Proponents and Opponents of the CC 'Consensus' Agree That the IPCC is Political to its Core.

Finally, opponents and proponents of the CC 'consensus' agree.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a UN mandated intergovernmental body set up at the request of member governments. They produce assessment reports which have the consensus of every one of the participating governments. The IPCC Panel is composed of representatives appointed by governments and stakeholder organizations including climate scientists, NGOs and corporations. One example of the effectiveness of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that led to the IPCC is the Kyoto Protocol which, after years of negotiations, was a broadly flawed compromise that had no enforcement, didn't include many major emitters like China, India and Indonesia and since its adoption has seen almost every country in the world participate in massive increases atmospheric carbon pollution.

One thing proponents and opponents of the climate science's 'consensus' agree on is that the IPCC is, like every UN body, political to its core. Sergio Abranches of Ecopolity says, "Scientists are voicing concerns about the political screening of their texts by climate negotiators." Going on to say, "I’ve seen how they manage to bracket almost all substantive clauses, only to strike them out, leaving no more than general statements at the end. Most negotiators are masters of text rephrasing. They do it to reduce the degree of commitment or dilute substance, aiming at a comfortably bland final text."

Scientists and diplomats have very different mindsets  The language of science is objective and evidence-oriented. The language of politics is symbolic and interest-oriented. Whereas many scientists are foreseeing imminent disaster diplomats fear writing down the scientists’ warnings about climate change risks as they are formulated, whereas scientists want policy to follow science, not politics. This vetting of the IPCC's reports by politicians and their corporate masters helps explain why many countries are moving so slowly to develop precautionary policies.

One well written critique from the opponents perspective comes from the conservative Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC) in a report titled 'IPCC must avoid playing politics', where they argue that the scientific community generally, and the IPCC specifically, must distinguish analysis from advocacy. Another by a very bright though, IMO, mistaken Roger A. Pielke Jr at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado titled 'Policy, politics and perspective' comes to almost exactly the same conclusions as the Mud Report from almost exactly the opposite original assumptions.

An example of corporate influence on the IPCC by politicians was documented by a whistleblower's release of a memo from ExxonMobil to the Bush administration. The memo led to strong Bush administration lobbying, evidently at the behest of ExxonMobil, to oust Robert Watson, a climate scientist, from the IPCC chairmanship, and to have him replaced by Pachauri, who was seen at the time as more mild-mannered and industry-friendly. Environmentalists argued that the anti-Watson campaign by the US, oil producers like Saudi Arabia, and oil corporations like Exxon-Mobil, intended to cow the IPCC with the bald display of their fossil fuel backed politics.

It seems obvious that arguing about the precise causes of climate changes – angry gods, CO2, water vapour, sun spots, terrorist plots, etc is a meaningless a waste of time when it should be apparent to every human that the climate is changing fast and dangerously. Killer heat waves, droughts, desertification, ocean acidification, reduced clean water sources and crop reduction, polar melting, sea level rise, global habitat creep away from the poles by flora and fauna alike, retreating glaciers, dying coral reefs, etc. are already resulting in wars over dwindling resources, out of control species extinction disasters, extreme weather deaths, etc. Meanwhile our politicians enable the talk-endlessly-to-buy-time business objections dedicated to maximizing profits today regardless of increasing threats to future generations. YUCK