Harvard professor Robert Stavins revealed that the world’s main countries insisted on changes to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s annual report. These changes weren’t exactly based on science, Stavins’ claims, they were political.
(Daily Mail) — A top US academic has dramatically revealed how government officials forced him to change a hugely influential scientific report on climate change to suit their own interests.
Harvard professor Robert Stavins electrified the worldwide debate on climate change on Friday by sensationally publishing a letter online in which he spelled out the astonishing interference.
He said the officials, representing ‘all the main countries and regions of the world’ insisted on the changes in a late-night meeting at a Berlin conference centre two weeks ago.Three quarters of the original version of the document ended up being deleted.
[…]
IPCC reports are supposed to be scrupulously independent as they give scientific advice to governments around the world to help them shape energy policies – which in turn affect subsidies and domestic power bills.
Prof Stavins said the government officials in Berlin fought to make big changes to the full report’s ‘summary for policymakers’. This is the condensed version usually cited by the world’s media and politicians. He said their goal was to protect their ‘negotiating stances’ at forthcoming talks over a new greenhouse gas reduction treaty.
Prof Stavins told The Mail on Sunday yesterday that he had been especially concerned by what happened at a special ‘contact group’. He was one of only two scientists present, surrounded by ‘45 or 50’ government officials.
He said almost all of them made clear that ‘any text that was considered inconsistent with their interests and positions in multilateral negotiations was treated as unacceptable.’
Just as I ask when it comes to hate crime hoaxes: if it’s a legitimate problem, why must the situation be embellished? Why does there need to be interference?
Climate change activists have, for at least a decade, decried CO2 emissions to be one of the leading causes, if not the leading cause of global warming. They cite the gas as a pollutant and greenhouse gas. However, over the same period that the Earth has not seen any warming (nearly two decades) the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has sharply increased to record levels.
It wouldn’t be so bad if climate activists were merely offering the opinion that catastrophe is afoot. But they use the dreadfully inaccurate predictions and use them to lobby for the imposition of new taxes and then spend outrageous amounts of money to combat the so called climate change. These people then get some political power and use it to regulate the products people use and their behaviors. Again, it wouldn’t be so bad if these life changes were suggestions, but they aren’t and they admittedly have little to no significant effect on halting the supposed danger.
Why do we place so much stock in climate model projections and reports which are used as political propaganda when they are so often so wrong? If the claims being made continuously fail to materialize, isn’t it dangerous to our economy and liberty to continue to legislate and restrict based on these alarmist’s claims?
Sifting Reality 
So, in reading the story, it seems as if the original report was fine, just that the summary was “watered down” to be less problematic for some nations. Is that what you’re reading? That they played down the serious problems of climate change due to political pressure in the summary?
If that is the case, that is, of course, a problem. Nations should not try to downplay scientific opinion about the dangers/problems of climate change because it might hurt them strategically.
~Dan
Mmmm nope. Not what was said.
That’s how I’m reading the story. What are you reading into it?
~Dan