The scientists and the apocalypse - Climate Change: The Facts - page 172

of the 'detection' chapter, Chapter 8, of the IPCC report, no new evidence persuaded him
fromtheseconclusions.TheprecedingchapterintheIPCCreportalsodiscussedpersuasive
evidenceintheclimaterecordrunningcontrarytothehypothesisthatCO 2 wasasignificant
driver of change. 8
So, with the IPCC Working Group I report finalised in 1990, we had a second
international assessment in five years coming to the same conclusions on the empirical
science that we found in all the various governmental assessments during the preceding
decade. In between, James Hansen of NASA made front page news by calling for climate
action after giving testimony to US Congress of 99 per cent certainty that man-made
climate change is happening now. But with his performance followed by a wave of
remonstration among his peers, the IPCC report only serves to confirm it as the
grandstanding of an extremist. 9
Nevertheless, Hansen's call-to-action only reiterated the plea from Villach. And when
SCOPE 29 was published in 1986, the Villach statement had been placed at its front, as
though an executive summary of the non-prescriptive, equivocating underlying report.
With the IPCC, it was a different story. The summary at its front, as agreed by all the
governments,wasnotableforitsfidelitywiththeunderlyingreport.Sure,somespeculation
was puffed-up to appear more solid, but mostly it remained true to a report that hardly
constitutes the scientific basis for urgent and drastic action. 10 In other words, and to the
credit of its designers, the science-to-policy process had worked.
Consider also how, in the review process, Wigley was asked to consider when the
human influence will start to become apparent. In 1981 he had suggested this likely
around 2000, but by 1990 he was not so confident. 11 Only when the half a degree of
warmingseeninthefirsthalfofthetwentieth centuryisagainrepeated, concludedWigley,
will we then be likely to determine just how much of it is human-induced. 12 The IPCC
also moderated the expected rate of greenhouse gas build-up, and so, according to the
worst-case modelling, this extra warming was not expected for at least a decade, but more
likelynotformanydecades.Inotherwords,notonlyhaddetectionbeenpostponed,but(as
Brian O'Brien was quick to declare) so too had the whole emergency. 13
Alas, by that stage no one was listening. Three years after the IPCC process was first
conceived, the working group set to establish the scientific basis for action found itself
the calm centre of a maelstrom of climate enthusiasm brewing all around. As it would
eventually break the scienceto-policy process, let's go back and consider that brewing
storm.