Fiona Godlee has an editorial in the British Medical Journal on the subject of climate change (£, but free trial is available). It begins with a defence of the journal's climate campaigner position and moves on to discuss some of the science. For example:
The IPCC reports that it is highly likely that global warming is causing climate change, characterised by more frequent and intense temperature extremes, heavier rainfall events, and other extreme weather events.
Which is odd, because the evidence for rainfall having become heavier is limited to say the least: the IPCC summary for policymakers says that there are likely (not highly likely) that there are more land areas with increases than decreases and expresses only medium confidence (more likely than not) that there is a human influence. Given the almost total failure of GCMs in the area of precipitation, even this is probably overstating the case. I'm sure I don't need to rehearse the case regarding, for example, hurricanes for the benefit of readers here.
We move on to a similarly interesting position on emissions scenarios, with Godlee claiming that RCP8.5 represents "business as usual". This is, not to put too fine a point on it, incorrect. As Matt Ridley pointed out a few months ago, RCP8.5 involves 12 billion people burning ten times as much coal as today. The idea that this represents a plausible future almost defies belief. And even if you accept the absurd assumptions of RCP8.5, factoring in the recent observational evidence on climate sensitivity gets you only a couple of degrees of warming by the end of the century, rather than the 4 degrees ("in some parts of the northern continents temperatures ...more than 10°C"!!) touted by Godlee.
And if her grasp of the science was not shaky enough, here are her conclusions:
WHO has shown important leadership on climate change but has stopped short of declaring a global public health emergency. This may be understandable with Ebola raging. But it is what WHO should now do. Deaths from Ebola infection, tragic and frightening though they are, will pale into insignificance when compared with the mayhem we can expect for our children and grandchildren if the world does nothing to check its carbon emissions. And action is needed now.
Everybody involved in the climate debate accepts that major features of the climate system are not captured by the climate models - recent claims that the unpredicted pause in surface temperature rise was caused by deep-ocean heat transport are a case in point. Yet Dr Godlee wants to declare a public health emergency based on the output of these same computer models, inevitably diverting resources away from pressing real problems. This is beyond absurd.
The question is, is it moral?