The Smug Baldy Speaks

Many news sources are reporting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest report makes a strong statement that human activity is “very likely” responsible for global warming. For example, the BBC reported today that:

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, said: “It is extremely encouraging in that the science has moved on from what was possible in the Third Assessment Report.

“If you see the extent to which human activities are influencing the climate system, the options for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions appear in a different light, because you can see what the costs of inaction are,” he told delegates in Paris.

In a recent post, I countered the claim that human activity cannot be proven to be a cause of global warming, in part by using data from the previous 2001 IPCC report. The new report goes further, stating:

“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.

Interestingly, they define “very likely” as a 90% confidence level. While critics of global warming science, like those who write letters to my local paper, will likely jump on that statement and say something like, “See 90% isn’t certain - you haven’t proved anything”, the rest of us will remind you that 90% is also the level of confidence that’s called, “beyond a reasonable doubt” in the US legal system.

American Enterprise Institute Shenanigans?

The IPCC report comes at the same time as another one that claims:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To my knowledge, the guardian report hasn’t yet been independently verified, although Kevin Drum at Washingtonmonthly.com is having some fun with it:

Seriously? These guys [Exxon Mobil] made $39.5 billion but were willing to pay scientists only ten grand each to whore themselves out writing reports and op-eds pretending there’s some kind of serious doubt about the reality of human-induced global warming? Even though these scientists have kids to feed?

That’s insulting. For this level of simpering I recommend holding out for at least $50,000. That’s the minimum it would take to buy a congressman, after all.

If that second report turns out to be true, I why the EAI didn’t work harder to to keep the report of it’s own shenanigans out of the press.