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An Exercise in Smoke and Mirrors

23 September 2021
Climate change

The Week That Was, the weekly newsletter of www.sepp.org … has a piece by Ken Haapala, president of SEPP, that some may find rather revealing – or perplexing. There are deficiencies in the 6th Assessment Report [2021] issued by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [the IPCC], particularly in its Summary for Policymakers [written up for politicians and their cohorts]. It includes a new version of the hockey stick with minimal evidence supporting it. Steve McIntyre very quickly tore gaping holes in it. In fact, his criticism is devastating – but completely ignored by the media as lackeys of the politicos. The assertion that temperatures had been stable over 2000 years, right up to the industrial revolution, comes from a set of studies by the international paleoclimatology group based in Bern [Switzerland], known as PAGES 2k. The data are maintained by NOAA in Boulder, Colorado. PAGES 2k deliberately omits high resolution, well established proxy studies of alkenone [produced by marine algae]. These are the backbone of paleoclimatological studies, going back millions of years into the past, and not just the last 2000 years]. Yet, they are absent. McIntyre points out the physical science in the latest IPCC report is used to justify dramatic changes in the use of fossil fuels. Given the cost and magnitude of such changes, the document should be of the highest scientific standard – and challenges the integrity of the IPCC and the UN.

Steve McIntyre went through the claim with a fine tooth nail. He found that they had ditched a lot of proxies in the new hockey stick and inserted short coral series in their place [100n to 200 years in length]. In other words, lots of tree rings and ice core records were abandoned in favour of sea corals. They no longer suited the narrative. McIntyre wonders how PAGES 2k reached their conclusions, adding 'proxies covering the medieval period and earlier are sparse in the new hockey stick'. Only one has values prior to AD925 – yet they claim the hockey stick covers 2000 years. For the last couple of centuries, it is dominated by very short coral proxies.  Haapala ends by saying, false claims by the UN and its followers cannot produce compelling physical evidence of dangerous global warming. China, India, and other countries in the Far East, will continue to smile politely and ignore the froth from the West.

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