IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control.

 

The key player in the IPCC Black-Ops controversy is alledged by Dr. Singer to have altered key scientific reports at the IPCC:  Dr. Benjamin D. Santer, a physicist and atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has been active as a contributor and a Convening Lead Author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He earned the U.S. Department of Energy's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for environmental science and technology and an Outstanding Scientific Paper Award from NOAA in 2002. See page 63, "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years," by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.

 

The Controversy:  Page 63, “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years “by Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. ….. “The IPCC’s 1996 report was reviewed by its consulting scientists in late 1995. The 'Summary for Policy Matters' was approved in December. And the full report, including chapter 8, was accepted. However, after the printed report appeared in May 1996, the scientific reviewers discovered that major changes had been made 'in the back room' after they had signed off on the science chapter’s contents. Santer, despite the shortcomings of the scientific evidence, had inserted a strong endorsement of man-made warming in the 1996 report’s chapter 8:  There is evidence  of an emerging patten of climate response to forcing by greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols … from the geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of temperature change … These results point toward a human influence on global climate.”

 

“Santer added the following sentence to the crucial chapter 8 (of which he was the IPCC-appointed lead author) of the printed version of the 1996 IPCC report:  The body of statistical evidence in chapter 8, when examined in the context of our physical understanding of the climate system, now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate. “

 

“Santer also deleted these key statements from the expert-approved chapter 8 draft:

  • “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed [climate] changes to the specific cause of increases in greenhouse gases.”
  • “While some of the pattern-base discussed here have claimed detection of a significant climate change, no study to date has positively attributed all or part [of climate change observed] to [man-made] causes. Nor has any study quantified the magnitude of a greenhouse gas effect or aerosol effect in the observed data – an issue of primary relevance to policy makers.”
  • “Any claims of positive detection and attribution of significant climate change are likely to remain controversial until uncertainties in the total natural variability of the climate system are reduced.”
  • “While none of these studies has specifically considered the attribution issue, they often draw some attribution conclusions, for which there is little justification.”
  • “When will an anthropogenic effect on climate be identified? It is not surprising that the best answer to this question is, ‘We do not know.’

“Santer single-handedly reversed the ‘climate science’ of the whole IPCC report – and with it the global warming political process! The ‘discernible human influence’ supposedly revealed by the IPCC has been cited thousands of times since in media around the world, and has been the ‘stopper’ in millions of debates among nonscientists.”

 

A Response Dated September 20, 2007

 

....... Based on the email that you sent me several days ago, I thought you were genuinely interested in obtaining a better understanding of climate science. .......There is no such secretive enterprise. My sole agenda  is to improve our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change.

You made a couple of egregious ..... errors. ..... you incorrectly state that LLNL's "research staging" has never considered solar effects on climate. If you had bothered to read the book chapter I sent you several days ago ("Progress in Detection and Attribution Research"), you would have seen that our group has in fact looked at the likely impact on atmospheric temperatures of solar irradiance changes (see Figure 1 in that chapter).

We know from satellite and weather balloon data that the Earth's lower atmosphere (the troposphere) has warmed over the last 3-4 decades, while the atmospheric layer above the troposphere (the stratosphere) has cooled. This "fingerprint" is consistent with our best understanding of how atmospheric temperatures should be changing in response to increases in greenhouse gases. It is fundamentally inconsistent with the hypothesis that atmospheric temperature changes over the second half of the 20th century are due to "solar cycles". An increase in solar irradiance (i.e., an increase in solar radiation arriving at the top of Earth's atmosphere) should WARM the atmosphere throughout the entire
atmospheric column. In other words, if solar variability were the cause of all observed climate change, both the troposphere and the stratosphere should have warmed over the past 3-4 decades.
Unfortunately, observations of pronounced stratospheric cooling do not support your "solar cycles" theory.

Sincerely,
Dr. Santer

Note:  We give Dr. Santer's good offices the benefit of the doubt and as we prefaced in our opening page, he is one of our own here in Livermore and we credit the excellence in science from LLNL as serving the national interest. Dr. Santer however, now uses the above study which allegedly according to Dr. S. Fred Singer, was altered in 1996 without committee awareness or consent and now Dr. Santer cites IPCC actions of 1996 as authoritative, creating a circular alleged misrepresentation, 1996 IPCC science committee findings and citing the findings as a basis for National policy change.  Please read above page, then see attached new report: Progress in Detection and Attribution Research, June 28, 2007 (Highlighted on Page 2 of Introduction attached : large file allow some time. ). There exists a circular reference perpetuated into the justifying basis of our science in Dr. Santer's report. This does not seem appropriate, if the allegations of Dr. S. Fred Signer are true. (Note to reader, LLNL, through Dr. Santer, has instructed this publication not be placed on line even though it's not classified. We have therefore removed it per his request October 1, 2007).  Here I quote the offending alledged scientific misrepresentation from that report. The same alledged falsified statements Dr. Signer cites in his book is now woven into official US government atmospheric science and is sure enough offered up by Santer and others adding to a sense of earthly doom ......  "the IPCC's second scientific assessment reached a more definitive conclusion regarding human impacts on climate, and stated that  'the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate' (2). This cautious sentence marked a paradigm shift in scientific understanding of the nature and causes of recent climate change." ...... And indeed it has. According to Dr. Signer (see above), Santer was responsible for the crafting of this very statement in 1996 without scientific committee consultants' approvals, demonstrating the political nature of the IPCC and the integrety (or loss of integrety) of its scientific processes.

Loss of integrity in the scientific process leads to problems on several levels. Among those problems caused for LLNL, the IPCC, US interests, and the world, the most egregious is that so much becomes vested in camp theory that no one can undo the directional momentum driven by political agenda instead of hard science, when new discoveries lead to different truths. Everything that might shed light on newly discovered counter trends for earth cooling such as great cooling plumes near the equator serving more efficiently than expected or MIT’s recent discovery of the “Iris Effect” are squelched, denied peer review, and blocked from funding further research. This is done so current vested, camp interests both inside and outside of government in this unholy alliance, are not embarrassed. This is the outrageous consequence of lost scientific process integrity and we seem to be living it. 

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