RECENT EVIDENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE: a critical review

John Daly

The present debate regarding the existence and magnitude of an anthropogenic impact on climate change is founded on numerous scientific studies over the last few decades. The scientific reliability or otherwise of many of these studies has clear implications for public debate on greenhouse gas abatement. Presented here are several examples of avoidable problems evident in various highly publicised studies, which were influential in shaping public perceptions about global warming. It is vital that policymakers and the public have confidence in the science of climate change as a basis for formulating sound policy for the future. Therefore, some of the problems raised here need be addressed by the climatological community.

Predictions of global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been accepted not only by scientists, but by governments, the media and many in the general community. However, there exists a persistent core of scientific and community opinion which maintains these predictions to be at odds with reality, where evidence is at best inconclusive and at worst highly flawed, and that global warming predictions appear to be compromised by politics and ideology. This monograph aims to explain the basis for the counter-opinion and to outline aspects of the present scientific evidence which many `dissenters' find troubling or unacceptable.

Keywords: climate, greenhouse effect, climate change, global warming