The 2,247th Meeting of the Society

January 9, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Powell Auditorium at the Cosmos Club

Retiring President's Lecture

The NIPCC Report

Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate

Kenneth A. Haapala

Investment Economist
Retiring President

Sponsored by Bill Spargo, LLC.

About the Lecture

Formed under the guidance of the late Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus of Rockefeller University, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) includes contributors to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientists who contest the methods used by the IPCC and claims of a consensus for its “Summary for Policymakers.” Edited by S. Fred Singer, the NIPCC report reviews the same scientific research the IPCC reviews. More importantly, it reviews scientific research the IPCC ignores as well as recent research.

The NIPCC report directly challenges the conclusions of the IPCC Summary that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing dangerous and unprecedented warming. In brief, the NIPCC report finds the recent warming is neither unusual nor unprecedented and most likely predominately caused by natural forces. The NIPCC report asserts that the quantitative models used by the IPCC to make predictions are unreliable and biased in greatly overestimating the influence of carbon dioxide emissions on warming. The NIPCC report demonstrates that the IPCC report obscures how little we know of the natural forces that cause climate change.

Starting with a brief overview of our knowledge of climate change, the speaker will highlight key failures in the IPCC report. Particularly, the speaker will critique the IPCC’s use of quantitative procedures and techniques of presentation. The talk will conclude with alternative theories, suggestions of what went wrong, and what needs to be studied.

About the Speaker

KENNETH HAAPALA is an investment economist. As a quantitative economist, early in his career he was a major contributor and/or author of several reports funded by the Federal government. Topics included appropriate use of quantitative models in analyzing the economic impact of a completed major infrastructure project and the inappropriate use of quantitative methods by the Federal Energy Administration, and other Government agencies, in predicting the U.S. would run out of natural gas and the world would run out of oil by the end of the 20th Century.

After the last report, the speaker became a privately employed investment economist who has consulted with numerous private companies. He has reviewed hundreds of reports based on quantitative techniques and has written critical analyses on many. In addition, he has written over a hundred articles, op-ed pieces on various subjects, had a column in a financial newspaper, and has been a commentator on radio programs.