IPCC and UNFCCC

The I ntergovernmental P anel on C limate C hange (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 W orld M eteorological O rganization (WMO) and the U nited N ations E nvironment P rogramme (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 U nited N ations F ramework C onvention on C limate C hange (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 G reen- H ouse G ases (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 go vernments with out 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 state ment of settled science and a scientific consensus on A nthropogenic G lobal W arm ing (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 ex press ed a position on AGW ( 32.6% en dorsed + 0.7% rejected + 0.3% uncertain --> total 33.6% ), and from this they conclude that 97.1% ( 32.6/33.6 %) endorsed the con sensus position that hu mans 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 consen sus, in such calculation the lar gest group of climate scientists (66.4%), which did not explicitly ex press 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 scien tists. The authors generalize selectively dedu ced 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 scien tist may also have suppor ted 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 mini mize 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 politi cians to deduce from such kind of investigations any scientific con sensus. An even worse evaluation is presented by Powell [4], who assumes that the extent of a con sensus 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 con sen sus 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 bur ning of witches is an ap propriate means to protect humans against disasters and climate cata strophes. This will be the result of screening the peer-reviewed litera ture, since nowadays no serious article can be found, where burning of witches as adequate mea sure against potential threads is gravely discussed or men tioned, and therefore also no ex pert can be found who con tra dicts 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 dis qualifying that such logics has meanwhile been taken over by the German Govern ment 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 S ummary for P olicy M akers (SPM) demonstrates, how the IPCC modified its original mission from consul ting governments to an active political organization. The re ports are dri - ven by an extreme form of fear based activism and speculation instead of presen ting settled climate facts. They are no longer scientific reports but converted to political state ments 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 expia tion (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, Pan-European Declaration of Independent Scientists, sign- ed by more than 700 scientists of 24 countries, sent to the UN and UNFCCC, G. Berkhout et al., September 2019 [9].

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

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