Don
Just because somebody has studied a scientific subject at university does not make them somehow oracles on the subject of climate change. The two MP you refer to are hardly unbiased.

Peter Lilley is primarily an economist although he claims to have studied natural science at Cambridge University. He has strong financial interests in the oil industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lilley
Quote
“Lilley is currently Vice Chairman and Senior Independent Non-Executive Director at Tethys Petroleum. For this position he received, between 2007 and 2012, $400,000 worth of share options. Between 2012 and mid-June 2013, he was paid more than £70,000 by the company.”

Graham Eric Stringer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Stringer

First of all he is a labour politician and therefore can’t possible be right about anything.
He is a qualified chemist, which is a fair way from climate science.
He was involved in the investigation into the so called climategate affair, where he voted against the other 3 panel members on every occasion.

My biggest problem with him is he does not believe in dyslexia, which I happen to suffer from quite severely. I can assure him it is a real, I did not learn to read until I was 12 and then I taught myself, despite having one on one lessons for a number of years.
If he can be so wrong about something like dyslexia, I have no faith in his ability to judge other fields outside his immediate areas of expertise.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/news/report-ipcc-5-assessment-review

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press/140729_statement_UK_report.pdf
Quote
"The committee’s report notes that the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report is the best available summary
of the prevailing scientific opinion on climate change currently available to policymakers. It
acknowledges that the conclusions of the report are widely supported in the scientific community
and that its summaries are presented in a way that is persuasive to the lay reader."

A rational paper by the author, which is being attacked by the irrational warmists.

Yet, not one of the warmist camp has been able to table the empirical scientific evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause dangerous global warming.

Ideally, the IPCC -- the political animal that it is -- should be euthanised. However, it would be too much to expect the Coalition Government to do this, as the responsible Minister is a committed warmist. The Opposition -- even without Kevin Rudd -- and the Greens would be the last to call for the IPCC's disbandment.

Good article and one that needs ongoing attention.

I would hope that one day soon, people that have spent the last 20+ years believing faithfully will start to question when predictions of appocalypse continually do not come to pass. As this happens IPCC will become increasingly less relevant.

Like all religions, will take time and some's faith may mean that never open their mind to possibilities and the IPCC will always have some support for religious dogma. But like any secular society, rationalism and logic will one day come to the fore.

As pre-empt for any commentators - the question here is CO2 from human sources and impact on climate. There is no debste that increasing population, pollution, development etc all have impact. That is not the role of IPCC which is limited to human induced climate change. I would argue that the former is more important and the IPCC has helped the world has waste decades and $'s instead of tackling more serious issues.

Climate change is the greatest challenge we face - created and exacerbated by population growth - and those that deny it, like Aitkin, are either grossly ignorant or grossly irresponsible. Given Aitkin's holding scientific posts in the past, I can only conclude the latter holds. It is articles such as this that thwarts effective climate action yet, if we remain on the path that we are on, we will have four degrees of warming and that is basically the difference between civilisation and societal breakdown. Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman who writes for the New York Times, once wrote that climate change deniers should be charged with treason. It is certainly a suggestion that bears contemplation.

Re Don's quotes in the fourth and fifth paragraphs of his article - his point seems to be that these two are in disagreement with each other. I can't see how. They both acknowledge the uncertainties (and the certainties).

As for the statement by the two politicians he cites,

It says

The bulk of the main IPCC technical report recognises these uncertainties and is simply a useful compilation of the research in the field.

However, the Summary for Policy Makers is far less balanced than the report it purports to summarise.

So if you think it's got something wrong you can check it out in the main report, it would seem.

The criticism seems to be "the Summary for Policy Makers systematically omits mentioning or plays down key information in the main report"

Well of course a summary will omit things. Whether or not they are key information is something you need a broad and deep understanding of the relevant science to determine.

Does Don have this? He's never given any evidence of it.

As a person who knows a bit (very little, compared with those who work in the area) about the science myself I am frequently amazed to find people who manifestly know less than I do, but see their view on matters of climate science as worth the same as the experts.

Is Don one of those people?

Very good article Don. My leanings are with the over 30 000 scientists who submitted to the senate select committee expressing some doubts regarding the science. As mentioned above, perhaps the IPCC is past it's use by date.