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Has ‘denying’ won?

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Has ‘denying’ won?

The science is 150 years old and growing each day, yet it is still being rejected by politicians and some academics. We shall talk to a few of those who remain unconvinced by climate research and its conclusions: a former vice-chancellor, a renowned Princeton mathematician, a space scientist from WA who worked on the Apollo program, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a climate researcher in America. Have they ever changed their minds on the topic? Do they perceive any risk at all? What do they think of President Trump’s policies? How can critics remain unmoved as the evidence mounts? Sharon Carleton reports.

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Andy Pitman has supplied the following links to support his statements:

The popular myth that climate scientists formed a consensus that the Earth was heading towards an ice age in the 1970s is addressed by Peterson in a paper freely accessible at:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

The link to the 2013 IPCC report (working group 1) is available here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

The issues of natural variability are best approached via the index and terms like “variability”, “natural forcings”, “climate variability” but also on the key drivers of natural variability including ENSO, El Nino, the Southern Annual Mode, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and so forth. The link to the 2007 IPCC report (working group 1) is available here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/wg1/

In addition to the search terms listed above, there is a FAQ on natural variability in Chapter 2.

The statements around the IPCC ignoring reviewers comments needs to be considered in context: First, see
https://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs/factsheets/FS_review_process.pdf

Note that there are tens of thousands of reviewers’ comments and the fact that a reviewer raises an issue does not mean that this has to lead to a change in the IPCC report. The comment might be erroneous for example. Following exactly how the First Order Draft is modified to become the Second Order Draft and then the final draft based on reviewers’ comments, and the responses by the authors is a nightmare given there are 20,000 to 30,000 comments on the working group 1 reports. However, details are available at:
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/review_of_wg_contributions.pdf

Letters from the reviewer editors are available at: (11MB, 102 pages)
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/drafts/WGI%20AR5%20Review%20Editor%20Report%20(30%20Jan%202014).pdf

Unauthorised releases of all reviewers’ comments for the 5th Assessment report can be found on line - whether these are accurate in all respects is difficult to determine.

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