Unquestionably, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed to build the scientific case for humanity being the primary cause of global warming. Such a goal is fundamentally unscientific, as it is hostile to alternative hypotheses for the causes of climate change.
The most glaring example of this bias has been the lack of interest on the IPCC’s part in figuring out to what extent climate change is simply the result of natural, internal cycles in the climate system. In Chapter 9 of the latest (4th) IPCC report, entitled “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”, you would think the issue of external versus internal forcing would be thoroughly addressed. But you would be wrong.
The IPCC is totally obsessed with external forcing, that is, energy imbalances imposed upon the climate system that are NOT the result of the natural, internal workings of the system. For instance, a search through Chapter 9 for the phrase “external forcing” yields a total of 91 uses of that term. A search for the phrase “internal forcing” yields…(wait for it)…zero uses. Can we really believe that the IPCC has ruled out natural sources of global warming when such a glaring blind spot exists?
...The IPCC’s pundits like to claim that the published evidence for humanity causing warming greatly outweighs any published evidence against it. This appeal to majority opinion on their part is pretty selective, though. They had no trouble discarding hundreds of research papers supporting evidence for the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age when they so uncritically embraced the infamous “Hockey Stick” reconstructions of past temperature change.
Despite a wide variety of previous temperature proxies gathered from around the world that so clearly showed that centuries with global warming and cooling are the rule, not the exception, the Hockey Stick was mostly based upon some cherry-picked tree rings combined with the assumption that significant warming is a uniquely modern phenomenon.
As such, they rejected the prevailing “scientific consensus” in favor of a minority view that supported their desired outcome. I suspect that they do not even recognize their own hypocrisy.
I must admit I've always been uncomfortable with the way the proxies (tree rings or bristlecones) were used to make claims about the last 50 years of temperatures. I understand that proxies are useful when we want to talk about time periods before the advent of scientific methods of measuring temperatures, but we have had thermometers since the 18th Century. Why are we basing arguments about modern temperatures using tree rings?
Yes, I realize technically the argument is that the proxies allow us to make evaluations about temperature change over time, but that is not how the Hockey Stick graphs are being used. They are being used as the primary evidence of unprecedented warming period. After all, you don't find Hockey Sticks when you look at thermometer temperatures over the last 50-100 years.
Example 1: Australia
Example 2: USA
Yet, we are being asked to ignore this data in favor of looking at tree rings and bristlecones. What's next? Goat entrails?
Oh, for no other reason but its a cool graphic, here is the US for the last 6 months:
ADDING:
Above I said:
After all, you don't find Hockey Sticks when you look at thermometer temperatures over the last 50-100 years.
Turns out you don't even find the Hockey Stick when you look at the thermometers around the Yamal site:
Look, I like trees as much as the next guy, but I think I trust thermometers more.
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