“Climate Cluckers” creative fiction to block energy projects.

Whether most scientists outside climatology believe that global warming is happening is less relevant than whether the climatologists do. A letter signed by over 50 leading members of the American Meteorological Society warned about the policies promoted by environmental pressure groups. “The policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuel and requires immediate action. We do not agree.”Those who have signed the letter represent the overwhelming majority of climate change scientists in the United States, of whom there are about 60.

McMichael and Haines quote the 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is widely believed to “prove” that climate change induced by humans has occurred. The original draft document did not say this. What happened was that the policymakers’ summary (which became the “take home message” for politicians) altered the conclusions of the scientists. This led Dr Frederick Seitz, former head of the United States National Academy of Sciences, to write, “In more than sixty years as a member of the American scientific community … I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.”