Nongovernmental (NGO) and intergovernmental (IGO) climate change panels are at odds with one another regarding the existence and impact of climate change.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), an IGO, or intergovernmental organization, recently released a report that all but predicted the zombie apocalypse. The report stated that climate change is harming the growth of crops, the quality of water and forcing various wildlife to adapt a new way of life. Prior impacts on natural systems have astonishingly left human beings relatively unscathed, according to the IPCC.
But, now, we can soon expect world hunger and poverty if no course correction is made. “Throughout the 21st century, climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth,” the report stated. Yet, their policy prescriptions consist of unrealistic regulations that will redistribute wealth to lesser-developed nations and create heavy economic burdens on developed, wealthy and willing nations.
If climate change skeptics question the scientific methods of the IPCC, or whether or not their data has been cherry-picked, then they are heartless for not caring how global warming will “make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger.”
A nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a NGO, or nongovernmental organization, argues the polar opposite has and data suggest will continue to occur as a result of greenhouse gases. The NIPCC state global warming is not causing substantial harm to the biosphere.
The NIPCC directly counters the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) with critiques of their methods and motives. In essence, they argue that they are simply an alarmist, crisis-creating collective government body with an alternative agenda and obvious bias.
This work provides the scientific balance that is missing from the overly alarmists reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are highly selective in their review of climate science and controversial with regard to their projections of future climate change,” the report opens.
“Although the IPCC claims to be unbiased and to have based its assessment on the best available science, we have found this to not be the case. In many instances conclusions have been seriously exaggerated, relevant facts have been distorted, and key scientific studies have been ignored.”
The panel of more than 50 scientists concluded that human impact on the global climate is small. When taken in total, and not just specific cherry-picked periods, changing temperatures are within a historic scope of periodic temperature variations, and there is no net harm to human health or food production.
“Biological Impacts broadly tracks and critiques the work of IPCC’s Working Group II. It appears IPCC is continuing its pattern of selectively reporting data to present an alarmist view of the impacts of climate change,” the report explains.
In fact, regarding food productions, the NIPCC found that an increase of CO2 stimulates vegetative productivity, which has increased food supplies in impoverished regions. Further, in the past, greening of the Earth transpired even in the face of real assaults from fires, disease, pest outbreaks, deforestation and climatic change.
The IPCC reports state that in many regions of the earth, changing precipitation and melting snow are altering hydrological systems, which negatively impact the quantity of water resources. They also claim that climate change is forcing terrestrial, freshwater and marine species to shift their geographical ranges and migration patterns.
The NIPCC, however, found that the rates of global sea-level change vary in decadal and multi-decadal ways and show neither recent acceleration nor any simple relationship with increasing CO2 emissions. A sea-level rise due to heat expansion is also unlikely given that the Argo buoy network — Argo is a system for observing temperature, salinity, and currents in the Earth’s oceans which has been operational since the early 2000s — shows no significant ocean warming over the past 9 years.
Nevertheless, while we could go back and forth on the data points, the average American is neither a professional scientist nor seriously concerned with the debatable phenomena, if any, of manmade climate change. What we can do as average Americans, sarcasm emphasized, is examine and weigh the motives and agendas of both nongovernmental organizations and intergovernmental organizations.
“Ethical standards have been lowered, peer review has been corrupted, and we can’t trust peers in our most prestigious journals anymore,” said Joe Bast, President and CEO of Heartland Institute.
What we do know is that climate change alarmists are, in fact, funded by government or proponents of central government, have released multiple doomsday projections over the decades that have never materialized, are proven liars (remember climate-gate?), and are actively attempting shutdown debate using ridicule and fear tactics.
“Mostly it’s a bunch of old, retired guys that got together and wrote a report for the Heartland Institute that is basically full of misinformation,” said Donald Wuebbels, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Indiana Champaign Urbana.
The Heartland Institute, which publicly rolled out their report Wednesday in Washington, D.C., insists that it is peer-reviewed. Upon further examination, we located over 100 scientists who have, in fact, reviewed the NIPCC research from what they claim to be an objective — or scientific — method of approach. For these scientists, the IPCC approach is riddled with methods that violate the fundamental tenets of the scientific method, such as a lack of willingness to even scrutinize a model with obvious contradictions.
Much of the IPCC model relies on natural climate processes or variability, “weaknesses in climate models and data sets used to measure temperatures or forecast future climate conditions, or with data that raise serious scientific questions about the IPCC’s attribution of climate change to human greenhouse gas emissions.”
It is certainly true that we cannot know for sure what the NIPCC is driven by; perhaps, the desire to bring integrity back to the field. But it is true the NIPCC has worked with leading thinkers in the fields of statistics, physics, economics, geology, climatology, and biology. This should have satisfied Dr. Wuebbels’ concerns, or at least cause him to pause before making the claim the work wasn’t peer-reviewed.
In the course of their study, the NIPCC has avoided the appeals to authority, making certain “assumptions,” or relying upon “circumstantial evidence that characterize the reports of the IPCC and other partisans in this debate.”
On the other hand, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a government-sponsored collection of likeminded proponents of centralized power. They are politically motivated and obviously predisposed to believing that climate change is a problem in need of a collective U.N. solution, or else they would not be selected for the project. Those in the field who help to validate their methods and conclusions, are without fail-rewarded with funding for their own projects, institutions and careers.
The NIPCC are not affiliated or sponsored by any government or governmental agency. The panel is independent and not part of the political arena. Thus, at least theoretically, they are free of pressures and influences from the political class. The international panel of scientists and scholars first came together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change, in fact.
“Our sole goal in presenting this information is to enable fellow scientists, elected officials, educators, and the general public to make up their own minds about what the science says, to understand climate change rather than simply believe in it,” stated the panel of their own agenda. It sounds suspiciously reasonable; completely lacking that typical “flat-earth,” close-minded kind of tone.
