The evidence is in. The headlines proclaim:

"Global Warming Man Made, Will Continue".

"Scientists Agree: Humans Causing Global Warming."

Democrats are screeching "SEE... I told you so!" People are throwing around words like absolute and unequivocal to describe the evidence.

The noses of Jacques Chirac and the US Senate have turned upwards in their indignation towards the fuel consumption habits of the American people, and someone - somewhere is probably saying "There ought to be a law."

The recently publicized conclusions about global warming and the hysterics that followed were based on an executive summary released February 2nd by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This latest report is one in a series from the IPCC that has been released every few years.

A thorough examination of the documentary evidence in this case reveals that thus far there is no basis in proclaiming that the actions of mankind are the "unequivocal" cause of rising Earth temperatures, regardless of how many hundreds of experts that Al Gore and the media claim said so.

The evidence I will submit in this series of articles will show that the phenomenon of "global warming" is a highly politicized subject entirely capable of being manipulated for personal gain or political power. It will also show that global warming is a wedge; a tool being utilized by globalists at the UN and in the media for a variety of socialist reasons, not the least of which is the transfer of technology from the "haves" to the "have-not's".

It will also serve as an object lesson in the tendencies of the mainstream media to gloss over a story without digging deep enough for the facts.

Finally, it is a sad testament to the US education system and it's failure to teach critical thinking to our nation's youth, as evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of people who are thoroughly convinced that man is the primary reason for global climate change, despite the questions that remain over the methodologies used to reach that conclusion.

What this series is NOT, is an attempt to say that the Earth isn't getting warmer, or the consequences of that warming aren't catastrophic. It is. They are.

Part I (this article) is an examination of the IPCC itself, allowing you to draw your own conclusions about the objectivity of it's report. Part II is where the actual science will be scrutinized; where we will take a detailed look at the methodologies used to produce the reports. We will also uncover the various disclaimers peppered throughout the report, regarding data quality, and the shortcomings of the approaches used to compile that data. Part III will summarize the findings.

At the conclusion of this series, I sincerely hope that you will come away with a much firmer understanding of the forces at work in the debate over global warming, and resolve not to be swayed by hype and speculation that is rampant in the mainstream media today.

Disclaimer: Nowhere in this series do I question the underlying science behind the IPCC's conclusions. Nor do I question the qualifications or knowledge of those producing this summary. I question the conclusions themselves due to the politicized system that they were produced under.

Part I. The UNIPCC

Introduction.

First and foremost, the climate change "report" that everyone is citing is not the IPCC report itself, but an executive summary of the soon-to-be released report designed for policymakers. It is a layman's explanation of the IPCC's conclusions. It contains no evidence and it does not explain the methodology used to reach the conclusions that it reached.

The full report won't even be available until May 2007, and is not a single report, but a series of documents. Before we've even examined the science, the rampant media circus surrounding the report's release proves unwarranted, at least until the full report is available.

IPCC Mission and Organization:

Let's start with the facts. What is not in scientific dispute is that the Earth is getting warmer.

Surface and sea temperatures are rising. Sea ice is receding, This is upsetting sea temperature and salinity, and wreaking multifaceted environmental havoc on large populations of fish, marine mammals, and plant life, which cascades up and down the food chain. Many critical species, such as polar bears and arctic krill are threatened by these changes. Recent evidence points to the fact that these trends have increased in the last 50 years or so. There is no doubt that if this continues, our planet will be in serious trouble. There is no dispute.

What has been in dispute for the last couple of decades is whether or not mankind -by burning and polluting- is a significant contributor to the warming of the Earth, or whether these upswings in temperatures are the result of cyclical changes to the Earth's climate over cosmic time scales that we just don't understand.

Global warming as a physical phenomenon DOES exist. Our planet is getting warmer. The question then, is whether there is enough observable, quantifiable, verifiable evidence. Evidence that is free of political interference. Evidence that shows conclusively that man is causing the temperature to rise.

This is a complex debate with lots of evidence to examine. But before we can even get into the substance of the report's conclusions, we must learn what the IPCC is, and clarify the misconceptions held by the mainstream media while breaking this story.

Just what is the IPCC? I was surprised to learn that it doesn't do any research, monitoring, or experimentation itself [1]. It is a UN organization created by two other UN organizations [2] that is open to all UN and World Meteorological Organization member countries.

It does consist of scientists, and various other experts in their fields, but also authors, engineers, and reviewers. A look at the member selection and report drafting processes reveals that it is hardly scientific, and is by nature, actually political.

The IPCC was created as early as 1988 by the UN to study the impact of climate change. From a practical scientific standpoint, this had immense value. As a result of the first IPCC Assessment Report released in 1990, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established. This was an international treaty to consider what could be done to reduce global warming, and mitigate it's impacts.

Since then, the countries that signed on to the UNFCCC, in large part, have also become signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, a natural extension of the UNFCCC, which we will not discuss here, but nonetheless needs to be pointed out to reveal the full context in which this latest report was created.

The First IPCC Assessment Report was out of print and unavailable for evaluation.

The Second Assessment Synthesis in 1995 cited considerable progress in pinning the cause of global warming on man, but offered nothing in the form of evidence. It came with the disclaimer that the ability to measure temperatures across multiple centuries was just beginning to emerge, as was their ability to establish man as the cause vs. natural variability. It was more a treatise on social justice [3] than a scientific document contributing to solving the riddle of man's influence on his environment.

The IPCC is subdivided into working groups, much like congressional subcommittees. The first working group concentrates on the scientific aspects of climate change; the physical effects, the substance of the argument at hand. The other groups won't be addressed here, because they deal with the socioeconomic impact, mitigation, and other aspects of climate change that don't concern the cause, and are not germane to this discussion. Suffice it to say that all working groups concentrate on developing their contributions to the final report in their various areas of expertise, and then meet to draft the report.

A disclaimer on the Working Group I website states very clearly that the full report must undergo final revision and release, and that speculation regarding it's contents has been unhelpful [4]. Apparently the entire international press corps missed that one, but I digress...

In another document overlooked by the media on the IPCC's website, the IPCC outlines the semantic differences between the terms "transfer", "cooperation" and "diffusion" when describing the effort to get western nations to forfeit our technology to poorer nations in the interests of mankind's quest to end global warming. It then sets out describing ways to make that happen. [5]

Finally, the IPCC report drafting process consists of creating an outline that identifies specific issues to be addressed by the panel. Once the outline is approved, teams of authors are assembled for each chapter. A draft report is created and approved by the IPCC panel, then sent to the governments who are signatories to the UNFCCC, and then once the language is agreed to by international consensus, the report is released.

Thus the IPCC organization and operating principles themselves are suspect. Yes, there are scientific experts in climatology and related sciences involved in crafting the report, but the authors did not conduct the research, only interpreted it's meaning. In addition, the drafting process was conducted in a manner consistent with the absurdity with which the UN approaches all matters. A resolution, reached on UN member consensus, in search of a problem. In this manner, it is entirely possible that hard, scientific absolutes were watered-down in the interest of reaching consensus on this matter of global importance.

Conclusion: Since the early 90's, the IPCC -at the behest of the UN- drafted a series of reports that consisted of outlines with preordained conclusions. They then broke off into study groups, compiled the scientific research of others to support their conclusions, researched ways to redistribute the technology of the "haves" to the "have-nots" in support of those conclusions under the guise of solving the supposed crisis and then released these reports as concrete evidence that man is bringing about the impending doom of the planet by driving SUVs.

Nothing but the summary of the latest report is today being used -without any supporting evidence - by Jacques Chirac and the leaders of 46 other nations in their call to adopt a new layer of international bureaucracy, and threatening the US with a carbon tax if we do not sign global warming treaties.[6]

The language of the most recent report has yet to be finalized by international consensus, but if you ask the mainstream media or many US Senators (none of whom have seen anything but an executive summary), and we're screwed.

Each IPCC attempt, i.e. each assessment report builds on the previous one, straining to reach closer and closer to the golden ticket; the conclusion that mankind is the cause of rising Earth temperatures. It is by advancing these arrogant conclusions that the UN can scare the world population into believing that they have the answer to something that could have been around since he earth was created 4.5 billion years ago.

But despite the politics involved in producing this latest report, the basis of my argument lies not in my opinions about the motives of the UN, shallow conspiracy theories, or subjective measures such as political considerations, but on the interpretation of hard science. A detailed analysis of the methodology for the 2001 IPCC report reveals to anyone with a high school science background a series of holes that together make this report anything but conclusive.

Overview of the IPCC Climate change methodology.

Let's start with what a couple of examples of modern, acceptable science look like today. The efficacy of birth control is generally considered effective if it is 99 - 99.9% effective. The results of DNA testing are used in death penalty cases because the results demonstrate a 99.5% - 99.9% probability of matching a criminal defendant; In many criminal cases that hinge on DNA, the statistical odds that the DNA matches someone else are nearly equal the number of people on the planet, or one in several billion.

Why should we accept anything less when discussing something of such global significance, which liberals argue will imminently kill us all in less than a generation if we don't stop it ?

Acceptable statistical probabilities generally hover in the 95% certainty range, and this is an obstacle to the acceptance of any statistical evidence as conclusive proof of anything.

Now that we have something for comparison, let's examine the science behind the IPCC; the reports themselves.

Previous Assessments

The First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1990 dealt primarily with the impacts of climate change, and the response strategies, but did not substantially attempt to address the question of man's influence. It claimed a measurable rise in temperature, but questions remained over the accuracy of the climate models, the unknown nature of possible mitigating anthropogenic (or human-induced) cooling effects, and the lack of longer periods of historical data.

The Second Assessment Report (SAR) in 1995 began to suggest that man may have a discernible influence on the environment, but it cited many uncertainties, such as doubts about future estimates of emissions and aerosols and their properties. It also stressed the need for further development in the modeling of clouds, oceans, sea ice, and vegetation, and also in further long-term observations of the climate. The SAR also began to heavily suggest the "transfer" of technology to less developed nations.

The Third Assessment Report (TAR) in 2001 continued to build upon the work of past reports, and continued to inch towards the conclusion the UN had already reached in the late '80's.

As stated in Part I, there is no published methodology for the 2007 report until May, so we'll have to look at the 2001 (TAR) results which form the basis of the latest science, because the 2007 report will no doubt cite the improvements since the 2001 report as the primary basis for their firmer conclusion.

Red Flags:

Numerous red flags which call the IPCC's whole conclusion into question were uncovered when critiquing the science behind the global warming theory. Among them was the IPCC 's definition of detection and attribution with respect to man's influence on his environment.

First, they stipulate that true, scientifically valid attribution of man to the warming of the planet would actually require pouring various greenhouse gases, in various concentrations, in controlled experiments, over varying time frames into the atmosphere , and that this approach is --strictly speaking-- practically impossible. [1]. This many of us knew already.

Next, they acknowledged that natural climate variability exists, and is a complex phenomenon, which is not completely understood, in scope or frequency. [2]

Other red flags include the acknowledgment that current models cannot account for differences with the actual observed warming trend, and that some studies actually suggest that the warming observed at the beginning of the 20th century may have been significantly influenced by natural factors such as solar irradiance.

Lacking directly observable evidence, the IPCC must rely on the the study of paleoclimatology, the observation of tree rings and various forms of geological evidence or "proxy data", such as carbon dating, ice cores or sediment layers, along with multiple inferences about the meaning of this proxy data.

The proxy data is then combined with a very limited historical record, in an attempt to support the conclusions. The problem with relying on these substitutes for hard observation, is that they tend to also have seasonal, as well as decadal variations that are, in themselves, not readily explained by modern science.

Therefore, the IPCC must approach global warming as a statistical signal-to-noise problem. [3] In simple English, mankind's stress on his environment is the "signal" to be separated from the "noise" that is all of those other things; solar cycles and polar shifts, volcanic and geothermal activity, plate tectonics, natural convection, cloud dynamics, and all of the other influences on the Earth's temperature. This approach is flawed, because it implies that there is a detectable signal (man's interference) out there among the noise to begin with, and then sets about using other controversial methods to validate that assumption.

The way that the IPCC sets out to actually separating that signal from the noise of natural climate variability doesn't involve hard science, but some rather squishy statistics and questionable scientific techniques.

Statistical Analysis and the Null Hypothesis

The method of null hypothesis testing has as many detractors as supporters. Simply put, it involves advancing a theory to be disproved by advancing an alternate theory. The incorrect use of the null hypothesis can introduce bias. For example:

H0 (Null hypothesis) Humans AREN'T causing global warming

H1 - Alternate hypothesis - Humans ARE causing global warming.

With some flawed and incomplete climate models, and a lot of inferences about conditions millenia before humans appeared, it is quite a simple matter to say that you detected increased warmth due to increased atmospheric CO2 that has only come about since the burning of fossil fuels. On the surface you have refuted the null hypothesis, which some would imply that humans cause global warming. But in reality there has been no establishment of cause and effect relationship. That would require additional layers of testing and validation.

Even if you were to detect a significant temperature change; and even if that change was scientifically proven to have happened in the last 100 years, that makes progress towards, but still does not meet the threshold of unequivocal scientific proof that man is causing it.

Multiple regression

In order to provide enough data to make your conclusions even meaningful, in the case of global warming, your models must simulate what the atmosphere used to be like, and what the effects of increased heat and CO2 would do to the planet. We only possess a little more than a century of actual records to go by, which magnifies the problem.

The technique that the IPCC team uses to account for the unknown natural or internal forces that may be warming or cooling the planet is referred to as multiple regression [4]. Discussion of regression techniques is beyond the scope of an opinion piece, but the local library and the Internet are treasure troves of information on this technique, and it's applications and limitations. The point here, is that there is no clear scientific consensus on the use of multiple regression as scientific proof. Many scientists over the course of history have dismissed it.

Climate Models

I was previously a Systems Programmer/Analyst working on some very critial systems with low tolerances for error. One of the cardinal rules of data processing is expressed in the acronym G.I.G.O., or Garbage In, Garbage Out.

If the data input into a computer program contains errors to start with, those errors will be carried over to the end result. But in the complex world of 1's and 0's; of hexadecimal and binary arithmetic; there is simply no way to determine what the effects will be. The error could be negligible. It may produce perfectly valid results, but results that are double, or half of what one expected, leading to faulty conclusions.

In principle, if variables aren't defined with enough precision, no one knows the results. I have personally seen errors propagated in computer code by humans that went unnoticed for decades, until some observant analyst spotted a problem, and then dug deep. It happens all the time.

Assumptions are deadly in the world of data. A single assumption calls the results of ANY data into question no matter how many hundreds of scientists bristle at the suggestion. What I have seen over the course of 150 hours of research in terms of the assumptions made about the data in the IPCC's conclusion makes me cringe. According to the IPCC itself, the models and the conclusions make scores of assumptions that raise serious doubts in my mind about the report's validity.

There are, according to the IPCC, also many aspects of climate models themselves that are less than ideal. They still cannot adequately explain, much less model the mitigating effects of vapors, clouds, vegetation, or the cleansing properties of the hydrocycle. The models have come a long way, but still lack many of the inputs necessary to make a scientifically valid conclusion about man's influence.

In short, the science involved in the entire IPCC report drafting process is quite simple:

150 years of available records are combined with the available information from sediment beds, ice cores and tree rings and plugged in to climate models to draw conclusions about the climate over the previous thousand years. That information is combined with a greenhouse gas inventory based on similar faulty logic as well as the actual measurements of CO2 and other gases that we can now take. A conclusion is then drawn that the Earth's temperature has risen roughly .3 to .6 °C over the last century or so, and that it is likely due to increased atmospheric CO2, so the statistical conclusion is then drawn that it very well must be caused by man.

I will submit to you that there are just as many scientists that --absent political and financial pressure-- would reject these conclusions as absurd.

There are simply too many uses of the words and phrases like assumptions, large uncertainties, gaps, and confidence ellipsoids. It is riddled with internal bias, and is not worthy of the title "science".

Previously, we looked at the IPCC and the role that politics plays in its election and report publication processes. We also looked at its connection with the Kyoto Protocol, which upon objective examination is nothing more than the forfeiture of western technology and knowledge to poorer countries in the interests of cleaning up the environment.

Next, we took a look at the scientific techniques involved in reaching all of the doomsday conclusions, and examined why many of these techniques were biased in favor of the conclusions they reached.

How Climatology stacks up against the Heavyweights:

Even Einstein's famous theory of General Relativity has been put to the test on occasion. Since the wide acceptance of the Big Bang theory, astronomers have long held that the Universe would follow the physics model of an explosion, eventually slowing down its expansion, until it collapses from the force of gravity.

They set out to measure how much the Universe was actually slowing down, giving a possible clue to the timing or nature of it's demise.

The readings were off the scale. Unable to make sense of their measurements, they thought that Einstein's theory was broken. The world was in chaos. Only after shedding their biases and taking stock of what they were seeing, did they realize the Universe was actually still expanding. When they reran their experiments using the new information, Einstein's theory worked once again, and the world was in harmony.

Science is not even sure that the expansion of the Universe will slow down. The key is whether it contains enough mass. The jury is out on that one too.

Intellectual Dishonesty

The Earth has been found through hard science to be 4.5 billion years old. It also has gone through multiple Ice Ages, likely including a "Little Ice Age"[1]. There is even a "snowball Earth" theory. Not surprisingly, the IPCC said that a cooling pattern of less than 1º C that lasted for 400 years in the Northern Hemisphere is insignificant [2], yet a .3 to .6º C warming over what they claim was the entire planet over the last century means that we have to give our technology away to Third World countries, stop driving SUVs and ditch our fireplaces or we're doomed in a generation.

The IPCC cannot have it both ways. Why is a drop of less than 1º C insignificant if it lasts 400 years, but an increase of less than 1º that took 100 years significant? Biased research, that's why...

Our planet is but one tiny, insignificant grain of sand floating in the cosmos. Our Sun warms our planet and gives us life, yet also produces coronal mass ejections (CME) and perpetually bombards our planet with a solar wind that screams through space at hundreds of kilometers per second. The Sun will likely end in about 5 billion years as a Red Giant, incinerating everything in the solar system. How's that for global warming?

I must confess I knew there would be negative reactions to this article. I made several disclaimers that I did not question the underlying science, and that one should wait to read the entire article before opening one's mouth. Well, many people rejected that advice, and ended up looking quite foolish in the process.

A researcher we'll call "Brad" emailed me from Antarctica. He told me he was currently involved in research way down south, trying to study how excess CO2 affects the shell formation of marine animals. Server logs verified he was in fact with the US Antarctic program. After essentially calling me a liar, he ended up admitting that he had somewhat of a knee-jerk reaction and actually emailed me before he had checked his facts or even completed reading the introduction; before I even set out to refute the science.

The ideology of liberalism is so infectious, even researchers themselves aren't aware of the extent of their own bias.

Many liberals simply cannot believe that anyone would disagree on this issue, and are reacting like Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, covering their ears, and childishly pouting: "La la la la, I am not listening to you, Jeffrey!", burying their heads in the sand, and avoiding my footnotes like the plague. I have been accused of preventing the development of cleaner energy and wanting to remain dependent on foreign oil, called a retard, a dumbass, told that my "childern" (sic) will pay for it, and despite the fact that I have shed blood in defense of this country, was told by a self-professed "devout Christian" I have no right to express these views. According to many, Al Gore's Academy Award and Nobel nominations (entirely politicized institutions in their own right) are conclusive proof that I was wrong.

In my introduction, I made light of the sorry state of our education system. These responses to solid research should remove any doubt as to the failure of said system. What these poor souls don't understand is that the harm in taking this report as fact, is that the prevention of the free exchange of ideas is generally referred to as Fascism. Patriotic Americans hate fascists. I eat Fascists for breakfast.

Anyone not encouraging this science to be put to the test is waging an intellectually dishonest argument, by trumpeting it's validity, but not encouraging it's dissection. True men of conviction would INVITE independent scrutiny with great fanfare. Those who declare the debate over are intellectually bankrupt.

The preponderance of the evidence accumulated over 150 hours of research indicates that there is so much consternation and disagreement in the scientific community over the methods of multiple regression and null hypothesis testing, particularly when combined, that this report is based on flawed logic and cannot be trusted.

The only "Inconvenient Truth" is the one that liberals refuse to acknowledge, even when their noses are rubbed in it.

In the end, it seems that the increased emissions from Nancy Pelosi's new, bigger jet, along with the hot air emanating from liberals and the U.N. are far more significant contributors to global warming than America's love affair with the automobile will ever be.

If there's one thing that true believers of anthropogenic global warming have in common is true devotion. You might say it has become a religion, the anointed leader, the Reverend Al Gore

Earlier this year, when the IPCC announced -with considerable alarm- that their latest assessment report made the strongest connection between the increasing levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and global increases in temperature we were told that even if we immediately reversed the damage we were doing, it was too little, too late. Al Gore chastised Americans for not doing enough to combat this catastrophic problem.

When Canada decided to voluntarily enact cutbacks in emissions, Gore smugly chastised them too, saying they weren't doing nearly enough

Ironically, it was noted that Reverend Al's palatial Tennessee mansion consumed 10 times the energy of the average American household.

When confronted with this bald hypocrisy, Gore had all the answers. Why, while his mansion consumed 10 times the energy, he proclaimed that it was "carbon neutral". Through the use of carbon "offsets" or credits, he claimed to be living a carbon neutral lifestyle. And by purchasing some of these babies -these credits- you too could theoretically rid yourself of guilt for your pollution by paying for the burning of excess methane, or the planting of some trees. And thus, a fraud was born.

If this global warming lie was truly due to the damage that we as human beings are doing to our planet due to our polluting ways, then Al Gore has a lot of explaining to do.

To begin with, the "credit" in a carbon credit is not a tangible product. In simple terms, when a mine or waste disposal operation that routinely emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere voluntarily reduces the amount of pollution in their operations, such as capturing and burning excess methane, the reduction of pollution is then somehow measured, quantified, and magically turned -hocus pocus- into a commodity that someone else can purchase. The credits are then supposedly "retired" by converting them into trees that are then planted in reforestation projects, or using them to pay for other projects to mitigate the impact of global warming.

Certain sellers of these greenhouse gas credits do publish methodologies on how to quantify the capture and destruction of methane from coal mines and landfills, but the standards that they cite are not readily available to the general public for scrutiny. Many of their methodologies rely upon IPCC standards that are "out of print". So, while the methodologies explain the formulas used to calculate methane capture and destruction, there can be no independent, public scrutiny of the actual methods used to ensure that those methodologies were in fact followed, which calls their integrity into question.

We're somehow supposed to just believe that they can not only measure the amount of methane they're removing from the atmosphere, but they can also account for the amount of "leakage", and quantify the amount of CO2 is being removed through the planting of trees and other measures. Even if everything that pushers of these credits said was true, that simply robs Peter to pay Paul in terms of pollution.

As time goes on, the myth of anthropogenic global warming will continue to unravel. Despite what many liberals believe, conservatives do support commonsense measures to conserve our finite resources, and manage our planet in a responsible fashion. But they do not support half-measures at the expense of freedom or progress.

Exactly how many of these carbon credits would Al Gore and his gigantic entourage need to pull off a Live Earth concert series? In order to save the environment from imminent destruction, Al and friends are going to travel around the world burning jet fuel and diesel, and generating untold tons of methane-producing garbage and sewage in the process. The hypocrisy exhibited by these sanctimonious zealots is on full display. It's not really about global warming or how many pollutants are being dumped in the atmosphere. It's about who's doing it, and how they feel. It's really about that most basic liberal emotion, white guilt. Nothing more need be said.