IAC slams IPCC process, suggests removal of top officials

This is long overdue!

“The review panel recommended that the main writers involved in the report not respond in writing to merely editorial remarks, but they sit down with the editors to make sure that all scientific criticism is addressed and different point of view are reflected in the final report…”
—————
Comments not “‘peer reviewed” can now be ignored.

Now, to get rid of the ignorance and blatant stupidity in the US government!

The report released Monday by the panel from the InterAcademy Council, which links scientific institutions around the world, did not try to reassess the science of the climate assessment itself. It said the way the United Nations panel goes about its work has “been successful overall.”
Indeed it has been “successful overall” with the way it “goes about it’s work” selling lies to the world.

IAC Press Release for report on IPCC; “The committee also called for more consistency in how the Working Groups characterize uncertainty. In the last assessment, each Working Group used a different variation of IPCC’s uncertainty guidelines, and the committee found that the guidance is not always followed. The Working Group II report, for example, contains some statements that were assigned high confidence but for which there is little evidence.”

OK, a formal statement of IPCC’s exaggeration of certainly. I recommend the AR5 working group drafts be available online for blogosphere review. All drafts from beginning to final. Transparency required.
I found that the IAC hit the major problems with the IPCC, recognized the existence of the problems. However, except for a few instances, the recommendations for change were weak generalities . . . mainly only offering pointers to better structure/process/people . I guess that is better than nothing.
I was surprised to find that Dr Harold Shapiro, head of the IAC committee came across as credible in the video of him at the UN press conference. I hereby nominate him to replace Rajendra K. Pachauri effective immediately. Dr Shapiro has be brought up to speed by being chair of the IAC review of the IPCC.
Anthony => WUWT had no small part in getting to this point. Thank you.
John

Comments not “‘peer reviewed” can now be ignored
I’m looks to me like the IAC recommended that the formal process of responding to all comments in writing could be streamlined with respect to comments about style, grammar, and so on, but that comments on substantial scientific disagreements could no longer be given a written brush-off but had to be dealt with substantively.
Or so I hope, anyway.

In the review process for the last report, for example, 90,000 comments were submitted. The sheer overwhelming number contributed to the fact that an offhand remark by a scientist in an interview about the Himalayan glaciers made it into the final report.

So is that how it happened? 😉
Note that the IPCC has still not acknowledged that the claim was in error — all they have admitted is that they made a procedural error by including a claim that was not backed with a proper citation to a peer reviewed article. The claim could still be true, for all anyone reading their statement would know.

Himalayan glaciers melting deadline ‘a mistake’.
“The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says. …mistook reference to year 2350 for 2035…. referenced sources not peer reviewed or published”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8387737.stm
As Maxwell Smart said “Missed it by that much (315 years), Chief!”
http://www.wouldyoubelieve.com/sounds/niceness.wav

I have a copy if you need it.
As it is only 1.5MB I can either email it directly or upload it to my webspace and send you a link
REPLY: covered , thanks -A

This seems like a promising step, but it all smells like more make-busy work for additional bureaucrats.

Swedish media are full of reports from IPPC-involved “experts” who claim that this report only makes IPCC stronger and better.
Somehow I get the feeling that these responses have been rehearsed before today.

Here is the London telegraph link to this report.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7971780/Climate-change-predictions-must-be-based-on-evidence-report-on-IPCC-says.html
Christopher Booker is running his piece this week on the CDM ripoff taking place at the hands of the UN.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7969102/The-Clean-Development-Mechanism-delivers-the-greatest-green-scam-of-all.html#disqus_thread
“Easily the largest and most lucrative component in the CDM market is a peculiar racket centred on the manufacture of CFCs, chlorofluorocarbons, classified under Kyoto as greenhouse gases vastly more damaging than carbon dioxide. The way the racket works is that Chinese and Indian firms are permitted to carry on producing a refrigerant gas known as HCF-22 until 2030. But a by-product of this process is HCF-23, which is supposed to be 11,700 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. By destroying the HCF-23, the firms can claim Certified Emission Reduction credits worth billions of dollars when sold to the West (while much of the useful HCF-22 is sold onto the international black market).
Last year, destruction of CFCs accounted for more than half the CDM credits issued, in a market that will eventually, it is estimated, be worth $17 billion. Of the 1,390 CDM projects so far approved, less than 1 per cent accounts for 36 per cent of the total value.”

From the report:
“Equally important is combating confirmation bias—the tendency of authors to place too much weight on their own views relative to other views (Jonas et al., 2001). As pointed out to the Committee by a presenter and some questionnaire respondents, alternative views are not always cited in a chapter if the Lead Authors do not agree with them.”
Compare this to Pachauri’s statements from last year:
“In summary, no individual or small group of scientists is in a position to exclude a peer-reviewed paper from an IPCC assessment. Likewise, individuals and small groups have no ability to emphasize a result that is not consistent with a range of studies, investigations, and approaches. Every layer in the process (including large author teams, extensive review, independent monitoring of review compliance, and plenary approval by governments) plays a major role in keeping IPCC assessments comprehensive, unbiased, open to the identification of new literature, and policy relevant but not policy prescriptive.”
And:
“The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.”

They are not a controlling legal authority…..

Love these points
..problems derive partly from a failure to adhere to IPCC’s uncertainty guidance for the fourth assessment
.
…authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence
.
..making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements
.
..contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.

What does this tell us about 2500 of the worlds leading climate experts who were supposed to have produced the most peer reviewed document in the history of scientific endeavour?
We can only wonder how it will be going down in the media and other quarters who have gone along with the catastrophe theory. The media likes nothing better than a good story to sell, so there is always the possibility that it could develop into a nasty backlash.
But whatever happens, this will stain the very name of science in the eyes of Joe P.

Professors Martin Parry (IPCC chair) and Mike Hulme (UEA) interviewed this morning on BBC Radio Four’s ‘Today’ programme over the roles played by politics and ‘climate science’ in shaping policy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8954000/8954116.stm [6:52]

“The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers has been criticized for various errors and for emphasizing the negative impacts of climate change. These problems derive partly from a failure to adhere to IPCC’s uncertainty guidance for the fourth assessment and partly from shortcomings in the guidance itself. Authors were urged to consider the amount of evidence and level of agreement about all conclusions and to apply subjective probabilities of confidence to conclusions when there was high agreement and much evidence. However, authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements. The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly. When statements are well defined and supported by evidence—by indicating when and under what climate conditions they would occur—the likelihood scale should be used.”
“IPCC assessments are intended to rely mainly on peer-reviewed literature. […] An analysis of the 14,000 references cited in the Third Assessment Report found that peer-reviewed journal articles comprised 84 percent of references in Working Group I, but only 59 percent of references in Working Group II and 36 percent of references in Working Group III (Bjurström and Polk, 2010).”
“Although the Committee finds that IPCC’s procedures in this respect are adequate, it is clear that these procedures are not always followed.”
“Non-peer reviewed sources are to be listed in the reference sections of IPCC reports, followed by a statement that they are not peer reviewed. […] Moreover, a search through the Working Group reports of the fourth assessment found few instances of information flagged as unpublished or non-peer reviewed.”
“Equally important is combating confirmation bias—the tendency of authors to place too much weight on their own views relative to other views (Jonas et al., 2001). As pointed out to the Committee by a presenter and some questionnaire respondents, alternative views are not always cited in a chapter if the Lead Authors do not agree with them.”
“A near-universal observation—made in presentations, interviews, and responses to the questionnaire—was the need to strengthen the authority of the Review Editors to ensure that authors consider the review comments carefully and document their responses. With the tight schedule for completing revisions, authors do not always do an adequate job of revising the text and Review Editors do not always require them to explain why they rejected a comment.” “This includes paying special attention to review comments that point out contradictions, unreferenced literature, or potential errors; and ensuring that alternate or dissenting views receive proper consideration.”
“The IPCC uncertainty guidance provides a good starting point for characterizing uncertainty in the assessment reports. However, the guidance was not consistently followed in the fourth assessment, leading to unnecessary errors. For example, authors reported high confidence in statements for which there is little evidence, such as the widely-quoted statement that agricultural yields in Africa might decline by up to 50 percent by 2020. Moreover, the guidance was often applied to statements that are so vague they cannot be falsified. In these cases the impression was often left, quite incorrectly, that a substantive finding was being presented.”
“IPCC’s mandate is to be policy relevant, not policy prescriptive. However, as noted above, IPCC spokespersons have not always adhered to this mandate.”
“Data are the bedrock on which the progress of science rests. The extraordinary development of new measuring techniques and new digital technologies has enabled climate scientists to assemble vast quantities of data. However, the large size and complex nature of these databases can make them difficult to access and use. Moreover, for various reasons many of these scientific databases as well as significant unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature are not in the public domain. An unwillingness to share data with critics and enquirers and poor procedures to respond to freedom-of-information requests were the main problems uncovered in some of the controversies surrounding the IPCC (Muir Russell et al., 2010; PBL, 2010). Poor access to data inhibits users’ ability to check the quality of the data used and to verify the conclusions drawn. Consequently, it is important for the IPCC to aspire toward ensuring that the main conclusions in its assessment reports are underpinned by appropriately referenced peer-reviewed sources or, to the greatest extent practical, by openly accessible databases.”

jason says:
August 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm “You are watching a co-ordinated respons kick in ladies and gentlemen.”
Or the response we’re seeing reflects a broad acceptance that the IPCC is indeed facing an evolving challenge to communicate the current state of scientific knowledge and a recognition from those involved that this IAC review has made some sensible recommendations on how to achieve just that?

As I read this I am mostly replacing IPCC with UN, unless the acronym is UN IPCC to begin with.
The whole mess needs to end. They do nothing except squander and waste. They are ignored by anyone they attempt to “punish”. They redistribute to no avail, in most cases enriching those least worthy as if it were their main purpose. They are the most wasteful organisation in the history of humanity.
They ignore, and are designed to ignore this type of thing on a regular, and regularly depressing basis.

“However, authors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence.”
I’d like to know exactly which statement those were . Unless the committee specifies which statement were overblown, then one can only assume that the whole of AR4 is untrustworthy.

For a moment I thought it was April 1st…
Ecotretas

I just wish that the U.S. would spend half as much money toward nuclear fusion as they do on hot climate. There are several promising companies trying to come up with a solution to this type of nuclear energy. Some are General Fusion and Polywell. Some people in the field think 1-2 more years and it might be possible to make this a reality.
These small companies need federal funding but so do the car companies. ALAS.

I just posted this over at RC. It seems objective and not troll-like. We’ll see if it persisits.
________________
One excellent recommendation by the IAC review committee is to limit tenure of the major IPCC figures to one assessment. This will provide better mix of viewpoints in ongoing assessments. This should mean AR5 has a new group of key IPCC people with track records in science that will help to restore some of the eroded public confidence in the IPCC and climate science in general.
Also there is another excellent recommendation by the IAC as follows “. . . key improvements include enhancing the transparency of the process for selecting Bureau members, authors and reviewers; . . . ”
John

@42 Tim Williams, erm, how is real climate calling discussion about this “contrarian spin”?
The report is damning, even the fundamentalists must see that.

The Guardian are using sleight of hand, big headline and front page pic for a “Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change” story – tiny, no pic link underneath for “Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN climate change body, under pressure to resign”

Committee to Review the IPCC
Harold T. SHAPIRO, Chair, Princeton University, USA
Roseanne DIAB, Vice Chair, Academy of Science of South Africa, South Africa
Carlos Henrique de BRITO CRUZ, State of São Paulo Research Foundation and University of Campinas, Brazil
Maureen CROPPER, University of Maryland and Resources for the Future, USA
FANG Jingyun, Peking University, P.R. China
Louise O. FRESCO, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Syukuro MANABE, Princeton University, USA
Goverdhan MEHTA, University of Hyderabad, India
Mario MOLINA, University of California, San Diego, USA, and Center for Strategic Studies in Energy and the Environment, Mexico
Peter WILLIAMS, The Royal Society, UK
Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, International Human Frontier Science Program Organization, France
ZAKRI Abdul Hamid, Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation, Malaysia
Staff for the IPCC Review
Anne LINN, Study Director, National Research Council, USA
Tracey ELLIOTT, The Royal Society, UK
William KEARNEY, National Research Council, USA
Stuart LECKIE, The Royal Society, UK
Tu NGUYEN, InterAcademy Council
Jason ORTEGO, National Research Council, USA
Greg SYMMES, National Research Council, USA
Wow, actually a real pair of committees, not wall-to-wall shills for CRU or the IPCC. It is nice to see.
Mexican, Indian, Malaysian, Brazilian, Dutch, South African – even a Frenchman.
Anybody recognize the names?

“IAC slams IPCC process, suggests removal of top officials” says WUWT
… hard to detect any slamming, constructive criticism concerning
structure and mangement, yes, and a lot of praise concerning
the science summary…
… “removal of top officials” sounds like: “you are fired, Pachaury,
because you failed”
when the report actually proposes one-term appointments for all
leading positions as a better structural solution …

“What we have here is a failure to communicate”… as in Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman

IAC Report in section on Access to Information
“Moreover, for various reasons many of these scientific
databases as well as significant unpublished and non-peer-reviewed literature are not in the public domain. An unwillingness to share data with critics and enquirers and poor procedures to respond to freedom-of-information requests were the main problems uncovered in some of the controversies surrounding the IPCC (Muir Russell et al., 2010; PBL, 2010). Poor access to data inhibits users’ ability to check the quality of the data used and to verify the conclusions drawn. Consequently, it is important for the IPCC to aspire toward ensuring that the main conclusions in its assessment reports are underpinned by appropriately referenced peer-reviewed sources or, to the greatest extent practical, by openly accessible databases.”

—————————–
So, there is the often repeated theme for more access to climate science data. This time it is made to the IPCC. It did not stop with Mann, Jones, CRU, MET office, GISS and NOAA. Great strategy to keep on moving up the food chain to the top organism. : )
John

Better get a crane, D8 Caterpillar with winch, tow truck and Sikorsky Skycrane.
Pachauri is in his bunker with a “Hell no, we won’t go” sign on the barricaded door.

So if the “peer review” process is controlled more tightly to prevent opposing research from being published as has been the case even since climategate, the IPCC process will effectively not be changed at all.

The review still didn’t address one of the key issues related to models, this from the discussion of WG II:
“Best estimates from various models are often presented to show variation in the range of outcomes. Uncertainty analyses of individual models could also be presented, if available in the literature.”
Publication of model results don’t usually present assessments of model uncertainty for GCMs. Diagnostic literature is often published later than reports of model results and don’t include uncertainty analyses. Some diagnostic results show correlated error for all the models so “various models” or ensembles of models won’t necessarily bracket “the range of outcomes”.
These types of model errors which are just reported and the uncertainty of the models is not quantified in the published literature would fall into the “structural uncertainty” row of the “simple typology of uncertainties”. The diagnostic literature does “compare models with observations” but there was no way to get the authors to admit that these were “inadequate models”, they just charged ahead presenting models results as if they were evidence.
We need more diagnostic literature, published earlier and to insist that the implications of the diagnostic literature be discussed when model results are reported. Work relevant to net feedbacks and radiative imbalance such as Lindzen, Spencer’s or Eschenbach needs to be developed into model diagnostics and published early and often, because they bear directly on whether the models are adequate. Hopefully Wentz will repeat his precipitation diagnostics on the latest models, since the under-representation of the water cycle was significant and relevant not just to projections of drought but probably to net feedbacks as well. If would be helpful if the diagnostic works of Camp, Lean, Roesch and Tung on solar and surface albedo were also updated.
If the recommendation of greater transparency, responsiveness and representation of alternative viewpoints are implemented, the authors may have to actually be intellectually honest in order to achieve the appearance of intellectual honesty. That would be refreshing.

Whichever way you look at it I think that it is damning for the IPCC that a pro AGW mainstream news site such as the ABC reports on the front page of its site like this:
“Review calls for UN climate shake-up
A major report handed to the United Nations in New York overnight recommends a big shake-up of the way the international body’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is run.
In the run-up to last year’s highly anticipated climate summit in Copenhagen, the IPCC was rocked by a scandal involving leaked emails which critics say showed panel members had skewed data…”

These assessments and recommendations amount to huge slaps in the face ot the IPCC – left, right and center.

John Whitman says:
August 30, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Invariant,
Like the carbon trading markets where carbon is essentially valueless, on the Nobel Peace prize market it is likely that future trading in Nobel Peace prizes will be at a nearly valueless level.
John
Yes. Also they gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace prize too early, so they have reduced the impact of the reward somewhat. (My personal opinion is that Barack Obama and Steven Chu had solid and intelligent comments about saving the rainforest and installing a worldwide supergrid when they were here in Norway last year – I suspect that they may be suspicious about manmade climate change but that the political climate is not there yet…).

Well, below is the second IAC report related comment that I tried to post over at RC today but it seems to have disappeared without being posted. But, I am an optimist and both of the emails are probably being processed as I speak!
Do you think it was too skeptical? Seemed pro-science to me. I thought it was something that a site like RC that clearly views themselves as pro-science would appreciate.
Do you think it is my mouthwash or underarm deodorant, or what?
John
——————-

John Whitman says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
30 August 2010 at 5:37 PM
Actually reading the IAC report on the IPCC gives a good impression of scientific method in progress.
For the first time it appears that a really independent review has been done on key issues with the process of evaluating climate science. Some public credibility of climate science might possibly begin to be restored.
John

The IPCC server crashing under the weight of public scrutiny should send the message loud and clear. Little brother is watching and recording. At the moment I suspect many of those involved in promoting the Global Warming agenda would prefer total invisibility to transparency.

Ian H says:
August 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I believe the IPCC model is the wrong one. What would be better would be the kind of adversarial system we see in court. The problem is that all sides of the question are not being given a fair go. The adversarial system would fix this…..
_________________________________________________________________
That is the best idea I have heard yet.

Ian H says:
August 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I believe the IPCC model is the wrong one. What would be better would be the kind of adversarial system we see in court. The problem is that all sides of the question are not being given a fair go. The adversarial system would fix this…..

That is the best idea I have heard yet
Gail/Ian H,
I am no fan of the UN being involved in climate science.
Adversarial model as in law/justice system model revolves around handling man-made objects. The body of law.
I would see problems in adapting the legal model to metaphysical existents, physical nature.
The traditional science model (pre-climate science and pre-post modern science) already has a good model.
I am fond of what I call the argumentative model for climate science. Everyone argues with their papers, data, experiments, models, code and methodologies in a transparent forum. There is no authority, other than nature, to appeal to. May the best argument remain standing. Mother Nature might smile fondly upon her rather homely human creatures for discovering all her secrets. Maybe some parental pride for us!
John

Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor at the UK Independent doesn’t seem to have read the report!
31 Aug: UK Independent: Revealed: why failure of climate summit would herald global catastrophe
The world is heading for the next major climate change conference in Cancun later this year on course for global warming of up to 3.5C in the coming century, a series of scientific analyses suggest…
If there are no further breakdowns, it is possible that the meeting may at least restore faith in the UN climate process. “Nobody thinks Cancun will be a big-bang moment,” said Keith Allott, head of climate change for the World Wide Fund for Nature. “What the world needs to do is put some wheels back on the climate truck.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/revealed-why-failure–of-climate-summit-would-herald-global-catastrophe-2066127.html

Rhys Jaggar says:
August 30, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Whilst I see some sense in what you say Rhys the major reason why
skeptics may be doing what you say is because they have been marginalised,
attacked and labeled simply for wanting to see real science done and then verified. This marhinalisation and attacks have been ongoing over a couple of decades. (We have even heard calls for skeptics to be tried for crimes against humanity from the major proponents of this CAGW rubish.)
As it turns out.. many if not most of the skeptics criticismims of the IPCC and its processes are justified. I doubt that many will be happy until some people are
brought to trial for the amazing waste of money that this pseudo scientific misadventure has caused.
And frankly, it is only just that this should occur. (how many deaths from starvation
can be laid at the feet of those that counseled using biofuels? Hundreds of thousands if not millions…
Sounds like a crime against humanity has been perpertrated to me)….
regards
Jim

Link to Dump the IPCC Process, It Cannot Be Fixed
in my preceding comment:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/

The IPCC is a damaged brand.
In the world of politics, when a political animal goes down, the pack moves in for the kill.
No quarter is given, none is expected.
If the IPCC does not right itself, well, you know what comes next. Whitewash is a very thin coat of armor.

I do not think any of this matters anymore. They are “dead men walking” no matter what they do, simply because “you can’t fool all of the peoplle all of the time”.
After years of scaremongering in the UK (eg. snow is a thing of the past) the Great British Public has had enough. The next idiot who stands up and declares “2010 the hottest year ever” will probably get shot. Today, in London, I had to fire up my central heating, for the first time in August – ever!

Kevin Trenberth was interviewed on (Australian) ABC Radio today and seems to be supporting moves for Pachauri to go, as well as supporting many of the recommendations.
Transcript at http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s2998349.htm?site=sydney (sorry not competent enough to embed the link)

My summation, briefly.
gave added ammunition to critics doubting assessments that the earth is warming.
Neil MacFartquhar, the NY Times publicist, is an idiot (as expected). Nobody doubts warming, MN is ice free in the summer.
The confidence scale should not be used to assign subjective probabilities to ill-defined outcomes.
The likelihood scale should be stated in terms of probabilities (numbers) in addition to words to improve understanding of uncertainty.
Is a vote of no</b< confidence one on the options?
Where practical, formal expert elicitation procedures should be used to obtain subjective probabilities for key results.
Steve Mac, you’re wanted on the phone, someone from the IPCC.
The IPCC should develop and adopt formal qualifications and formally articulate the roles and responsibilities for all Bureau members, including the IPCC Chair, to ensure that they have both the highest scholarly qualifications and proven leadership skills.
Adios, Dr. Rajenda Pachauri, back to your Lionel trains.

As long ago as 1997 when I read COM (97) 9. “Environmental Taxes and Charges in the Single market”, it seemed to be all about concentrating on making money out of it. Right at the beginning, the first paragraph reads “The Commission has several times given its support to an increased use of fiscal instruments to make environmental policy more efficient and cost-effective. Most of these instruments are implemented at Member State level. This Communication is presented in order to support these activities, and ensure that the environmental taxes and charges are used in a way compatible with Community Legislation.”
The real shock at that time was when President Bush said “NO” to Kyoto. They noted that the Kyoto Protocol would require the U.S. to cede to a UN bureaucracy the powers we now use to set the pace of our economic growth, our production of goods and services, and the creation of new jobs. This form of unilateral economic disarmament makes no sense.” “”The idea of trading credits to facilitate implementation of that agreement, and the very concept of regulating the world’s energy policies through an international treaty together constitute a huge battle over power–not just “power” in the sense of controlling the energy sources that drive the world economy, but political power in the sense of “who decides”; who decides how fast our economy should grow (or if it should grow at all), who decides etc, etc”

This report contains a lot of very fine recommendations, which is implemented will doubtless result in a much improved, and far less certain, report next time.
The problem is, there were ALREADY a fine sounding set of policies, regarding peer review, and deadlines, and answering reviewers concerns for instance, which although clearly written down, were in practice utterly ignored, as long as doing so resulted in a more alarming conclusion.
After all, they weren’t supposed to quote from WWF and Greenpeace leaflets, but they did. I see no reason to suspect these new rules will be followed any more than the old ones were.

Pach-man is toast! Well, at least he has the ability to enthrawl millions with his dim wit, de-mean-or, and lively, lurid novels. Imagine what poor Professor Mann is thinking – no alternate speciality. Hay! I’ll bet he could write fiction too. I have a feeling there’s going to be a tsunami of sexest detective novels on the market soon. Wonder what the “Libbers” are going to say?

I found this article by Michael Oppenheimer fascinating. It was published at the Environmental Defense Fund site and is therefore unabashedly honest and boastful about how the IPCC got started. Should be required reading for everyone who thinks the IPCC was a legitimate clearing house for information on climate and climate change:
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/11/01/ipcc_beginnings/

Tim Clark says:
August 31, 2010 at 4:30 am
R. Gates says: August 30, 2010 at 5:05 pm
The climate junkie will form their [opinoin] sic based on their personal experience and somewhat on their political leanings, the scientist will form their opinion based on their own educational and special areas of interest, knowledge, and research,….
Gates, in spite of the fact you deny it, some of us here are both.
_____
Oh? I’m quite aware that there are mixtures of all types of individuals here on WUWT, from the climate junkie to the politcal hack, and of course, I well aware of the professional scientists here who are also a climate junkies. My point is– main stream America could care less about the IPCC, and really about the whole notion of climate change in general, and the whole debate about the credibility of the IPCC is simply one of politics, not one of science. Changing (or even getting rid of) the IPCC doesn’t change the science, only the kind of political hay that can be made for either side. If AGW is a problem, there will need to be some kind of international body to deal with it, one way or another, eventually.

Ian H says:
August 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm
“I believe the IPCC model is the wrong one. What would be better would be the kind of adversarial system we see in court. The problem is that all sides of the question are not being given a fair go. The adversarial system would fix this.
What I’d like to see are two investigative report writing bodies, preferably less bloated than the current IPCC; one charged with the mandate of presenting evidence that AGW is a serious problem requiring immediate action, and one charged with the mandate of presenting evidence that it is not. Let them issue their reports on an alternating basis with a six month gap between them.”
The trouble with that scheme is that there is no financial incentive.
DonB

That doesn’t include the skeptics (eg McKitrick and McIntyre) whose work is discussed in the IPCC reports.

What would you do?

Neglected to answer you.
I would open all data streams to the public, endemnifying scientists against potential loss of earnings. Unfortunately, that probably means government money (our taxes).
I would remove government representatives from the process except after completion to transfer understanding. No govt officials should have a say in the drafting.
I would (concurring with the report) make the review process even more transparent, and make access to all reviewer comments easier for the public. I would recommend annexes to each chapter summarizing contrary views that were consonant with and backed by at least three independent studies.
I think rolling over the chair and other executive positions more frequently is a good idea.
Invite prominent, qualified skeptic scientists to sit in on the process, and, where their expertise is sufficient, to contribute to authorship.
While I would recommend establishing an alternative assessment report, I cannot think of a framework for an international effort that would have the facility that the UN does for a project of this scope.

To Khwarizmi see my entry at August 31, 2010 at 4:25 am, re the part the UN plays in this subject. This is how some in the House of Lords debabes view the matter, do you wonder at MY reaction? Lord Avebury in the House of Lords 25th June 2001 asked: “My Lords, have the Government had an opportunity of evaluating the evidence made public in the “Equinox” programme on Channel 4 last week, based on research of Dr Santo Bains at the Oxford University? It revealed that at two points in the world’s history there have been catastrophic releases of methane hydrates from the ocean floors, which came at a certain point in the warming of the oceans, raising the temperature of the Earth by some 8 degrees. Does the Minister take this seriously? If so, should there be a far more drastic programme for the reduction in carbon emissions than we have seen so far?”
That question perhaps highlights my thoughts on the subject, because apart from some one sitting on the sea bed, plugging the hole from which the methane hydrates are emanating from, I doubt there is little else we can do.
Constance D Holmes explained her rather lengthy reasons to the House Committee on Science Feb 4th 1998. I will pick out just one or two phrases.
· It sets a U.S. emissions target, which cannot be met without causing severe economic and social dislocation.
· It transfers power to UN bureaucrats who could intrude into U.S. legislative and Constitutional processes by controlling U.S. economic growth, limiting the conduct of foreign policy by exempting only those greenhouse emissions that occur from UN sponsored “multilateral operations”.
· It prohibits Senate reservations and modification to the Protocol, and potential allows for future tightening of emissions targets without explicit Senate approval.
· Its cost are a “stealth tax” on American consumers and businesses and it increases a UN bureaucracy that likely would be dominated by countries quite willing to use provisions in the Kyoto Protocol to impose economic and social change on U.S. families, workers and businesses–for little, if any, environmental gain.
An article by Philip Stott, on 12th April 2001 holds one or two “facts”, although I cannot verify any of them. “European politicians, who like to focus on country-by country comparisons which are, in geographical terms, meaningless, have carefully nurtured the myth that the USA is the main producer of carbon dioxide (CO2). But how can you compare tiny counties, like the UK (only 94,227 square miles) or Sweden (173,723 square miles), with the USA (3,732,400 square miles)? Any meaningful geographical comparison has to be with Western Europe as a whole, or at least with the 15 Member States of the European Union (EU) and even the EU, at 1,249,000 square miles, has well under half the land area of the USA.”
“If we take the carbon dioxide emissions from consumption and flaring of fossil fuels for 1999 (1), we see that the countries of the EU emit around 925 million metric tons of carbon equivalent (MMTCe) per year, while the USA emits 1519.89 MMTCe per year. Correcting these figures by area gives us 0.0007 MMTCe per square mile per year for the EU and 0.0004 MMTCe per square mile for the USA. So the per unit area production in the EU is 175 percent that of the USA. And this does not include emissions from EU applicant states, like Turkey (49.96 MMTCe in 1999)”
It makes ya think, don’t it?

To Gaylon. Take a little tip. Never give up. Keep on fighting. Never let such people that produced the IPCC get away with IT, or your money (and mine) because of it.
Did global warming cause earthquakes? Volcano’s? The gradual erosion of islands, continents? Is it true we were once joined to the Continent?
You fight until you win by the TRUTH being told.