Readers may recall this story last week: Ad hoc group wants to run attack ads
Here’s their formal response. I’m providing this from: http://www.openletterfromscientists.com for all to see here and to discuss. – Anthony
An Open Letter from Scientists in the United States on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Errors Contained in the Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007
[Note: More than 250 scientists have already signed this open letter and signatures are still being collected. On Friday, March 12, 2010, when the letter has been delivered to federal agencies, a list of signers will be posted. The vast majority of the signers are climate change scientists who work at leading U.S. universities and institutions. They include both IPCC and non-IPCC authors. Additional signers include professionals from related disciplines, including physical, biological and social scientists. If you are a scientist wishing to sign the letter, please see the note below. If you have any questions, please contact the letter’s authors, contact information is below.]
Dear Colleagues:
We have written an open letter about the IPCC process, media attention, errors, and suggestions for improvement, which we are circulating to both IPCC authors and other scientists in the US. We plan to send the letter to the US Congress, State Department, EPA, NOAA, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality, and other relevant US agencies and organizations.
If you would like to be a co-signer of the letter, please send your name and institutional affiliation to Gary Yohe at gyohe@wesleyan.edu by close of business on Friday, March 12. A note on the letter will say: ‘Signatories’ affiliations are listed for identification only and should not be interpreted as representing official institutional positions.’
Because it won’t be possible to coordinate multiple versions, we do not plan to edit this letter further at this juncture. However, if you do have comments, please feel free to include them in your email response.
Please circulate the open letter to your colleagues if you would like. We apologize for any cross-listings in advance.
Best,
Gary Yohe
Steve Schneider
Cynthia Rosenzweig
Bill Easterling
***********************************************
Many in the popular press and other media, as well as some in the halls of Congress, are seizing on a few errors that have been found in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in an attempt to discredit the entire report. None of the handful of mis-statements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements) remotely undermines the conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Despite its excellent performance for accurately reporting the state-of-the-science, we certainly acknowledge that the IPCC should become more forthcoming in openly acknowledging errors in a timely fashion, and continuing to improve its assessment procedures to further lower the already very low rate of error.
It is our intention in offering this open letter to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world. We first discuss some of the key messages from climate science and then elaborate on IPCC procedures, with particular attention to the quality-control mechanisms of the IPCC. Finally we offer some suggestions about what might be done next to improve IPCC practices and restore full trust in climate science.
The Climate Challenge
Our understanding of human contributions to climate change and the associated urgency for humans to respond has improved dramatically over the past two decades. Many of the major components of the climate system are now well understood, though there are still sources of significant uncertainty (like the processes that produce the observed rapid ice-sheet melting and/or collapse in the polar regions). It is now well established, for example, that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from human sources have increased rapidly since the Industrial Revolution. Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reduce the heat going out of the climate system, i.e., the radiation balance of the Earth – and so first principles of physics tell us to expect, with a very high likelihood, that higher temperatures should have been observed.
Indeed, measurements of global average temperatures show an increase of about 0.6 degrees C over the twentieth century and about 0.8 degrees C warming since mid-19th century. The pattern of increase has not been smooth or monotonic. There have been several 10- to 15-year periods of stable or declining temperatures over the past 150 years, but 14 of the warmest 15 years on record have been experienced between 1995 and 2009. Since 1970, observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are already being affected by these temperature increases.
Because the long-term warming trends are highly significant relative to our estimates of the magnitude of natural variability, the current decadal period of stable global mean temperature does nothing to alter a fundamental conclusion from the AR4: warming has unequivocally been observed and documented. Moreover, well-understood lags in the responsiveness of the climate system to disturbances like greenhouse gas increases mean that the current temperature plateau will very likely not persist much longer. Global climate model projections show that present-day greenhouse gas concentrations have already committed the planet to about 0.5 degree C in warming over this century.
Increasing emissions of carbon dioxide from the consumption of coal, oil and natural gas as well as deforestation have been the major drivers of this observed warming. While we cannot predict the details of our climate future with a high degree of certainty, the majority of studies from a large number of research groups in the US and elsewhere project that unabated emissions could produce between 1 and 6 degrees C more warming through the year 2100.
Other research has identified multiple reasons to be concerned about climate change; these apply to the United States as well as globally. They include (1) risks to unique and threatened systems (including human communities), (2) risks from extreme events (like coastal storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires), (3) economic damages (driven by, for example, pest infestations or inequities in the capacity to adapt), (4) risks from large-scale abrupt climate change (e.g., ice-sheet collapse, ocean circulation slowing, sharply increased methane emissions from permafrost) or abrupt impacts of more predictable climate change (generated by thresholds in the coping capacities of natural and human systems to climate variability), and (5) risks to national security (driven largely by extreme events across the world interacting with already-stressed situations).
These sources of risk and the potential for triggering temperature-driven impacts at lower thresholds, as well as the explicit recognition in the AR4 that risk is the product of likelihood and consequence, led the nations of the world to take note of the Copenhagen Accord last December. The Accord highlights 2 degrees C in warming as a target that might reduce the chance of “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” to more manageable levels. Research has shown that increasing the likelihood of achieving this goal over the next century is economically and technically feasible with emission reduction measures and changes in consumption patterns; but it will not be easy without major national and international actions to deviate substantially from the status quo.
The IPCC and the Fourth Assessment Report
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the IPCC in 1988 to provide policy makers regularly with balanced assessments of the state of knowledge on climate change. In so doing, they created an open intergovernmental organization in which scientists, policy analysts, engineers, and resource managers from all over the world were asked to collaborate. At present, more than 150 countries including the United States participate in the IPCC. IPCC publishes an assessment report approximately every six years. The most recent Fourth Assessment, approved by member countries and released in 2007, contained three volumes: The Physical Science Basis (Working Group I); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Working Group II) and Mitigation of Climate Change (Working Group III) and a Synthesis Report. More than 44 writing teams and 450 lead authors contributed to the Fourth Assessment – authors who have been selected on the basis of their expertise in consultation with all member countries and who were assisted by another 800 scientists and analysts who served as contributing authors on specific topics. Authors donated their time gratis, and the entire process was supported by four Technical Support Units (TSUs) that employ 5 to 10 people each.
Errors in the Fourth Assessment Report
It was hard not to notice the extraordinary commotion that erupted around errors that were eventually found in the AR4. The wrong year for the projected disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers and the wrong percentage of ‘land below sea level’ in the Netherlands are examples of errors that need to be acknowledged frankly and rectified promptly. In a few other cases, like the discussion of the correlations between crop yields, climate change, and climate variability in North Africa, caveats that were carefully crafted within the chapters were not included when language was shortened for the Synthesis Report. While striving to simplify technical details and summarize major points, some important qualifications were left behind. These errors of omission in the summary process should also be recognized and corrected. Other claims, like the one reported at the end of February suggesting that the AR4 did not mention the millions of more people who will see increases in water availability that were reported in the cited literature along with the millions of more people who will be at risk of water shortage, are simply not true. In any case, it is essential to emphasize that none of these interventions alter the key finding from the AR4 that human beings are very likely changing the climate, with far-reaching impacts in the long run.
The heated debates that have emerged around these instances have even led some to question the quality and integrity of the IPCC. Recent events have made it clear that the quality control procedures of the IPCC are not watertight, but claims of widespread and deliberate manipulation of scientific data and fundamental conclusions in the AR4 are not supported by the facts. We also strongly contest the impression that the main conclusions of the report are based on dubious sources. The reference list of the AR4 contains about 18,000 citations, the vast majority of which were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The IPCC also has transparent procedures for using published but not peer-reviewed sources in their reports. These procedures were not properly followed in the isolated Himalaya case, but that statement was never elevated into the Summary for Policymakers of either Working Group II or the Synthesis Report – documents that were approved unanimously and word for word by all member nations.
Nonetheless, failsafe compliance with these procedures requires extra attention in the writing of the next round of assessments. We propose implementing a topic-based cross-chapter review process by which experts in an impact area of climate change, such as changes in water resources, scrutinize the assessment of related vulnerability, risk analyses, and adaptation strategies that work downstream from such changes. Here we mean, to continue the example, assessments of possible increases in flooding damage in river basins and the potential for wetlands to provide buffers in the sectoral and regional chapters. This would be most productively implemented just before the first-order draft, so that chapter authors can be alerted to potential problems before the major review step.
Quality Control within the IPCC and US Review
The impression that the IPCC does not have a proper quality-control procedure is deeply mistaken. The procedure for compiling reports and assuring its quality control is governed by well-documented principles that are reviewed regularly and amended as appropriate. Even now, every step in the preparation of every chapter can be traced on a website: First Order Drafts (with comments by many scientists as well as author responses to those comments), Second Order Drafts in which those comments are incorporated (and comments by experts and country representatives on revised versions as well as another round of author responses), and so on, up through the final, plenary-approved versions.
To be clear, 2,500 reviewers together provided about 90,000 comments on the 44 chapters for the AR4. Each comment is documented on a website that also describes how and why the comment was or was not incorporated in the next revision. Review editors for each chapter worked with the authors to guarantee that each comment was treated properly and honestly in the revision; in fact, no chapter can ever move forward for publication without the approval of its set of two or three review editors.
The US Government opened its reviews of the draft IPCC report to any US expert who wanted to review it. In order to protect against having this preliminary pre-reviewed draft leaked before its ultimate approval by the IPCC Plenary, the US Government asked all potential reviewers to agree not to disclose the contents of the draft. For each report, the US Government assembled its own independent panel of government experts to vet the comments before submission to the IPCC. Anything with scientific merit was forwarded. There were multiple rounds for each of the Working Group reports and the Synthesis Report, and opportunities for US experts to review the drafts were posted as Federal Register notices.
IPCC principles also govern how authors treat published but non-peer reviewed sources. These procedures acknowledge that peer-reviewed scientific journals contain little information about on-the-ground implementation of adaptation or mitigation – matters such as the emission reduction potential in a given industrial sector or country, for example, or catalogues of the specific vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies of sectors and regions with regard to climate change. This information is frequently only available in reports from research institutes, reports of workshops and conferences, or in publications from industries or other non-governmental organizations. This is the so-called gray literature. The IPCC procedure prescribes that authors are obliged to assess critically any gray source that they wish to include. The quality and validity of a finding from a non-peer reviewed source needs to be verified before its finding may be included in a chapter text. Each source needs to be completely traceable; and in cases where gray sources are used, a copy must be deposited at the IPCC Secretariat to guarantee that it is available upon request for third parties.
We conclude that the IPCC procedures are transparent and thorough, even though they are not infallible. Nonetheless, we are confident that no single scholar or small group of scholars can manipulate the process to include or to exclude a specific line of research; authors of that research can (and are fully encouraged to) participate in the review process. Moreover, the work of every scientist, regardless of whether it supports or rejects the premise of human-induced climate change, is subject to inclusion in the reports. The work is included or rejected for consideration based on its scientific merit.
It is important to note that we are not addressing here the criteria and procedures by which the IPCC selects chairs and authors. These are handled exclusively by the IPCC and its members according to terms of reference that were initially defined in the authorizing language of 1988. That is to say, governments or their appointees frame and implement these policies; and they create, approve and staff Technical Support Units for each working group. We do not make suggestions on these topics since they lie beyond our purview.
What comes next?
We expect that the robust findings of the AR4 will be continue to be supported by new information gleaned from literature published since 2006 — i.e., that the climate change issue is serious and real. Given these findings, we believe that the climate change issue deserves the urgent and non-partisan consideration of the country’s legislative and administrative leaders. We feel strongly that exaggerated focus on a few errors from 2007 cannot be allowed to detract from open and honest deliberations about how to respond to climate risk by reducing emissions and promoting adaptation at home and abroad.
As the process of producing the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) begins, the IPCC should become more responsive in acknowledging errors rapidly and openly as they become known. To this end, we urge the IPCC to put an erratum on its website that rectifies all errors that have been discovered in the text after publication. In doing so, a clear distinction needs to be made between errors and progressing knowledge. IPCC assessments are detailed snapshots of the state of scientific knowledge at a given time, while knowledge evolves continuously through ongoing research and experience; it is the errors in the assessments that need immediate attention. In contrast, progressing knowledge is published in new scientific journal articles and reports; this information should be used as a basis for the AR5, but it cannot be listed as errata for the AR4 because it was not available when that assessment was conducted. The website should, as well, respond rapidly and openly when reports of errors in past assessments are themselves in error. We cannot let misperceptions fester anymore than errors go uncorrected.
Climate research and the IPCC reports on the state of knowledge provide a scientific foundation for climate policy making, whose agenda is defined by the governments of the IPCC and not the lead authors per se. The quality of and the balance in the knowledge delivered by any assessment is certainly essential, as is clear and explicit communication of associated uncertainties. Given the recent political and media commotion surrounding a few clear errors, it is now equally essential that we find ways to restore full trust in the integrity of the overwhelming majority of the climate change research and policy communities. To that end, we are pleased that an independent critical evaluation of IPCC procedures will be conducted; we hope that the process will solicit participation by the National Academies of the member nations.
The significance of IPCC errors has been greatly exaggerated by many sensationalist accounts, but that is no reason to avoid implementing procedures to make the assessment process even better. The public has a right to know the risks of climate change as scientists currently understand them. We are dedicated to working with our colleagues and government in furthering that task.
March 10, 2010
Signed:
Gary W. Yohe Wesleyan University and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
gyohe@wesleyan.edu
Stephen H. Schneider Stanford University
shs@stanford.edu
Cynthia Rosenzweig NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University
crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov
William E. Easterling Pennsylvania State University
billeasterling@psu.edu
Wondering Aloud (11:35:57) :
Where do you think you are? Real Climate? They didn’t edit you. Besides you gave us a good chuckle with the “continued accumulation” stuff. Best part is you seem unaware of the irony.
—–
Heh, thanks! RC came to mind right away, they don’t post many of my contributions.
Speaking of having posts yanked, have any of you been to the WUWT “shadow” blog, “Wot’s up with that”?
http://wotsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
Stupid site! Again, they don’t listen to logic. Anthony’s site is a great meeting place for some well-thought out arguments from all sides.
There must be many scientists who previously took the AGW line, until all the lies and false data came to the fore, and have now become sceptics. Can we appeal to those scientists to show their hand and tell the world that AGW science is now totally discredited and that there is no proof whatsoever that governments need to take the ridiculously expensive action corrupted scientists advocate to ‘save the world’. A convert would be a powerful beast for the sceptic cause. They could start by posting their views on this blog.
fredb (07:48:53) :
If I was a USA citizen, I would be pleased to sign this document.
How sad.
George L (12:08:25) :
There must be many scientists who previously took the AGW line, until all the lies and false data came to the fore, and have now become sceptics. Can we appeal to those scientists to show their hand and tell the world that AGW science is now totally discredited and that there is no proof whatsoever that governments need to take the ridiculously expensive action corrupted scientists advocate to ’save the world’. A convert would be a powerful beast for the sceptic cause. They could start by posting their views on this blog.
—–
I’m raising my hand!
I’ve worked in methane mitigation since 1980, at the University of Illinois, combining alternative energy (methane from cow poop to generate electricity) with GHG reduction. I still think this is prudent, as uncontrolled reactive hydrocarbons in the atmosphere have a wide range of deleterious effects such as photochemical smog generation etc. Plus it is a cool source of energy, I’ve worked with pig farms in the Philippines that generate all of their electricity using pig-poop methane! Fun stuff!
However, I never fully bought into the AGW story entirely…in my field (public health), I am considered a heretic for my position. Blame it on my background in astronomy and environmental chemistry, the system is far to complex for the simple models suggested by Jones, Mann etc.
Believe me, the pressure to conform to the AGW consensus in most fields is unbelievable. The scientists who seem most able to to object include geologists, astrophysicists and atmospheric chemists. However, climate change is tangential to their work, and they avoid being cut off from funding streams by not aggressively publishing.
Life sucks & then you die. There are lots of us out there, even more now that Climategate happened. We suspected fraud, now we have the evidence.
Those are scary guys, specially when dealing with eugenics. WWF should take care of them 🙂
CRS, Dr.P.H. (11:31:40) :
OceanTwo (08:30:52) :
The scientists are using an extreme scientific threat. I can’t recall anywhere in history that such extremism is or has been effective – essentially, do this or millions will die.
—–
I’ll give you two:
…
I probably wasn’t clear: extreme scientific threat hasn’t been used to stave of a *real* and extreme problem. Oh, there have been numerous instances of scientific threat, but none of them turned out to be a real threat, solution or even address a significant problem.
I suppose some could argue that being made aware of the threat was enough to stave it off, but there’s a difference between an effective awareness campaign and chicken-little-give-me-money-to-stop-the-sky-from-falling awareness campaign.
When a scientist is so close to an issue, it does appear that that issue is of utmost importance.
Look. LOOK !
The good people attaching their signatures to the letter are
really, really, really , really, REALLY serious about there being nothing to see…
Now, citizen, please move along.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Hansen complained about being muzzled. [snip]
The inmates have taken control of the asylum. They are now signing off on their own quality and performance report.
OT but interesting:
This has been the third hottest winter in Athens Greece since 1897
In descending order:
winter 1935/36 average temperature 16.5C
1954/55 15.8C
2009/10 15.5C
from the data of the National Observatory of Athens, the down town ( Thesion) observatory. ( UHI not subtracted)
Did Schneider support Ehrlich’s positions on nuclear winter, that a nuclear explosion would lower the planet’s temperature by as much as 35C?
So..the readers digest condensed version: You’ve found mistakes, but look how hard we worked.
We used to have a principle in undergrad which was “if you didn’t really have an answer, through everything you had into the report to cover it up.” Now I understand why it worked, the professors used it too.
Deny. Deny. Deny. Deny it exists. Deny it’s important. Deny it’s relevant. Deny it’s wrong. Deny it’s criminal. ‘Deny you had anything to do with it’ is coming up next, I suppose.
Re: anna v (Mar 15 13:11),
That is average maximum temperature, of course.
Sou
I went to the link you suggested, but there was no empirical evidence of any sort concerning AGW. None at all. None. All talk and personal opinion. If I missed something, please be good enough to point it out.
Australians are normally very good at science. Once, the whole world of medicine agreed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress. It could be nothing else, since the stomach was sterile. Consequently millions of people suffered needlessly. But two Australian researchers carried out proper science, using the scientific method, and proved that the ulcers were caused by bacteria. They were awarded the Nobel Prize – richly deserved, unlike the someone we all know and the disreputable organization who the originators of this letter are funded by.
These bozos give us biologists a bad name.
I’m a biologist, but wouldn’t trust these guys to spell “photosynthesis”, never mind explain the effect of elevated CO2 on the process!
“Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reduce the heat going out of the climate system, i.e., the radiation balance of the Earth – and so first principles of physics tell us to expect, with a very high likelihood, that higher temperatures should have been observed.”
The rate of fossil fuel burning increased 1200% after 1945, yet the rate of temperature increase between 1910 and 1945 was far greater than the rate of temperature rise between 1945 and today. This implies that the above hypothesis is incorrect.
“To be clear, 2,500 reviewers together provided about 90,000 comments on the 44 chapters for the AR4. Each comment is documented on a website that also describes how and why the comment was or was not incorporated in the next revision.”
Oh yeah… But look what happened when a certain reviewer actually wanted to see the review comments during, and after, the process:
http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/21/ipcc-and-snail-technology/
The IPCC is now decorating themselves with a transparency that they earlier have gone to ridiculous lenghts to oppose. This part is not their achievement; they should have given due credit to Steve McIntyre.
anna v (13:11:04) :
“This has been the third hottest winter in Athens Greece since 1897”
And Stockholm had the first January with the temperature never rising above freezing since 1829 (UHI not subtracted either).
Only 250? What happened to the tens of thousands I’ve seen referenced occasionally?
The signatories of this letter are a good list of who to fire come the revolution.
“JDN (13:19:58) :
Deny. Deny. Deny. Deny it exists. Deny it’s important. Deny it’s relevant. Deny it’s wrong. Deny it’s criminal. ‘Deny you had anything to do with it’ is coming up next, I suppose”
Is there a competition this week between you trolls about who manages the most disturbed comment?
Oopen ;letter to IPCC defenders
This is in response to your letter dated March 10th, 2010, in defense of the IPCC. First, I would tell you that I am not a climate scientist, but rather a retired pediatrician. That does not mean that I am totally ignorant of Climate issues. However, it does mean that I am totally unknown in the field, literature and even blogs.
I am concerned that you did not include in your letter the two most fundamental issues that the IPCC holds to be true, when in fact they are much in dispute. First, the residence time of CO2 is given as about 50-200 years, as determined by Sir Houghton. As you know he did not account for 50% of the CO2, but came to this conclusion anyway. There have been at least 35 studies by good researchers by various techniques that indicate the residence time is about 5 years, including the studies by Segalstat in 1996-1998, and Essenhigh in 2009. So with this one study you call it a consensus? Please explain that to me. The IPCC contradicts itself by saying in one place it is 50-200 years, then in another place states that the CO2 emitted will be absorbed In a few years. And there is not even mention of these contrary results by these other researchers? Susan Solomon’s study indicating over a 1000 years is not even worth mentioning.
Second, the other fundamental issue is the idea of positive forcing by water vapor in amplifying the effects of rising CO2 levels. As; you know, in nature, a large positive feedback is very uncommon. Nature does not seem to like that idea. The positive feedback is supposed to give three to six times more rise to the temperature of the atmosphere than would occur if the feedback was not present. If there was such a large feedback, over the 4.5 billion years the earth certainly would have perished long ago, as there would be ample time to have this feedback destroy the planet. It has not occurred. It is interesting that in the mathematics of explaining this, the Stephan- Bolzman equation is used. But, I do not find any literature in physics that allows this to be used on a gas. It is supposed to represent the radiation from the SURFACE of a black body, and I would like to know where the surface of a gas is located? A surface radiates only from the surface, but a gas radiates in all directions. I do not find any physics that shows this is a legitimate use of Stephan- Bolzman. Please show me how you reconcile this feedback with the actual observations over these billions of years? Most studies by equally good researchers indicate that the feedback is much less, and may be negative at times, so that there is no runaway temperature.
You say that there is a good control of the contents of the IPCC. But, you fail to mention that most of the comments that were negative were just eliminated by the controllers of the chapters, and were not incorporated in the document. Many examples of that have been published. And the summary for policy makers is not a scientific document, but rather a political paper. You mention the thousands who worked on the IPCC, but do not indicate that only a very small portion of them are really scientists, and of these, they are appointed by the governments in a politically acceptable manner. That is, they are biased to keep the skeptics out. And you failed to mention that only a very small number of members of the committees actually read and commented on the whole document. I find it offensive when you say that 2500 reveiwers were involved, when in fact the vast majority were not climate scientists at all. They were mostly political appointees.
In making the errors of the IPCC a focus of attention, I think you are avoiding the real issue. I think you are naively thinking they are the real issue, when in fact the real issue is one of integrity of the science community that has been overlooking the climate issues. The deceit and lack of transparency, and control of the literature, fudging data, keeping the skeptic point of view out, and personal attacks are terrible.
The other fundamental issue is the modeling one. As you all know, modeling is an infant science. As I understand it, the mathematics of the models involve calculus formulas of differential equations that have no answers. So they use parametrisations, which means they “guess”. Also, the clouds, and solar cycles, PDA, and other ocean occillations are not included, and CO2 is the only important determiner of climate. And the temperature and other data are taken from grids, for which there may be no good data, and the data is homogenized to get results. The data are already homogenized by the various agencies that keep track of this data, and one could and should argue that it is not valid data when it is so treated. The scenarios of the IPCC have been based on these models, and so far they have all been wrong. They are interesting to play with, but useless to predict the future.
Peer review has turned out to be a joke. Peer to Peer is having your buddy review your paper. And you will review his paper. Review means reading it and concurring, not really checking the data and math etc. And you don’t need to bother making the data available for checking. If you are in the right clique, you will do well, but if not…forget it. If you go against the “consensus”, you are dead. And if you are not part of the clique, you will not get published in any journal. They will see to it that you do not. You hope the National academies of Science of the member nations will get involved. But the National Academy of Science of the USA is closed to transparency and refused to poll its members on their position with regard to climate issues.
It is right that you inserted a disclaimer about how the appointments to the IPCC are made, rightly implying that it is a political process, and you wash your hands of that. You are also right in saying that the agenda of politically determined climate policy is determined by the governments, and is not a scientific determination. And you say it is a good thing that there will be an independent critical evaluation of the IPCC, which means that the UN will investigate itself. That does not sound very independent.
Lastly, you indicate that the public has a right to know the risks of climate change (and the risks of political machinations to “combat climate change”?) as scientists currently understand them. The question is which scientists? Did you send your letter to those who hold a different opinion of the IPCC and climate issues and ask for a rebuttal letter?
>> Wondering Aloud (11:56:23) :
For a good laugh copy and paste the signatories in the search bar. I did about a dozen, not a physical scientist in the bunch. The closest I ofund of anyone in terms of profession to competence on this issue was a statistician at Bowling Green; and if he actually thinks that the IPCC report isn’t crap in regards to statistics than Bowling Green may need some help in their math department.
Ok I’ll stop now… for a while <<
Great. They've just validated the Oregon Petition.
“Climate research and the IPCC reports on the state of knowledge provide a scientific foundation for climate policy making, whose agenda is defined by the governments of the IPCC and not the lead authors per se.”
In non-gibberish speak that would mean that the policy is already decided and now they (IPCC) is put to the task to provide scientific justification for it.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (12:25:51)
eugene r wynsen md (15:37:13)
Two excellent posts, demonstrating that there are a lot more intelligent, thoughtful, informed people out there who have enough respect for science not to be suckered into the glib pronouncements of the AGW alarmists, than those hucksters who have spent their careers bamboozling the public realize.
/Mr Lynn