Climate change forecasts 'invalid' - researcher

Karori researcher Kesten Green has told MPs there was no need to pass the Government's Climate Change (Emissions Trade and Renewable Preference) Bill - because global warming forecasts are unscientific.

Dr Green, the author of a peer-reviewed paper auditing the forecasting methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), opposed the bill because he claimed it was based on "invalid climate forecasts".

He told Parliament's finance select committee that authors of the IPCC fourth assessment report provided sufficient information to observe predic tions violated 72 of 89 accepted principles of forecasting.

There was insufficient information to judge how closely a further 51 principles had been followed.

"Some individual principles that were violated are so important that violation of any one of them alone invalidates the IPCC's forecasts," he said.

These IPCC forecasts drew on six years of research by 2500 scientists from more than 130 countries, and said global warming was "unequivocal" with human activity more than 90 percent likely to blame for an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, to 379 parts per million (ppm), up from 280ppm before the Industrial Revolution.

They warned that by 2050, there is very likely to be loss of high-value land, faster road deterioration, degraded beaches, and reduced farm and forestry production in southern and southeastern Australia and parts of eastern New Zealand.

The w armer temperatures and decreasing water resources would increase the burden of some diseases, and global sea levels would rise 59cm this century.

Professor Scott Armstrong, of Pennsylvania University - who wrote the global warming forecast audit with Dr Green - put in a written submission to the committee, claiming they had been unable to find a single "scientific" forecast of global warming.

- NZPA