Guest post by Ron Cram
Since Climategate, PachauriGate, GlacierGate and AmazonGate, a number of mainstream and skeptical climate scientists have been very critical of the IPCC. Some are suggesting the IPCC should be disbanded and future assessment reports should come from international science organizations. I would like to make a more modest proposal, a proposal which may have a chance to become reality.
Before you write this off as a hare-brained scheme, hear me out. The proposal is starting to get some traction. It was mentioned by Tallbloke (who liked the idea) and DeepClimate (who didn’t like the idea). It is a workable plan, but first let’s review the current situation.
Criticisms of the IPCC Process
After Climategate, many people have put forward criticisms and ideas to improve the IPCC process. Ryan Maue wrote a fine piece for ClimateAudit titled “What to do with the IPCC?” which describes some of the thoughts by different climate researchers. There are a number of criticisms we should consider more closely.
Roger Pielke is an ISI highly cited climatologist. He has criticized IPCC for a number of biases, including ignoring articles on problems with the surface temperature record (UHI and poorly sited stations) and ignoring or downplaying papers showing the climate change effect of land use/land cover changes (which he calls a first order climate forcing). Pielke has also criticized the IPCC for cherry-picking papers to “promote a particular conclusion on climate change.”
Judith Curry has criticized the IPCC for a number of reasons also. She claim the IPCC broke its own rules to accept papers prior to peer-review and assigned high-status positions to untested researchers who happen to make claims which support the IPCC narrative of impending doom. Curry is still worried about global warming but says she no longer feels the need to substitute the IPCC for her own personal judgment.
Eduardo Zorita is also very concerned about future warming, but he is concerned that uncertainty is being hidden from policymakers. He has criticized Climategate researchers and called on the IPCC to ban them from any participation in future IPCC assessment reports, a worthy proposal but one the IPCC is almost certain to ignore. Zorita has also written about the pressure put on climate scientists to toe the line. He thinks policy makers should be made aware of “the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture.”
Patrick Michaels claims the IPCC ignores the conclusions of peer-reviewed papers they find disagreeable. As evidence for this criticism, he points to Climategate emails.
Steve McIntyre’s experience as an IPCC reviewer has not convinced him the process is fair or unbiased. As a reviewer, McIntyre advised the IPCC not to truncate data but to show and fully discuss the Divergence Problem, but McIntyre’s recommendations were rejected out of hand. McIntyre seems to feel reviewer’s comments are routinely ignored by Coordinating Lead Authors.
Richard Lindzen, professor at MIT and member of the National Academy of Sciences, has served as a lead author for IPCC. He says the “most egregious” problem is the IPCC represents its reports as the consensus findings of thousands of scientists when none were asked if they approved of the final version of the report.
John Christy has also served as a Lead Author and has been critical of the IPCC’s selection process of Lead Authors because of the reliance on nominations by national governments. Christy says, “Indeed, the selections for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report represented a disturbing homogeneity of thought regarding humans and climate.” Christy has proposed a living ‘Wikipedia-IPCC.’ While this is an interesting idea, anyone who has ever been involved in an edit war on Wikipedia knows how frustrating it can be.
Ross McKitrick has written about his frustrations in getting simple IPCC errors corrected. He is convinced IPCC data is contaminated with industrialization effects and he has called for the IPCC to be disbanded.
What does IPCC Chairman Pachauri say to all of this criticism? He says:
IPCC relies entirely on peer-reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out.
As the links above show, this statement is clearly untrue. A great many of the world’s finest climate researchers have expressed significant criticisms of the IPCC process and the final assessment reports. But it appears nothing will change unless an idea is put forward which is so compelling and so obvious a solution that it cannot be ignored. The alarmists have seized the apparatus of editorship and will not relinquish it.
A Modest Proposal
If policymakers want a less biased picture, there is only one way to achieve it. It is necessary for the IPCC AR5 to consist of a Majority Report and a Minority Report. Going into the process, no one will know which of the competing reports will be named the Majority Report and which the Minority Report. That decision will come after both reports are completed and voted on by the climate scientists involved.
Climate scientists will be asked to vote for the report they believe best represents a careful presentation of current science. The requirement the final report must gain the approval of contributing climate scientists will be new for the IPCC. It will require the Coordinating Lead Authors to be more responsive to reasonable reviewer comments and will tend to make the assessment report less alarmist. If it fails to make the report less alarmist, the “consensus report” may find their report named the Minority Report.
Here’s how the idea would work: Both reports would have its own set of Editors. One report would have traditional IPCC editors, the other will have editors who have been critical of the IPCC process. All climate researchers are free to contribute to either report in any invited capacity. Researchers do not have to choose a “team.” In fact, the safest career choice for climate scientists will be to contribute to both reports and be a reviewer of both reports.
This represents the best chance for the IPCC to fulfill its mission of providing policymakers with a balanced assessment of climate science.
Scope of the Effort
Working Group I of AR4 was dominated by relatively few scientists. The report lists two co-chairs, Susan Solomon and Dahe Qin. Another six people are listed on the editing team for a total of eight. Here is the breakdown of authors by chapter:
| Chapters | Coordinating Lead Authors | Lead Authors | Contributing Authors | Review Editors |
| Ch 1 | 2 | 6 | 26 | 2 |
| Ch 2 | 2 | 13 | 37 | 2 |
| Ch 3 | 2 | 66 | 0 | 3 |
| Ch 4 | 2 | 9 | 44 | 2 |
| Ch 5 | 2 | 11 | 53 | 2 |
| Ch 6 | 2 | 14 | 33 | 2 |
| Ch 7 | 2 | 13 | 60 | 3 |
| Ch 8 | 2 | 11 | 76 | 0 |
| Ch 9 | 2 | 7 | 44 | 3 |
| Ch 10 | 2 | 12 | 78 | 2 |
| Ch 11 | 2 | 15 | 40 | 2 |
| Totals | 22 | 177 | 491 | 23 |
If counted correctly and all of these were different people, there would be 721 total editors and authors. We know some people served in more than one capacity. For example, Kevin Trenberth served as Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 3 and Contributing Author of Chapter 7.
The number of Lead Authors is high because Chapter 3 credited every involved scientist as a Lead Author with zero Contributing Authors. Normally, each chapter has 2 Coordinating Lead Authors, 2 or 3 Review Editors and 10 or 11 Lead Authors. So then AR 4 Working Group I was dominated by about 150 scientists and another 500 served as Contributing Authors.
In reality, AR4 Working Group I was dominated by about 150 climate scientists, but the most important were the eight editors and the 22 Coordinating Lead Authors. It would be very easy to duplicate this effort by climate scientists who have been critical of the IPCC.
The alternate report could be edited by the team of Roger A. Pielke, Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Eduardo Zorita, Judith Curry, Hans von Storch, John Christy, Garth Paltridge and Richard Lindzen. These names are only a suggestion but, a team like this could not be easily dismissed. It includes strong proponents of global warming theory, strong skeptics and luke-warmers. It has representatives from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. It has experts on the Arctic, Antarctica and the tropics and specialists on oceans, atmosphere, radiative transfer and more.
An editing team of this strength would find it easy to attract top quality coordinating lead authors for each chapter. Roger Pielke alone has probably written papers with 150 (just a guess) different climate scientists as co-authors, all of whom respect him and would stand in line to join him in an assessment report. Richard Lindzen is a member of National Academy of Sciences and also commands tremendous respect. He also could attract many top climate researchers to write an unbiased assessment report. The same is true of Christy, Curry, Akasofu and the rest.
What if the IPCC refuses?
It is possible the IPCC will not bow to pressure to publish two reports. In that case, climate scientists simply come together to publish an alternative assessment report without the IPCC. Since IPCC authors and reviewers are not paid, funding is not a problem. Since the book-sized assessment report can be published on the internet, there are no real publication costs.
Yes, I am familiar with the Nature, Not Human Activity Rules the Climate. While it was written by an international panel of scientists, there were only 24 authors. It suffers by not getting the buy-in of a larger segment of the climate science community. I am proposing a full and fair assessment of climate science. It should be timed to be published at about the same time as, or shortly after, AR5.
It is hard to imagine that Pielke, Christy, Akasofu and others would not like to see an alternative assessment report to the IPCC – an effort dedicated to correcting the poor methods of the IPCC – a report which actually considers comments from reviewers. It is difficult to imagine they would not like to be a part of such an effort. And it is just as difficult to imagine that would not like to see their report put to the vote against AR5. This will be a time-consuming and unpaid effort. But it will be a grand effort and one that future generations will be very grateful for.
The question now is: Is this a project Pielke, Curry, Lindzen and others are willing to take on?
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Not bad. Especially when you consider that anything is better than nothing.
The answer to the question is: I would sincerely hope so. The people of the world need this project.
It is a foregone conclusion that the IPCC won’t go for this; why would a turkey vote for Christmas? But let’s bring it on.
As long as Michael Mann is involved then he will find a way to corrupt the process. If the IPCC really represents “thousands of scientists” then it can just bar the Real Climate team and those in the Climategate emails from participating without affecting the outcome of the report, but greatly increasing its credibility.
Perhaps in future reports academics who’ve been in climate science for decades will take prominent roles rather than sociopathic PhD neophytes trying to earn a name for themselves with a lot of flash and a lack of facts.
The question now is: Is this a project Pielke, Curry, Lindzen and others are willing to take on?
I certainly hope so! I also would prefer that the IPCC grow a pair and accept the challenge, but do expect the current leadership of the UN or IPCC to be so bold, or so confident in their position.
Majority? Minority? How about “let’s save taxpayers a fortune in transport to exotic places of second rate scientists and railway engineers” by scrapping the thing altogether.
When something is on no value at all – scrap it!
My first question is what determines a “climate scientist” and therefore who is entitled to a vote? Equally who doesn’t get a vote?
Does Gavin Schmidt get a vote? Or Ross McKitrick? Where do we draw the line?
And it then follows – how much of the electorate have a conflict of interest because of the funding gravy train? Shouldn’t people with such a conflict of interest be excluded from the vote?
I read on an earlier post that NASA spent $1bn on global warming last year, and the US $8.7bn over an unspecified period. That’s a helluva lotta jobs, career opportunities and status-building publications. All good reasons to say there is a conflict of interest and that the vote would be like turkeys having a vote on the Christmas menu.
But if you were to exclude them and widen the criteria for deciding who gets to vote, the next complaint is that the vote lacks credibility.
I like the Cold Englishman comment. In addition I have a problem with voting. In science positions nothing has so far been “settled” by voting. Let me give the following example: Around 1904 the science Physics was “settled”, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Lorentz all had done their work, a majority standpoint. In 1905 a gentlemen from a patent office wrote a new standpoint, say a minority standpoint. It took the scientific field by storm without voting but based on the article its scientific merits which for a greater part still holds to day, until something new comes by.
“If the wine is sour, throw it out.” — The innkeeper in the film “The Agony and the Ecstasy”.
A good idea, but the problem is you are dealing with an organisation,which has actively promoted the corruption of the scientific process.
Most leaders of weird religious cults and autocratic regimes genuinely believe they are doing a good job and do not tolerate criticism in any form.
The IPCC is no different, you just cannot get the main beneficiaries of a corrupt regime to cleanse themselves of their corruption; an outside force always has to do this.
I wish I could think of ‘an outside force’ capable and willing to do this, but I can’t.
The idea (if it’s one) leads to an endless war between two antagonistic camps dominated by politically biased members. Whom to believe at the end?
This is clearly a non-scientific but a political approach to save what’s left of a quite damaged institution. Too much debris laying around to start anew.
Figuratively speaking: how do you order your meal in a restaurant telling you that they would have two cooks and two kitchens, a conservative and a liberal one?
John Christy’s ‘Wikipedia-IPCC’ idea is much more convincing: an open peer review process like the one you find here …
http://www.livingreviews.org
The most important thing is to keep politicians and bureaucrats as far away from the scientific process as possible.
A scientific board for each topic, limited access to the discussion and review forum for recognized scientists working in the field, annual reports (majority and minority report) – and a moderated layman’s blog.
Peter
The recent history of climate science has shown that such a proposal would never work.
The ClimateGate narrative showed conclusively that a small cabal of scientists were prepared to pervert the scientific method, block and threaten to block opposing papers from being published, use RealClimate and other places to provide false and misleading commentary against opponents, hide methods and data for spurious reasons, truncate and disappear contrary evidence and use every dirty trick to defund and isolate their opponents.
As Ryan O’Donnell et al has found out, the cabal still in business. As Penn State has so eloquently explained, the academic institutions are not prepared to consider even prima facae evidence of serious misconduct while those star researchers are bringing in millions of dollars in grants.
I recall that Chris Essex and Ross McKitrick made such a proposal for a “Minority Report” in their book “Taken by Storm”. But the political and financial asymmetry would pose an insuperable barrier to researchers’ future funding and careers if they were seen to be even sympathetic to climate non-alarmism.
Even scientific institutions like the NAS, AAAS and the Royal Society have been traduced to bend to breaking point the fundamental principles of the scientific method.
There are no historical parallels for such a corruption of science as has happened in the last 15 years in Western science, and there are no easy solutions.
Sorry.
These events continue to occur
Sounds like a very sensible suggestion to be. If the high heid yins in the IPCC are not agreeable then Pielke et al should make it clear that they will go ahead anyway and produce a Minority Report. But haven’t the NIPCC already done this?
Whilst this is a very worthy and intelligent suggestion, perhaps for that reason it has zero chance of being taken up by the IPCC.
Don’t forget that they are there to serve their political masters and ‘science’ and ‘truth’ are irrelevant to their mission.
It would be more likely to be accepted that they add a steering committee at the top to ‘assist’ Pachauri in his endeavours. I would suggest Monbiot, Ward, Romm, Strong and Oxburgh and have Prince Chuckles as Chair.
The warmists couldn’t object, the committee members would be well rewarded and I think the arrangement would give just emphasis to what the project is all about.
You need to bring boils to a head before lancing them.
Fixing a train wreck is impossible. You don’t have to be a railway engineer to know that. And oh yeah, what would the summary for policy makers look like. The entire UN is an anti-American, anti-free enterprise construct that provides a habitat for just the types like Pachauri. The whole UN is broken and the IPCC is a symptom.
Being somewhat skeptical of AGW, there is an advantage in maintaining the IPCC. Given the governance structure alone, the IPCC serves as a stone weight for those in support of the AGW theory.
It is noteworthy that some alarmists are trying to cut Al Gore loose. If the theory was correct, they’d advance their case further if they cut the IPCC lose instead.
Further to my earlier comment (which was probably too negative towards the main post).
I’m torn between wishing to see the IPCC ended, and seeing what AR5 comes up with to try to recover the IPCC’s composure.
Assuming there will be an AR5, my suggestion would be to extend to process to include an open on-line “Replies” section.
Replies would be part of the report. They would address specific points in the main body of the AR5, but not limited to procedural/technical/scientific points.
It would be important to ensure that the IPCC is not in control of Replies.
The IPCC would not be entitled to respond to Replies – the IPCC’s responsibility would be to ensure AR5 (and the process) is squeaky clean and balanced in the first place. If not, Replies would be posted as a permanent record of any failings. This would bring discipline.
Replies would come from subscribers but there would be no criteria such as academic background or carreer choice. Replies would not be permited to quote the replier’s qualifications (no appeal to authority).
Replies could only address AR5. A Reply could not respond to other Replies (not another internet sandpit) .
There would need to be some form of moderation, but not something that could be controlled by special interest groups. Perhaps Replies initially go into some form of quarantine (which would be publicly visible) and some procedure to raise them out of quarantine (such as a “seconder”).
Final point – all subscribers would have a single vote on each Reply. This would be a positive vote or abstention (no voting-down to cancil other positive votes).
The Replies with the most votes would thererfore rise to the top of the pile. And readers of AR5 would then have a ready measure of the most significant concerns being raised about the report and its implications. This would therefore inform the various interesed parties about quality, even-handedness and other important matters concerning AR5.
It is all in the negotiating tactics employed.
As an opening gambit we shoud suggest disbandment and summary execution.
After a bit of haggling to and fro we can settle for disbandment and permanent exile.
The point I would make following climategate and the more recent O’Donnel trashing of the Steig paper – which has been completely ignored by the MSM and even environmental journalists – is that we cannot rely on the media to expose the culture of politicised and junk science within the IPCC; the press and TV are in it up to their necks as much as the politicians.
It is scientists (ok, mainly play station modellers) who got us into to this mess, and it is good scientists who are going to have to get us out of it (with help from the blogosphere of course). And not forgetting Mother Nature in respect of the three cold winters the northern hemisphere has just experienced – another one of those and voters and taxpayers will surely have had enough.
A Modest Proposal
If policymakers want a less biased picture….
haha. it was a good proposal up to that point.
What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born blogger? Will no one rid me of this troublesome guest poster?
Is this really true? According to statements given to the Inter Academy Council by IPCC insiders the IPCC could not produce its reports without reliance on gray literature
Two reports means no consensus ergo this will never happen.
IPCC should really stand for International Panel for CO2 Condemnation. It’s intention was not to learn about the climate but to hang any adverse weather consequences on CO2. It’s time to disband this organization and when that’s done, do the same with the rest of the chain of command.
Why keep it at all. It is a political construct rather than a scientific research body. We do have some competent climate researchers. Why not appropriately fund them rather than dump precious resources into a corrupt organization with questionable goals.