THE IPCC LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING OF FACTORS AFFECTING CLIMATE

The next time you meet someone who says that scientists have a good level of understanding of the causes of global warming you could refer them to this table (2.11) from the 4th IPCC Report, Working Group 2. You will need to scroll down to page 200 (chapter 2) to see the table which displays sideways. This table lists 16 factors which the IPCC identify as contributing to global warming (they use the term 'radiative forcing' to describe this). The interesting thing about the table is that out of these 16, for only one of them does the IPCC claim to have a high level of scientific understanding (LOSU). For two of them there is a 'medium' LOSU, another two 'medium/low', six have a 'low' LOSU, and five 'very low'. It should be noted that the 16 factors are only the ones known to the IPCC; there are probably several others as yet unknown altogether. It is from these 'forcings that they feed in the information into the computers to give their predictions of future temperatures over the coming century.It seems extraordinary that the science which world governments put so much faith in is based on such meagre understanding.