IPCC DISSENT BY ROGER HELMER MEP

A startling new revelation from the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) blows apart the myth of scientific unanimity. New information suddenly revealed by the IPCC, apparently to pre-empt embarrassing disclosures under Freedom of Information laws, shows that significant numbers of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists - usually described as "unanimous" in their support of man-made global warming - have registered serious concerns, which the IPCC serially rejects even while claiming a "consensus". It is becoming obvious that this climate-change consensus is a journalistic fiction.

An illustrative example of how the IPCC treated substantive, often damning critiques and contrary views presented by its own panel members is to reject it, not with typical rebuttal, but with the claim that the alleged error happens to be their "standard practice". And therefore, it is good, goes the "logic".

The IPCC is driven by a central group committed to the climate change orthodoxy, with specific sectors of the work farmed out to appropriate specialist groups. It is becoming increasingly clear that the ideologically-driven central group is exerting "politburo" control over the whole project. It systematically rejects and denigrates dissenting opinions, whether from within or outside the IPCC.

Papers are submitted by panel members to the IPCC for inclusion into its reports. Both the selection and editing of these papers is in the hands of the central group, who also draft the Executive Summary - the only section (if any, beyond the press release or those of pressure groups) that most politicians and journalists read. These summaries have been consistently shown to adopt a more hard-line alarmist position than is justified by the underlying science. The summaries are political spin, not science.

Meantime the Oregon Petition dissenting from the alarmist consensus has attracted the voluntary and verified signatures of over 17,000 qualified scientists who have serious doubts about the anthropogenic hypothesis and who oppose the Kyoto Protocol.

Commenting on these revelations, Roger Helmer MEP, a member of the European parliament's Temporary Committee on Climate Change, said:

"This is the moment when we realise that the self-proclaimed Emperor has no clothes. Far from being a monolithic group of 2500 scientists committed to the idea of catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming, the IPCC panel itself is riven with dissension and is desperately struggling to keep the lid on this internal dissent.

"We need to examine whatever it is that scientists do actually agree upon before we do huge -- further -- damage to our Western economies in an attempt to avert a highly speculative risk".

Mr Helmer chaired a conference on climate change in the European parliament in Brussels on July 4th, which was addressed by celebrated climatologist Professor Fred Singer, and other experts including Hans LaBohm, a former adviser to the Dutch Foreign Ministry and himself an expert panelist of the IPCC who disagrees fundamentally with their conclusions.

These experts have produced a challenge to the IPCC conclusions, presenting an alternative science-based view in the name of a larger coalition of experts most with experience as IPCC authors or expert reviewers, called the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).