An Open Letter to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

November 28, 2018

Contact information for the IPCC Secretariat 

C/O World Meteorological Organization

7bis Avenue de la Paix

C.P. 2300

CH- 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland

 

Phone : +41-22-730-8208/54/84

Fax : +41-22-730-8025/13

ATTN:    Dr. Hoesung Lee,  Chair

Dear Sir, 

RE: Call to Retract IPCC SR15 Report – Crime Against Humanity, Lack of Due Diligence, Faulty Scientific Premises and Conflicts of Interest

We have thoroughly reviewed the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change SR15 report and call upon you to retract it for the following reasons:

  1. Promoting Crime Against Humanity

As early as Oct. 23, 2007, the UN Special Rapporteur on Food, Jean Ziegler, called the use of biofuels a ‘crime against humanity’[1] saying:

“It is a crime against humanity to convert agricultural productive soil into soil which produces food stuff that will be burned into biofuel.”

 

His words seem to have been ignored by the IPCC in the recent report which advocates for a completely untested model of biofuel use as a means of generating electricity – this being Biomass Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), which would, at scale, entail the use of arable land that is one and a half times the size of India.

 

The work of the New England Complex Systems Institute, dating back to 2011, has shown that biofuels and food speculation have led to a dramatic surge in food prices worldwide, causing mass civil unrest, an underlying driver of migration.[2]

 

It is negligent, unethical, and immoral of the IPCC, a UN body, to advocate for untested biofuel ‘solutions’ in its report that would obviously constitute further such crimes against humanity.

 

  1. Negligent Review

In 2015, Jonathan Lynn, Head, Communications and Media Relations, of the IPCC communicated with Friends of Science Society regarding a press release.[3]  At that time, as outlined in our exchange of correspondence, we asked the IPCC for peer-reviewed studies supporting the claims made in the Summary for Policymakers, SPM.4.2.2. “Decarbonization…” of the 2013 report, that wide-scale deployment of wind and solar were a “cost-effective mitigation strategy…”  Mr. Lynn indicated that there were none, but if such material was available, it would be incorporated into the next report. This was not done for the IPCC SR15, even though the report strongly advocates for renewables.

 

Several studies, like that of Prof. Michel J. Kelly of Cambridge,[4] show that renewables cannot support basic society in terms of Energy Return on Energy Invested, and he asserts that rapid decarbonization would result in mass deaths.[5]  “Burden of Proof”[6] shows that there is no credible evidence that 100% renewables systems are viable.

 

Our recent assessment, “In the Dark on Renewables”[7] demonstrates the folly of renewables, the burdensome costs imposed on an unwitting public, and the lack of due diligence by government policymakers, many of whom seem to rely upon IPCC reports without question as the work of the “world’s top scientists.”  Such negligent review is not an exemplar of top science.

 

  1. Faulty Premises on Climate Science

The recent IPCC SR15 report is based on three key faulty premises which are detailed in our report “Faulty Premises = Poor Public Policy on Climate” and summarized below.[8]

Faulty Premise #1: that we are in the “Anthropocene” Epoch – we are not, it is the Holocene which began some 11,700 years ago.[9] The drive to officially recognize the Anthropocene Epoch has been deemed by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Commission on Stratigraphy to be political rather than scientific.[10]

Faulty Premise #2: that carbon dioxide would be a commodities trading market and as simple and profitable to institute as the sulfur dioxide trading markets. It is not. Sulfur dioxide markets were a select microcosm, affecting a few hundred, specific industries which were able to easily incorporate industrial scrubbers to reduce pollution; carbon dioxide and related proposed taxes affect every element of modern society. Where sulfur dioxide can be reduced into a tangible, trade-able product, carbon markets are fraught with fraud as carbon trading is based on “the lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no one.” While some see carbon dioxide reduction targets as the ‘great equalizer’ because it is common to all processes of modern society (and to people, carbon dioxide breathing carbon-based life-forms), it is, in fact, highly prejudicial, particularly toward northern countries where people are reliant on fossil fuels to survive.  Further, the proposed Green Climate Fund makes a mockery of so-called ‘climate justice’ by being designed to allow wealthy Saudi Arabia to apply for funding, while requiring bankrupt Greece to pay in.

Faulty Premise #3: that carbon dioxide from human industrial emissions is the driver of climate change and global warming.  In fact, despite a recent significant rise in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, there is no statistically significant comparable rise in global average mean temperatures for ~20 years. Climate models predicting warming have widely diverged from observations, indicating that they are useless for forecasting what temperatures will be 20 or 100 years from now. Dr. Judith Curry testified to the US Senate that carbon dioxide is not the control knob that can fine tune climate, and that the 2013 IPCC report weakened the case for human causation of climate change.[11]  Dr. John Christy testified to the US Senate that the IPCC’s own documents show that human greenhouse gases have little effect on climate; nature is the greater factor.[12]

A number of scientific papers published in recent years shows that the climate is much less sensitive to increasing CO2 emissions than simulated by climate models. For example, the paper by Dr. Ray Bates[13] used empirical data to estimate that the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is tightly constrained with a best estimate of 1.02 °C and a likely range of 0.85 °C to 1.28 °C. Climatologists Nicholas Lewis and Dr. Judith Curry[14] published an important paper in the Journal of Climate that estimates the ECS best estimate is 1.50 °C with a likely range of 1.20 °C to 1.95 °C, assuming all the warming was human-caused. However, accounting for the natural recovery from the Little Ice Age, the ECS best estimate drops to only 1.28 °C. The corresponding Transient Climate Response best estimate drops from 1.20 °C to only 1.02 °C. These values are much less than the mean climate model estimates for ECS and TCR of 3.2 °C and 1.8 °C, respectively. Considering the large benefits of warming and CO2 fertilization, the Social Cost (Benefit) of Carbon Dioxide is significantly negative, meaning CO2 emissions are net beneficial to human welfare.

  1. Climate Change Policy is Fraught with Conflicts of Interest

Parties with vested interests in renewables and global carbon markets have been spending over $600 million a year funding Environmental Nongovernmental Organizations (ENGOs) to push climate catastrophe hype as a reason for incorporating renewables on the grid, with the ultimate objective of establishing a global cap and trade system.[15]  These parties enacted this plan with no regard for national sovereignty, a founding principle of the United Nations Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2.1.[16] These plans have been socially and economically detrimental to all societies where they have been foisted upon citizens, particularly in Canada where our resource industry has been severely damaged due to the foreign-funded interference by these groups. This is contrary to the UN Charter IX, Article 55 a.  These groups have conflicts of interest in that key players, such as WRI (World Resources Institute), which claims to have helped set ¾ of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions for the countries that are signatory to the Paris Agreement, have also been funded by parties with vested interests in renewables.  The unelected, unaccountable, transnational groups – UNPRI and CDP Worldwide – are acting as activist investors and skewing markets worldwide, based on their dogmatic acceptance of the faulty principles of the IPCC described in point 3) above.

 

This is contrary to the founding principles of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (which encourages free trade, the reduction of trade barriers, fair practices and no unilateral implementation of policies).[17]

 

In Canada, promoting unsubstantiated claims in contrary to the Competition Act; this is greenwashing – a form of fraud. Yet with your otherwise unexamined position of ‘authority’ without critical scrutiny, your unvetted claims will be relied upon by many businesses and policymakers.  This is against the public interest.

https://www.canada.ca/en/competition-bureau/news/2017/01/not-easy-being-green-businesses-must-back-up-their-words.html

 

Furthermore, in Canada, ENGO charities are required to provide a net public benefit – yet many are entangled in the IPCC process or funded by foreign advocates of a global cap and trade system – a system that is based on the faulty scientific premises of the IPCC reports. This is contrary to the public interest.

 

We call upon you to retract the IPCC SR15 report. 

 

We call upon governments to disband the IPCC and establish national and regional climate science bodies that report in real-time on-line and engage in conference calls, rather than flying to climate conferences.[18]

 

No government should condone or support a body that provides material promoting crimes against humanity, based on lack of due diligence, faulty scientific premises and conflicts of interest.

 

Sincerely,

Friends of Science Society

 

[1] https://news.un.org/en/story/2007/10/237362-un-independent-rights-expert-calls-five-year-freeze-biofuel-production

[2] http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodprices.html

[3] https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2015/11/05/a-matter-of-public-interest-on-the-ipcc-does-it-recommend-or-not-recommend-that-is-the-question/

[4] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-energy-and-sustainability/article/lessons-from-technology-development-for-energy-and-sustainability/2D40F35844FEFEC37FDC62499DDBD4DC/core-reader

[5] https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/Prof%20Mike%20Kelly%20-%20FENand%20ER.pdf

[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032117304495

[7] https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2018/11/18/in-the-dark-on-renewables-rebutting-deloitte-insights-and-climate-reality/

[8] https://blog.friendsofscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Faulty-Premises-Poor-Public-Policy-on-Climate-Oct-30-2018-FINAL.pdf

[9] http://www.episodes.org/publicationArticleDetail.do?p=2075

[10] http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/26/3/pdf/i1052-5173-26-3-4.pdf

[11] https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/curry-senatetestimony-2014-final.pdf

[12] https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/HHRG-115-SY-WState-JChristy-20170329.pdf

[13] Bates 2016  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015EA000154/pdf

[14] Lewis & Curry 2018; https://niclewis.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/lewis_and_curry_jcli-d-17-0667_accepted.pdf

[15] ClimateWorks Foundation – WikiLeaks https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/fileid/57594/16165

[16] http://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/chapter-i/index.html

[17] https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/what_stand_for_e.htm

[18] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/20/un-environment-chief-erik-solheim-resigns-flying-revelations

1 Comment

  1. Alan Lebis

    Love it

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