How to use IPCC report to reject climate change » Yale Climate Connection

New Energy Secretary Chris Wright was until recently CEO of Liberty Energy, the second largest fracturing company in the United States. In 2024, the company issued a declaration called “Improving Human Life” in which Wright made an exciting statement that would be reassuring – if it was true:

“One of the other things we often hear about climate change is that it causes a significant increase in extreme weather events and leads to fatal consequences. This is wrong. Extensive reports from the Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change (IPCC) do not actually show an increase in frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, floods or weather-to-weather droughts,” he said.

The IPCC is a UN agency whose job is to provide governments with information about climate science. Thousands of scientists volunteer to contribute to their reports, published every five to seven years.

Wright’s claim on what the IPCC says is effectively by atmospheric scientist Jim Kossin, one of the lead authors of the IPCC report, in the video below by Peter Sinclair, a former contributor to the climate link at Yale University.

“We have increased the intensity and frequency of extreme precipitation events and human action is playing a significant role,” Kossin said in the video. Even with drought, science is about to be sure of uncertainty, “we are still confident that extreme droughts are increasing and human action is playing a role,” Kossin added.

Understand the limitations of IPCC reporting

The IPCC report is considered the gold standard for climate change information as it is the result of a years-long assessment process by hundreds of world's top climate scientists who have rigorously reviewed it. However, IPCC reports can be exploited by people with vested interests against those acting on climate change. Here are four methods:

1. Quote from the decision makers summary only. This overview has attracted the greatest attention, and it is not just a scientific document. This is also political Consistent All 195 countries involved have approved line by line, including stones such as Saudi Arabia and Russia. For political reasons, these countries are accused of watering scientific content for decision makers. So if your goal is to mislead people, it is better to ignore the subject of the report, which is endured by political censorship.
2. Ignore new research and quotes for old IPCC survey results. The IPCC report is only published every six years or so, and there is a deadline for how to include recently published research. In fast-growing fields such as climate change science, most of the time the IPCC report has become obsolete. Therefore, if new research shows a more certain climate change effect, it can be ignored and cited outdated science.
3. Take advantage of uncertainty to take advantage of your strengths. The evaluation of IPCC documents is very conservative and requires a high level of consensus from multiple scientific papers before it involves human-induced climate impacts. Since there is often quite a bit of uncertainty in finding, you can use it as an excuse to delay actions.
4. Selectively selective cherry selection results. This is the technique Wright uses. The IPCC report is long and complex, and it can be picked out from it to support many different perspectives. So, in a narrow sense, you can immerse yourself in the report to find statements that support Wright’s argument. For example, regarding tropical cyclones (including hurricanes), the latest IPCC report says: “Data limits inhibit clear detection of past trends globally.” But the same document also has a statement contradicting Wright: “Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region of the world. Evidence of extreme changes, such as heat waves, precipitation, drought and tropical cyclones, especially attributions to human influence, especially their influence.”

In fact, Here are the conclusions drawn by the summary of decision makers of the 2023 IPCC Comprehensive Report:

“Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health (very high confidence). There is a window of opportunity to end quickly, ensuring a livable and sustainable future for all (very high confidence).

2021 IPCC summary of policy makers’ views on tropical cyclones

The 2023 IPCC summary for policy makers is not targeted at tropical cyclones, which is the name of the storm category including hurricanes and typhoons. It supports Wright (Wright) yes In some ways it became more intense – contradicting his claims. Here is a summary of the key points of decision makers:

1. The strongest storm is getting stronger. “This is possible Over the past four decades, the global proportion of major (3-5) tropical cyclones has increased. ”
2. The typhoon moved northward. “The latitude of tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific reaching its peak intensity has moved northward (It is very likely).
3. We cannot tell whether the frequency of tropical cyclones around the world is changing. “have Low confidence The trend of the whole category of tropical cyclones with a long-term (year-old to centenary) trend. ”
4. We know that even though the satellite records of the storm date back decades, tropical cyclones are dumping more rain. “Event attribution studies and body understanding show that human-induced climate change increases large precipitation associated with tropical cyclones (High confidence)but data limitations hinder clear detection of past trends globally. ” (Event attribution studies have enabled scientists to calculate the probability that climate change makes specific weather events more intense.)

More details are available in Chapter 11 of the IPCC report, “Weather and Climate Extremes in Climate Change.” This chapter explains that the lack of confidence in trends “should not be interpreted as no physical (real) trend”, but rather that historical records are not enough to see trends, especially because natural variability is so high. Here are the other key points of tropical cyclones:

1. The changes in tiny particles mainly from air pollution are aerosols, Very likely Responsible for the recent increase in hurricane seasons in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and Arab Basins, but the role of climate warm gases emitted by humans is uncertain.
2. This is More likely The slowdown in translation speed of tropical cyclones in the United States – the movement of the storm center is partly attributed to the human-induced effect. This slowdown increases the destructive potential of storms as they can dump more rainfall and theme infrastructure into longer winds and storm surges.
3. Over the past 40 years, the frequency of rapid reinforcement events worldwide has increased (and is possible Partly due to human-induced effects). Rapid strengthening means that the tropical cyclone suddenly and significantly strengthens, which is dangerous because it makes people have little preparation time.
4. have High confidence This man-induced climate change has led to extreme rainfall in Hurricane Harvey and other strong tropical cyclones in 2017.

As for misleading claims about our knowledge of tornadoes, floods and droughts, see these guides from our archives:

Bob Henson contributed to this article.