After the latest assessment released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - or the IPCC – on February 2, 2007, I began to speculate about the disposition and the objective of the organization. If it is understood that the IPCC was created to help policy makers propose options for mitigation to help curb the effects of anthropogenic global warming, then it must be assumed that the organization began under the pretense that anthropogenic global warming was previously occurring and was a real threat to humanity. Since this is evidently the case, would it be possible for the Panel to deliver an objective evaluation of the scientific facts if it was already tacitly recognized by the creators of the Panel that humans are to blame?

The United Nations is a global, political body at its core. One of its stated aims is to develop a system for facilitating the creation and implementation of international law. It is comprised of political leaders and politically appointed delegates from various nations who represent the governments of those nations. They embody the objectives of the governments they symbolize reminiscent of senators and representatives in our Congress and they are subject to the same form of political biases. The United Nations is nothing more than an organization serving as a global government and its delegates are operating as international politicians. Any action or function by the United Nations is a political process or calculation by its leaders and members, including the establishment of commissions, agencies, or panels.

The IPCC is bound by the same tendencies of subjectivity or partisanship as any other political body. Scientists are not apolitical beings only serving in the name of humanity’s greater interests. Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard University, wrote a book in 1985 called, Risk Management and Political Culture. When speaking of risk assessment, she says, “Scientific judgment must be exercised throughout, usually in full knowledge that different choices may lead to substantially different policy recommendations. Given this state of affairs, it is almost inevitable that a scientist's personal and political values will influence his reading of particular facts.”

What we can draw from this is the realization that a constructed panel of scientists and politicians, who are operating under an organization whose stated objective is to create international laws and require the cooperation of nations, will be influenced by their own political inclinations and the policies of the institute which has employed their services. In addition, the establishment that requested these services is likely to have an agenda which needs to be validated. There have been multiple allegations from contributors of the IPCC that accused the Panel of influencing and editing the content of the report in order to satisfy the objectives of the policy makers. These have been expressed by proponents of anthropogenic global warming and the skeptics, which begs the question: Should the IPCC be viewed as an authoritative scientific organization, or has its research and content been manipulated or distorted enough to be no more than political science?

One way to evaluate the findings is to examine the proposed solutions resulting from the report. For the sake of civility and avoiding substantial debate, let’s assume the assessment is scientifically correct. Over the next few decades, it is suggested by the IPCC that further warming is inevitable. What then are the proposed solutions by the governments who are relying on this report to make policy decisions? They are very wide-ranging, from cap and trade technology and carbon emission taxes to bio-fuels and wind energy. Are these practical resolutions and will they be able to diminish or thwart future warming?

For any new legislation to be effective, it would need to be adopted by every nation on Earth. This is one aspect where the Kyoto Protocol has failed. It excluded several of the fastest growing industrialized countries of the world. Unless changes are implemented globally, any attempt by individual nations to stifle future human effects on climate would be seemingly fruitless. Moreover, if the cost is not reasonable, it may be impractical to attempt any form of compliance to new legislation that would send multiple economies into recession or depression. We would all as soon die from abject global poverty as we would from purported catastrophic events due to excessive warming.

Other futile attempts, such as bio-fuels like ethanol, will only complicate our plight. Raising crops for fuel will minimize the amount of land used for growing food. In turn, this may require additional deforestation to acquire more terrain for agricultural, thus cancelling out any good measures taken by producing the bio-fuel. Increasing farmland will also necessitate a correlative increase in irrigation, resulting in a further burden on water supplies. If additional landscapes are not obtained for farming, the price of these crops will increase significantly due to essential laws of supply and demand. This dilemma has already been witnessed in Mexico with their corn harvests. Since corn is used in a multitude of food processes, it would send prices for many provisions upward, and could possibly have an adverse effect on inflation.

Most other initiatives involve tremendous costs or penalties in the form of regulations and taxes. Given that businesses do not in actuality pay taxes, the burden of compliance would be passed on to consumers. Widespread distribution of wind and solar energy is not currently feasible because of its cost and unreliability. Gravitation towards the trendy carbon offset demonstrates the unwillingness of people and corporations to see climate change as an imminent peril, including those at the forefront of the environmental movement. Offsetting emissions is absolutely incomparable to reducing or eliminating emissions.

All of these proposals require the belief that man is the primary driving force of climate change. An equivalent premise was needed to craft the IPCC a couple decades ago. Even still, when the IPCC is referenced for the dire necessity of regulations on emissions, the recommended solutions by various governments fall short of any rational application. It can be said that by the actions of the policy makers for whom this assessment was created, the content of the IPCC does not appear to be worrisome despite the rhetorical displays produced for the media. Many of the “solutions” seem to be more about controls and restrictions than actual reduction or prevention. If the estimations are not taken seriously by the governments who were de facto organizers of the panel, what does that say about their original motivations? Or, what does it tell us about the scientific evidence presented in the report?

We know that the United Nations and the IPCC are very much political entities and it would be lackadaisical and naïve to believe none of the world’s scientists maintain a proclivity to reflect personal opinions about preserving nature in their work, especially those practicing environmental sciences. Conceivably, politicians around the world could quite possibly have arrived at the understanding that the political capital on anthropogenic global warming is near expiration. This would explain the apparent need to promote alarming predictions - which increase in severity as each sequential assessment is published - in order to pass legislation that controls business markets, instead of offering real-world solutions that are both comprehensive and practical.

Links for background reading or research:

United Nations official website: http://www.un.org/

IPCC official website: http://www.ipcc.ch/

Sheila Jasanoff biography: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~sjasanoff/fullbio.htm