicians.

The Worst-Case Scenario

A particularly extreme climate-alarmist politician in one country can influence the entire IPCC process. Canada, for example.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau owes his three electoral wins to a large degree to his climate alarmism instilling existential fear in voters. Trudeau passed his fight against climate change to his Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Mr. Steven Guilbeault.

His qualifications include being a professional environmental activist that resulted in four arrests, including climbing the CN Tower in Toronto while employed at Greenpeace. Guilbeault’s radical past has earned him the nicknames “Green Jesus” and “Uneven Steven”.

For Guilbeault “Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” It could be reasonably argued that is also normal weather, but the IPCC’s science by political consensus means Guilbeault must be accommodated.

AR6 Synthesis Report Summary for Policy Makers Paragraph A

Six years of new work and 35 years of accumulated work are condensed into the 36-page short version of the AR6 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers politicians and the news media to digest. Paragraph A.1.2 represents the damning conclusions of WG I, the physical sciences basis, which includes:

“The likely range of total human-caused global surface temperature increase from 1850–1900 to 2010– 2019 is 0.8°C–1.3°C, with a best estimate of 1.07°C.”

Note to reader: I have added the bolding, and it likely means a 66% or greater probability. From ice cores, we know that the Little Ice Age was the coldest period in the last 10,000 years, and 1850 was the beginning of the end of it.

We can reasonably agree that the planet is 1°C warmer than 1850, but here is a short but incomplete list of causes that should be considered and evaluated:

• Warming is caused by increased solar activity causing increased radiation output and decreased cloud cover on Earth, both of which increase the energy reaching the Earth’s surface. Evidence suggests that the inverse of this caused the Little Ice Age.
• Warming is caused by cyclical variations in ocean oscillation events such as El Nino, which would transfer existing energy from the oceans to the atmosphere.
• A linkage of the above two factors; or
• Human emissions of carbon dioxide, which the IPCC acknowledges have a very limited global warming capacity that has already been reached.

The IPCC political appointees in charge of reviewing the SPM only allow the last point to be included (and only up to the comma) and all other evidence to the contrary is deleted from all other reports.

And that’s why reading the rest of the AR6 Synthesis Report is simply pointless. The IPCC is not a scientific institution run by scientists; it is an intergovernmental organization run by politicians.

This commentary was first published at Climate Change Dispatch, March 31, 2023, and can be accessed here.

Many thanks to Brock Pullen, MD! Ron Barmby (ronaldbarmby.ca) is a Professional Engineer with a Master’s degree, whose 40+ year career in the energy sector has taken him to over 40 countries on five continents. His book, Sunlight on Climate Change: A Heretic’s Guide to Global Climate Hysteria (Amazon, Barnes & Noble), explains in layman’s terms the science of how natural and human-caused global warming work.