CONTACT: Fred Palmer
(703) 907-6168 or
info@co2andclimate.org

U.N. IPCC THIRD ASSESSMENT IN ERROR

(Washington, DC – January 23, 2001) In stating that the increase in temperature in the 20th Century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past thousand years, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment report has revealed its underlying bias and that it is in error, says Greening Earth Society President Fred Palmer.

According to Palmer, the IPCC’s conclusion is based upon “a new analysis of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere.” That analysis, Palmer explains, often is graphically depicted as a “hockey stick” showing relatively flat temperature excursions during the last thousand years and a dramatic increase in the last hundred. The hockey stick effect, he says, is accomplished by discounting the existence of the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period.

“Recent work by Mann, et al, attempts to make the case that periods of extreme climate warming and near ice age conditions were isolated to the Northern Hemisphere and Europe, and were not global in scope,” Palmer says. “A new report we release today by Dr. Diane Douglas Dalziel of Arizona State University draws upon a host of studies from sites scattered around the world that prove the existence of the Little Ice Age as a global condition, not limited to the Northern Hemisphere and Europe.” Dr. Dalziel’s study is part of a research agenda funded by Greening Earth Society through the Arizona State University Climate Data Task Force.

According to Dr. Dalziel, scientists have studied much more than glacial geology to reach this conclusion. A 41-page annotated bibliography released as part of her report includes research concerning marine cores, sea-level curves, tree-ring chronologies, peat bogs, salt marshes, stalagmites, historic records, and even human tooth enamel to determine the magnitude, timing, and geographic extent of the Little Ice Age.

“Each of the studies summarized identify marked cooling of 1.5°–2.0°C sometime between 1400 and 1850. Although there is some regional variation in the timing of cooling during the Little Ice Age, cold periods typically were synchronous over broad regional areas – and often synchronous around the world,” Dalziel writes. “As a result of numerous investigations identifying cooler temperatures between 1400 and 1850, many climate scientists accept as real a Northern Hemisphere Little Ice Age temperature signature. Fewer are willing to accept a Southern Hemisphere Little Ice Age temperature signature, however. Nonetheless, it is clear from several paleoclimate investigations in Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America that there is convincing evidence that the Little Ice Age occurred in those regions as well.”

According to Palmer, the hockey stick curve used to highlight 20th Century should be considered within the context of the lower global temperatures associated with the Little Ice Age phenomenon. Several scientists now point to solar variability as a primary forcing mechanism in ancient climate, “Why is it the United Nation’s summary discounts everything and singles out human activity,” he asks. “When you look as we have into the bona fides of the case that is being made, the IPCC conclusions are thrown into question because they incorporate a substantial misreading of our climate past. As such, this IPCC document does not provide a legitimate basis for setting environmental policy, much less world energy policy – one that discourages use of fossil fuels.”

CLICK HERE to read the report.