Bishop Hill AR5 - Lindzen's thoughts
Oct 8, 2013 Climate: IPCC Climate: Sceptics 
Richard Lindzen has published his conclusions on the Fifth Assessment Report. His statement is reproduced over at GWPF and it's fair to say that it's pretty scathing. I liked this bit, which is along similar lines to my own ones in the Consensus? What Consensus? report.
In attempting to convince the public to accept the need to for the environmental movement’s agenda, continual reference is made to consensus. This is dishonest not because of the absence of a consensus, but because the consensus concerning such things as the existence of irregular (and small compared to normal regional variability) net warming since about 1850, the existence of climate change (which has occurred over the earths entire existence), the fact that added greenhouse gases should have some impact (though small unless the climate system acts so as to greatly amplify this effect)over the past 60 years with little impact before then, and the fact that greenhouse gases have increased over the past 200 years or so, and that their greenhouse impact is already about 80% of what one expects from a doubling of CO2 are all perfectly consistent with there being no serious problem. Even the text of the IPCC Scientific Assessment agrees that catastrophic consequences are highly unlikely, and that connections of warming to extreme weather have not been found. The IPCC iconic statement that there is a high degree of certainty that most of the warming of the past 50 years is due to man’s emissions is, whether true or not, completely consistent with there being no problem. To say that most of a small change is due to man is hardly an argument for the likelihood of large changes.
Reader Comments (52)
Radical Rodent
Pity. You were doing so well up to paragraph 3.
Never mind. You'll catch up one day...
heheheheh