The author says:

"The IPCC itself does not commission research. It attempts to put together all that independently generated information in order to get the big picture."

That is monumentally wrong; see:

http://hro001.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/uns-climate-bible-gets-21-fs-on-report-card/

The IPCC uses activists for much of its reports and relies on "grey" literature or reports which are ideological or political in nature.

The history of the IPCC has been one of mistake, corruption and ideology concerned with using the lie of AGW to justify a growth in the UN's influence and to redistribute wealth from the West to the 3rd world.

The latest example of that is the creation of 'disaster' fund whereby nations like the Philippines which just experienced an entirely natural weather disaster, can demand compensation from Western nations for their creation of AGW:

http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/typhoon-haiyan-revives-compensation-row-at-un-climate-talks_891230.html

The IPCC is a farce and has no scientific validity as the 2010 IAC enquiry found:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/29880.html

This article is prolix amphigory.

You're so full of it, cohenite/Anthony Cox.

I was under the impression that post Karl Popper the essence of science was that you stated a hypothesis and tried to disprove it. Darwin for example in the Origin of Species puts forward the hypothesis that evolution is driven by natural selection and the struggle for existence at the beginning of the book. The rest of the book then tries to disprove it and when he fails you end up accepting the model. If you get data (best through an experiment) that falsifies the hypothesis you reject it.

With regard to AGW the problem is that the past 15 years have not substantiated the models.

I am reminded of the words of Tim Michen:
Science adjusts its views based on what’s observed,
Faith is the denial of observation, so belief can be preserved.

Yes, Anthony, we can blame it all on the Sun, can't we?

If you fancy a little read, find a potted history of your pet theory here http://www.aip.org/history/climate/solar.htm

PS: ice volume, or extent? What's the important measure when deciding whether Arctic ice is disappearing?

Others have dealt with the science aspect of it..

The problem from the public policy point of view is that these much vaunted climate models have proved useless, and even counter productive in deciding policy. During the megadrought in SE Aus we were told it would continue, so a number of states built desalination plants which now take up space. During the subsequent 2-3 years of flooding, we were told the flooding was worse due to high ocean temperatures (which had not been forecast, or even mentioned before the flooding). In fact there is no indication that teh flooding was worse than the last, major round in the 1970s..

When severe bushfires hit NSW early in the season we were told it was due to climate change, although nothing much had been said about bushfires before that (the recent IPCC report doesn't say anything about fires, only about dryness).

When a big typhoon hit the Philippines we were told it was due to global warming when, in fact, the IPCC report admitted that scientists cannot not find any trend in storms.

Scientists can be left to sort this matter out among themselves, but as far as framing public policy goes, the track record of the climate models to date suggest that any attempt to control emissions so that such an such a limit in CO2 would keep the earth at this or that temperature increase is a waste of time. The models just aren't that accurate..

If the way we live is such a serious problem shouldn't we see other less debatable circumstantial evidence – like salination of the land, soil loss, air & water pollution, habitat & species loss et cetera?

We might see an emergence of “winners” & "losers" with "winners" developing a new “ethic”, like that “greed is good” & the development of an economy that encourages it.

We might also see personal, family & community breakdown, disenchantment with materialism, depression, loss of hope & even suicide.

In poorer nations we might start to see critical social division where people started risking their lives & even the lives of their children to streets lined with gold.

A radicalisation of poor people that only by sacrificing their own lives could they fight against perceived global injustices – we might expect them to see this as a holy war with tactics like guerrilla warfare & terrorism rather than to conventional confrontation where they would be annihilated by superior richer forces.

Disempowered nations might even look to develop weapons of mutual destruction, or at least their disempowered and poverty stricken citizens might accept this tactic by their leaders without objection.

Where per capita use of fossil fuels is high we might see evidence of closing borders against refugees & a building up of defences.

Health wise, resulting from excessive consumerism we might see obesity or heart conditions et cetera on a phenomenal scale.

Urged on by the representatives of such nations using catch cries like “democratic principles” & “our way of life is not negotiable”, we might anticipate that even where problems like global warming are acknowledged, the response would be to prop up the lifestyle with new technology to allow for continued & even expanding per capita consumerism. We would expect to hear a lot about “clean” coal, “eco” tourism, electric cars & de-salination run by “safe” nuclear power.

Common sense tells me that, although nothing can be certain, connecting the dots strongly suggests that we are going the wrong way.

Chris Baulman
@landrights4all