Dutch-Led Network Of International Experts Finds “Serious Errors” In Latest IPCC Report

The UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) is misleading policy makers by focusing on an implausible worst-case emissions scenarios, concludes a new analysis report published by the Clintel Foundation: “The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC“

The IPCC is hiding the good news about disaster losses and climate-related deaths and wrongly claims the estimate of climate sensitivity is above 2.5°C. Also errors in the AR6 report are worse than those that led to the IAC Review in 2010. concludes the report by The Climate Intelligence Foundation (Clintel), which was founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok.

Opposite of IPCC claims likely true

Another result: The IPCC ignored crucial peer-reviewed literature showing that normalized disaster losses have decreased since 1990 and that human mortality due to extreme weather decreased by more than 95% since 1920.

Clintel accuses the IPCC of cherry picking from the literature to claim increases in damage and mortality due to anthropogenic climate change, when in fact the opposite is likely true.

Rewrote climate history

The Clintel report is 180 pages long and the first serious international ‘assessment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. In 13 chapters the Clintel report shows the IPCC rewrote climate history, and emphasizes an implausible worst-case scenario, favoring bad news and ignoring good news.

“The strategy of the IPCC seems to be to hide any good news about climate change and to hype anything bad,” reported the Clintel press release.

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 Councel (IAC Review) in 2010. Clintel believes that the IPCC should reform, or be dismantled.

Clintel is a network of international scientists who analyzed several claims from the Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis)
and Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) reports. This led to the latest report: “The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC”.

IPCC ignores 97% of all papers

Clintel explains how the IPCC ignored 52 out of 53 peer reviewed papers dealing with “normalized disaster losses” and found no increase in harms that could be attributed to climate change. Yet, the IPCC highlighted the single paper that claimed an increase in losses.

Cherrypicking, rewriting history

The IPCC also 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, and has introduced a new hockey stick graph, which is the result of cherry-picked proxies. The IPCC ignores temperature reconstructions that show more variability in the past, such as the well-documented Little Ice Age.

In its recent report, the IPCC also has grossly exaggerated sea level rise and CO2’s ability to warm the earth’s atmosphere and thus appears to have remained ‘addicted’ to its highest emissions scenario, so-called RCP8.5, which in recent years has been shown by several published papers to be implausible and thus should not be used for policy purposes.

Severely biased 

“We are sorry to conclude that the IPCC has done a poor job of assessing the scientific literature,” the Clintel scientists report. “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 the inclusion of other views does not permitted, then the IPCC should be dismantled, the scientists say.

Reality: Future is far less bleak

“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.”

Clintel also 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”.

Clintel press release here.