Shoddy science or intentional deceit? — UK papers report on two more bogus IPCC claims

The inaccuracies in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports are now increasing in frequency.  While the US press has been mostly silent as these stories have broken, the UK press has been digging up false claim after false claim made by the IPCC.

Over the last month, they were breaking about a story a week, but in the last week the pace has been picking up.  Including two new examples of shoddy research or possibly intentional scientific fraud that has been reported on this week.

In addition, on Saturday, the former head of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, made a number of shocking admissions.  He claimed that he ‘lost’ the source temperature data that had been requested via freedom of information requests, and that is the reason why he failed to comply with those requests.  It’s important to note that in one of the leaked Climategate emails, he told Michael Mann (Penn State climate researcher)  that he would delete data files before releasing them via freedom of information requests.

The other revelations that Jones made were that there has been no statistically-significant warming in the last 15 years, and that he admitted that the medieval warm period might have been warmer than today.

Now on top of Jones’ moment of honesty, combined with his “dog ate my research” excuse, we have two major IPCC  Armageddon claims used by Gore and company that have now been proven false.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air details the first one, which appears to be a case of scientific fraud:

Another key element of the IPCC report on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) turns out to be based on deliberate decisions to use the most hysterical claims by advocates rather than on science.  The IPCC warnings of the African crop projections have a more demonstrably corrupt basis, as the report deliberately ignored actual science that showed little risk of crop yields — science funded by the British government at a cost of over £2.5 million.  Who compiled the IPCC Synthesis that ignored peer-reviewed science for the speculation of one Moroccan activist, whose report didn’t even agree with its cited sources?  Rajendra Pachauri’s own business — and he got over £400,000 for the work:

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for “carbon credits”. As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, “agricultural production will more than double by 2020″. Yet it was Agoumi’s claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC’s Working Group II report in 2007.

What made this even odder, however, was that the group’s co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC’s 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by “up to 30 per cent”.

British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry’s salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain’s Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.

On to the second false claim.  The Register in the UK did a story yesterday on a statistical review of  the raw data that debunks the IPCC claims of increased hurricane activity and intensity, which they claimed was more likely than not caused by human activity:

More trouble looms for the IPCC. The body may need to revise statements made in its Fourth Assessment Report on hurricanes and global warming. A statistical analysis of the raw data shows that the claims that global hurricane activity has increased cannot be supported.

Les Hatton once fixed weather models at the Met Office. Having studied Maths at Cambridge, he completed his PhD as metereologist: his PhD was the study of tornadoes and waterspouts. He’s a fellow of the Royal Meterological Society, currently teaches at the University of Kingston, and is well known in the software engineering community – his studies include critical systems analysis.

Hatton has released what he describes as an ‘A-level’ statistical analysis, which tests six IPCC statements against raw data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) Administration. He’s published all the raw data and invites criticism, but warns he is neither “a warmist nor a denialist”, but a scientist.

Hatton performed a z-test statistical analysis of the period 1999-2009 against 1946-2009 to test the six conclusions. He also ran the data ending with what the IPCC had available in 2007. He found that North Atlantic hurricane activity increased significantly, but the increase was counterbalanced by diminished activity in the East Pacific, where hurricane-strength storms are 50 per cent more prevalent. The West Pacific showed no significant change. Overall, the declines balance the increases.

“When you average the number of storms and their strength, it almost exactly balances.” This isn’t indicative of an increase in atmospheric energy manifesting itself in storms.

Even the North Atlantic increase should be treated with caution, Hatton concludes, since the period contains one anomalous year of unusually high hurricane activity – 2005 – the year Al Gore used the Katrina tragedy to advance the case for the manmade global warming theory.

…

Thre IPCC’s WG1 paper states: “There are also suggestions of increased intense tropical cyclone activity in some other regions where concerns over data quality are greater.” Hatton points out the data quality is similar in each area.

The IPCC continues: “It is more likely than not (> 50%) that there has been some human contribution to the increases in hurricane intensity.” But, as Hatton points out, that conclusion comes from computer climate models, not from the observational data, which show no increase.

“The IPCC goes on to make statements that would never pass peer review,” Hatton told us. A more scientifically useful conclusion would have been to ask why there was a disparity. “This differential behaviour to me is very interesting. If it’s due to increased warming in one place, and decreased warming in the other – then that’s interesting to me.”

Al Gore used the deaths of all those Katrina victims as nothing more than power-point aids to keep selling his global-warming snake oil.  He, and other global-warming activists  trumpeted how increased hurricanes would lead to countless death and destruction, and how the 50% reduction in African crop yields would lead to mass starvation.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air gives his take on the suspect hurricane claims:

In this case, it appears that the IPCC ignored readings from below the equator to bolster their claims.  Unlike in the MWP, we have plenty of measurements of storm activity in the Southern Hemisphere for that period.   If Hatton’s calculations are correct, the IPCC either ignored them or discounted them in the calculations.  Either way, the claims on storm intensity are now suspect, as is much of the IPCC’s claims and supposedly scientific process.

What some have long suspected, is being revealed as truth a little more every day.  Instead of the ‘debate being over’, we are finding that Gore and company are simply guilty of using fabricated scientific conclusions to continue their fear-mongering and Godless profiteering in their pursuit of making billions from their green empires.