UN abandons science and hires climate change zealots who damn the facts

Life would be impossible without experts — doctors help us when we get sick, mechanics fix our cars when they break down, farmers produce our food, to name just a few.

But we live in a time when too many of these roles have become politicized.

President Donald Trump recently fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency released a jobs report he did not like. Similarly, soon after his election, President Joe Biden fired the climate scientist leading the US National Climate Assessment and replaced her with a communications professional.   

Not surprisingly, public confidence in medical and scientific institutions has dropped overall and become more partisan as politicians increasingly select experts to advise them based on their politics rather than their willingness to call things as they see them.

The ongoing politicization of scientific institutions is not limited to politicians or to the United States.

Now we’re seeing it in the organization tasked with periodically assessing climate science under the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which distills the thousands and thousands of research papers on climate change to help inform decision-makers on the nature of the problem and possibilities for response.

The IPCC is so important for clarifying what we know and don’t know about climate that I have testified before Congress that if it didn’t exist, we would have to invent it.

Last week, the IPCC announced its list of authors for its seventh assessment report, which is just getting underway and will take several years to produce.

One of its most important chapters is on extreme weather events — how they may have changed over time, and understanding the reasons for any identified changes.

Much to its credit, despite media reports that breathlessly hype every hurricane, flood, and tornado as being worsened by climate change, the IPCC has for decades called things straight. 

People are often surprised to learn that the most recent IPCC report did not detect increasing trends in the incidence of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, or drought. The IPCC did find increases in heat waves (and decreases in frigid outbreaks), heavy precipitation (in some locations), soil moisture deficits, and fire weather.

As an expert who has published widely on extreme weather, I have for many years praised the IPCC for its commitment to getting the science right, despite enormous pressures from climate activists who routinely argue that action on energy policy can reduce extreme weather and its impacts.

However, based on the IPCC’s list of authors for its chapter on extreme weather, that commitment to scientific rigor may be over.

Because the IPCC has consistently failed to establish strong connections between greenhouse gas emissions and most types of extreme weather, a cottage industry of promotional studies has developed in its place. 

“Extreme event attribution” was invented to circumvent the normal process of scientific peer review in order to have media impact and to support litigation against fossil fuel companies.

As Friederike Otto, the head of World Weather Attribution, explains, “Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind.” 

Otto, who argues in a new book that racism, colonialism, and sexism are the root causes of global warming, has just been appointed as co-lead of the forthcoming IPCC chapter on extreme weather.

In a press release, she explains that her leading role means that she has “a lot of opportunity to shape the structure and focus of the chapter” in the UN’s report.

Scientific assessments are supposed to accurately reflect the underlying peer-reviewed literature, and not to be shaped by the inclinations of its leaders — that’s how politics slips in.

Otto is joined by two other lead authors and 17 other authors. Of these 20, nine focus their work on “extreme event attribution.” 

Few, if any, have any expertise in the IPCC’s traditional approach focused on detecting long-term changes in the statistics of weather phenomena, and then on connecting any detected changes to particular causes.

The tensions between the IPCC’s traditional approach and “extreme event attribution” can be seen in recent research. 

A peer reviewed climate modeling study of flooding in Pakistan concluded: “Understanding how climate change affects monsoon regions in South Asia is not straightforward.”

In contrast, for Otto’s WWA, establishing a connection between climate change and Pakistan’s floods is easy: “Every tenth of a degree of warming will lead to heavier monsoon rainfall, highlighting why a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy is so urgent.”

The next IPCC will have to arbitrate between these types of opposing claims, and has empaneled those making the latter claims in charge.

By putting WWA and its fellow travelers in charge of the IPCC’s chapter on extreme events, the IPCC is signaling that media hits, climate litigation, and energy advocacy trump rigorous science.

The politicization of expert institutions is bad when Republicans do it and bad when Democrats do it. The only thing worse is when scientists politicize their own institutions.

Roger Pielke Jr. is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who writes at The Honest Broker on Substack.