Thursday, February 01, 2007

IPCC Moves towards Skeptic Stance!   [Iain Murray]

I wrote on the CEI blog about how the IPCC has quietly changed its definition of its projected temperature rises to include all pre-industrial warming, not just warming from 1990 onwards.  Our best information has it that the IPCC calculates that 0.8 degrees centigrade has already occured.

Subtracting that 0.8 from the projected temperature rises in the Fourth Assessment Report gives us a projected temperature rise this century of just 1.2 to 3.7 degrees centigrade.  It also lowers the "best guess" for temperature rise to 2.2 degrees centigrade.  This compares to the Third Assessment Report range of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees for 1990 to 2100.  Yes, the IPCC has actually lowered even the lower band of its projections, despite all the hype that it has raised it upwards.

Interestingly, prominent "skeptic" Pat Michaels has been saying for years that the way the models behave coupled with real world data suggests a best guess of 1.7 degrees temperature rise this century.  Pat's projection is now clearly towards the middle of the consensus.  In other words, the IPCC has moved towards the skeptical position, so much so that the IPCC's lower bound for temperature rise is now half a degree less than prominent skeptics have been saying, while the skeptics' best guess is half a degree less than the consensus best guess.  This is chump change compared with previous disparities.

No wonder the alarmists are in a tizzy.

02/01 02:35 PMShare