UN IPCC & NASA Scientist Ray Bates speaks out on the temp hiatus – Warning of ‘over-alarmist’ stance on climate risk
Bates: 'No completely confident explanation of either the warming hiatus or the models’ failure to replicate it is at present available. Consequently, the report of the first [IPCC] working group acknowledges that the model projections for the future are subject to significant caveats.'
'The over-alarmist stance of the second working group’s report should not induce the public or our legislators into supporting blanket policy options affecting agriculture that serve neither the interests of this country nor those of the wider world.'
The second working group’s report conveys no corresponding sense of caution. The most pessimistic climate model projections are taken as if they were completely reliable and are applied to deriving the most alarming impacts in various sectors. Extreme weather events are attributed to man-made emissions in a way that the first working group does not endorse. “Multiple tipping points” – a concept that is not endorsed by the report of the first working group even under the most pessimistic of model projections for the 21st century – are freely referred to.
Ray Bates is Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at UCD. He was formerly Professor of Meteorology at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen and a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. He has served as an Expert Reviewer of the current and previous IPCC Working Group I reports.
