Posted: 01/25/2005
Bad Science, Politics of Global Warming Lead to Resignation
Distinguished Researcher Backs Out of IPCC Assessment
DALLAS (January 25, 2005) – Distinguished researcher Chris Landsea’s resignation earlier this week from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is evidence that global warming has become politicized, according to scholars with the National Center for Policy Analysis’s (NCPA) E-Team project.
“I applaud Chris Landsea’s principled stand,” said S. Fred Singer, E-Team adjunct scholar and president of the Science and Environmental Project. This is yet another black mark against the IPCC, and serves as a warning against accepting their conclusions.”
A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Landsea noted this week in a “Dear Colleague” letter announcing his withdrawal from participation in the latest IPCC assessment report that “I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized.”
“Landsea’s resignation provides more evidence that the lead authors of the IPCC chapters are so committed to the view that humans are causing climate change that they have lost their objectivity – their commitment to following the evidence wherever it leads,” said H. Sterling Burnett, NCPA Senior Fellow. “This is not a new problem for the IPCC.”
In his letter, Landsea specifically noted comments made by Dr. Kevin Trenberth, lead author of the IPCC assessment, at a press conference at Harvard University linking outbreaks of intense hurricane activity, and especially the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season, to global warming.
Noting that none of the authors at the Harvard conference are experts nor did they cite any new research in the field, Landsea said there is “…no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin.” He added that in fact “…the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricanes will likely be quite small.”