The Name Tells You Everything
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Read that name again. There is no “science” in it. There is no “assessment” of whether climate change is happening. The title assumes the conclusion. The IPCC was created to tell governments what they could do about climate change, not to determine whether climate change was real.
Most people believe the IPCC is an independent scientific body that objectively assesses climate research. This belief is the foundation on which the entire climate policy edifice rests. If the IPCC is not neutral – if its structure, funding, and incentives all push in one direction – then every policy justified by “the science says” needs to be re-examined.
What the IPCC Actually Is
The IPCC was established in 1988 by two United Nations organisations: the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Its original mandate, as stated in UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53, was:
“To provide internationally coordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, timing and potential environmental and socio-economic impact of climate change and realistic response strategies.”
Note the framing. The IPCC was not asked “Is the climate changing, and are humans causing it?” It was asked “How bad will it be, and what should we do about it?” The null hypothesis – that human-induced climate change might be negligible or non-existent – was never given equal standing.
The IPCC’s own website states its purpose as assessing “the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change.” Again: the risk of human-induced climate change. The question is not whether it exists, but how much risk it poses.
This is not a neutral mandate. It is a mandate to find a problem that justifies action.
How the IPCC Is Funded
The IPCC is funded by its member governments. In 2023, the largest contributors were:
- United States: approximately $4.5 million per year
- Germany: approximately $3.2 million
- Japan: approximately $2.8 million
- United Kingdom: approximately $2.5 million
- European Commission: approximately $2.0 million
Every one of these governments has signed the Paris Agreement. Every one has committed to domestic climate policies that require the IPCC’s findings to be credible. Every one has a political stake in the IPCC continuing to find that climate change is serious, urgent, and caused by humans.
This does not mean the IPCC’s science is fabricated. It means the institutional incentives are aligned in one direction. Governments that fund the IPCC need it to produce results that support their policy commitments. Researchers who contribute to IPCC reports are selected by governments. The assessment process is run by bureaucrats who work for climate ministries.
The question is not whether any individual scientist is dishonest. It is whether a system with these incentives can produce genuinely objective assessments.
How the Science Gets Selected
The IPCC’s assessment reports are not comprehensive surveys of all climate science. They are summaries of selected research, filtered through a process that has repeatedly been shown to exclude results that do not support the consensus narrative.
The process works like this:
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Governments nominate scientists to serve as authors. The IPCC Secretariat makes the final selection. Authors are overwhelmingly from institutions that receive climate research funding from governments committed to climate action.
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Authors draft chapters based on published research. Studies that find small or negligible climate impacts are less likely to be cited because they are less likely to be published in high-impact journals – which prefer novel, attention-grabbing results.
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The draft undergoes two rounds of review. Reviewers are also selected by the IPCC. The review process is not anonymous. Authors who challenge the consensus narrative have described being subjected to personal attacks and pressure to conform.
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The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is approved line-by-line by government delegates – not by scientists. This is the document that journalists and politicians actually read. The underlying report runs thousands of pages and is almost never read in full.
The result is a system in which the final, policy-relevant output is negotiated by government representatives, not scientists. The IPCC’s own rules require the SPM to “be consistent with the underlying scientific report.” But when there is ambiguity – and there always is – the government delegates push for the most alarming interpretation.
What This Means for the Headlines
The “2,700 heatwave deaths” studies, the scenario scares, the claim that climate change is making hurricanes worse – each of these follows the same pipeline. A researcher produces a study with eye-catching numbers. The study is published in a high-impact journal. The IPCC cites it in its assessment. The media reports the IPCC finding. Politicians cite the media report as evidence for action.
By the time the study is corrected or qualified – if it ever is – the policy has already been made.
The next piece in this series will look at three specific cases where this pipeline produced a claim that did not survive scrutiny: the “2,700 heatwave deaths” headline, the RCP8.5 scenario that refused to die, and the repeated adjustments to the global temperature record.
Sources
- UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 (1988). “Protection of global climate for present and future generations of mankind.”
- IPCC. “Principles Governing IPCC Work.” Procedural rules.
- InterAcademy Council (2010). “Climate Change Assessments: Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC.”
- Pielke Jr., R. (2023). “The IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers.” Substack series.
- Curry, J. (2018). “The IPCC Process: A Critical Assessment.” Climate Etc.
- Hulme, M. (2013). Why We Disagree About Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. Publisher link.