- undercounts deforestation emissions by a factor of 3
- undervalues methane emissions by a factor of 3
- ignores cooling effects
- ignores carbon opportunity cost of land used for animal agriculture
- underestimates climate sensitivity to increased CO2 concentration
The United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an organization of governments that are members of the UN or the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Created in 1988 by the WMO and the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), the purpose of the UN IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.
Thousands of scientists contribute to the work of the UN IPCC and it has a transparent and open process by which the work of the scientists is reviewed by experts and governments around the world. Therefore, the politicization of the UN IPCC’s reports is quite blatant as there is recorded evidence of political operatives significantly altering language, meaning and conventions in the content of the scientific reports.
The Three Axioms
With regard to emissions accounting, there are three axioms:
1) CO2 is CO2. CO2 is a well-mixed gas in the atmosphere and a CO2 molecule behaves the same way no matter what its emission source.
2) Photosynthesis occurs through the grace of Nature. It is arrogant and even incorrect from an engineering perspective for humans to take credit for photosynthesis and use it to offset certain kinds of emissions, if we are serious about addressing the nature and climate crisis.
3) Emissions accounting should include ALL emissions. We cannot draw conclusions from considering just a few emissions species, while ignoring several other equally relevant emissions species.
The UN IPCC violates all of these axioms in its emissions accounting.
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