A Major Deception on Global Warming
by Frederick Seitz
Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996
Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations
organization regarded by many as the best source of scientific information
about the human impact on the earth's climate, released "The Science of Climate
Change 1995," its first new report in five years. The report will surely be hailed as
the latest and most authoritative statement on global warming. Policy makers
and the press around the world will likely view the report as the basis for
critical decisions on energy policy that would have an enormous impact on U.S. oil and
gas prices and on the international economy.
This IPCC report, like all others, is held in such high regard largely because
it has been peer-reviewed. That is, it has been read, discussed, modified and
approved by an international body of experts. These scientists have laid their
reputations on the line. But this report is not what it appears to be--it is
not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the
title page. In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific
community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and
the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption
of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.
A comparison between the report approved by the contributing scientists and
the published version reveals that key changes were made after the scientists had
met and accepted what they thought was the final peer-reviewed version. The
scientists were assuming that the IPCC would obey the IPCC Rules--a body of
regulations that is supposed to govern the panel's actions. Nothing in the
IPCC Rules permits anyone to change a scientific report after it has been accepted
by the panel of scientific contributors and the full IPCC.
The participating scientists accepted "The Science of Climate Change" in
Madrid last November; the full IPCC accepted it the following month in Rome. But more
than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report--the key chapter setting out the
scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate--were
changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question had
accepted the supposedly final text.
Few of these changes were merely cosmetic; nearly all worked to remove hints
of the skepticism with which many scientists regard claims that human activities
are having a major impact on climate in general and on global warming in
particular.
The following passages are examples of those included in the approved report
but deleted from the supposedly peer-reviewed published version:
- "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can
attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in
greenhouse gases."
- "No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate
change observed to date] to anthropogenic [man-made] causes."
- "Any claims of positive detection of significant climate change are likely
to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of
the climate system are reduced."
The reviewing scientists used this original language to keep themselves and
the IPCC honest. I am in no position to know who made the major changes in Chapter
8; but the report's lead author, Benjamin D. Santer, must presumably take the
major responsibility.
IPCC reports are often called the "consensus" view. If they lead to carbon
taxes and restraints on economic growth, they will have a major and almost certainly
destructive impact on the economies of the world. Whatever the intent was of
those who made these significant changes, their effect is to deceive policy
makers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human
activities are causing global warming.
If the IPCC is incapable of following its most basic procedures, it would be
best to abandon the entire IPCC process, or at least that part that is concerned
with the scientific evidence on climate change, and look for more reliable sources
of advice to governments on this important question.
Mr. Seitz is president emeritus of Rockefeller University and chairman of the
George C. Marshall Institute.
This article is published without permission in the interest of public education in compliance with the concept of fair use as provided for in US Copyright Law Title 17 U.S.C., section 107.
