Greenhouse: the small print

Solicitors and purveyors of insurance love small print, and, when it comes to keeping themselves employed, so do some scientists. Just look at the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Such IPCC reports are the backbone of the Greenhouse lobby's argument, and are continually referred to in debate on the issue. But they're a sham.

The 2001 report, for example, has a lengthy Summary for Policy Makers (available at www.ipcc.ch ) that pronounces in bold type that: "The global-average surface temperature has increased over the 20th century by about 0.6C." How can you accurately make such fine measurements across the whole, varied planet? But it doesn't stop there: "Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, both satellite and weather balloon measurements show the global average temperature of the lowest 8 kilometres of the atmosphere has changed by +0.05 +/- 0.10C per decade."

That's outrageous. The margin for error (0.10C) is twice as high as the reading! Would you accept a car with a speedo that indicated that you were heading down the road at 180km/h while simultaneously saying maybe you were going backwards at 60km/h? In fact, the report shows the temperature of the atmosphere could have actually gone down by 0.05C.

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