As is habitually the case, the media seems to have missed the real story of the IPCC’s fourth report on climate change, which has been universally reported as predicting that the imminent global apocalypse is going to be even worse than previously anticipated and so it’s Even More All Our Fault Than Ever.

What has been largely overlooked is that what has been published is merely the summary for policymakers, while the actual science on which that summary is allegedly based will not be published — extraordinarily — for a further three months. As with previous IPCC reports, the summary is a political document written not by scientists but by officials. And now, various folk who have read the draft scientific material for the fourth report are saying that the IPCC summary bears little relation to the IPCC science which tells a very different story indeed — namely, that previous IPCC forecasts of the climate change apocalypse were exaggerated and wrong and that accordingly current forecasts have been drastically scaled back.

Christopher Monckton has produced a devastating critique of the summary in the light of what this draft scientific evidence says. He writes:

Figures in the final draft of the UN’s fourth five-year report on climate change show that the previous report, in 2001, had overestimated the human influence on the climate since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third. Also, the UN, in its 2007 report, has more than halved its high-end best estimate of the rise in sea level by 2100 from 3 feet to just 17 inches. It suggests that the rate of sea-level rise is up from 2mm/yr to 3mm/year – no more than one foot in a century. UN scientists faced several problems their computer models had not predicted. Globally, temperature is not rising at all, and sea level is not rising anything like as fast as had been forecast. Concentrations of methane in the air are actually falling…

The draft of the science chapters, now being circulated to governments for last-minute comments, reveals that the tendency of computers to over-predict rises in temperature and sea level has forced a major rethink. The report’s generally more cautiously-expressed projections confirm scientists’ warnings that the UN’s heavy reliance on computer models had exaggerated the temperature effect of greenhouse-gas emissions…Though carbon dioxide in the air is increasing, global temperature is not. Figures from the US National Climate Data Center show 2006 as about 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer worldwide than 2001. Since that is within the range of measurement error, global temperature has not risen in a statistically significant sense since the UN’s last report in 2001…

Though the mass media are now well-programmed to focus on the more alarmist aspects of the report, the halving of the sea-level projection is in effect a declaration, from the heart of the ‘consensus’, that the consequences of warmer worldwide weather will be minor and may be beneficial, that the worst scenarios are no longer probable, and that the panic is officially over.

The Wall Street Journal is one of the few outlets to stand aloof from the media hysteria and has published intelligent responses to the IPCC summary from Philip Stott and in an editorial, both of which make sane and sensible observations. You might think, however, that in three months’ time we’ll all be able to judge for ourselves when the IPCC scientific reports are finally published. But here’s the really wicked thing. It appears that the IPCC intends to make the scientists falsify the science. An appendix on procedures for publication states:

The content of the authored chapters is the responsibility of the Lead Authors, subject to Working Group or Panel acceptance. Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter [my emphasis]. These changes shall be identified by the Lead Authors in writing and made available to the Panel at the time it is asked to accept the Summary for Policymakers, in case of reports prepared by the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories by the end of the session of the Panel which adopts/accepts the report.’

Let’s pause for a second. The IPCC has said that the authors of the scientific papers will have to change their findings if they depart from the summary in order to bring them into line with it. In other words, research which apparently shows that the panic over man-made global warming is exaggerated misleading and wrong is to be altered to support the summary’s view that man-made global warming is even worse than previously thought.

There have been protests. Harvard University physicist Lubos Motl has written:

These people are openly declaring that they are going to commit scientific misconduct that will be paid for by the United Nations. If they find an error in the summary, they won’t fix it. Instead, they will ‘adjust’ the technical report so that it looks consistent.

The atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, who produced evidence on the study of clouds and water vapour for the IPCC’s third assessment report in 2001, said of the requirement to bring the research into line with the summary statement:

If you were doing that with a business report, the federal trade commission would be down your throat.

To counter this possible fraud upon the public, the Junk Science website has now published the draft scientific reports.

We are repeatedly told that there is simply no evidence to counter the man-made global warming theory and that the argument is over. This, it would seem, is how they are ensuring that it is over — by proposing to doctor the evidence. If they believe the evidence really is conclusive, just what are they so worried about?