With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about to release its much-anticipated fifth assessment report Friday, all eyes have been focused on how contributors will address the fifteen year halt to temperature increases despite rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
It was therefore preposterous of PBS’s Charlie Rose to spend almost 30 minutes talking to former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore Tuesday - exclusively about climate change, mind you! - without once asking either of them about the temporary cessation to "global warming" or the problem this raises for the IPCC as well as adherents to this theory.
Instead, Clinton and Gore were allowed to spread the usual hysteria concerning this issue whilst bashing everyone that disagrees with them.
Surely, Rose or someone involved in this program must have been aware of the problems currenlty facing the IPCC.
For instance, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday:
It's a climate puzzle that has vexed scientists for more than a decade and added fuel to the arguments of those who insist man-made global warming is a myth.
Since just before the start of the 21st century, the Earth's average global surface temperature has failed to rise despite soaring levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and years of dire warnings from environmental advocates.
Now, as scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gather in Sweden this week to approve portions of the IPCC's fifth assessment report, they are finding themselves pressured to explain this glaring discrepancy.
The panel, a United Nations creation that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, hopes to brief world leaders on the current state of climate science in a clear, unified voice. However, experts inside and outside the process say members probably will engage in heated debate over the causes and significance of the so-called global warming hiatus.
None other than the New York Times reported this "hiatus" in June:
As unlikely as this may sound, we have lucked out in recent years when it comes to global warming.
The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.
The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. True, the basic theory that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.
But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.
So contentious is this issue that there were allegations over the weekend that IPCC scientists are trying to avoid including the temperature hiatus in their report.
Britain's Telegraph observed Saturday:
The behind-the-scenes wrangling is likely to cast a shadow over the publication on Friday of the 2,000-page report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report is still in a draft version and will be finalised over the next five days with heated discussion centring on how to explain the fact that since 1998 the earth’s temperature has barely risen.
It is claimed some governments have even tried to intervene to remove references to the 15 year climate change 'hiatus’ or 'pause’. [...]
Documents seen by the Associated Press (AP) show attempts at political interference in the final report, and that “several governments that reviewed the draft objected to how the issue was tackled”. [...]
But the documents, according to AP, show Germany called for the reference to the slowdown to be deleted while the US urged scientists to include as its “leading hypothesis” that the reduction in warming is linked to more heat being transferred to the deep ocean. Both countries’ governments have policies which state their belief in man-made climate change.
So despite a pivotal United Nations climate change report coming out Friday, and a lot of wrangling going on concerning this fifteen year halt in temperature increases, Rose opted not to address any of it with the man that won a Nobel Peace Prize for "informing" the public about this issue.
Rose didn't even mention the upcoming IPCC report.
He's one heckuva journalist, isn't he?
