7 - The IPCC is a reliable authority and its reports are both correct and widely endorsed by all scientists
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) undertakes no research for itself and relies on peer-reviewed scientific papers in reputable journals (see item 6). There is strong evidence that the IPCC is very selective of the papers it wishes to cite and pays scant regard to papers that do not adhere to the notion that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide have caused warming.
Four more issues noted above are also very relevant to the IPCC procedures. The IPCC reports are based on historical temperature data and trends (see 1 & 2), and the attribution of warming to human activities relies very heavily on climate modelling (see item 3). The IPCC pronouncements have a powerful influence on the direction and funding of scientific research into climate change, which in turn influences the number of research papers on these topics. Ultimately, and in entirely circular fashion, this leads the IPCC to report that large numbers of papers support a certain hypothesis (see item 5).
These fallacies alone are major defects of the IPCC reports, but the problems do not end there. Other distortions and fallacies of the IPCC are of its own doing.
Governments appoint experts to work with the IPCC but once appointed those experts can directly invite other experts to join them. This practice obviously can, and does, lead to a situation where the IPCC is heavily biased towards the philosophies and ideologies of certain governments or science groups.
The lead authors of the chapters of the IPCC reports can themselves be researchers whose work is cited in those chapters. This was the case with the so-called “hockey stick” temperature graph in the Third Assessment Report (TAR) published in 2001. The paper in which the graph first appeared was not subject to proper and independent peer review, despite which the graph was prominently featured in a chapter for which the co-creator of the graph was a lead author. The graph was debunked in 2006
[6] and has been omitted without explanation from the Fourth Assessment Report (4AR) of 2007.
The IPCC has often said words to the effect “We don’t know what else can be causing warming so it must be humans” (or “the climate models will only produce the correct result if we include man-made influences”), but at the same time the IPCC says that scientists have a low level of understanding of many climate factors. It logically follows that if any natural climate factors are poorly understood then they cannot be properly modelled, the output of the models will probably be incorrect and that natural forces cannot easily be dismissed as possible causes. In these circumstances it is simply dishonest to unequivocally blame late 20th century warming on human activity.
[7]
The IPCC implies that its reports are thoroughly reviewed by thousands of experts. Any impression that thousands of scientists review every word of the reports can be shown to be untrue by an examination of the review comments for the report by IPCC Working Group I. (This report is crucial, because it discusses historical observations, attributes a likely cause of change and attempts to predict global and regional changes. The reports by working groups 2 and 3 draw heavily on the findings of this WG I report.)