Questions about the IPCC’s Summary for

Policymakers, 2007

[SPPI Note:  the following questions were sent to the IPCC early in the year, prior to release of the final report.]

[Monckton Note (7-15-07):  It should be explain that the UN, as a result of my questions, corrected Table SPM0, in which it had multiplied the projected contributions of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets tenfold by the ingenious movement of four separate decimal points, and relabelled it Table SPM2, and quietly posted the new version of the SPM without comment on its website. Inferentially, the deliberate exaggeration of the contributions to sea-level rise from these two ice-sheets was done to support Al Gore's wild exaggeration of sea-level rise. Certainly, journalists throughout the world wrote alarmist headlines about sea-level rise, even though the UN had actually cut its top-end projection by at least a third. The same journalists somehow failed to point out subsequently that the UN had made the correction asked for. We should also point out that the UN has not replied giving answers to any of the questions which I sent to it.]

****************

I should be grateful if the IPCC were able to answer the following questions, which will help me to understand the Summary for Policymakers.

1. Why has the Summary for Policymakers been released at least three months before the underlying science chapters, which were declared to have been finalized before the Summary was compiled?

2. Will the science chapters now be revised to conform with the Summary for Policymakers? If so, is it appropriate that the scientists should bring the science into line with the opinions of the political representatives who compiled the Summary, rather than the other way about?

Page 3

3. Why does the Summary not mention that there has been little or no increase in methane concentrations since the previous UN report in 2001?

4. In the Third Assessment Report, the anthropogenic contribution from greenhouse gases was estimated at 2.43 watts per square metre, with all other anthropogenic forcings broadly cancelling each other out. In the present report, the anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing is said to be 2.3 watts per square metre (a decrease of one-eighth despite a rise in CO2 concentration since 2001), and this falls to 1.6 watts per square metre (less than two-thirds of the 2001 estimate, and amounting to little more than 1% of the 150-watts-per-square-metre natural greenhouse effect) if the IPCC’s new quantifications of all anthropogenic forcings are taken into account. Am I right that the UN had previously overstated total anthropogenic forcings by more than half?

5. If the natural greenhouse effect is taken as 20 – 33C, is it right to say that the temperature effect of the total anthropogenic increment of 1.6 watts per square metre since 1750 is an increase (over and above natural variability) of no more than  0.21 to 0.35C?

6. In December 1995 CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa was 360ppmv, and in December 2005 it was 380ppmv, an increase of 20ppmv, or 5%. Using the UN’s CO₂ forcing formula, dF = 5.3 ln (C / C₀), and taking C₀ as unity, the total radiative forcing from CO2 to 1995 was 5.3 ln (360) = 31.20 watts per square metre (around one-fifth of the natural greenhouse effect). The total CO₂ radiative forcing to 2005 was 5.3 ln (380) = 31.48 watts per square metre, an increase of just 1%. Yet the UN says: “The carbon dioxide radiative forcing increased by 20% from 1995 to 2005.” One can only reach the published figure by assuming that the natural greenhouse effect does not exist and that the pre-1750 concentration of ~280ppmv produces no natural radiative forcing at all. In that event the figures for 1995 and 2005 respectively are 5.3 ln(360/280) = 1.33 watts per square metre and 5.3 ln(380/280) = 1.62 watts per square metre, an increase of 22% over the decade. Did the UN mean to say: “The anthropogenic carbon dioxide radiative forcing increased by 20% from 1995 to 2005”? If so, the omission of anthropogenic is a misleading error, which has led at least one national journalist in the UK to draw inappropriately alarmist conclusions.

7. The decadal increase of 0.29 watts per square metre, multiplied by 0.5 as suggested in ch.6 of the Third Assessment Report, would suggest a temperature increase of 0.145C over the decade 1995-2005 arising from the additional CO2 forcing and all other forcings and feedbacks. The observed temperature increase from 1994 to 2004 (comparing NCDC five-year means) was 0.29C, suggesting that anthropogenic factors contributed half of the observed warming over the decade. Would the IPCC agree?

8. If half (or 0.145C) of the 1995-2005 increase in temperature was natural, does the UN consider that the entire solar contribution to warming compared with 1750 (now reduced to 0.12 watts per square metre) has occurred in the last decade?

9. The Sun has been more active, for longer, in the past 50 years than in any similar period in at least the past 11,400 years (Solanki, Usoskin et al., 2005). Therefore, is it appropriate to assume as little as 0.12 watts per square metre of solar forcing compared with 1750?

10. The Sun’s activity in 1750 was not far short of recent levels. It then passed through several minima of which the last ended 100 years ago. How much of the increase in temperature over the past century does the IPCC attribute to the increase of 4 watts per square metre at top of atmosphere (0.7 watts per square metre or 0.35C at the surface) in solar activity since 1906?

11. Why does the Summary for Policymakers fail to mention the growing number of results from around the world suggesting that the Sun is about to enter a profound cooling phase that may last most of this century?

Page 4

12. The IPCC says: “The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.” But is it not the case that the warming trend over the 1920s and over the 1930s was also 0.13C (NCDC annual means)? Should it not have been made clear that the 50-year trend is only higher than the 100-year trend because of the pronounced fall in mean global temperature between 1940 and 1975?

13. Where does the Summary for Policymakers mention that in the five years since its previous report global mean surface temperature has not risen at all. 

14. The IPCC says that “the ocean has been absorbing more than 80% of the heat added to the climate system.” Does the IPCC mean that mean global land and sea surface air temperature would have risen at least five times as fast as the observed figure if the ocean had not taken up 80% and more of the heat?

15. Since 1961 (taking NCDC 5-year means) global mean land and sea surface air temperature has risen by ~0.485C. Is the IPCC suggesting that this would have been 2.5C but for the absorption of 2C of heat by the oceans?

16. Given that the oceans are 1,100 times as dense as the atmosphere, is it correct to divide the 2C above by 1,100 to arrive at the mean ocean water temperature increase since 1961?

Page 5

17. Was Table SPM0 (reproduced below) inserted to the draft following, and because of, the report by the Science Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph to the effect that the UN’s present report cuts the 2001 report’s high-end estimate of the increase in sea level to 2100 by half?

18. I am having difficulty in understanding table SPM-0, which I summarize here:

The italicized figures, added by me, are the sums of the four individual sources listed. However, in the table as published the totals are considerably less. Please explain.

19. Assuming that the recent increase in the rate of sea level rise is real (but see Morner, 2004), and taking the estimate from the Third Assessment Report that in the 10,000 years of the Holocene interglacial sea level has risen 130m, is it not right that the observed 17cm centennial rate of rise in sea level is around one-seventh of the mean centennial sea-level rise, and that even the higher rate of rise over the past decade is only a quarter of the mean centennial rise over the past 10,000 years?

Page 6

20. Where does the Summary for Policymakers mention that the warm period in the Arctic in the 1930s and 1940s was warmer than the present?

21. Where in the Summary does the UN mention the extensive greening of the Sahara, which has lost 300,000 square kilometres of area to vegetation over the past 30 years?

Page 7

22. In general, why does the UN mention so few of the beneficial consequences of warming, such as the less cruel temperatures in Northern latitudes, particularly across Siberia?

Page 8

23. Why was the defective “hockey-stick” graph not withdrawn and apologized for in the section on palaeoclimate? The failure of the UN to apologize for this error in the only graph which was printed six times, large and in full colour in the previous report, and the continuing use by the UN of that now-discredited graph in other climate publications, casts doubt on the scientific integrity of the IPCC process.

24. Given the large and growing number of papers in the peer-reviewed literature attesting to the existence of a mediaeval warm period that was 3 or 4C warmer than the present in some places and was discernible in all parts of the globe, what is the basis for the UN’s conclusion that the current warm period is likely to be warmer than the Middle Ages?

Page 9

25. The UN says equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 concentrations is 2 to 4.5C, with a best estimate of 3C. The climate forcings listed in the table in the current SPM are insufficient to yield 3C of warming for a doubling of CO2: accordingly, the UN must be assuming that the feedbacks occurring in response to higher temperature are net positive. Please provide a quantified list of all climate feedbacks used in the UN’s calculations, whether positive or negative.

Page 12

26. There is a mention of “increasing acidification of the ocean”. However, is it not true that even with the reductions in alkalinity the ocean will remain alkaline rather than acid?

27. “Ongoing increases” of sea surface temperatures are mentioned. But Lyman et al. have found that in the past three years sea surface temperatures have fallen (though the Summary for Policymakers does not mention this). Is “ongoing” the appropriate word?

Page 13

28. The UN says “thermal expansion would continue for many centuries … “. Is it not correct that the expansion beyond 2200 would be measured in small fractions of a metre per century?

29. Since the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 50-100 years, is it not true that if CO2 stabilization occurs by 2100 the lingering effects on temperature and sea level in the millennium beyond 2200 will be near-vanishingly small, putting into context the reports mention of effects lasting a millennium after stabilization?

30. Where does the UN draw attention to the fact that, if the Sun grows cooler as is now widely expected among solar physicists, the medium-term effects projected in the Summary for Policymakers will be offset to at least some extent?

Page 14

31. Please state the estimated world population in 2050 and 2100 for each of the scenarios shown on page 14. Most demographers forecast a peaking of world population in 2050, followed by a sharp decline thereafter.

  Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, is a former policy advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  He may reached through SPPI, or directly at (+44 1882 632341)( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

                                                                                                                                                                                      

Robert Ferguson, President

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

209 Pennsylvania Ave., SE

Suite 299

 Washington, D.C 20003

www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org  (202) 288-5699

*Views here expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of SPPI.