New Analysis Highlights Serious Errors And Bias In Latest IPCC Report
By Paul Homewood
Amsterdam, 9 May 2023
* IPCC hides good news about disaster losses and climate-related deaths
* IPCC wrongly claimed the estimate of climate sensitivity is above 2.5°C; it is more likely below 2°C
* IPCC misleads policy makers by focusing on an implausible worst-case emissions scenario
* Errors in the AR6 report are worse than those that led to the IAC Review in 2010
The IPCC ignored crucial peer-reviewed literature showing that normalised disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and that human mortality due to extreme weather has decreased by more than 95% since 1920. The IPCC, by cherry picking from the literature, drew the opposite conclusions, claiming increases in damage and mortality due to anthropogenic climate change. These are two important conclusions of the report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, published by the Clintel Foundation.
The 180-page report is – as far as we know – the first serious international ‘assessment’ of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. In 13 chapters the Clintel report shows the IPCC rewrote climate history, emphasizes an implausible worst-case scenario, has a huge bias in favour of ‘bad news’ and against ‘good news’, and keeps the good news out of the Summary for Policy Makers.
The errors and biases that Clintel documents in the report are far worse than those that led to the investigation of the IPCC by the Interacademy Council (IAC Review) in 2010. Clintel believes that the IPCC should reform or be dismantled.
With the recently published Synthesis Report, the IPCC finished its sixth assessment cycle, consisting of seven reports in total. An international team of scientists from the Clintel network has analysed several claims from the Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports. This has now led to the report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC.
In every chapter the Clintel report documents biases and errors in the IPCC assessment. The errors are worse in the WG2 report than in the WG1 report. Given the political relevance of what is known as “Loss and Damage” (at the yearly COP meetings, countries currently negotiate donations to a Loss and Damage fund) one would expect a thorough review of the relevant literature. However, Clintel shows that the IPCC has totally failed in this respect. For example, a review article on the subject, published in 2020, showed that 52 out of 53 peer reviewed papers dealing with “normalised disaster losses” saw no increase in harms that could be attributed to climate change. The IPCC highlighted the single paper that claimed an increase in losses. That paper is – unsurprisingly – flawed, but its cherry picking by the IPCC suggests they found its conclusions irresistible.
Climate-related deaths
“We are on a highway to climate hell”, said UN-boss Guterres recently. But an in-depth look at the mortality data shows that climate-related deaths are at an all-time low. Well-known economist Bjorn Lomborg published that important information in a 2020 peer-reviewed paper, but the IPCC, again, chose to ignore it.
The strategy of the IPCC seems to be to hide any good news about climate change and hype anything bad.
Erasing climate history
The Working Group 1 report is not free from bias and misleading conclusions either. The report documents problems in every chapter the Clintel team reviewed. The IPCC has tried to rewrite climate history by erasing the existence of the so-called Holocene Thermal Maximum (or Holocene Climate Optimum), a warm period between 10,000 and 6000 years ago. It has introduced a new hockey stick graph, which is the result of combining cherry-picked proxies. And it has ignored temperature reconstructions that show more variability in the past, such as the well-documented Little Ice Age.
The IPCC claims there is an acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise in recent decades. Clintel has shown this claim is flawed, because the IPCC ignores decadal variability in sea level. We also show that its sea-level tool – made available for the first time – shows a mysterious and improbable jump upward in 2020.
Climate sensitivity
Canadian economist Ross McKitrick has pointed out that all global climate models used by the IPCC show too much warming in the troposphere, both globally and in the tropics (where models predict a ‘hotspot’). This probably indicates some fundamental problems in the way that these models simulate the climate system.
A ’spectacular’ result of the IPCC AR6 report was the rise of the lower bound for the climate sensitivity likely range from 1.5°C to 2.5°C, therefore claiming that low values for climate sensitivity are now unlikely. The Clintel report shows this rise is not justified. The Clintel report suggests that observed warming and other evidence indicates that the true figure is more likely to be below 2°C than above 2.5°C. This also means that the best estimate for climate sensitivity, which the IPCC says is 3°C, is not justified.
On top of that, the IPCC is ‘addicted’ to its highest emissions scenario, so-called RCP8.5 (or now SSP5-8.5). In recent years, several papers have demonstrated that this scenario is implausible and should not be used for policy purposes. Deep inside the WG1 report, the IPCC acknowledges that this scenario has a ‘low likelihood’ but this very important remark was not highlighted in the Summary for Policymakers, so these important audiences are unaware of the issue. RCP8.5 is the scenario most often referred to in the IPCC report.
IAC Review
Back in 2010, errors in the WG2 report of the Fourth Assessment led to the investigation of the IPCC by the U.N. Interacademy Council (IAC). This review recommended, amongst other things, that “[h]aving author teams with diverse viewpoints is the first step toward ensuring that a full range of thoughtful views are considered.” This important recommendation is still being ignored by the IPCC. Worse, we document that Roger Pielke Jr, a scientist with considerable expertise in these areas, is regarded as a kind of ‘Voldemort’ by the IPCC, and they deliberately avoid mentioning his work or even his name. This leads to biased conclusions.
Reform
We are sorry to conclude that the IPCC has done a poor job of assessing the scientific literature. All countries rely on the IPCC reports to support their climate policies and most of the media blindly trust its claims. The Clintel report The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC shows that this trust is not justified.
In our view the IPCC should be reformed, and should include a broader range of views. Inviting scientists with different views, such as Roger Pielke Jr and Ross McKitrick, to participate more actively in the process is a necessary first step. If, for some reason, such inclusion of different views is unacceptable, the IPCC should be dismantled.
Our own conclusions about climate – based on the same underlying literature – are far less bleak. Due to increasing wealth and advancing technology, humanity is largely immune to climate change and can easily cope with it. Global warming is far less dangerous to humanity than the IPCC tells us.
The report can be downloaded here.
The press release (in English) can be downloaded here in pdf.
Dutch press release here.
Hungarian press release here.
ABOUT CLINTEL
The Climate Intelligence foundation (Clintel) was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. Clintel’s main objective is to generate knowledge and understanding of the causes and effects of climate change, as well as the effects of climate policy. Clintel published the World Climate Declaration, which has now been signed by more than 1500 scientists and experts. Its central message is “there is no climate emergency”.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Is anybody surprised that the corrupt IPCC process produces false and misleading conclusions?
You only need to read the charter of the IPCC. The “results” are predetermined.
Correct. A kid would get an F grade for planing a science experiment the way they hard wired CO2 into the plan as the culprit. 30 whatever years later they STILL have not demonstrated a causal link between CO2 and temperature so more and more it becomes clear that to these charlatans, keeping their lousy jobs is more important that discovering the truth and that lying in support of a “good cause” is virtuous and earns them kudos.
Do not expect to see this “problem” presented by that paragon of impartiality, the BBC any time soon….
The name is a bit of a clue.
Who funds Clintel ?
Google it and find out for yourself…and then bugger off somewhere else
Charming. Look, you need to address concerns like this because it is the first question the other side will ask.
OK, kz, if you’re looking for spurious motives, are you a member of the Green party?
No I’m not a member of the Green party. I’m actually on your side for the most part. When I point out this report to the other side the very first response will be, “they are funded by big oil”. So are they or are they not? I can’t find out from their website.
More important is who is funding IPCC and all the other “climate” fanatics
Unfortunately, we are.
Anybody who thinks that’s a relevant question simply demonstrates that they are simple-minded bigots who don’t care to try and understand whether there is a climate problem or not. There is zero chance of convincing such people that they should examine the arguments made by Sceptics or non-Alarmist scientists. They cannot and will not examine their own opinions and beliefs.
There is a list of 1500 supporters here.
Click to access WCD-version-02182311035.pdf
A lot of scientists among them, and from around the world too.
Yes there is a list of disparate persons there, I’ve seen it before. I don’t see a claim that Clintel is wholly funded by these people. For all I know some of them are major funders, but then if you are CEO of a bauxite processing company, obviously there is a vested interest there.
Why should their funding matter so much? A lot of it is in small individual donations. 1,500 declared supporters giving €100each is an income of €150,000. Their overall budget and spending is tiny – a small percentage of say Greenpeace or even XR. What worries you about what they spend it on?
The only thing that really matters is whether their research has anything useful to say. For those pushing the climate agenda, that matters a lot, because it undermines them, particularly when it is correct as it seems to be.
Perhaps you could explain what the vested interest of the CEO of a lithium mining company is, and why a audited miner would be different. Also why if he chips in €1000 that is going to fundamentally alter what this group of scientists say.
Audited = bauxite
I came across this regarding a case Clintel is joining.
https://climatecaseofthecentury.org
Clintel was founded by 2 businessmen from the real estate industry. I couldn’t find any list of donors.
From the link.
“Clintel is totally independent and does not receive any funding from governments or any foundation. Our support base is you – the thousands of private citizens around the world who are more concerned about the negative effects of judicial climate policies than about climate change itself”
The guys that run it have links in the past with the oil industry, having worked for various oil companies and detractors make much of their past links. Their detractors also make much of the fact that many of the signatories to the World Climate Declaration are not scientists and some that are are not so called climate scientists and that is a weak point for them. Unfortunately these facts make it easy for Alarmists to persuade others to ignore what Clintel says as it is branded a denial organisation.
Thank you. This is the kind of grown up response we should expect.
That sounds like it was written by someone from the climate alarmists. Try Berkhout’s own bio, which shows he became a professor at TU Delft in 1976 after starting his career in 1964 in geophysics research.
https://www.aj-berkhout.com/bio/
Crok has been a journalist since 1997, having studied chemistry.
Marcel Crok (1971) studied chemistry in Amsterdam and Leiden. In 1997 he became a freelance science journalist after an internship at the Chemisch Weekblad (nowadays C2W). In 2001 he became an editor at Technology magazine De Ingenieur and from 2003 at Maandblad Natuurstenschap & Techniek (NWT). In February 2005, Crok published a large and critical story about the hockey stick graph in NWT (English version). This story released many reactions and since then he has followed the climate debate closely. Later that year, the hockey stick story earned him the first glass griffin, an incentive prize for young science journalists. With the prize money of the Glass Griffioen and a contribution from the Fund for Special Journalistic Projects, Crok is currently working on an international book about the climate debate, based on interviews with many climate researchers. The working title of the book is the CO2 case. In the book he investigates whether and if so how it has been proven that CO2 is guilty of recent warming on earth.
Perhaps that makes it easier to understand why he is a bête noir of CAGW believers.
I’d really love to find one of these organisations that is truly not funded by fossil fuel industries. If Clintel could prove this it would be a real advantage to the cause.
Have you ever found “one of these organizations” that actually is funded by fossil fuel industries? It seems to me that the standard tactic is to try to browbeat anyone who disagrees with CAGW by identifying who they are and then taking steps to attack them by cancelling them in every way possible. In due course that will extrens to Trudeau trucker treatment. The tactic us simply designed to stop as many as possible from evaluating the claims made by such organisations, particularly effective when such a claim is sufficient to deny any chance of a rational hearing in the media.
Given the tactics it is no surprise that these organisations simply refuse to expose their ordinary donors to the CAGW mob, and content themselves with statements that they are not funded by fossil fuel industry donations.
In fact, fossil fuel companies usually take great pains to disavow any links with “these organisations”. It would be a PR disaster that would see them attacked by greens in government. Instead they fund green think tanks.
Kzbkzb, in two abbreviated words – F. O.
I don’t know how you expect to gain support with an attitude like this.
Why waste your time kibitzing here? Do you imagine your cunning ‘flame wars’ plan is not transparent? Hope this is polite enough to avoid too much more pearl clutching.
Kzbkzb,
I, in my small way, for one they requested donations from the general public. I do not think there is the slightest chance they would seek or accept funding from sources that could then be used against them.
This report doesn’t hit hard enough…
“The Clintel report suggests that observed warming and other evidence indicates that the true figure is more likely to be below 2°C than above 2.5°C.”
What is the basis for saying saying sensitivity is even close to 2 deg C? There is no empirical, causative evidence that climate sensitivity is anything more than 0 deg C! Being generous, I’ll add +/- 0.2 to the zero!
I’m pretty sure zero is below 2!
I think the are being careful. If you say it’s zero it just gets instantly dismissed as Denier racist anti-science far right fascism.
I understand that zero is below 2 but the fact they use 2 is an indication that they think 2 is possible. So they are not being careful, they are being cowardly. There is no mechanism for CO2 to cause any significant warming but they would prefer to be mealy-mouthed about it so they reduce their argument by just 0.5 deg and hope that justifies them being taken seriously. There is no measurable or significant warming effect from CO2. Period. ‘Climate Sensitivity’ just perpetuates the fraud. Who is the denier here?
The IPCC is simply a cover for the UN Agenda of destroying capitalism and forcing socialism on the world. At a news conference in 2012 in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
An interesting thing is to see the link to their behaviour all the way back to the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory.
Off message: Is this a record? Gridwatch shows that wind is generating 1% of what electricity the UK requires at noon today? Anyone got the time and energy to show what that means as a return on the capital employed.
“…return…”
Allowing for fixed overheads? -10% per annum. But this is a game of ‘heads the consumer loses, tails we toss again.’
I have attempted to do this. I have created an Excel file from demand and wind data for 2022 downloaded from the Gridwatch website to calculate the excess installed wind power and storage capacity required to guarantee supply matches demand without the use of fossil fuels. For hydrogen storage, I calculate the installed wind capacity needs to be 6.75 times the average demand and for battery storage 4.5 times the average demand. Taking the NG ESO FES LTW for 2035 figure of 76 GW average demand I calculate, for hydrogen storage, we need 513 GW of installed wind power at a cost of £2.4tn with £347bn of electrolysers and a hydrogen storage capacity of 2.8m tonnes. Battery storage requires 342 GW of installed wind power at a cost of £1.6tn and 76 TWhrs of battery storage at a cost of £28tn. If anyone would like to check my Excel spreadsheet and calculations please email me at jbxcagwnz@gmail.com and I will be happy to send a copy.
SMRs would be a much better option….
Excellent! Thanks for all this hard work.
John,
simple capacity does not tell the whole story. Wind, solar, wave and tidal all have serious technical deficiencies and as such are incapable of running a grid alone, they are inferior to conventional generators.
To a degree batteries, on a large scale can overcome som eof these deficiencies, so I’m told by renewables enthusiasts.
Inertia replication would need to be for every second so I would say that you need two sets of batteries to serve this function i.e. one discharging the second charging.
I cannot begin to get my head around how much capacity that requires?
Much appreciated. It it realistic or fair for you to be asked to refresh this information quarterly or at whatever interval is reasonable? Is it practicable for one among us to scrutinise the outcome so that some level of peer review can be demonstrated?
Typically such bright ideas do not come from competent people — I am only a Chartered Surveyor.
The Mail had a piece yesterday claiming that wind was producing more power than gas generation. I am sure this will be lying by omission such as interconnectors were in full flow etc.
Come off it! Everyone knows that we have wind farms that can power more than 2,000,000 homes!! /s
Come off it with bells on! They can power 30 million homes…assuming a load of one light bulb in each home. Which is all the plebs need to find their way to their beds of rags strewn on the floors.
Dave and Harry, I enjoyed the responses. Makes you wonder what keeps the devotees’ boat afloat apart from our cynical belief that grants, subsidies and massive risked loss of credibility for the fund managers and our political classes.
Any news of a publisher awaiting the text of a book on the origins and operations of the renewables racket. There is precedence — sort of –see the scandal at Elf Aquitaine of about 15 years ago.
I heard it was limitless and all that windmill magic is only surpassed in wowishness by the even more limitless solar magic energy….. both of which at the same time produce chemistry similar to petrochemicals out of thin air that we need to “sustain” our 21st Century civilization….
The more important question to the future of civilization of course is the link between electricity and racism and slavery and how it must be supplied in equitable amounts which must be clear to those who see them both as providers of the asinine term “green energy”. A more absurd usage of the word green there never was.
Not only is it limitless, pmfb, everyone KNOWs that the wind is FREE! (or, as I love to tell greenies, so is oil and coal: it just has to be captured, rather like the wind…..
…and then there’s magic
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/demand-flexibility-service-delivers-electricity-power-10-million-households
The Demand Flexibility Service, put in place by the ESO across the 2022/2023 winter, saved over 3,300MWh of electricity as consumers and businesses did their part to reduce demand at key times. In total, this was enough to power nearly 10 million homes across Great Britain.
1.6million households and businesses participated in the Demand Flexibility Service, delivering demand reduction across 22 events held across this winter.
In reality, the savings from 1.6 million homes might have been enough to power 450,000 others (10 million divided by 22 events). Maybe.
This kind of crazy thinking should be called out. It gets really dangerous when politicians and journalists believe it.
1.6 million households saved enough electricity to power 10 million homes?! Exactly how much must those 1.6 million have been using if, just by reducing their usage, each of them could power 6 other homes?
At times of high demand smart meters are supposed to charge MORE to limit usage, so called Demand Side Reduction, so why did they pay people not to use electricity, because if they did charge more, all hell would be let loose. Exposing all the lies surrounding smart meters.
I turned my oven, grill, toaster, tumble dryer ON.
When visiting other electric jurisdictions we all engaged in “load building” activities: Turning on all the lights in the hotel room, raising or lowering the thermostat temperature setting & etc.
It Doesn’t Add up,
saving just over 3 Gigawatt hours over the whole of the winter is the tiniest of tiny savings. At an average demand of 30 Gigawatts means a generation of 720 Gigawatt hours per day. What is the National grid ESO thinking when they publish such irrelevance.
Demand response or more correctly rationing is a sign of a failed system.
Business and Industry requires reliable power and lots of it, that should be their aim.
I don’t know who’s running the National Grid but they seem to employ lots of propaganda generators.
Put another way 3,300MWh is about the annual consumption of 1,000 homes.
Interesting that I can’t find any of the MSM reporting this story.
Your favourite broadcaster cond.:- the BBC issued a ‘story’ 3 hours ago headlined “Wind is the main source of UK energy for the first time.” See above for the supply to the grid 4 hours ago. More advertorial from the same source follows on.
Ireland awards 3GW of offshore wind under its ORESS-1 auction at an indexed price of €86.05/MWh (about £75/MWh). That’s a significant premium to the AR5 Administrative Strike Price ceiling of £44/MWh in 2012 money or about £60/ MWh currently.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/irish-government-awards-over-3gw-for-offshore-wind-in-breakthrough-moment-for-ireland/
Indexation, curtailment and other terms here
https://www.gov.ie/pdf/?file=https://assets.gov.ie/252215/7eacfb9c-6702-4e72-9499-5bea86aa9d96.pdf#page=null
Worse, we document that Roger Pielke Jr, a scientist with considerable expertise in these areas, is regarded as a kind of ‘Voldemort’ by the IPCC, and they deliberately avoid mentioning his work or even his name. This leads to biased conclusions.
When the IPCC screws up, they get upset that Pielke points out where they’ve screwed up. But he’s doing everyone a favour, including them. On Twitter yesterday he said of the IPCC: ‘It is their responsibility to ensure scientific quality of their products.’
No, its the IPCC’s responsibility to follow the Leftist political directions of its masters. The science says no global climate emergency. The political masters say there is. Guess who wins?
IPCC was political from the very start. Look at it’s full name “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”, not a mention of actual science.
>>The science says no global climate emergency. The political masters say there is.
On a ‘design and innovation’* module I took with the Open University in 2018, we had to reference IPCC AR5 in several essays. We were told not to bother reading the report but just to quote from the ‘summary for policymakers’. Naturally, we were not told that this section of the IPCC report was written by politicians rather than the scientists whose work the summary misrepresented.
I resented having to lie in order to maintain my grades.
* ‘You will own nothing and be happy.’
My impression from various alumni donation softening up stuff I receive is that professing the correct beliefs is essential for any ambitious academic today. There was some eco-loonery in my day (engineering, 50+ years ago) but not so overt. When I became a chartered engineer my donation to the ICE library was ‘Small is Beautiful’ which I thought a splendid joke at the time.
“…Open University…”
Having enjoyably and cheaply studied with the OU, on and off since 1984,
I parted company with them in 2014. Partly because they quadrupled the cost,* and partly because it seemed to me inevitable that they would go the way of all modern institutions.
The send me letters asking for donations. I have mixed feelings about that.
There weren’t many laughs but I remember one time. While doing a final Honours course in Complex Analysis, I went to one of the ‘Day Schools,’ as I found the subject quite challenging. I immediately noticed there was an eight-year old girl already writing away in an exercise book. I can’t tell you how intimidating that was to a middle-aged man with a fair conceit of himself! Was I going to be corrected, every time I opened my mouth, by a new Newton? Luckily it turned out that she was the daughter of one of the actual Maths students, only there because a babysitter had not turned up.
I peeked at her exercise-book. She was doing easy-peasy, primary-school, sums. Slower than I could! “Not so clever are you!” I said unworthily under my breath.
*Not entirely their fault. The government cut money from them. It had noticed that many of the students were nervous**, middle-aged, women trying to improve themselves who just liked learning things. Cameron et al did not much care about such people, as they were not going to ‘improve the work force.’
** Nervous with a reason. The OU did genuinely try to be accessible to the unacademic, and the start of each module and the early ‘TMAs’ were easy. However the OU was on its guard not be thought of as a joke and the final exams were hard.
“enough to power 1o million homes..
For one hour. A whole winter’s savings from this effort can keep the lights on everywhere for a few minutes. Pathetic that this is regarded as a good result.
That people can say and listen to nonsense all day long makes a mockery of the idea that we are Nature’s successful experiment in intelligence.
‘n million homes’ is always a lie (Sherratt’s Nth law). Our local solar subsidy farm claimed that it would power 150,000 homes when proposed (claim now down to 100,00) it’s 11,000 homes if you allow for practical heat and an EV(!).
‘Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, the global investment manager behind the scheme, started construction after it won the highest government subsidy ever awarded for a solar energy project.’
The IPCC has always been a global warming advocacy group. It took reputable scientists a little while to understand but then went to court to have their names removed from a report as it was bollocks. Since then nobody of repute is involved and even if their name was put forward they would be rejected hence a disease expert was rejected as an author in favour of a PhD student.
The IPCC has been extremely successful in persuading normally intelligent people that white is black and vice versa. This Government, particularly the dozy Theresa May and the indolent Boris Johnson swallowed hard and accepted all the nonsense. The problem is that the gullible 80% of the public took sides with them without ever challenging the theory or questioning the facts. I have been recording public estimates of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere for ten years and the 2 year running average is still around 11%, only one person getting it exactly right, a pupil from a Surrey public school. A Government Minister, when asked suggested the figure was between 50 and 60% What hope do the 20% of sensible people have of turning the dangerous vessel round .
Where does 11% come from? It is only zero point zero three or zero point zero four percent and even the alarmists admit that only 3% of that already only just about measurable number is “manmade”.
>>CO2 concentration in the atmosphere for ten years and the 2 year running average is still around 11%
“What hope…?”
The chances are somewhere between nil, none, and zero.
The UN is collection of liberal arts parasites who do nothing, and produce nothing but mindless anti-human non-scientific drivel and propaganda based on nothing.