Why IPCC Climate Forecasts Are So Dodgy

by R. Barmy, May 5, 2022 in ClimateChangeDispatch


This is the fourth in a series of articles on the IPCC’s AR6 WG1 report. –CCD ed.

Margaret Thatcher helped create the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. As an Oxford-trained chemist, she understood scientific principles and was concerned that we “… do not live at the expense of future generations.”

By 2002, the Iron Lady turned against global warming extremism by stating in her book Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, “What is far more apparent is that the usual suspects on the left have been exaggerating the dangers and simplifying solutions in order to press their agenda…” [bold, links added]

Thatcher’s comments of exaggeration and simplification were a prescient critique of the IPCC report Climate Change 2021: The Physical Sciences Basis.

The IPCC uses computer simulations to predict climate dangers and test solutions. An important step in the computer simulation of a real-world physical process is making sure the simulator can replicate the known history of that physical process.

If a computer model can accurately replicate a significant history of a known process, called hindcasting, it lends credibility that the correct equations are being used and will be able to predict future events.