IPCC AR4 also gets a failing grade on 21 chapters

Well done to everyone for revealing the flimsy nature of the IPCC AR4.
You could send a link to the secretary of the Inter-Academy Council who are reviewing (supposedly) IPCC reports.

So a total of 30% of the citations were of non-peer reviewed writings. That’s actually far worse than I expected. It also would be interesting to know how many of the 70% peer reviewed citations were actually referenced correctly (i.e. supported the relevent IPCC text), but that would be a monumental undertaking.

Here is the link to http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/

Perhaps we should report on all the major players and give them a grading…?
Al Gore – for inaccurate, misleading and totally unscientific pronouncements, oh, and for making a truck load of money by scaring people… F
John Kerry – for being in a position of power and influence, but for being so DUMB (I’ve never seen a peer reviewed paper that refutes global warming)… F
George Monbiot – For years of rampant alarmism, but then finally having the balls to admit that Climategate was both damming and a blow to the AGW cause… C+
James Hansen – for.. um, where do you start? For some of the most outrageous pronouncements on global warming every to dribble from a person’s lips… G (only because it’s below an F!)
Steve McIntyre – For vigilance and determination in the face of almost overwhelming odds… A++
There’s plenty more to choose from!

The breakdown of the grading by chapters is interesting – Group one, describing ‘Climate Science’ appears to have been put together somewhat professionally. The part where they start ‘making things up’ comes in with the work from Groups two and three, Impacts and Mitigations, respectively.
So, basically, they may be able to claim to talk about ‘something’ happening, but as far as what that means, and what should be done about it, they don’t seem to have a the first frakkin clue other than their hairshirt agenda.

OUTSTANDING !!!!
Will anyone pay attention ???

An excellent idea, but the auditors have not followed it up with the necessary analysis. Were the references to news articles, etc. *appropriate*? If the cited publication was accurate authority for the proposition footnoted, then it is correct, regardless of whether it is peer-reviewed.
For example, if you are referring to the Kyoto Protocol, you may want to cite to the text of the treaty (not peer reviewed) rather than to a peer-reviewed article about the treaty.

Unfortunately for Framboise she bases her report card (much like many of her past criticisms) on the wrong information. Regardless of what Pachauri has said publicly, the IPCC guidelines do not state that it will only use peer reviewed literature. See for yourself: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data.htm
“[The IPCC will reference] Peer reviewed and internationally available scientific technical and socio-economic literature, manuscripts made available for IPCC review and selected non-peer reviewed literature produced by other relevant institutions including industry.”
[snip]
REPLY: That’s a point of consideration, but consider this: warmists will never again be able to say “but it’s not peer reviewed, and therefore irrelevant without looking like complete fools in the context of citing the IPCC -A

Hi, Riku Mellin, one of the auditors from the project.
I noticed that few people requested more details.
http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/findings-detailed.php
You can find the list of the individual workgroup and under the chapter number you can find “A”, “B” and “C” options, wich all of them have the individual audit.

How many of these grey literature citations stood in isolation *without* a partner peer reviewed citation. My (incomplete) reading of the IPCC is that most often the grey literature citation was a complement to a peer reviewed citation. Unless that distinction is made in this sort of analysis, this posting has little meaning.

This is extremely useful. Its becoming harder and harder for the global warming movement. Now they cant even get away with “It must be peer reviewed” anymore. Poor AGW crowd.

Someone posted here recently that there was a clause somewhere in AR4 allowing grey literature. Don’t know myself. But is a fluff piece by WWF even considered “grey”?

fredb (09:45:45) :
How many of these grey literature citations stood in isolation *without* a partner peer reviewed citation. My (incomplete) reading of the IPCC is that most often the grey literature citation was a complement to a peer reviewed citation. Unless that distinction is made in this sort of analysis, this posting has little meaning
———————–
Reply:
Of what use and of what authority are companion citations that come from non-peer-reviewed sources (regardless of whether or not they ahppen to be paired with peer-reviewed sources)?
Answer? NADA!
The only reason they’re thrown in is to increase “thud factor” — toss the document on the
floor and because it’s thicker, it makes a bigger thud.
Is that what science has come to? (It does’t work for a mid-term English paper, either!)

Well done auditors.
As far as the results go, who would expect anything else from any United Nations organization?

After Climategate last year it was a relief to find that AGW was shall we say, exaggerated. And it’s good news too – man-made CO2 is nothing more than much needed plant food. Public opinion polls show concern for the AGW conjecture is low and we can hope it falls even lower as there is nothing to be concerned about.
The bad news is that the exaggerations and flat out lies continue to inform our leaders and the electorate and MSM couldn’t seem to care less. Donna LaFramoise and her citizen volunteers have shown that so-called gold-standard peer-reviewed science informing the UN and world governments is more exaggeration and in some cases pure hearsay. There is an old saying – nothing ruins the truth like stretching it.
So this what the face of “settled climate science” looks like. Get past the letters after the names; get past the august institutions of academia and government; that’s the mask: rip it off and you get the real face of this so-called settled science. It looks a lot to me like a lynch mob of politically posturing petty intellectuals hungry for totally undeserved public recognition. Rip off the mask; what do you see? I see evil.

The anti science mis informers are which side?

Part of the standard of classifying a paper as “non-peer reviewed” by this report is that the paper in question was published before the modern, scientific peer review process existed. Here is some of scientific literature cited in Working Group 1, Chapter One, that falls in that category:
1. Agassiz, L., 1837: Discours d’ouverture sur l’ancienne extension des glaciers. Société Helvétique des Sciences Naturelles, Neufchâtel
2. Buys Ballot, C.H.D., 1872: Suggestions on a Uniform System of Meteorological Observations. Publication No. 37, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Utrecht, 56 pp.
3. Croll, J., 1890: Climate and Time in Their Geological Relations: A Theory of Secular Changes of the Earth’s Climate, 2nd ed. Appleton, New York, 577 pp.
4. Langley, S.P., 1884: Researches on the Solar Heat and its Absorption by the Earth’s Atmosphere. A Report of the Mount Whitney Expedition. Signal Service Professional Paper 15, Washington, DC.
In the case of the first one listed, the IPCC report reads “Louis Agassiz (1837) developed the hypothesis that Europe had experienced past glacial ages … .” That’s the sum total of the Agassiz reference.
My question is: do the authors of this report card — and everyone here writing in support of this document — believe that it is appropriate to treat a reference of scientific literature like this one (Agassiz) on the exact same basis that contemporary peer-reviewed scientific literature (e.g., Mann) is referenced?

I still think they’d be more accurate and honest if the used a Beer Review Process.
Couldn’t be any worse than their current process.

Sphaerica (10:26:05) :
“IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.”…..Rajendra Pachauri.
So, Sphaerica, I ask you, is the head of this group that stupid that he doesn’t know the rules governing his work product, or is he so dishonest that he’d wish to mislead the world regarding his work product?
Further, you know, like I know, the words “peer reviewed” has been part and parcel of the alarmist mantra. So much so, the sentiments have echoed the above quote.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter if the rules allowed “grey” material or not. The head of the group (Pachy) either doesn’t know what the rules are or is completely dishonest. This alone and in itself is enough to invalidate the work product. The reasons for the invalidation is exemplified by the many statements that came out of the IPCCs work product that were shown to be so blatantly wrong. (Rapidly melting glaciers in the Himalayan, for example .) They were either too stupid for such an undertaking or grossly dishonest. I suspect both, but will be difficult to prove.

James Sexton,
Funny you should mention glaciers. WUWT loves to post articles on weather and anecdotal events (look! it snowed this winter! global warming can’t exist!), but there’s no mention of the glacier that collapsed in peru, destroying fifty homes in the process.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/13/massive-glacier-triggers-tsunami-lake/
REPLY: I’m so sorry, my all seeing eye is defective today. Please be sure to note weather events on other countries, continents, moons, and planets that WUWT didn’t write about so that you can build up and knock down those ridiculous straw man arguments as well.
-Anthony “one eye” Watts

bubbagyro (10:24:34) :
This audit is a great start, but let’s not fall into the “if it’s peer reviewed, it’s OK”. How many of the “peer reviewed” papers are from controversial journals like Science or Nature?
————-
Good point. It’s not just climate science that’s a problem at these journals. Anything with an alarmist spin will be defended and the opposing science is suppressed. A case in point:
Fisheries Research 86 (2007) 1–5
Alan Longhurst
“Doubt and certainty in fishery science: Are we really headed for a global collapse of stocks?”
“…a recent article in ‘Science’ by Worm et al. (2006) was more alarmist: their analysis of a spatially interpolated version of the FAO archives led these authors to conclude that the rate of stock collapses had accelerated throughout the period 1950–2004. They extrapolate this trend in such a way that many readers understood that all exploited fish and invertebrate stocks
could collapse before mid-21st century if remedial action was not taken: even more extreme interpretations of the text were widely reported in the news media….”
” …critical comments concerning the article have been offered to the Science editors by several fishery scientists: one of these suggested that the ‘collapse’ data had been obtained by Worm et al. from FAO archives using unreliable assumptions. But, at the time of writing, in January 2007, no critical comment has yet been published by Science; the only response that I have seen from the editorial staff concern my own (rejected) comments on this apparent failure of peer review, and are meaningless: “We are aware that fisheries science and ocean ecology are contentious subjects, and that areas of legitimate disagreement exist” (Sugden, in litt.).”
After presenting evidence for the flawed use of statistical tools and other problems with Worm’s research, Longhurst comments:
“The results reported by Worm et al., and the very public interpretation of their text, must raise in our minds the issue of doubt and certainty in science (Young, 1951), and the increasing difficulty of certifying that important scientific results have a reasonable probability of being correct. The managing editor of Science, whose response I quoted above, had it completely wrong: if fisheries science and ocean ecology are contentious subjects, it is perhaps only because the process by which contributions are assessed by disinterested reviewers is starting to fail us.
Inevitably we are drawn to consider the apparent failure of peer reviewing in cases like this, and to the essential question: how should we resolve doubt and certainty in science now that individual scientists appear more likely than in the past to espouse social issues that are related to their research? If this is really the case, how may we now ‘certify’ that a scientific conclusion is the result of unbiased investigations and has received a disinterested review? More specifically, what are the consequences of part of the scientific community losing confidence in the review processes in what the press refers to as ‘influential scientific periodicals’?”
I wanted to draw WUWT readers’ attention to the fact that climate science is not an outlier in this problem. I had seen other people here comment that Science and Nature were tainted journals, and thought this might be a good opportunity to give evidence that this is a general problem. Longhurst also critiques ‘faith-based fisheries science’ – another familiar theme here.
(For those who might want to link to this article, it is available through a paywall at Scholar’s Portal.)
bubbagyro’s argument that articles published in these two journals should not be counted as being properly peer-reviewed should be taken seriously.

This news article came from Reuters, how true is it?
Glacier breaks in Peru, causing tsunami in Andes
By Marco Aquino
LIMA, April 12 (Reuters) – A huge glacier broke off and
plunged into a lake in Peru, causing a 75-foot (23-metre)
tsunami wave that swept away at least three people and
destroyed a water processing plant serving 60,000 local
residents, government officials said on Monday.
The ice block tumbled into a lake in the Andes on Sunday
near the town of Carhuaz, some 200 miles (320 km) north of the
capital, Lima. Three people were feared buried in debris.
Investigators said the chunk of ice from the Hualcan
glacier measured 1,640 feet (500 metres) by 656 feet (200
metres).
“This slide into the lake generated a tsunami wave, which
breached the lake’s levees, which are 23 metres high — meaning
the wave was 23 metres high,” said Patricio Vaderrama, an
expert on glaciers at Peru’s Institute of Mine Engineers.
Authorities evacuated mountain valleys, fearing more
breakages.
It was one of the most concrete signs yet that glaciers are
disappearing in Peru, home to 70 percent of the world’s
tropical icefields. Scientists say warmer temperatures will
cause them to melt away altogether within 20 years.
In 1970, not far from Carhuaz, an earthquake triggered an
avalanche of ice, rock and mud on the mountain of Huascaran
that buried the town of Yungay, killing more than 20,000 people
who lived below Peru’s tallest peak, which sits 22,204 feet
(6,768 metres) above sea level.
(Writing by Luis Andres Henao; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Kilde: Reuters (via NTB)

Dear moderator: I’m very sorry. I’ve just submitted a comment that’s missing an tag. It should appear after “Advertised” in the first sentence. My apologies. Also, if you’re feeling particularly kind-hearted, in the 3rd paragraph the removal of “are supposed to be” would make things more readable.
Donna Laframboise
[Already been fixed. ~dbs]

Reference those who say the IPCC standards allow use of non-peer reviewed sources, and that the “F” grade is thereby invalidated. The standards specify:
“5. Treatment in IPCC Reports Non-peer-reviewed sources will be listed in the reference sections of IPCC Reports. These will be integrated with references for the peer-reviewed sources. These will be integrated with references to the peer reviewed sources stating how the material can be accessed, but will be followed by a statement that they are not published.”
I checked one chapter in WG2’s report and (in an admittedly cursory scan) found 0 (zero) notes about non-published references, and 1 (one) that told how to access a report, but even it did not state whether it was published. There were a number of website URLs, but none that I found identified explicitly peer-review vs non-peer review.
So, the statement that non-peer reviewed sources are permitted is true. What it IMPLIED, that the standards allowed them to be quoted without identifying them as such, is not.

Incestuous Science
Papers such as the Guardian and the Independent dislike economic development as much as they dislike poverty, which limits their options somewhat. They fall back on token efforts to reduce poverty, such as Fairtrade, which don’t threaten to make the poor any more of a burden on the world’s resources, while at the same time campaigning against “climate change” in the hope that a marginally different future climate will prevent poverty getting even worse.
In much the same way, we find the Third World development charity Oxfam, another stalwart of modern environmentalism, increasingly campaigning against both “climate change” and Third World development.
Is it true that “there is no politics in science”? As we can see, alarmism projects itself through the seemingly-scientific projection. Might this have been made possible because of the way Ch.10 itself came into existence? For example, an interesting bias emerges when Ch.10’s authors are surveyed:
USA: number of researchers 28, Secondary affiliation, 1.
UK: number of researchers 17, Secondary affiliation 3.
Germany: number of researchers 7, Secondary affiliation 1.
Japan: number of researchers 7, Secondary affiliation 0.
France: number of researchers 6, Secondary affiliation 0.
Switzerland: number of researchers 6, Secondary affiliation 0.
Canada: number of researchers 4, Secondary affiliation 0.
China: number of researchers 3, Secondary affiliation 2.
Belgium: number of researchers 3, Secondary affiliation 0.
Australia: number of researchers 3, Secondary affiliation 0.
Russian Federation: number of researchers 2, Secondary affiliation 2.
Netherlands: number of researchers 2, Secondary affiliation 0.
ECMWF (LINK): number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Finland number: of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
India: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Monaco: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Sweden: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
Senegal: number of researchers 1, Secondary affiliation 0.
TOTALS: number of researchers 94, Secondary affiliation 9.
Non – US/UK: number of researchers 49,
US / UK: number of researchers 45,
(Some contributors to Ch.10 are listed as belonging to 2 countries).
In the case of the UK, at least, two decades of emphasis that politicians have placed on climate research has had a dramatic effect. Also interesting is that it is the country which for a long time has been considered the enemy of action to prevent climate change – the USA – which appears to have contributed most to the development of climate models. But on an per-capita basis, no country rivals the UK.
That the UK is a world leader in a field of climate research is not necessarily a bad thing. But it does speak about the priorities and prejudices that dominate the political sphere, which, in turn, is reflected in the constitution of academic climate science, represented in Ch.10. The UK since Thatcher, and increasingly in recent years, has sought to establish its moral authority on the world stage by embracing the “climate issue”, and making it the principle substance of international relations, and latterly its domestic polices: its “Green New Deal”, its “Industrial Strategy”, its “sustainability agenda”, its energy policy, and so on . Whether or not these politics are expressed in the science, it somehow leaves a footprint that is politically-shaped, even if it isn’t politically-driven.
It’s a mainstay of the argument for “action” on “climate change” that the “overwhelming majority” of climate scientists are in agreement on the need for it. Yet as the table above shows, there are just 94 authors responsible for compiling the report in which, alarmists argue, the case for alarm rests. “Ah, but…”, says the alarmist, “it’s the weight of evidence that counts”. Never mind that there is no evidence for something that hasn’t happened yet – the catastrophe which is the object of the alarmism – these 94 researchers do not draw from a wealth of research, but manage instead to cite themselves a whopping 317 times in a document that contains references to just 550 papers (including references to previous IPCC reports).
If we excluded those papers in which the chapter’s authors were directly involved, there would be only 292. Just eight researchers manage to cite themselves no less than 110 times – over a third of the chapter’s self-citations, and a fifth of the total.
Researcher: Jonathan M Gregory, Country: UK, number of Citations 19
Researcher: Gerald A Meehl, Country: USA , number of Citations 17
Researcher: Thomas F Stocker, Country: Switzerland, number of Citations 13
Researcher: T M L Wigley, Country: USA, number of Citations 13
Researcher: Myles Allen, Country: UK, number of Citations 12
Researcher: P Huybrechts, Country: Belgium, number of Citations 12
Researcher: Sarah C B Raper, Country: UK, number of Citations 12
Researcher: R J Stouffer, Country: USA, number of Citations 12
TOTAL: 110
Between the USA and UK, there are 208 self-citations from the 45 researchers. Authors from just two countries produced nearly half the entire body of “evidence” for alarmism, which they “review” for themselves.
The population of self-citing climate modeler-projectionists are so small in number, and so interconnected that there may be an argument that it constitutes a community with its own insular politics. Given the predominance of certain individuals from that population in the climate debate, it seems hard to argue otherwise. That’s one for sociologists to mull over, perhaps.
Don’t think I’m throwing out these numbers in order to argue that the science presented in ch.10 is rubbish. There’s nothing strange about self-citations or geographical bias or the dominance of small subsets of individuals in science. You would find similar dynamics in pretty much any other specialist field. This example gives an idea of the workings of a research community that has provided the raw material on which much of the “man-made global warming” alarmism is based.
The alarmist’s case does not reflect the opinion of an “overwhelming majority of scientists”, and there is not an “overwhelming body of evidence”. There is clearly a political dimension to the constitution of both the body of WGI Ch.10 authors, and the research it draws from.
The real casualty is not climate science, but climate alarmism, and by retreating to the firm scientific ground of WGI, alarmists demonstrate that clearly. Without WGII and WGIII, there are no grounds for alarm. All the promises, projections and prophecies are contained in WGII and III. Without a scientific basis for alarm, all you have left at your disposal is precaution, as Ed Miliband has discovered.
Alarmist articles oscillate wildly between headlines that proclaim “How the ‘Climategate’ scandal is bogus and based on climate sceptics’ lies” and “Climate change emails between scientists reveal flaws in peer review”. First, they appear to be suggesting that those behind the climate emails are the victims of “lies”, and then they “reveals how [the same] researchers tried to hide flaws in a key study”. On the one hand, the alarmists want to hold with the political arguments they have long been making, but they are also working double-time with doublethink to explain what happened to the science that was only recently “incontrovertible”.
It’s a bed the alarmists have made for themselves. They wanted a catastrophe, and now they’ve got one.

Some people make of all this way too complicated. As a common (well educated but non-scientist) person it really boils down to this: we hired a group of individuals to produce a scientific report; they produced a report that they claimed was science based; now we (the people who hired the report makers) take a look at the final product and realize that it isn’t what we paid for, and it isn’t what they claimed it to be. It honestly doesn’t matter one bit to me whether or not you can find in the fine print of the IPCC rules that non-peer reviewed literature would be allowed to be included. They were hired to produce science, they claimed to have produced science, and now we find they produced something of the quality of a newspaper article. This isn’t what we were paying them to do, and it isn’t what they said they had done!

1- It just came out and you can already judge it’s quality, methods etc?
2 – It is not clear what IPCC’s stand on non-peer reviewed material
3 – Even if IPCC has/had a rule: only peer-reviewed, it is a stupid rule
4 – Grey material ranges from rubbish to superior compared to peer-reviewed
articles. For instance, extensive reports from FAO or Swedish Env Inst are not
as limited in scope and well resourced in man-hours put down.
5 – The problem is that you have to actually read the grey product to assess
its merits, but actually the same often applies to peer-reviewed articles
6 – Fundamentalism in this context is wrong; in the end only the evidence
and the arguments presented matters.

H.J. Durham and Donna LaFramboise:
I think you are interpreting Annex 2 different from the IPCC authors. Just do a quick search for the term “unpublished” in IPCC AR4 and you will find several references labeled as such…unpublished references. Here’s one example page that includes an unpublished reference: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch11s11-references.html

Does this confirm that a political agenda was more important than quality science?
And, those that are pro-AGW, what say you?
If good science is your goal, how can you support this?

…(The Guardian and The Independent) fall back on token efforts to reduce poverty, such as Fairtrade, which don’t threaten to make the poor any more of a burden on the world’s resources, while at the same time campaigning against “climate change” in the hope that a marginally different future climate will prevent poverty getting even worse.

FairTrade is not going to help anyone get out of poverty. Free enterprise, property rights, and individual freedom are what they should be supporting. And if they are worried about climate change adversely affecting the poor, the emphasis should be on fight poverty.
Wealth allows people to adapt to a changing world. Wealthier people are also more concerned about the environment. Poor people are worried about short-term survival and have no means to pay for pollution controls and environmental cleanup.

bubbagyro (10:43:31) :
“I agree with Sphaerica.
Almost all of the articles in the IPCC, peer reviewed or not, are cherry-picked to support their hare-brained hypotheses, or else their membership in the Club Gore and access to lucrative grants are jeopardized.”
Since most peer-reviewed articles on AGW are from proponents, there
is no need for cherry-picking.
One would think that IPCC’s evident acceptance of the validity of grey
litterature would suit the sceptics, since you feel discriminated by
journals and could thus find other channels, which would be
impicitly acknowledged by IPCC, in principle that is.
The content will always decide in the end.

Funny that all the chapters in Working Group 1, where the actual climate science is laid out, seemed to get A’s. One could argue that Working Group 1 is the only one that really matters, considering that that’s where the climate science is. Of course Working Groups 2 and 3, on fuzzier stuff like adaptation and energy, are going to be less rigorous scientifically.

As for the IPCC report – a big round of applause to all the people who pored over the contents and made Pachauri’s claim of 100% peer review a complete nonsense and a damnable lie!

When you’re in a hole, stop digging!

Very interesting article and certainly destroys any remaining credibility that Pachuri might have had left.
Of the grey literature, does anyone know how much was published by advocacy groups or similar organisations who might have had a very specific agenda? Given the concentration of “F”s in WG2 and 3 I’ve got a hunch that it might be quite high.
Some of the criticism of this article also seems a bit misplaced. If one were to write a paper for an exam with a similar level of unreviewed references would it get an “F”? To my mind the question isn’t really whether the IPCC used unreviewed citations, simply that by using so many in what really are the critical parts politically, do they in fact deserve to get an “F”?
If we agree that they would, would the fix simply be to go back and rework it so that they don’t use so many?
Then, by leaving out much of the unreviewed material does it materially affect either the impacts of AGW or its mitigation?

Also, having read and reread Laframboise’s claims, she doesn’t say that the report claims only to use peer reviewed material. She does, however, say that it is claimed over and over again, not least by its Chairman and not even all that long ago, that it only uses peer reviewed material, and that such a claim is incorrect.
I think that Max and Todd both need to apologise for the pointless introduction of their straw man. Sorry guys, you can’t criticise her for an incorrect claim that she doesn’t make.
Nice try at hiding the pea though.

For all those doubters who think that ‘grey-papers’ are allowed in IPCC reports, here’s a quote from the head of the IPCC.
“IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.”…..Rajendra Pachauri.
So if he is correct, a mistake has been made regarding IPCC Policy – if he is wrong, the head of the IPCC is a fool or a liar. The whole organisation is a joke, much like the rest of the UN.
Regarding the peer reviewed papers used in the report, it would be useful to know how many have been refuted by subsequent papers? This would be another massive job, but I suspect it would be revealing!
The whole IPCC climate scam really built on the shallowest of foundations, just like the conjecture of CAGW.

So we should dismiss what Hansen says based on the facts that he sells books based on it? Good point!
We should also dismiss everything the Club Of Rome says. They sell their reports in book form.
Oh, and a lot of peer reviewed pro AGW papers are behind pay walls.
You’re a concern troll.
By DirkH on April 14, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I am saying exactly what I said. And the point was quite obvious. We should be in this to make a point, not money out of it. This lady is.
And don’t you dare accuse me of being a troll.

When do they release the Fourth Assessment Report-Corrected Edition (FARCE)? When it’s complete?

What proportion are peer review but not scientific, ie, based on the guesswork of computer models?

“blackswhitewash.com (14:17:30) :
[…]
I am saying exactly what I said. And the point was quite obvious. We should be in this to make a point, not money out of it. This lady is.
And don’t you dare accuse me of being a troll.”
What about Steve Mosher? Do you extend your accusations on him? He makes money out of climategate, doesn’t he? He’s written a book.

blackswhitewash, are you identical to climategatestuff or what’s going on here? Please don’t do that.

Max Westin (09:33:29) :
I was going to make the same point Max. I couldn’t find any claim by the IPCC that supported the statement “We’ve been told it’s 100 percent peer-reviewed science.”
Perhaps it’s just our favorite railway engineer shouting his mouth off.
Interesting work all the same.

Kate.
Excellent article. I read it twice but it was worth it.
Mikael P.
Do you really think that one’s mother tongue determines success in publishing in journals? Actually, I probably agree which says everything about so called peer review.
As someone said earlier (metallurgist) it is essential for all young researchers to be published and most papers are fairly ordinary but they keep their fingers crossed. Certainly, in medicine, one might be advised as to which journal might be appropriate i.e. different standards of ‘validity’, whether in design or statistical interpretation etc. But, once published they often seem to have the same ‘truthfulness’ at least as far as the media is concerned. Peer review only means that the paper is not complete rubbish, on a first cursory read, but says nothing about the true validity of the paper.

RobJM (14:48:18) :
What proportion are peer review but not scientific, ie, based on the guesswork of computer models?
Really, you cannot reason like that. Computer models are part of
science. Period.
You could possibly maintain that IPCC use of models is guesswork,
meaning that they apply the method in a bad way .
I don’t agree with that conclusion.

If there were any clearer evidence that this whole thing is one great “groupthink” mistake, it is the way all these reports are full of bogus science. In proper science, there is proper scrutiny and stupid stuff like this would never have found its way into the reports.
Instead, not only is their dodgy dossier full of bogus science, they even are stupid enough to try to defend their own failings. And by doing so, not only do we know that their reports are dodgy, we also know that the whole system of review and oversight is also highly dodgy: the whole system is corrupt, and so it is inevitable that anything produced by this corrupt system is also corrupt.

Didn’t see this in any previous comments. My apologies if I’m simply repeating known information.
IPCC chapters receiving a grade of A:
Chapter 2: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing
Chapter 3: Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change
Chapter 5: Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level
Chapter 6: Palaeoclimate
Chapter 8: Climate Models and their Evaluation
Chapter 7: Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry
Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change
Chapter 10: Global Climate Projections

Donna Laframboise (11:30:28) :

One of my favorite pages from our report is titled How the IPCC report has been Advertised. It’s a list of quotes – from Dr. Pachauri, from the US Enivironmental Protection Agency, and media outlets ranging from the The Economist to the Associated Press.
All these quotes declare that the IPCC report is based only and solely on peer-reviewed literature. This is the grand myth of the IPCC. And Pachauri is not the only one who has peddled it for years.
…
If you can’t even describe your own report accurately, don’t expect folks like me to believe anything else that comes out of your mouth. Nothing Pachauri now says about his organization or his report has any credibility.

Thank you very much, both for the report, and this sensible and reasoned riposte.

@ magicjava (16:13:58) :
“Didn’t see this in any previous comments. My apologies if I’m simply repeating known information.
IPCC chapters receiving a grade of A:………………”
Yes, the grading was based upon how many peer-reviewed references were used vs. “gray” material. So, I’m a bit confused about your post. Is it that peer-reviewed material only matters in your mentioned chapters? Or that it doesn’t matter at all? Or perhaps only those that are important to you? I’m not sure.
What I took away from the article……. A quote from our favorite train engineer, Pachy(man in charge of the IPCC report) “IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.”
Pachy was being either blatantly stupid or blatantly dishonest. Either way, the man in charge of the report was/is obviously unfit. His entire work product is invalidated, regardless of the few “A”s they got based on the few chapters that included some peer-reviewed studies.
Moreover, if he truly believed that only peer-reviewed material was being used, then his subordinates were picking and choosing the material they wished in the report and ignoring other material without his knowledge. If he did have knowledge then he has shown a propensity to mislead and misinform the public. However you wish to perceive Pachy, his body of work is invalidated by his own statement. (Or one could look at the fantastic claims made by the report that has already been discredited.)

vigilantfish (15:55:25) :
Please note that Longhurst echoes the fears of other scientists that the peer-review system is failing, first in the failure to get articles properly reviewed in the first place, and then second, in the refusal of scientific journals such as Science and Nature to publish the criticisms of published work by highly qualified scientists.
Dr T G Watkins (15:28:50) :
Do you really think that one’s mother tongue determines success in publishing in journals? Actually, I probably agree which says everything about so called peer review.
Peer-review system is indeed failing; for sure it is overburdened by the
shee volume of articles submitted. Still doubtful on Science & Nature bias though. There is of course nothing magic with S & N, only we have made
them so important for impact points etc. Peer-review was a bad system all along, but the best we have. As TCW says, it is a minimum standard. The
slight(?) edge of being a native English speaker cannot perhaps be blamed on peer-review, since a native speaker objectively tends to express himself
better. The effect of US/UK being dominant in excellence is hard to separate
from any language effect.

If tomorrow morning i presented the IPCC with hard evidence that falsified AGW, would they disband?
Anser: NO
Why? Answer: A tangled web of vested interests (‘research’ funding, salaries, Pachauri, Gore, Oxburgh – insert others – …….)
If and when AGW collapses it is going to be very embarrasing indeed.

Donna Laframboise
I, also, thank you , for an excellent, well written, report.
It would be such a positive step forward if, somehow, someone, would initiate a class-action lawsuit against the IPCC and the lead scientists, for fraud.
[ie accepting government/taxpayers funds for fraudulent scientific reports.]
Steven K (12:07:29) said it beautifully. Thanks Steven.

Oops – sorry Mod – I missed pasting these 5 lines to the top of my previously posted table
Working Group 3, Chapter 4 F 15 360 85 Energy supply
Working Group 3, Chapter 7 F 23 352 77 Manufacturing and process industries
Working Group 3, Chapter 1 F 24 50 76 Introduction
Working Group 3, Chapter 5 F 27 260 73 Transport and its infrastructure
Working Group 3, Chapter 6 F 29 379 71 Residential and commercial buildings

James Sexton:
“To be perfectly honest, I really don’t care about whether the science backs up climate change or not.”
That pretty much says it all right there.

@WillR (17:31:21) :
For those who wish to audit the auditors and re-do the work… Please! Feel free to do so. The checks would be most welcome
”
Thank you WillR
The audit was undertaken with good intentions and was for the most part a laborious and thankless task, though it did on occasions give us some insight into the science. In many cases this was a positive experience.
Sure, there were cases when we missed out “reprints” or had to make decisions about historical papers that pre-dated the modern peer-review process, but we believe we did this in as fair and transparent manner as possible.
If anyone wants to review or do further work on this then I am sure Donna would be happy to engage.

“simply made stuff up”
Don’t even need acorns for this falling sky. It’s just falling. Take their word and fork over the cash.

21 of 44 chapters in the United Nations’ Nobel-winning climate bible earned an F
Ya, that does sound like government work.
BTW, George Bernard Shaw and Yasser Arafat won Nobel Prizes. So it’s ‘anything goes’ there.

Johnny D (18:00:26) :
James Sexton:
“To be perfectly honest, I really don’t care about whether the science backs up climate change or not.”
That pretty much says it all right there.
That’s really cool man. Do you really think you can take something out of context like that? I mean really, all anyone would have to do is scroll up as see this….
“To be perfectly honest, I really don’t care about whether the science backs up climate change or not. I’ve known our climate was in a constant state of change for some time now.”
Sorry if you didn’t pay attention during your 5th grade science class, but the climate changing has been common knowledge for most self-aware entities for some time now. You know, carrying the “scientist” label doesn’t mean they hold some obscure yet unequivocal truth about mankind and nature. What’s next for you? Do we need to spend a few billion taxpayer dollars/pounds to inform you that lightening can be dangerous? Maybe Mike Mann can do a study to show you how lightening is caused by man’s methane emissions and we can find some totalitarian cure for that too?
You know, you could have just honestly engaged me in a conversation, or even actually answered my question. But, again, it’s common knowledge alarmist won’t and can’t. It probably goes back to their attention span in the 5th grade.

hro001:
My contention was that the term “published” in Annex 2 may not mean published in a peer-reviewed publication but instead published in a form that was available to the public. The evidence seems to point to the latter definition.
In any case, after reading your response and that of Donna Laframboise, I’m left wondering why you wasted all this time just to answer the question:
“Are Rajendra Pachauri’s, “science” journalists’ and other media mavens’ claims that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment reports are “all on the basis of peer-reviewed literature” supported by the evidence in the references?”
when 5 minutes spent reading IPCC procedures would’ve given you the answer. I think the likely reason is that you, like the “media mavens” who also got it wrong, just accepted Pachauri’s statement without fact checking actual IPCC procedures and now you’re left scrambling to find an actual use for your report card project. It certainly doesn’t cast any doubt on the IPCC report itself. To do that, you’d actually have to spend time looking at the grey literature references, see how they were used, and then determine whether they were appropriate.
Hey, I think I just got an idea for a book…

@ Todd Brunner (19:30:36) :
It isn’t whether the rules stated they did or didn’t use peer-reviewed sources, or even whether they were allowed by the rules. It goes deeper than that. The article of this thread directly quotes Pachauri. You think he forgot what the rules were? He was/is in charge of the damned thing. If he doesn’t know what the rules are about including or excluding material, then the contributors are including and excluding material at their leisure conforming to their own biases.(We all knew that already, but this is proof.) Or it is occurring with the approval of Pachauri and he’s intentionally misleading the public. (Again, we all knew that, but this is DIRECT PROOF!) All we have to do is give Pachy a test to see how cognate he is of reality. I suspect we’ll find that Pachy is cognate, the subordinates acted with his approval and did include or exclude material at their leisure according to their personal biases and without regard to the scientific merits of the work referenced. We’ve already seen that with the Himalayan glacier melt reference and others.

I think that this topic points out how the process was manipulated. As I recall it was stated many times that of you wanted to present a “negative point of view” regarding AGW all one need do was write a paper, get it peer reviewed and it could (might?) be included in the IPCC assessment.
The work by Donna Laframboise and her team of volunteers was worthwhile for one point alone: Clearly the “science” and “policy” work commissioned or reviewed for the IPCC reports need not be peer reviewed if it was “on message”, i.e. it supported the “so-call consensus view”. I really do think that the point is quite clear now. In other words — “get your work peer reviewed for inclusion” was just so much balderdash and a smoke screen. You gained inclusion and became part of the “in crowd” by going along to get along.
If you can’t draw any other conclusion from the work it should be clear that the work need not be peer reviewed — it need only provide the right message.

Dave Worley (18:41:06) :
“I know this is somewhat OT.
I suppose we can afford to shut down our space program.
We can always design a computer model of a spacecraft delivering a telescope to the lunar pole.”
This is not a bad example, but if you think about it for awhile:
Modelling is the reason why you can send the astronauts out there
and get them safely back. To simplify boldly: if you are anti-model,
you are anti-science and why are you then in a debate about science?

Someone point out my mistake but a book not based on total facts is a book of fiction?

hro001:
I can’t really understand what your getting at here. What is my “published/unpublished quandry”? It seems like you are trying to argue that “several” can’t mean “6 out of 18,631”. Please elaborate.
And I’ve already said I agree that Pachauri and any other media source that said the IPCC contained only peer-reviewed material was wrong. Like many people I discovered this fact years ago when I decided to check what their official procedures were. So Pachauri says something wrong about the IPCC report and you, for some reason, decide to grade the IPCC report based on his incorrect statement. How is this of value?

Todd Brunner (05:04:39) : Phil Clarke (16:30:20) : see below
“So Pachauri says something wrong about the IPCC report and you, for some reason, decide to grade the IPCC report based on his incorrect statement. How is this of value?”
Indeed. How is this of great value? and is it fair & balanced? as the
saying goes. I do however see potential value in the exercise,
provided it is not disseminated further under the propagandistic
slogan:
21 of 44 =F, 5600 grey references, 1 discredited IPCC report!
Because, a citizen panel generally is what scientists should crave for:
involving citizens in the process creating greater understanding of
science and science/policy interactions. There are also difficulties;
Phil Clarke (16:30:20) :
I then took a reference classified as ‘not peer-reviewed’ and looked
it up:
Gritsevsky, A., and N. Nakicenovic, 2002: Modelling uncertainty of
induced technological change. In: Technological change and the environment, A. Grubler, N. Nakicenovic, W.D. Nordhaus, (eds.).
Resources for the Future, pp. 251-279.
Certainly, the cited article is a book chapter, and books are not peer-reviewed, but somehow our ‘citizen auditors’ managed to
miss the fact that the it is a reprint from the very much peer-reviewed Energy policy, and it has been cited an impressive 131 times in the literature. It took me about 2 minutes with Google Scholar to
discover this.
[ and to complicate; some books are nowadays peer-reviewed MP]
We would be demanding a lot from non-specialists! and afterwards
possibly, would have to criticise them (audit, public discussions).
Maybe include a board of scientists for advice on the methodology?
Not sitting at the same table during the work, but available. Then,
this board could take part of the rap.
The question of what Pachauri/IPCC has actually said is not totally
clear to me, but I guess he could be rebuked . However, are
you all aware that Pachauri (or the scientists) are not receiving a
salary from IPCC? Ask any Project Mangement Consultant; in his/her
judgement can a organisation the size of IPCC be effectively run
with a volunteer leader? IPCC is a first-time experiment; with hind-
sight it could have been better structured.
I know a wave of ridicule might be on its way: Pachauri has lined his
pocket 10 times a top executive salary by other means. Well,
then we have to investigate that also, according to proper procedure.
At this level, we cannot assume that the executives will not have
their private economy well-buffered or that they should give up their
businesses (unless there is conflict of interest). If that is the criteria,
the leaders would have to be retired billionaires only.

@DirkH, addendum to kadaka (07:12:27):
The “climategatestuff” link (climategatestuff.wordpress.com) goes straight to blackwhitewash.com. Same site, two different links here going to it, attached to two different aliases. Draw your own conclusions.

mikael pihlström (00:59:47) :
“Modelling is the reason why you can send the astronauts out there
and get them safely back.”
Nope, the reason we could do it was that we had the will.
Animations appear to suffice today.

mikael pihlström (01:09:52) :
You will have to admit, that in the sceptic movement it is becoming
commonplace, to dogmatically look for the word ‘model’ and then
declare the science invalid.
——————-
The origins of my scepticism lie with the misinterpretation of models by fisheries scientists: the models used by fisheries scientists who were recommending catch limits for the Grand Banks fisheries in the 1980s were generated using too many assumptions about natural mortality, the fishing mortality rates, and recruitment rates. I.e. – there was not enough data to justify the conclusions being drawn from the models. The result? The most calamitous collapse of groundfish stocks in the history of the North Atlantic fisheries. The good thing was that this event forced scientists to go back to the drawing board and re-examine their assumptions.
Models are not evidence, they are tools. Where is the evidence that reinforces the claims being made by climate scientists that catastrophic, or even non-catastrophic, global warming is occurring DUE to human-generated CO2? WUWT provides a plethora of evidence in numerous postings over the past several years that there are few if any measurable effects from this source.

mikael pihlström (13:13:49) :
I feel as if I am repeating tropes here, but the lovely thing for climate scientists is that their predictions are so far in the future that most of them will have spent their last paycheck and be long since stowed in the ground before their predictions are rejected or verified.
Even before climate alarmism took off and climate science became a hive of ideological and politicized activity (back in the innocent days of the study of weather) I was drawing mental parallels between meteorology and fisheries science. Both deal with attempts to predict the future course of events. Meteorologists so far have little success beyond a 5 day horizon. Fisheries scientists try to use past data to project the total allowable catch at a certain proportion of the fish stock. Their calculations include the recruitment of fish (successful spawning and survival to the first year), growth, natural mortality from predation etc, as well as fishing mortality.
Since the cod stock collapsed the science has been refined and models are being used more cautiously. The sustainable yield is now calculated as a much smaller portion of the stock. Scientists now must also account for variations in water temperatures and long-term climate change whether natural or not, and multispecies interactions, the role of environmental damage (e.g. effects of bottom trawling) fish behaviour and other parameters. They still rely on models, but the models, while vital tools, are now treated more cautiously, and cross checked by a variety of mathematical and empirical techniques.
The variables for fisheries science are enormous. Yet they are at least equalled by those that challenge climate science. The computer models of the 1990s made no provision for the effects of clouds or solar variation, or the PDO or AO or numerous other parameters. But while fisheries scientists had to change the way they operate due to the the collapsing fish stocks, there is never any consequence when climate scientists’ models turn out to be way off target. They simply reboot and start all over again, always with the same story, modifying their models to keep their hypothesis of global warming going, while declaring the science to be settled. Furthermore, to push their story they rewrote history: Michael Mann’s now thoroughly discredited hockey stick graph (a model of the past) is an example of why it is hard for sceptics to treat climatologists’ projection models with much reverence. It also turns out that while they are embarked on a an argument that relies heavily on statistics, they are not very good statisticians. See
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/

vigilantfish (15:26:25) :
“Furthermore, to push their story they rewrote history: Michael Mann’s now thoroughly discredited hockey stick graph (a model of the past) is an example of why it is hard for sceptics to treat climatologists’ projection models with much reverence. It also turns out that while they are embarked on a an argument that relies heavily on statistics, they are not very good statisticians. See
http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/”
No objection against a critical ‘surge’ on evaluating the chances of predictive modelling of climate for the 21th, but given the ‘sceptic’
view on modelling we discussed earlier, I wonder when that will
happen. As the IPCC report 2007 provides rather much material on
the modelling and scenarios it is perhaps symptomatic that the
discussion (rejection)here is on a rather abstract level. Involvement
of statisticians is of course needed, but does the last phrase of a
fragment copied from the link you posted suggest to you that a
pure statistician approach is not enough?
• VS Says:
March 4, 2010 at 13:54
“In other words, global temperature contains a stochastic rather
than deterministic trend, and is statistically speaking, a random
walk. Simply calculating OLS trends and claiming that there is a ‘clear increase’ is non-sense (non-science). According to what we observe therefore, temperatures might either increase or decrease in the
following year (so no ‘trend’).”

vigilantfish,
Nobody expects a 1 to 1 relation between temp and CO2, esp not when other climate forcings (notably aerosols, but also volcanic, solar, other ghg etc) are also changing. On that thread on my blog, some people seem a little too eager to jump to conclusions that are not supported, and haven’t even been tested.

On a related matter The book “Climategate” by Mosher & Fuller, advertised above, now has another book with a similar name; well it also is called “Climaegate”, and is supposed to be about more than just the CRUtape e-mails.
The new book was pseudo leaked yesterday, at several SF Bay Area Tea Party rallys. Written by Brian Sussman; former TV weather man; and now the KSFO raio morning show host (Conservative).
Brian has been touting his book for some time on his radio show, and leaking bits and pieces of what is in it; and he plans a big release on the Sean Hannity radio and his Fox News TV show next week.
I didn’t buy the book, but Brian has from time to time made comments about items in it. It would seem that he settled on the Climategate Title relatively recently once that storm broke. He is hoping that this will be the big expose, and the definitive nail in the coffin of AGW and IPCC and other sillinesses.
I have a feeling that he is in for a big letdown. Not that he doesn’t reach the right conclusions; but I suspect that there is much of the important Physics; that he really doesn’t know; and he possibly has put his foot in it in a few instances. Those feelings are based on what he has revealed on his radio show.
Well if anyone decides to spend the money; maybe they can give us a report; or perhaps the vultures will soon descend and tear it to shreds. Well I wish him well with it any way.

I will leave the deconstruction and dissembling of Laframboise et al to other posters above. I wish to marvel at a simple truth shown if the main point is expressed in layman’s terms.
Referencing the article: 5,587 of the 18,531 sources cited were not peer-reviewed.
In other words, more than 1 out of every 4 — almost 1 out of every 3 — citations or referenced articles is not peer reviewed. This is not a minor error.
Given the high stature and esteem that the Climate Scientologists demand that we give them, they need to be exemplary in something as basic as following their own rules, that every paper be peer reviewed or not allowed into the report.
This makes the Hockey-Stick gang more than laughable in their excluding papers — even peer reviewed ones — when the IPCC allowed 5,587 grey paper citations into the report.
More than 1 out of every 4 — almost 1 out of every 3 — papers fail the IPCC’s own test. How is this not a failure? Perhaps heavy cannabis use influenced the grading scale?

“”” Dave Worley (10:34:55) :
mikael pihlström (00:59:47) :
“Modelling is the reason why you can send the astronauts out there
and get them safely back.”
Nope, the reason we could do it was that we had the will.
Animations appear to suffice today. “””
Well I am old enough to remember quite clearly; as if it was yesterday, that when those first men reached the moon on a landing expedition, that their fancy computerized modelled process for landing on the moon; was too damn stupid to notice that it was about to put them down on a pile of rocks, which very likely would have tipped the whole machine over; from which no escape would have been possible.
I wonder if the mission planners ever thought to construct the LEM in such a way, that the total contraption was light enough and strong enough that two men in space suits with shovels or whatever could actually right the whole contraption if it fell over.
In any case, and actual man, had to take over the landing and move to some place othet than a rock pile.
Thats’ why models are always supicious. They are simply wonderful to explain in some simplified fashion, that which is already known from observation; but they should be taken with a grain of salt, when making predictions; especially about the future.