A formal announcement was made in a press conference made at 12:30PM EST by the IPCC, which is getting press, for example here. But at the time of this writing, there’s no mention of it whatsoever on the main IPCC web page here:
UPDATE: They’ve finally added a mention of the press release, click link to see the updated main page.
From the The Times by Ben Webster
The United Nations is to announce an independent review of errors made by its climate change advisory body in an attempt to restore its credibility.
A team of the world’s leading scientists will investigate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and ask why its supposedly rigorous procedures failed to detect at least three serious overstatements of the risk from global warming.
The review will be overseen by the InterAcademy Council, whose members are drawn from the world’s leading national science academies, including Britain’s Royal Society, the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The review will be led by Robbert Dijkgraaf, co-chairman of the Interacademy Council and president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
…
More at the Times
However having a look at the IPCC web page and lack of any mention of it on the main page that I can find, it would seem the announcement is more about PR than procedure. It doesn’t share the side bar or center stage with the upcoming AR5 or any of the other blurbs they’ve released in their defense in the last couple of months. [Note as mentioned above, they’ve added a link on the main page now. ]
To find it, you have to visit the Press Information page where they write:
====================================================
 |
 |
Launch of Independent Review of IPCC Processes and ProceduresNew York, UN Headquaters, 10 March 2010 |
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and IPCC Chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri launched an Independent Review of the IPCC Processes and Procedures at a Press event held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday 10 March 2010. This was followed by a Press conference, where Robbert Dijkgraaf, Co-Chair of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), spoke to correspondents and answered questions.
The entire event was available live to journalists via the UN webcast at:: http://www.un.org/webcast/
The IPCC alerted media correspondents before it took place.
Accompanying documents are:
PRESS RELEASE – “Scientific Academy to Conduct Independent Review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
Processes and Procedures at Request of United Nations and IPCC”
Terms of Reference for the Independent Review by the IAC
Letters by the Chair of the IPCC and the UN Secretary General to the Co-Chairs of the InterAcademy Council (IAC)
(to be made available as soon as possible)
===================================================
It would seem they don’t much care for putting an attempt to restore credibility on the main page. Makes you wonder.
It will be interesting to see how they explain away some of the more blatant issues, like this one: IPCC Ignored Wildfire Corrections — 3 times
Anu (20:24:49) :
It’s hard for the UN to do good work when it has to rely on “deadbeat” [U.S] nations for funding
Agreed, Anu – since Bali and Copenhagen certainly did not suffice, permanent quarters for the UN at Club Gitmo would appear to be the only answer, that is, short of also asking Big Oil for more funding.
Looks to me as if IPCC is going to get dumped and replaced with a bright, shiny IPCC release 2.0.
Bye bye choo choo.
I see some comments in your blog about Consensus. Has anyone ever looked up the word Consensus in a dictionary? Consensus actually means that there is no agreement on the matter under consideration. So are we all being duped? Following is an extract (part of page 3) from a 5 page article on this subject by a man named Sinai Waisberg. The link to the complete article is shown at the end. It confirms in my mind that it is control of the masses that is the ultimate goal.
Extract from Sinai Waisberg document, Global Warming Consensus:::
It is noteworthy that in the realm of politics there is a strong tendency for consensus to be formed only among the worst elements of society. The reasons for such were put forward by the economist Friedrich A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. The following passage contains the core of his argument:
In the first instance, it is probably true that, in general, the higher the education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values. It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and ―common instincts and tastes prevail. This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards. It merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar are the people with low standards (…) Here comes in the second negative principle of selection: [a political dictator] will be able to obtain the support of all the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are prepared to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently (…) It is in connection with the deliberate effort of the skilful demagogue to weld together a closely coherent and homogeneous body of supporters that the third and perhaps most important negative element of selection enters. It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off-than on any positive task. The contrast between the ―we and the ―they, the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses (…)
Read complete 5 page document here:
http://www.globalwarmingconsensus.com/files/global-warming-consensus.pdf
@Al Gored (19:45:59)
————————————————————-have an astonishing article from a site called Faxts.com – not to be confused with facts – that reveals just how desperate the gang is getting and what is coming.
————————————————————-
Thank You!, here’s the Link:
http://faxts.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=505:environment-violent-backlash-against-climate-scientists&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=121
I wouldn’t give up on Dijkgraaf just yet.
He is a brilliant physicist and believes in true and unbiased peer review. And so he will not be very understanding of IPCC lead authors arrogantly dismissing legitimate reviewer comments.
It is true that he has said that there was a “consensus” among scientists that AGW is a fact, but in his mind at the time there was… Like many others he knew nothing of the sceptics arguments. How could he? He is not a climatologist and he was exposed to the same IPCC propaganda as the rest of us.
I think that it is quite possible that he will grind the IPCC into the ground.
We don’t do “whitewash” in Holland, which our prime minister discovered only a few weeks ago (regarding Iraq). Pachauri could be in for a big shock.
How long will it take for the scientific community to get its credibility back after the IPCC has destroyed it so compressively? With its peer-reviews, fudging of facts, independent reviews and politicising of science. Years? Decades? Or generations? (I guess its how much damage they do to the world)
Science was the only subject that held my attention at school (and Miss Hedges), I have completely lost faith in scientist, my new heroes are statisticians, well 80% of them.
They can’t even get the terms of reference correct and which should read ‘…….independant review of the deliberate errors made ……
Concerning the remarks of Robert Dijkgraaf, who is accused to be not independent:
First: he is chosen as he is the chairman of the Dutch Academy of Sciences and
co-chairman of InterAcademy Council, which is really a very logical choice.
Secondly: what is important is that a group of non-climate scientists are going to review IPCC. Of course, almost every scientist will have already some opinion on this matter by now, but that’s is hardly avoidable, that does not make them not independent. Independent does not mean opinionless, independent means he has had nothing to do with IPCC or climate science. Which scientist would you rather choose, McIntyre, Lindzen, PielkeSr, they are also hardly independent are they?
What is important is that Dijkgraaf is not a climate-scientist nor has he ever published anything concerning climate change. Furthermore, Dijkgraaf is not going to do this on his own, but he will form a committee of scientists who are gointg to do the review. But of course it easier to start shouting that it is not an independent review and the conspiracy has widened and now includes all national academy of sciences, (such as NAS (US) and the Royal Society (UK)). So, my question to the people here: who would you have appointed as “independent” reviewer, if not some respected non-climate scientist?
Somebody needs to point out to the BBC that if it were a few small errors there’d be no need for a review. If the governments in the vicinity of the Himalayan Glaciers had taken notice that AR4 had predicted the melt of the glaciers over the next tweny seven years billions of $$ could have been spent and people moved from their homes to make dams, or for their own safety. I don’t call that a small error. In fact it wasn’t an error at all it was a deliberate attempt to frighten, WG2 refused to use the predictions of WG1 and used the WWF instead. Georg Kaser the Austrian glaciologist wrote to Dr. Lal in 2006 pointing out the error and was ignored.
@Manfred
britain’s royal society has long been taken over by WWF activists,
the american NAS is run by stephen schneider and his streetfighters including michael mann’s enabler Gerry North.
Ah, I see the conspiracy has already widened! So NAS and RS are also not to be trusted, I should have known…
Has anyone had a look at the InterAcademy Council Web site here:
http://www.interacademycouncil.net/
The first item that struck me was “Toward a Sustainable Energy Future”, a project that relies on there being a need for low-carbon emission energy. Does this constitute a conflict of interest?
The second thing that I noticed was that the review only covers “processes and procedures”, not content (side bar on right).
Being an academy of science maybe their priority will be to see if the IPCC has actually follwed the scientific method, formed appropriate hypotheses and null hypotheses, which they then rejected with a sufficient confidence interval, based on rigorous experimental procedures, and that the experimental data is available for review etc.
If “integrity” (trustworthiness) were bestowed by titles I would have trusted every American President back to Truman, as it turned out, the last President I “trusted” was Truman –I was too young then to know the ways of the world.
@Leigh
The second thing that I noticed was that the review only covers “processes and procedures”, not content (side bar on right).
Correct and I think that is the right approach. It is really not possible for a relative small group of “outsiders” to review whether the content is correct, what is important is that should be reviewed whether the process itself was flawed or not.
“Being an academy of science maybe their priority will be to see if the IPCC has actually follwed the scientific method, formed appropriate hypotheses and null hypotheses, which they then rejected with a sufficient confidence interval, based on rigorous experimental procedures, and that the experimental data is available for review etc.”
I strongly disagree. The IPCC does not do any science itself, so they do not have to use the scientific method. The IPCC only reviews the current state of the science of climate change. So the committee should review whether that has been done in a fair way. Furthermore I think it is important to reconsider whether it is allowed to use grey literature and if so, under what conditions (and in which part of the report)
What standards is the “independent” review team auditing? Is there an international standards for scientists that the IPCC participating scientists were to adhere to; an instruction manual, so to speak, of how scientists are to go about the process of doing science? I work in automotive. The auto industry driven standard is ISO/TS16949. Documented transparency and communication between customers and suppliers is of utmost importance. Phil Jones didn’t seem to care much for documentation or transparency.
In regards to the time tested rules of scientific work, IPCC scientists failed to adhere to the process. That much is obvious. The “independent” review could come to that conclusion. To say AGW has consensus and the conclusions are valid or invalid may end up not being part of the scope of their “independent” review.
The question is, will AGW politicians finally admit that since the process is corrupted, then the data and models are suspect as well and should not be relied upon until the hypothesis has been tested over and over with similar results.
The “Worlds Leading Scientist” reviewing “The Worlds Leading Scientist”?
Sounds like a consensus to me!
Anu (20:24:49) :
The world would be a better place without the UN.
So the independant review of a UN bureaucracy begins, under funding of the UN, and they are not examining AR4 for content errors, just the process of building it so as to affect the next report. Huh! Sounds like the objective is to find a better way to deceive going forward.
The parameters of this “review” are as self-serving as the parameters for the IPCC itself.
Anu (20:24:49) :
It’s hard for the UN to do good work when it has to rely on “deadbeat” nations for funding:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/white-house-sla.html
++++
Oh, please. Go ahead and calculate what percentage of the total UN yearly budget is spent directly on the IPCC by the UN, and multiply that by the US shortfall in UN contributions for a total amount the IPCC is hurt by what you’re pointing at.
Then calculate how much free “in kind” contributions the IPCC receives from the participation of scientists funded wholly or primarily by the US government (and paid for directly out of the US budget instead of the UN budget). And not just US-based scientists either, as Dr. Jones pointed out in his emails that he has/had several US DoE grants.
Be sure to come back and tell us which number is larger, and by how much.
The InterAcademy Council is clearly a biased group – they have produced reports in the past where Rajendra Pachauri and Steven Chu were in the “study group”
See: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/IPCC_IAC.htm exposing the bias of this “independent” group.
geo (11:56:15) :
The total annual budget for the WMO is $56 million.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/Word_template_-_Assessed_Contributions_to_UN_Specialized_A.pdf
The total annual budget from the UN, for UNEP, is about $13 million. The rest of their budget is voluntary contributions:
http://www.unep.org/rms/en/Financing_of_UNEP/Regular_Budget/index.asp
The IPCC was was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The US owes about $1.6 billion.
It’s not the only country that owes money:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/un-finance/tables-and-charts-on-un-finance/the-core-un-budget/27405.html
but most of the other countries owe money for “peacekeeping” missions, not regular budget UN programs.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/un-finance.html
As of October 31, 2009, members’ arrears to the Regular Budget topped $829 million, of which the US owed 93% .
The UN Regular Budget is $2.073 billion.
Any way you slice it, the UN is missing a huge chunk of its budget.
I’ll leave it to you to show how many $millions Michael E. Mann’s volunteer work for the IPCC is worth.
This will destroy the reputations of all the national academies when the attempted coverup is exposed. They have been the gate keepers in so many fields its unknown what damage they have done. Like guilds and unions they can only prosper by enforcing a form of monopoly on labor keeping the independent operators and scabs out. If the InterAcademy Council (IAC) takes a hit we will see all sorts of fields opened up. You may not like the results but it will be very interesting.
If you believe in true science, that evidence can disprove a popular theory, then this wont effect you much. However much of what is taught is disputed in obscurity and often with experimental proofs that have gone for decades shut out of mainstream peer review. This is what the mainstream media and science fear most.
Curiousgeorge (16:15:30) :
sorry it took so long. didn’t see your “request” till now. hope your still checking.
WSJ
MARCH 8, 2010
Politics and Policy
Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the administration’s game plan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704869304575104621269451154.html
And here is a few of the things they need to review – borrowed from another website:
1. The head of the IPCC, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has no background in Climate Science. His PhD is in economics and he worked as a railway engineer before becoming the head of the IPCC.
2. Only 52 scientists contributed to the 2007 IPCC summary for policy makers, although diplomats from over 115 countries contributed.
3. A paper that became a key reference source for the IPCC’s claimed that the effect of urban warming in eastern China was “negligible”. It turned out that 49 of the 84 climate monitoring stations used for the report had no history of their locations at all, meaning no one could verify where the data came from. This included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest no fewer than 18 “had been moved” during the study period to warmer urban areas. When the source data was re-examined it was found that urbanisation was responsible for 40% of the warming previously reported and claimed as evidence for “man-made” global warming.
4. When asked to independently review the IPCC’s last two reports on claimed sea-level rises, the reviewing scientist was “astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors was a sea level specialist”.
5. Up until 2003, the IPCC’s satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend in sea level, so the IPCC used an increase of 2.3mm recorded on a single Hong Kong harbour tide-gauge to claim a global sea level increase of 2.3mm.
6. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that the Himalayan glaciers were melting was derived from nothing more scientific than a phone interview with someone who wasn’t even a scientist.
7. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that “man-made” global warming would lead to increasing numbers of natural disasters, such as Katrina scale hurricanes, was based on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to critical peer-review.
8. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that “man-made” global warming was going to result in deficiencies of up to 50% in African agriculture was also based on a non peer-reviewed claim in a non-scientific paper.
9. The IPCC’s now retracted claim that “up to 40%” of the Amazonian rain forest could react drastically to even a slight reduction in rainfall was based on a non-peer-reviewed non-scientific paper.
10. The IPCC’s claim that 55% of the Netherlands was below sea level, rather than the actual 26%, has now been retracted.
11. According to the United States Historical Climateology Network (USHNC) 90% of US climate-monitoring surface stations have been found to be poorly situated, meaning that they have a margin of error greater than one degree Centigrade, which is huge in climateology terms.
12. In 1978 there were 6,000 climate-monitoring surface stations; today there are only about 1,200.
13. The vast majority of lost climate monitoring stations were sited in rural areas, meaning that overall results are distorted upwards due to a much greater percentage of such stations being located in urban areas, often on top of warm office blocks.
14. Carbon dioxide contributes only 4.2% to 8.4% of the greenhouse gas effect.
15. Only approximately 4% of carbon dioxide is actually man-made.
16. Water vapour accounts for between 90% and 95% of the green house gas effect.
17. An estimated 99.99% of water vapour is natural, meaning that no amount of de-industrialisation could get rid of it.
18. There have been many times when the temperature of the planet has been higher than it is now; these include the Medieval Warming Period, the Holocene and the Jurassic periods.
19. Antarctic ice core samples prove that increases in carbon dioxide follow increases in temperature by about 800 years, not precede them as claimed by the IPCC.
20. A leading figure in the “Climategate” scandal now admits that there has been no “statistically significant” global warming since 1995.
21. 2008 and 2009 were the two coolest years of the decade, neither of which are likely to be as cold as 2010.
22. During the Ordovician period carbon dioxide concentrations were twelve times higher than what they are now – yet the temperature was lower.
23. Solar activity is highly correlated with temperature change.
24. Studies show that half of all recent warming was solar in cause.
25. The planet Mars has warmed by about half a degree Centigrade since the 1970’s, which is about as much as the Earth over the same period; as far as we are aware there is no industry on that planet.
26. The 0.7 degree Centigrade increase in temperature over the last century is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, climate trends.
27. The distance between the Earth and the Sun varies; thus affecting the amount of heat energy the earth receives.
28. Earth’s axial tilt oscillates between 21.4 degrees and 24.8 degrees, which affects the distribution of the sun’s energy across its surface.
29. Antarctica has 90% of the earth’s ice and it is growing, not shrinking as claimed by the IPCC.
30. The Arctic sea ice has now returned to its 1979 levels, which is when monitoring began.
31. The Arctic ice caps have recovered from their loss in 2007.
32. The Arctic is now one degree Centigrade cooler than it was in the 1940’s.
33. Sea level 81,000 years ago was one metre higher than it is now while carbon dioxide levels were lower.
34. According to satellite data sea level has been decreasing since 2005.
35. Instead of damaging forests, the increased level of carbon dioxide has been helping them grow.
36. Some climate scientists argue that urban warming is responsible for half of the global warming trend from 1980 to 2002.
37. According to a leaked “Climategate” email, temperatures recorded in Darwin, Australia, were shown to be falling by 0.7 degrees Centigrade per century – but after IPCC “homogenisation” they were recorded as increasing at 1.2 degrees Centigrade per century.
38. It is alleged by Russian scientists that Britain’s Hadley Climate Research Unit “cherry picked” climate data from just 25% of Russia’s surface weather monitoring stations, thereby overstating Russia’s warming by a very significant two-thirds of a degree Centigrade for the period between the 1870’s and 1990’s.
39. It is alleged that Britain’s Hadley Climate Research Unit, the body at the centre of “Climategate”, threw out original temperature data that could have been re-examined to verify its findings, because it claimed it did not have “storage space”.
40. The owners of the trading floor where the carbon credits will be traded, allegedly including Goldman Sachs and Al Gore, stand to make trillions of dollars if cap-and-trade is passed by the US administration.
From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031002891.html?hpid=topnews
“An outside review of a U.N. panel — promised after flaws were uncovered in the panel’s most recent report on climate change — will not recheck that report’s conclusions and will instead focus on improving procedures for the future, officials said Wednesday.
U.N. officials defended their decision, saying that there is still no reason to doubt the most important conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a landmark report in 2007, the panel found “unequivocal” evidence that the climate was warming.
“Let me be clear: The threat posed by climate change is real,” Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said during a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York. “Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change, nor does it diminish the unique importance of the IPCC work.”
Anu (17:38:15) :
Nice try. The total UN yearly budget is on the order of $40B/year. If we take $69M (your number for WMO and UNEP), and assume 25% of that is for IPCC (which is probably still high) then that is .04% of the UN budget. .04% of $1.6B is $640K.
Yes, I think it is clear that voluntary “in kind” contributions of scientist time paid for directly or indirectly out of the US budget is well north of that.