Great links Glen.
I found this in another forum where the subject is being discussed and post the latest input from a memeber ... another ëxpert" ??? or another opinion??? I dont know anymore.
A prospectus for big government
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, February 05, 2007
Imagine you find out that a large corporation has produced its annual report before its audit is complete. Long before its outside accountants have signed off on revenues and expenses for the year, the company has issued its official annual statement claiming everything is rosy.
Oh, and the report was written by the company's sales department rather than its finance office.
Securities commissions would be all over them. Exchanges would stop trading their shares.
Or how about a mining company that issued a prospectus claiming it had found a rich vein of ore even before the mineral samples had been tested?
"Charlatans! Frauds! Crooks!," you'd scream. And you'd be right.
So how come so many otherwise smart people are eager to swallow whole the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's global warming report when the scientific studies behind it will not be released until May at the earliest?
The 21-page document, officially called the Summary for Policy Makers, was released by the IPCC last Friday, and leaked far and wide for a week before that to ensure maximum public relations impact.
But the scientific reports on which the summary is allegedly based won't be available for months. Accepting the conclusions of the summary before being able to see the science behind it is just like buying shares in a company based on its premature annual report or speculative ore claims.
The IPCC summary isn't even written by scientists, at least not in their capacity as scientists. It is written by a few politicians, bureaucrats and environmental activists chosen by the UN agency, some of whom also happen to be scientists.
And the vaunted meeting in Paris last week that approved the summary's final draft, the meeting most of the world's media so breathlessly told us represented the consensus of 2,500 leading scientists? Well, most of the attendees with votes were the representatives of their national governments. That some were also scientists was purely coincidental. The IPCC buries its scientific findings for release months after the fact; has politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists write its report; and -- surprise! surprise! -- ends up coming to conclusions that can only lead to bigger government, and government funding for environmental scientists.
In effect, the IPCC summary is a prospectus for big government written by big government's sales department.
And don't expect the full truth to come out even when the 1,600 pages of science are finally released. The IPCC has a habit of censuring the work of scientists who disagree with the global alarmist orthodoxy. It has also instructed scientists still working on their academic contributions to the final report that those contributions must be modified after publication of the summary so as to "ensure consistency with" the summary's conclusions.
It is the political tail wagging the scientific dog.
In the corporate world, this would be called a scam. News producers, editors and reporters would see right through it. In the environmental world, the IPCC is hailed as the definitive word, and most media fall to their knees before its collective wisdom without raising so much as a suspicion.
Friday's summary actually contained some good news -- if one simply looks at the few hard scientific observations it contained and disregards the hell-in-a-hand-basket hyperbole.
For instance, since its last report in 2001, the IPCC has revised downward its projections for temperature and sea-level rise.
Six years ago, the "scientific consensus" was that the Earth could warm by 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. This time, the IPCC thinks it will rise by no more than 7.2 degrees F -- a 30% reduction. And sea levels are now projected to rise by no more than 17 inches, half the rise of 34 inches in 2001's forecast.
This is the forth IPCC report, and the third in a row in which the doom and- disaster predictions have been revised downward.
The IPCC should be saying that the more we learn about global warming, the less we believe its consequences will be disastrous. But that doesn't feed the global big-government industry. And it would make it hard for environmental special interests to continue raising billions each year.
So just as Tony Blair's government was accused of having "sexed up" intelligence on Iraq's WMDs to justify invasion, the IPCC and the environmentalists have sexed up predictions on climate disaster to reinforce their self interests.
© National Post 2007
I wonder what he really thinks
alex
. Sorry I was a little manipulative
. If only everyone could stop and ask similar questions when presented with the news
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