UPDATE: In his March 10, 2010 news conference on the subject UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said: "We need to act based on the best possible science. We need to ensure full transparency, accuracy and objectivity, and minimize the potential for any errors going forward...We must be clear about what we know and also about where there is uncertainty.  We must communicate transparently and debate intelligently."

Yet the Secretary General has yet to even acknowledge the below correspondence asking the UN to share the observational evidence supporting their claims that "The earth's climate systems are warming above and beyond natural variability", to quote Ban in his remarks to the media on March 10.  This Challenge was submitted to the UN as an open letter and now has been signed by 166 leading climate experts from many countries.  

Similarly, the Secretary General never responded to the open letter sent to him two years earlier, signed by more than 100 specialists from around the world, many of whom are leading figures in their fields, from climate science to economics to biology, which concluded "Attempts to prevent global climate Change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."

Read UN Secretary General's remarks to the media.  Watch the comments of both the Secretary General and the IPCC Chair, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.

NOTE: New expert endorsers are invited to endorse the below Challenge to the United Nations. 

CLICK HERE TO SIGN LETTER.

Open Letter to UN Secretary-General

Dear Secretary-General,

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ - the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth's orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

1. Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
   
2. Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
3. Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;
4. Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;
5. The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;
6. Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;
7. Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;
8. Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;
9. Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
10. Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do.

Signed by:

Science and Technology Experts Well Qualified in Climate Science

Science and Technology Experts in Other Related Disciplines - this is only the beginning of the list that is being created based on the feedback from many supportive highly qualified scientists and engineers who are not specifically climate experts