Dear Robin - Global warming science and climate policy face a severe and deepening crisis of credibility. The whole climate agenda is confronted by growing doubt and criticism, not least as a result of the so-called Climategate scandal, the Copenhagen fiasco and the revelations about the IPCC’s alarmist claims based on unreliable sources.

This crisis is shaking the scientific and political establishments to the core. The scientific community is haemorr haging integrity and authority at an unprecedented speed and scale. What we are witnessing is a growing backlash over the suppression of scientific data, the exaggeration of global warming impacts and the maltreatment of climate critics. While eminent scientists are suddenly calling for more openness and a dialogue with critics of the conventional view on global warming, the UK government has declared war on so-called climate sceptics who are rapidly gaining ground in the eyes of an increasingly …

For the last 20 years, one IPCC report after another has been responsible for a relentless outpouring of doomsday predictions. The IPCC process, however, by which it arrived at its alarmist conclusions, has been shown on numerous occasions to lack balance, transparency and due diligence.

The IPCC’s work is controlled by a tightly-knit group of individuals who are totally convinced that they are right. As a result, conflicting data and evidence, even if published in peer-reviewed journals, are regularly ignored, while exaggerated claims, even if contentious or not peer-reviewed, are often highlighted in IPCC reports.

Not surprisingly, the IPCC has lost a lot of credibility in recent years. It is also losing the trust of more and more governments who are no longer following its advice—as the Copenhagen summit showed.

Claims by RK Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, that IPCC’s erroneous doomsday prediction about …

At the age of 52, Israeli-born Benny Peiser has become something of an institution in the combat-prone world of climate change politics. He is welcomed warmly by the skeptics and is rejected with equal fervor by the mainstream environmental movement. Peiser’s CCNet climate news service has become required reading in recent years—not least of all to find out what the skeptics are saying—with close to 8,000 subscribers, including many U.S. scientists.

Der Spiegel fragt: “Warum aber ist der offensichtliche Unsinn nicht längst irgendeinem der 3000 Wissenschaftler aufgefallen, die am IPCC-Bericht mitgewirkt haben?” Und hier ist die Antwort: The Global Warming Policy Foundation today released, for the first time, details of the defective process by which the 2035 Himalayas date got into an IPCC report. Inherent and serious flaws in the review process clearly emerge from this new evidence. As a result of a Freedom of Information request, David Holland, a GWPF researcher, gained access to the responses by the IPCC’s lead authors. The documents show that most doubts and questions that were raised about the 2035 date were ignored and that the Review Editors failed to take any note of it. Das ganze Dossier ist hier zu lesen

Amid controversy surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on melting glaciers, Xie Zhenhua, Vice-Chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, today urged the UN panel to make the fifth assessment report comprehensive by also citing contrarian views. He said there is a view that climate change is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself. “Climate change concerns survival and development of people. We need to adopt an open attitude to scientific research and incorporate all views,” said Xie, while addressing a conference of BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries here today.

China appeared to cast doubts on Sunday on the scientific consensus on the underlying causes of global warming, with a senior official saying that Beijing had an “open attitude” towards what he described as “disputes in the scientific community” on the issue. “There is a view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself,” Xie Zhenhua, vice-chairman of China’s National Development and Reforms Commission, told a press conference in New Delhi. “We have to keep an open attitude.”

Mr Xie said later that global warming was a “solid fact” that was already having an impact on developing countries, but that there were still “uncertainties” over the cause of the phenomenon. “The major reason of the climate change is the unconstrained emissions of developed countries during the industrialisation process. That’s the mainstream view,” he said. “But there are some uncertainties.”

Roger Pielke Jr: [...] There is no note, no acknowledgment, nothing indicating that the estimated damage for hurricanes was modified after publication by an order of magnitude. The report was quietly changed to make the error go away. Of course, even with the Table corrected, now the Stern Review math does not add up, as the total GDP impact from USA, UK and Europe does not come anywhere close to the 1% global total for developed country impacts (based on Muir-Wood), much less the higher values suggested as possible in the report’s text, underscoring a key point of my 2007 paper.

Consequently, anyone wanting to understand or replicate my analysis from the original source would no doubt be confused because evidence of the error in Table 5.2 was quietly changed after the publication of my paper. Had they noted the error it would have obviously led to questions …

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders. Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action. ‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting …