Excerpts from the Financial Post essay by Ross McKitrick
There is too much conflict of interest built into the report-writing process
After the Climategate emails scandal of last winter, and discoveries of some embarrassing errors in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, asked the Inter-Academy Council (IAC) to review IPCC procedures. The IAC is a little-known branch of the Inter-Academy Panel, itself a little-known committee that connects national academic societies. It was a safe choice for Pachauri. The last IAC report was a glowing tribute to alternative energy schemes, coauthored by Pachauri himself, along with current Obama administration appointee Stephen Chu and a group of others. So I do not expect much independence of mind or hard-headed objectivity from the IAC. But with the report due out on Aug. 30, I guess we shall soon see.
I was one of hundreds of people asked to respond to a set of inquiry questions. The questions, and my replies, are available on my Web page (rossmckitrick.weebly.com).
Here is a summary of some of my input.
IPCC policies, such as the requirement for an “objective, open and transparent” review process, sound impressive, but my experience is that the written policies are not always followed, and there do not appear to be any consequences when they are breached.
For example, one rule states: “Review Editors will need to ensure that where significant differences of opinion on scientific issues remain, such differences are described in an annex to the Report.” Yet no such annexes have been produced. I was involved in numerous areas where there were significant differences of opinion on scientific issues, such as flaws in surface temperature data, improper estimation of trend uncertainties and methodological flaws in paleoclimate research. None of these differences were resolved during the review process, yet no annexes were ever published, creating a false impression of consensus.
After the publication of the AR4 I found that important text had been altered or deleted after the close of the review process, and the Lead Authors of Chapter 3 had fabricated evidence (on Page 244 of the Working Group I Report), by claiming that statistical evidence in two published, peer-reviewed articles on surface data contamination was statistically insignificant, when the articles show no such thing.
The paragraph was inserted after the close of peer review and was never subject to external scrutiny. That Lead Authors are able to insert evidence and rewrite the text after the close of review makes a mockery of the idea that the IPCC reports are peer reviewed, and undermines the claim that they contain the consensus of experts.
Read more: http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/08/27/fix-the-ipcc-process/#ixzz0y0p4sz8u
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Well written, illustrative and to the point.
There’s no such thing as good government.
Asking the IAC to critque the IPCC and find its flaws is akin to asking one thief to critique another. The worst that can be said? “You were sloppy and got caught.”
Ross,
You were concise, but “Bob the Builder” was even more concise. 🙂
I think it’s fairly safe to say that the only impartial peer reviews an IPCC report would receive would be from people the IPCC would avoid like the plague — IOW, scientists uninvolved with the UN in any way.
The IPCC has two basic problems.
a) It’s mission statement says it is looking for agw change. That’s nice, but what about natural changes? Natural changes trump agw gge by 356-to-1. But since natural changes aren’t addressed, no ratio can be concluded. The IPCC prefers to exhaustively examine the flea on the elephant’s ass (man) rather than the elephant in the room (nature).
b) It bases its policy statements on primitive computer projections using corrupted temperature data sets. They prefer to be exclusively occupied looking at CO2 measurements which lag ice core temperature increases by about 800 years, rather than examining the titanic forces which completely dictate climate change – planetary mechanics.
As we plummet into the Landscheidt Grand Solar Minimum, which will cause severe agricultural losses and their attendant famines, the IPCC keeps whistling the CO2 trace gas tune, while a quieting Sun will wipe us off the planet with unthinkable cold.
Ross writes: “The IPCC “peer review” process is not like the one academic journals use, in which reviewers actually have the authority to recommend rejection and require changes; instead it is more like a limited, voluntary public comment process. Since the IPCC gives Lead Authors the sole right to determine content and accept or dismiss comments, it is more like a weblog than an academic report.”
Exactly.
Ross McKitrick:
“The IAC is a little-known branch of the Inter-Academy Panel, itself a little-known committee that connects national academic societies. ”
————————
” The eighteen-member InterAcademy Council Board is composed of presidents of fifteen academies of science and equivalent organizations—representing Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the African Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS)—and representatives of the IAP: the global network of scientific academies, the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences (CAETS), and the InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) of medical academies. ”
—–
Looks rather representative to me
Which part is fabricated? Which part is pier reviewed? Which part has been changed since it was reviewed? Who chose the IAC? who chose the pier reviewers? Who chose to corrupt the process? Who corrupted the process with fabricated data? As it is…the AR4 isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, the IPCC isn’t worth the stationary it’s stamped on and Patchy isn’t worth the Aviation fuel spent on him while he dreams of pornographic liasons with desperate women. Thank you very much Mr. McKitrick.
If only the IPCC had followed its own rules, this investigation would not be necessary.
The rules are quite impressive.
The reports are………….well pretty meaningless.
Just my 2 cents worth: It’s FUBAR’ed.
Pachauri is feathering his newly-painted nest, and nobody at the IPCC is going to make him fly away while there’s money to be made preserving the Status Quo and selling steamy novels (that stuff sells).
There was an audit on the finances of Pachauri which shows that he is a male Shirley Sherrod,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/aug/26/rajendra-pachauri-financial-relationships
How do we counter this report that shows he does not make millions, or that he does not take a salary from his role as head of the IPCC?
We look weak, bad.
Steven Chu uses the Mann Hockey Stick graph in his DOE presentations. Unfortunately the link to that PDF now says this: “We’re Sorry! The page you requested cannot be found at this time.”
http://www.eia.doe.gov/errormsg.html?v=http://www.eia.doe.gov:80/plenary/Chu.pdf
It was discussed at ClimateAudit here:
http://climateaudit.org/2009/05/03/spot-the-hockey-stick-n/
Well done Ross!
Thanks. The IPCC needs urgent fixing!
But, can it be fixed?
How many dictatorships vs. functional democracies are there in the UN?
This is unfair to builders like Bob. Unlike the IPCC members, they will lose their jobs if the building falls down.
@ur momisugly Paulw
The comments tend to put the matter into perspective. Also note the ‘Recommend’ ratings. Pachauri has all sorts of interests associated with Big Oil. And, as this comment shows, the ‘KPMG audit’ was no audit at all:
“ChilliKwok
26 Aug 2010, 5:09PM
JamesEastwood wrote
> Did these AGW disbelievers also get an independent audit
/> completely exonerating them?
From the KPMG report:
6.1.1 This report is based on information supplied to us by TERI & Dr Pachurai..
6.1.2 …KPMG takes no responsibility ..[for].. errors, omissions arising thru negligence or otherwise..
6.1.3 Our work constituted a limited review… significantly different from an audit and cannot therefore be relied upon to provide the same level of assurance as an audit.”
There is too much money on the line, the IPCC cannot be fixed. Nor for that matter expected to tell the truth.
As those issues at the IPCC and elsewhere are neither sincerely investigated let alone solved, I start to think it is up to homeland security to clean up the mess and process those involved.
Ross McKitrick,
A professional and well done statement on the IPCC. Thank you for your leadership.
My view of the fundamental issue with the current/past climate report process is the study of climate should not be in the hands of anybody related to any government. [Of course, especially should not be in the hands of the UN.]
To exclude government from direct or indirect control of the climate study process, a possible scenario would be that private universities around the world take the lead in organizing studies and of organizing the process of producing unified documents on climate which would be made public directly to newspapers. Public universities would play a role under the leadership of private universities. A public forum would ensue for discussing the unified climate documents produced in this manner . Governments would then take direction from the voters. I say again, the government would take direction from the voters.
John
This is precisely the point for warmists to get to spend trillions, so as the natural cyclesleadstocooling, they can proclaim results for the trillions. If not then we get tospendmore. Tails I win…
Please don’t link Bob (a professional with integrity) with these muppets.
Here is a recently published review and history of the IPCC. It’s long but well worth reading , showing how all the different organisations are interconnected , the problems with the review process , problems with data collections etc.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/mclean_we_have_been_conned.pdf
I really doubt that the IPCC process can be “fixed,” i.e. made into an independent, unbiased scientific entity and disentangling it from political and economic influences.
I’m very familiar with this from my experiences in the field of public health. Public health causes take on lives of their own, with constituencies, financial/political interests and, ultimately, lots of jobs with a stake in continuation of policy, no matter how bad/counter-productive it is.
My toxicology instructor, Dr. Sam Epstein from the University of Illinois, has long lambasted the “cancer industry” for perpetuating expensive treatments instead of focusing upon prevention and banning carcinogenic substances. Take a look at this website & discussion of his sobering book “The Politics of Cancer”
http://www.preventcancer.com/press/books/poc.htm
CAGW? Same-same. Worldwide interests have powerful stakes in the outcome of the process, and we are all very familiar with the politics of the CAGW folks. Quite honestly, the best peer review of climate science I’ve ever seen has been on this blog. No-holds barred, anything goes, and very serious/high-level discussion of the science without preconceptions.
There are three ways that the CAGW dragon will be slain:
(a) loss of public interest in the topic, as catastrophic predictions fail to materialize (already happening);
(b) loss of political interest in supporting this cause and hamstringing nations with extensive costs of carbon mitigation and control, as we have witnessed in the UK and now witness in the US; and
(c) failure of China, India and other large, industrializing nations to participate in the West’s plans for carbon mitigation and control. If they don’t play, it makes no sense for other nations to hamstring themselves, since carbon emissions will rise anyway.
Fix the IPCC process? We would be much better off if we just disbanded the phony bunch of charlatans. As a matter of fact, we would be even better off if the U.S. withdrew from the U.N. and invited them to relocate their headquarters elsewhere.
This is an organization that was formed to foster world peace. Boy, that really worked out, didn’t it? Today, the U.N. wants to establish global governance and rule the world. This is clearly an organization that has gone off the rails and does not serve any useful purpose.
Get the U.S. out of the U.N.!
This no-good, closed, fraudulent organisation called IPCC
on the other hand is open to review and comments by sceptics
like McIntyre and McKritick? Not to mention that it gave
Lord Monckton opportunity to boast about his Nobel Peace prize?
M&M were not satisfied with the responses to their comments,
but there is a limit to knit-picking in a matter that after all is
rather marginal in the summary