Climate Conversation Group

Michael Duffy wrote yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald that the chairman of the IPCC gave an erroneous presentation. Others have commented on the IPCC’s increasingly discredited reputation. I did some research and posted the following comment on Dr Pachauri’s blog; so far it hasn’t been published:

Dr Pachauri,

In January you were quoted in The Guardian as saying you would “look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.”

In August the World Meteorological Organisation reported that the first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years and the whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years.

Yet a month ago in Sydney, at the University of NSW, you told your audience: “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before].”

Your assertion seems to have been unfastened from the facts. For if the year is cooler, it cannot also be warming. And if you acknowledged the temperature plateau in January, where had it gone by October?

The global temperatures recorded off the satellites by the University of Alabama in Huntsville, by Remote Sensing Systems, by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA and by others clearly show, since 2001, a plateau and a recent sharp decline.

Given such facts, you are in error to assert the atmosphere is warming. You should desist.

Cheers,
Richard Treadgold,
Convenor,
Climate Conversation Group.