John Ray, regarding developments at the IPCC (Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change):

The source most quoted in support of the global warming theory is the annual IPCC reports. One of the expert scientific authors of past reports has just pulled out of doing any future reports because he says his colleagues are making claims that run contrary to the scientific data.

The eponymously-named author in question, Dr. Chris Landsea, is an expert in hurricanes at NOAA.

The bone of contention? The head of the IPCC is apparently making public claims, in his capacity as head of IPCC -- not as a private individual -- that hurricane frequency is increasing as a result of man-made global warming. The rest of the IPCC is backed him up on this, and the media eagerly reported this unscientific assertion.

In his IPCC resignation letter, Dr. Landsea writes:

I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today

The problem? It's simply not true, nor are the scientists making these pronouncements even qualified to comment on this area of research:

To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

And that's just one area. If the IPCC uses these kinds of tricks to make a false global-warming link to hurricanes, why should we trust them elsewhere? The obvious answer is that we shouldn't.

Dr. Landsea appears confused as to their motive: "It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda."

It isn't beyond me. This is about accreting power, not about good science. The IPCC is acting more like a political party than a disinterested scientific body, so it makes sense that it's goals and methods are also political, not scientific.

And I'll bet you won't be seeing this reported in any newspaper.