Thanks to Prof Philip Stott on EnviroSpin Watch for spotting a startling development in the parallel universe of climate-change 'science', which if true leaves its integrity and credibility in shreds. An expert on hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, Chris Landsea, has resigned from the International Panel on Climate Change after what he says was a gross misrepresentation of scientific evidence to claim falsely that global warming was producing more hurricane activity. In an open letter to his colleagues, Landsea says that shortly after he had drafted the hurricanes chapter for the IPCC's fourth assessment report's Observations chapter, the Observations lead author, Dr. Kevin Trenberth, told a press conference organised by scientists at Harvard that global warming would spur the occurrence of more hurricane activity. But Landsea knew that this was the precise opposite of what the scientific evidence had suggested. He writes:

'I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

'Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

'It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.'

When Landsea expressed his concerns, he says, the IPCC simply brushed them aside. So Landsea has now left the IPCC, saying:

'I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound'.

If Landsea is correct, then this is a tremendous scandal and immensely damaging to the reputation not just of the individuals concerned but of science in general. Of course, it would not be surprising to people like myself who have long argued that the IPCC has disgracefully politicised science and, through its highly tendentious employment of climate computer modelling to produce the bogus certainty of man-made global warming, already destroyed the claim of this branch of science to its most precious attribute, evidential truth. But if Landsea's account is true, then for the first time the IPCC's hand will have been caught squarely in the till.

Posted by melanie at January 17, 2005