IPCC and UNFCCC

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1] is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, dedicated to provide the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change, its natural, political and economic impacts and risks, and possible response options. It was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. Membership is open to all members of the WMO and UN. The IPCC produces re- ports that contribute to the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the main international treaty on climate change. The objective of the UNFCCC is to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system". But this objective emanates from the assumption that almost only Green-House Gases (GHG) are responsible for an observed temperature increase since the end of the ‘Little Ice Age’ at 1850, and that for an inclining concentration of these gases mostly fossil fuel emissions are liable. Therefore, the UNFCCC and as its acting body the IPCC is primarily focusing on human emis- sions and tries to explain all global warming exclusively by human activities, while any natural variations are almost completely excluded. As a consequence, also most of the state-sponsored climate research was concentrating only on the human influence and largely neglecting natural variations. The IPCC does not accomplish original research, nor does it monitor climate or related pheno- mena itself. Rather, thousands of ‘experts’ from political and environmental organizations con- tribute on a voluntary basis to writing and reviewing reports, which are mostly captured by the governments without any larger modifications. From selectively screening the climate literature the IPCC and related institutions conclude that climate science is settled and that 97% of climate scientists or even more would make humans responsible for a climate change.

The So-Called AGW-Consensus

The statement of settled science and a scientific consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) goes back to evaluations like that of Cook et al. [2], who examined 11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 in the peer-reviewed literature matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. They found that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming (see left graphic). In their further analysis then the authors only consider those abstracts, which explicitly or im- plicitly expressed a position on AGW (32.6% endorsed + 0.7% rejected + 0.3% uncertain --> total 33.6%), and from this they conclude that 97.1% (32.6/33.6 %) endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming (right graphic). Independent of the fact that in science a hypothesis is not confirmed or rejected by voting or by a consensus, in such calculation the largest group of climate scientists (66.4%), which did not explicitly express a position on AGW, is completely embezzled. It is adventurous how Cook et al. - and with them the IPCC - infer from such manipulated data a 97% AGW-consensus of climate scientists. The authors generalize selectively deduced data from abstracts partially written more than 20 years ago, and mostly published to present a scientific result and not to express a position on AGW. Indeed, some of these scientist may also have supported the AGW-hypothesis, but others not. A detailed scrutiny of Cook‘s data even shows the exact opposite of a consensus. M. Fiedler [3] looked more carefully to the original data and found that from the 11,944 abstracts just 64 explicitly endorsed and quantified AGW as the dominant reason for the climate change (50+%). This is not more than 0.54% of all abstracts. 922 abstracts (7.72%) explicitly endorsed, but did not quantify or minimize it, and 2,910 (24.36%) only implicitly endorsed AGW. All the others had no position or were rejecting AGW. The only thing we can definitely learn from such investigation is that 32% of all abstracts concede (explicitly or implicitly) some smaller fraction of anthropogenic global warming, and only 0.54% hold humans mainly or alone responsible for global warming. So, it is a willful deception of the public and the politicians to deduce from such kind of investigations any scientific consensus. An even worse evaluation is presented by Powell [4], who assumes that the extent of a consensus can be determined by the number of scientists, who contradict the AGW-hypo- thesis. With this method he finds 5 surveys in 54,195 articles and derives from this an average consensus of 99.99%. Applying this method, right away we will find a 100% consensus for the hypothesis that witches are responsible for global warming, and burning of witches is an appropriate means to protect humans against disasters and climate catastrophes. This will be the result of screening the peer-reviewed literature, since nowadays no serious article can be found, where burning of witches as adequate measure against potential threads is gravely discussed or mentioned, and therefore also no expert can be found who contradicts such scenario, which nowhere is considered and which goes back to the middle age. This kind of investigations is absolutely nonsense, and it is highly disqualifying that such logics has meanwhile been taken over by the German Government to proclaim a 99% AGW-con- sensus of climate scientists (Bundestags-Drucksache 19/12631 [5])!

IPCC‘s New Perception

All this is no longer real science and objective consultancy of politicians. Rather the IPCC itself converted to a political organization, which disseminates climate religion and has turned aside from serious climate science. Their thousand pages long Assessment Reports, in particular the chapter Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) demonstrates, how the IPCC modified its original mission from consulting governments to an active political organization. The reports are dri- ven by an extreme form of fear based activism and speculation instead of presenting settled climate facts. They are no longer scientific reports but converted to political statements with the essence to convince politicians and media that any observed climate change is only man- made and natural effects have no influence on the climate. We know, declarations of a forthcoming climate catastrophe are most attentively recognized by the public and politicians. To some extent this even goes along with end time hysterics, as this could be observed with prognoses for a population explosion and the feared starvation crisis or the forest destruction in the 80s. But serious institutions and reliable climate scientists do not further invigorate such tendencies or dramatize speculations that create a religious war in our society and a polarization between industrialized and developing countries with claims for guilt and expiation (see e.g. requests for a deed of partnership: The Great Transformation [6]). Serious science concentrates on factual research which can confirm or dismiss a theo- retical prediction. Therefore, it is high time for a fundamental amendment of the climate organizations. This demand is strongly supported by many climate scientists and experts, see e.g.: • Letter to the US President and Petition to withdraw from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed by 310 international scientists, Lindzen et al., February 23, 2017 [7]. • REAL climate science shows Trump was right to Exit Paris, Declaration of scientists as re- sponse to a letter of MIT President Reif to the MIT community, in which Reif criticizes Presi- dent Trump’s decision to exit the Paris climate agreement, Marko et al., 2017 [8]. • There is No Climate Emergency, World Climat Declaration of Independent Scientists, signed by more than 1870 scientists of 61 countries, sent to the UN and UNFCCC, G. Berkhout et al., September 2019 [9].

Advocates of Climate Science

There is hardly any other discipline in which so many articles appear, both by climate experts and scientists from other disciplines, which critically question the data and publications pub- lished by official institutions or the governments and point to obvious contradictions and misinterpretations. They deliver an important contribution to the active climate debate. With- out claiming completeness, here we list some of these alternative associations as control bodies of the IPCC and advocates of serious science. Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change Already quite early, the one-sided considerations of a purely man-made climate change were recognized by some scientists. Therefore, almost at the same time as the IPCC, the Non- Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) was founded by Prof. Fred Singer to form an alternative scientific voice to the IPCC. For more than 70 years, Prof. Singer had outstanding positions in the sciences. He was direc- tor of the Center for Atmosphere- and Spacephysic at the University of Maryland (1953-62), first director of the National Weather Satellite Service (1962-64), founding dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences at the University of Miami (1964-67), served in various departments and was a Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. His specialty was atmospheric and space physics. Sadly, Fred Singer passed away in April 2020 at the age of 95. But until old age, he still used all his strength to ensure that science did not degenerate to a water carrier of politics with a rapidly increasing dependency of environmental sciences from politics. Therefore, he had already founded the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) in 1990, which - like the NIPCC - in many scientific reports positioned itself clearly against an increasing ideologization of environmental sciences and tried to counteract the emerging scaremongering of man-made climate change. With the death of Fred Singer, the NIPCC has not published new alternative assessment re- ports. However, other associations and scientists, who have critically questioned the work of the IPCC parallel or in cooperation with the NIPCC and SEPP continue to do this very actively. European Institute for Climate and Energy In Germany, for example, the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) has extensive internet activity, where critical reports from all over the world on climate change and energy supply appear daily, together with plenty of comments from a broad readership. Daily Newsletter on Climate and Energy The climate news from Prof. Vahrenholt and Prof. Lüning in form of a daily newsletter on climate and energy topics together with the blog "Kalte Sonne" and the “Climate Show“ on YouTube inform regularly about reports on new scientific results from the climate sciences. The reports are mainly focussing on new publications about the influence of natural control factors on climate events. Reviews and critical comments on other articles and press releases also appear there. The aim of the website is also to provide a thematically sorted overview of the continuously growing number of blog articles. Climate Intellicence Foundation The Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation that operates in the fields of climate change and climate policy. CLINTEL was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. In 2019 CLINTEL published a World Climate Declaration with the title: There is no Climate Emergency. This declaration was addressed to politicians and the UN. Meanwhile it is signed by more than 1,870 scientists from 61 countries. In May 2023 CLINTEL published the book: The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC - An Analysis of AR6. A team of eight scientists, in addition to several anonymous expert reviewers, from the Clintel network, have analyzed several claims from the Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports. Climate Realists In Norway, a group was formed years ago, which is mainly active in Northern Europe and calls itself Climate Realists. Since 2021 it publishes its own scientific journal, Science of Climate Change. This journal has a high scientific level with reviewers from proponents and critics of human climate change and also with contributions from both sides. In contrast to many journals controlled by the IPCC, in Science of Climate Change as Open Access Journal also climate-critical articles can be publish- ed. As a long-standing member, the Nobel Prize Laureate Prof. Ivar Giaever also supports the activities of the Climate Realists. CO 2 Coalition Finally, we refer to the CO 2 Coalition, which was initiated by Prof. Will Happer from Princeton University and Prof. Richard Lindzen from MIT. In particular, this association points to the advantages of a higher CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere. Plants absorb CO 2 from the air through photosynthesis. Without this process, plants would not be able to grow, and without this process, there would be no life on Earth. The growth of C3 plants in particular is signifi- cantly promoted by a higher CO 2 content in the atmosphere and thus also contributes to a more secure nourishment of the world's population. In May 2023, Prof. John Clauser, Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics 2022 (awarded for his quan- tum physics work) was elected as an additional director to the board of the CO 2 Coalition. We close here with his words: "The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population, and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science."

Wrong Climate Forecasts

Here only a small collection of announcements from official and non-official ‘climate experts‘ about our climate, which finally led to the founding of the IPCC; and also some statements of representatives or members of this association, which may reflect the seriousness of these forecasts, but also the style, how pure climate speculations are presented as facts: • As early as 1986, climate researchers warned of droughts, famines, storms, floods, poles will soon be ice-free, the glaciers of the Alps and the Himalayas will have disappeared by 2040, and as illustrated, for example, on the front page of the journal “Der Spiegel” in 1986, Hamburg, New York or Hong Kong will no longer exist in 20 years, i.e. in 2006. • Also James Hansen, previous head of NASA‘s Goddard Institute, saw New York disappear in the floods. He announced at a hearing of the American Congress in 1988: “In 20 years will the West Side Highway (along the Hudson River) be under water, and the win- dows along the road will be fixed with adhesive tape because of the strong winds." When I passed the highway in 2010, the water level was almost the same as it was 20 years earlier, maybe a few cm higher in agreement with the official tide gauge measurements, showing a linear incline over the last 150 years of not more than 1.3 to 1.8 mm per year. After all, an actual study just found that New York could be more affected by flooding than other coastal cities, because of a sinking subsurface at an average of one to two milli- meters per year. While the skyscrapers based on rock, hardly sink, coastal areas with softer subsoil are much more affected (Parsons et al. [10]). A particular example of surface sinking is Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. Large parts of the city sink by about 6 cm per year, 30 times the rise of sealevels. This is mainly attributed to the extraction of drinking water, which in turn contributes to the sinking of the country. • In 1989, Noel Brown, at that time the UN's chief secretary for the environment, announced: "In 11 years, entire nations could disappear from the face of the Earth as a result of rising sea levels, if global warming is not stopped by the year 2000“. Fortunately, the Maldives and Fiji Islands still exist. They are not nearly as endangered as always portrayed, not least because coral reefs are growing faster (8 – 30 mm/year) than sea levels are rising. It is also known that there are regions where the sea level has lowered relative to the coast instead of rising. Examples are Helsinki or the Norwegian coast, where after the melting of glaciers the land continues to rise for thousands of years. • In 2006, Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President, stated in the opening credits to his film An Inconvenient Truth, for which he was awarded by the Nobel Peace Prize: "If drastic measures are not taken to reduce greenhouse gases within the next ten years, the world will reach a point of no return. The situation is a real planetary emergency." Incidentally, this film tries to demonstrate the greenhouse effect in a model experiment, which, however, has nothing to do with this effect and can be seen as a clumsy, even dan- gerous deception. The goal of such a fake demonstration is clear, to simulate the effect of CO 2 emissions by men and to derive the imperilment of the planet by these emissions, which in turn calls activists like Fridays for Future or the Last Generation onto the scene. With the point of no return Mr. Gore certainly meant that the polar bear population is in- creasing significantly again, since fewer are released for shooting. And the Arctic ice has unfortunately been increasing again for several years, so that the Northern Passage will no longer be possible. • In 2007, Rajendra Pachauri, President of the IPCC until 2015, declared: "If no fundamental measures are taken within the next five years, it will be too late". And: "What we do over the next three years will determine our future. That's the definite time." • King Charles III, in 2009 still Prince Charles, announced: "Without financial incentives or de- terrence we have only 8 years to prevent an irretrievable collapse of our climate and ecosystem and everything that comes with it". • Of course, also German prophets should not be missing in such doomsday scenarios. As early as 2000, Mojib Latif, now head of the GEOMAR Helmhotz Institute in Kiel, predicted that our children would no longer know what snow is: "Winters with severe frost and a lot of snow like twenty years ago will no longer exist in our latitudes". And in his new book from 2020 he says: "What is currently happening on our planet is unpre- cedented worldwide. Primarily due to the CO 2 emissions produced by combustion of fossil fuels, the temperature on Earth is rising at an unprecedented speed with already visible and in some cases drastic consequences." What Latif cites, are not observations, but the results of computer models that calculate significantly higher temperatures than they are measured. • And Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institut für Klimafolgenforschung was already in 2006 and now again talking about new domino effects that can be triggered by climate change, such as the overturning of the Gulf Stream and the destabilization of the West Antarctic ice sheet. As paleoclimatologist he knows that temperatures over the last 570 million years have been predominantly much warmer, in some cases more than 10°C compared to our current temperatures. In these so-called Warm Ages the pole caps were ice-free. We are actually living in an Ice Age, the Quaternary, and within this Ice Age in an Interglacial, the Holocene, as a slightly warmer period. But it is not known that the Warm Ages or the Interglacials would have led to tipping points or the destruction of fauna and flora. On the contrary, together with a significantly higher CO 2 concentration this has led to better living conditions for humans and plants. • Unfortunately, with the Interim Report published in 2018 and the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC in 2021, nothing has changed in the forecasts. "Warming of 1.5°C or more increa- ses the risk of irreversible changes such as the loss of some ecosystems, and man-made emissions of CO 2 must fall by 45% within the next 12 years and reach 'zero' in 32 years."

References

1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): https://www.ipcc.ch/ 2. J. Cook et al.: Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Environ. Res. Lett. 8 (2013) 024024 (7pp), doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024 3. Markus Fiedler: Die 97% Einigkeit unter Wissenschaftlern, die es nie gegeben hat, https://markus-fiedler.de/2020/01/02/die-97-einigkeit-unter-wissenschaftlern-die-es-nie- gegeben-hat/ 4. J. L. Powell: The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Matters, Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 36, issue 3, pp 157-163 (2016), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0270467617707079 5. Bundestags-Drucksache 19/12631 vom 23.08.2019: Antwort der Bundesregierung auf kleine Anfrage der AfD - Drucksache 19/12228 6. Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU): Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine Große Transformation - 2011 7. R. Lindzen et al., Petition to withdraw from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Letter to the US President Donald Trump, February 23, 2017. 8. I. Marko, J. S. Armstrong, W. M. Briggs, K. Green, H. Harde, D. R. Legates, Ch. Monckton of Brenchley, W. Soon, REAL climate science shows Trump was right to Exit Paris, June 21, 2017. 9. G. Berkhout et al., There is no climate emergency, Pan-European Declaration of independent scientists (Climate Intelligence Foundation - CLINTEL), September 2019. Cover Note to UN and UNFCCC World Climate Declaration signed by 1878 scientists of 61 countries 10. Tom Parsons, Pei-Chin Wu, Meng (Matt) Wei, Steven D'Hondt, 2023: The Weight of New York City: Possible Contributions to Subsidence From Anthropogenic Sources, Earth‘s Future, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF003465

Physics & Climate