The controversy around the accuracy of the UN report on climate change continues to swirl, with an eclectic group of skeptics planning a detailed audit of the data upon which the report is based and hopeing to enlisted the power of masses to support their efforts.
The validity of the projections on the likelihood and impact of global warming is a critical one for Green Supply Chain thinking, as it goes to the heart of how much effort should be placed on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by companies, and the probabality and severity of any new laws limiting in some way limiting those emissions, such as the Cap and Trade bill that passed the US House last year but is - for the moment - stalled in the Senate. (See
Kerry, Graham and Lieberman Working on New Compromise Climate Bill they Hope will Gain Business Support.)
This latest audit effort is being led by a group called
NoConsensus.org, which was started by a woman named
Donna Laframboise, previously a writer and photographer.
She has recruited some number of both recognized climate authorities as well as regular citizens in her cause to investigate various global warming claims, especially the UN report that is frequently cited as supporting the need for swift and decisive action to combat global warming, but which has seen a number of questions about its accuracy raised in recent months.
After fact checking
sources in the report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and finding it wanting, the group is working to build an online database to make the underlying data and thus the basis for the report's claims available for analysis.
According to a related story by Fox News, this is just one of many efforts that are looking to challenge key aspects of the UN report - or perhaps in some cases even find the job was well done.
“A parallel universe is assembling itself parallel to the IPCC,” Patrick J. Michaels, a scientist and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute as well as former contributor to the IPCC, told FoxNews.com. "This universe has become very technical -- very proficient at taking apart the U.N.’s findings."
 The role of the UN report almost can't be overestimated. For example, when the US Environmental Protection Agency controversially found last year that greenhouse gases were a health hazard that the EPA should be able to regulate, that finding was largely based on the UN report itself. (See
EPA Move to Regulate CO2 Emissions Could Make Cap and Trade Approach Obsolete.)
That EPA ruling would allow the agency to regulate grenhouse gas emissions the way it does other substances that are clearly health hazards even if no laws restricting those emissions are ever passed by the Congress.
Michaels himself believes that UN report "suffers from systemic errors.”
Are challenges to the UN Climate report a good or nbad thing? Why? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback button below.
TheGreenSupplyChain.com is now Twittering! Follow us at www.twitter.com/greenscm
|
