ANOTHER climate change blunder: First it’s melting glaciers, now natural disaster claim is debunked
Jan 25th, 2010 by Rick Arms
The world’s leading climate change scientists have been caught out making unfounded claims about global warming for the second time in just over a week.
Experts appointed by the United Nations said rising temperatures were to blame for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
But it has emerged that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the statement, made in 2007, on an unpublished report that had not been properly reviewed by other scientists.
The report’s author has since withdrawn the claim, saying there is not enough evidence to link climate change to worsening natural disasters, and criticised the use of his data as ‘completely misleading’.
It follows the IPCC’s admission that it was wrong to state in its influential 2007 Fourth Assessment Report that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
That assertion was based on ‘ speculation’ featured in an eight-year-old article in New Scientist magazine.
The latest revelation means more embarrassment for the climate change lobby because worsening natural disasters were a central plank of arguments at the recent UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Barack Obama used the claims when he said last autumn: ‘More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.’
Ed Miliband
Unfounded: Secretary of State for Climate change Ed Miliband claimed increased severity of flooding was attributable to global warming
Climate change minister Ed Miliband has claimed that floods such as those which devastated parts of Cumbria last year could be widespread if global warming goes unchecked.
He said last month: ‘Events in Cumbria give a foretaste of the kind of weather runaway climate change could bring. Abroad, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of south Asia could put millions of people at risk of drought.’
The IPCC’s 2007 report said the world had ’suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s’, suggesting global warming was to blame.
But the claim was taken from a then unpublished report by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at London-based consultancy Risk Management Solutions.
When Dr Muir-Wood released the report he added the caveat: ‘We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses [damage caused by natural disasters].’
The IPCC said it would investigate the false claim and could withdraw it.
Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC, said: ‘We are re-assessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings.’
Dr Muir-Wood attacked the way his evidence was used. He said: ‘The idea that catastrophes are rising in cost partly because of climate change is completely misleading. We could not tell if it was just an association or cause and effect. ‘Also, our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished.’
Further embarassments are being revealed daily, of which this is one. The continued repetition of the mantra “none of this impacts the validity of the science’ is becoming more and more pathetic sounding.
The global warming bandwagon has lost a wheel and is headed in the ditch of obscurity. Thank God!
If local authorties stopped allowing homes to be built on flood plains, that would be a start. Also, if builders stopped making rabbit hutches for homes and allowing enough land to assist in soaking up the rains, allowing families to park properly in their new streets because households no longer have just the one car, they have 2 or more and new estates are simply not equipped to keep so many vehicles.
The whole idea is a big scam to force us all to pay more taxes?
A method of suppressing 3rd world development?
You might think I’m wrong, but with each day that passes more & more is coming out about the lies told to support these ideas, and anyone, however emminent who dares voice opposition is branded a heretic. Did you see the 180 minute documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Scam’? You should
Saving what resources we have and using them carefully makes very good sense, but not all the ‘new religion’ clap trap that goes with it.
Its all lies from the beginning to the end. They should all be brought before a court.
But weren’t we repeatedly told that was “IMPOSSIBLE”?
Still I bet someone will post here saying that they’re never wrong - except when they ADMIT they’re wrong………
“‘People have looked hard for evidence that global warming plays a part but can’t find it.” and there we have the problem. The Alarmists look for any way that they can link something to AGW. Even if they can’t prove a link, as long as they can’t find anything that disproves it, they run with the claim anyway and then attack anyone that tries to challange it.
Muir-Wood does not say the the IPPC report is wrong about damaging weather. He argues that is not yet proven by the statistical data available. The Mail takes the same approach the cigarette manufacturers took for years - it’s not proved so it must be wrong. Meanwhile Austrialia, India and the American Southwest dry up and burn a little more each year. Warmier temperatures and near equatorial drought are the two big predictions of global warming and they are being proven with each new record year.
A few weeks ago the Mail did the same thing with the report that the East Antartic ice shelf appears fairly stable , “global warming disproved etc, etc., ” completely ignoring the rapid disolution of the West Antartic ice shelf. Ah yes, only half the house is on fire, nothing to see here..
All it boils down to is that the Govenments of the worlds richest countries want another large serving of your disposable income…what a great earner…..a new tax……the best of all….free money…..and the wishy washy bleeding heart liberals as always are the first to support them in any accusations that they may make….true….or in some cases not so true….and in others complete fiction. Do you really think that you tax pounds are going to make a difference?
One of my friends already told me about this place and I do not regret that I found this article.