If You Can’t Trust the UN on Climate Change, Who Can You Trust?

Certainly not the UN! 

The debate, such as it is, over global warming has been increasingly driven by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  The UN-supported body has acquired the status of , say, the Vatican Curia, a direct representative from On High, not to be questioned by mere mortals.  But the IPCC deserves no such respect.

Explains H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis:

More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to sound the alarm over the possibility that global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.  In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in order to study and better understand this potential threat.  The IPCC’s mission was to provide a “comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socio-economic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

IPCC reports have predicted that average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels.  Congress is considering proposals to slow rising temperatures by joining international agreements or by implementing policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

However, several assessments have shown that the techniques and methods used to derive and verify the IPCC’s climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.  They indicate that the IPCC’s central claims — that the present warming trend is unusual, caused by human activities and will result in serious harm — are not supported by scientific forecasts.  Rather, these claims are opinions that are no more likely to be right than wrong.

Great.  We should move ahead and wreck our economy based on ideologically biased guesses!