By Alex Epstein

Note: This week’s set of Energy Talking Points is long, and took both me and Steffen Henne (my Head of Research) a long time time to prepare. We thought it was worth the effort to create (and is worth your effort to read) because the subject matter, the UN IPCC’s recent Synthesis Report, has a huge influence on global energy policy. And it is just an absolute piece of garbage. Yet it’s gotten very little pushback. We hope that demolishing the “Report” in detail will help discredit the current state of the IPCC, which at this moment is one of the most destructive forces in the world.

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The IPCC’s heralded Synthesis Report is supposed to accurately synthesize the best information about human beings’ climate impacts in order to rationally guide policy.

Instead, it severely distorts science to advance a corrupt political agenda.

• The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently published, to great fanfare, its “Synthesis Report” (SR)—the culmination of its lengthy 6th “Assessment Cycle” of reports on various aspects of human beings’ climate impacts and their implications for policy.1
• The Synthesis Report is supposed to accurately synthesize the best info about human climate impacts—including the threats of dangerous temps, storms, floods, etc—to rationally guide policy, above all what to do about fossil fuels, the leading cause of climate-warming GHGs.
• Because of the Synthesis Report’s prestige, the world took it very seriously when they heard about its dire claims. E.g., UN Chief Antonio Guterres saying we can’t have a “liveable future” if we don’t take “urgent climate action”—above all rapidly eliminating fossil fuel use.2

• Even skeptics of the IPCC Report’s drastic calls for rapidly eliminating fossil fuels—often via means that give enormous power and money to favored politicians—may feel uncomfortable questioning a “scientific” Report.
  
  But a common-sense reading reveals that it’s total garbage.
• A proper climate synthesis report must cover 2 key issues:
  
  1. An evenhanded (covering minuses and pluses) and precise account of our climate impacts.
  2. An account of our ability to master climate danger, including the use of fossil fuel to neutralize its own negative climate impacts.
• 1. An evenhanded and precise account of our climate impacts.
  
  With rising greenhouse gasses we must consider both negatives (e.g., more heatwaves) and positives (e.g., fewer cold deaths, global greening from CO2). And we must be precise, not equating some climate impact with huge impact.
• 2. An account of our ability to master climate danger
  
  Any valid climate synthesis must account for climate mastery, because the same fossil fuels that impact climate can also neutralize negatives—e.g., via fossil-fueled air conditioning to alleviate heat and irrigation to alleviate drought.
• You don’t need to be a scientist to know that a proper climate synthesis report should include both an evenhanded and precise account of our climate impacts and an account of our ability to master climate danger.
  
  And if you read the IPCC Synthesis it’s obvious it fails at both.
• I recommend just skimming the IPCC Synthesis Report, linked below—this report that is supposed to be so brilliant—and just ask yourself if it is remotely evenhanded about human impact on climate, or if it accounts for our mastery of climate.https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_LongerReport.pdf
• Instead of an evenhanded and precise account of our climate impacts, the IPCC SR gives us a blatantly biased view of exaggerated negative impacts, with no mention of positives like global greening thanks to CO2 fertilization of the atmosphere or decreasing cold-related deaths.
• Instead of accounting for our climate mastery ability, the IPCC SR ignores our ability to neutralize negative climate impacts, despite the fact that we’ve driven climate disaster deaths down by 98% over the last century!
  
  This is like a polio report omitting the polio vaccine.3
• By exaggerating our negative climate impacts and ignoring our ability to master climate danger, the IPCC Synthesis perpetrates a 3-part perversion of science:
  “A: Current Status and Trends”
  “B: Long-Term Climate and Development Futures”
  “C: Near-Term Responses in a Changing Climate”
• “A: Current Status and Trends” distorts the present state of climate danger
  
  “B: Future Climate Change, Risks, and Long-Term Responses” distorts the evidence about future climate danger
  
  “C: Responses in the Near Term” calls for huge power and money for an anti-fossil-fuel agenda
• The IPCC’s “Synthesis Report” has been criticized intelligently by various experts, including Roger Pielke and Patrick Brown.
  
  But this isn’t enough. All experts in the field should unequivocally condemn this dangerous piece of garbage and the process that produced it.4
• How the IPCC severely distorts the present state of climate danger
  
  By exaggerating negative impacts and ignoring climate mastery, the IPCC portrays the world as suffering “widespread adverse impacts… and related losses and damages” when climate danger is lower than ever!
• Any honest “Current Status and Trends” report on climate would start by acknowledging that any negative climate changes so far have been far outweighed by our increasing climate mastery ability, which led to plummeting climate deaths thanks to our fossil fuel-powered technology.5

• Insofar as a climate report addresses the overall state of the world, it should acknowledge that human life has never been better. E.g., extreme poverty (~$2/day) plummeted from 42% in 1980 to <10% today. And it should recognize fossil-fueled industrialization as a root cause.6
• The IPCC’s “Current Status and Trends” 100% falsely portrays fossil fuels as making climate, and life, worse than ever, even though they’ve made both better: “Climate change has adversely affected human physical health globally… and is contributing to humanitarian crises.”
• Any honest “Current Status and Trends” on climate would also acknowledge the impressively stable level of economic losses from climate—vs. an expected catastrophic increase–despite the increasing accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone spots like coastal areas.7

• Instead of acknowledging flat or declining climate damages, the IPCC portrays things as worse than ever: “individual livelihoods have been affected through, for example, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and loss of property and income, human health and food security.”
• Any honest “Current Status and Trends” report should acknowledge that while everyone has become safer from climate, the most developed countries are safest. And thus the path to increasing safety is more development, which will largely require more fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.8

• Instead of acknowledging the improving climate safety of the poor world, largely due to fossil fuels. the IPCC pretends their situation is worsening due to the world’s use of fossil fuels.
  
  This paves the way for advocating massive, unjust “climate reparations” schemes.

• To summarize: “The Current Status” section of the IPCC “Synthesis Report” gives a 180-degree false portrayal of today’s record-low climate danger by exaggerating our negative impacts and ignoring our climate mastery, so as to portray climate danger as record-high.
• How the IPCC severely distorts the future state of climate danger
  
  Just as the IPCC distorts the present evidence about (actually declining) climate danger, so it does with future danger to falsely claim: “Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health.”
• The fact that the IPCC’s Synthesis Report portrays record-low current climate danger as record-high calls its “Future Climate Danger” section into question: Why trust predictions about the future by those who deny the reality of the present?
  
  And indeed, the section is garbage.
• To understand how bad the IPCC’s “Future Climate Change, Risks, and Long-Term Responses” section is, note that it portrays climate danger as “a threat to human well-being” even though the reports it’s based on say nothing of the sort.
• Preceding parts of the IPCC’s Sixth “Assessment Report” that supposedly inform the Synthesis Report have many flaws—most notably, they severely underestimate humanity’s climate mastery ability.
  
  But those reports do not show a threat to a “liveable future” like the “Synthesis” claims.
• The IPCC’s Assessment Reports, contrary to the “Synthesis” of “a threat to human well-being” all show that the overall well-being of humans will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.
  
  The “Synthesis” is a lie.9

Read rest at Energy Talking Points