Alert: '90 per cent of the participants do not believe the UN IPCC report' - Japanese scientists challenge warming claims: (Australian Sun)

Japanese scientists cool on theories | The Australian

THREE senior Japanese scientists separately engaged in climate-change research have strongly questioned the validity of the man-made global-warming model that underpins the drive by the UN and most developed-nation governments to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

"I believe the anthropogenic (man-made) effect for climate change is still only one of the hypotheses to explain the variability of climate," Kanya Kusano told The Weekend Australian.

It could take 10 to 20 years more research to prove or disprove the theory of anthropogenic climate change, said Dr Kusano, a research group leader with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science's Earth Simulator project.

"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth," writes Shunichi Akasofu, founding director of the University of Alaska's International Arctic Research Centre.

Dr Kusano, Dr Akasofu and Tokyo Institute of Technology geology professor Shigenori Maruyama are highly critical of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's acceptance that hazardous global warming results mainly from man-made gas emissions.

On the scientific evidence so far, according to Dr Kusano, the IPCC assertion that atmospheric temperatures are likely to increase continuously and steadily "should be perceived as an unprovable hypothesis".

Dr Maruyama said yesterday there was widespread scepticism among his colleagues about the IPCC's fourth and latest assessment report that most of the observed global temperature increase since the mid-20th century "is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".

When this question was raised at a Japan Geoscience Union symposium last year, he said, "the result showed 90 per cent of the participants do not believe the IPCC report".