[Science] Fact checking global warming anti-"alarmists"

Posted by DrTechno on March 15, 2012 10:53 pm 36

The folks at the Verge care about accuracy of reporting patents and not mislabeling technology. Similarly, we should care when a group of scientists misrepresents data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in their op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Their main argument is that the IPCC predictions fail for the past 10 years of data, so there isn't a need for drastic action on climate change. They think the current predictions and most scientists are too "alarmist" concerning the consequences of global warming. You can see the data they presented below.

via wsj.com

At first glance, it does look like their argument has some weight- the predictions don't look great for 2001-2011. But as far as I understand (with some very easy searches to find the IPCC summary reports), this is a poor characterization of the IPCC predictions.

Here is what the IPCC reports say about their predictions:

1) The predictions of warming are for the period between 1990-2100 or a 110 year span

a) This means all of the predictions should start at 1990, not starting in their respective years

b) The 21 years are only a small portion of total prediction

2) There are ranges given in the report, high and low scenarios

a) The group of scientists chose some middle point

b) They didn’t seem to have judged the prediction with respect to these lower bounds of the IPCC report

via doctor-techno.com

Above is the temperature data from their graph (with a trendline) and the minimum predictions from the IPCC reports. It is plain to see that the trendline for the 21 years of temperature data exceeds the IPCC predictions over the same time span. Contrary to what this group of scientists claimed, the IPCC predictions do not fail.

Perhaps we are too alarmist on global warming, but the data (that these scientists brought up in the first place) doesn't back that up.