You may recall that WUWT reported this on Sepetember 6th, 2012:
Game on – NOAA’s refusal of documents earns them a lawsuit
Over the last couple of days, CEI’s Chris Horner has been emailing me news of a FOIA request he made earlier in the year. The FOI request is for correspondence between NOAA’s Dr. Thomas Peterson and Thomas Stocker, the head of the IPCC Working Group 1. It is hoped that this correspondence might get him some information on the IPCC secret letter sent by Stocker to all of the IPCC lead authors right after Climategate:
We have the announcement above, but not the attachment. The attachment is apparently secret since nobody wants to talk about it or even acknowledge its existence.
Steve McIntyre wrote an eviscerating essay about the secret letter circulated by the IPCC to UEA/CRU, which they are refusing to divulge, because:
there would be an adverse effect on international relations between IPCC WG1 and academic institutions within the United Kingdom because it would force is to reconsider our working arrangements with those experts who have been selected for an active role in WG1 AR5 from your institution and others in the UK”.
===============================================================
That was then. We have that letter now….it seems about duck and cover from media stories about the various IPCC “gates”, followed by business as usual:
Here is the original:
Letter_WG1AR4Authors_26022010 (PDF)
And the email from NCDC’s Thomas Peterson:
Chris Horner deserves praise for his dogged persistence.
So….where would the “adverse effect” stem from, exactly??
Brilliant. This is a red flag to scientists working in the field to:
a) look around themselves for any loose, untidy ends,
b) seriously consider not collaborating on AR5,
c) download Donna Laframboise’s book.
My favorite quote from Stocker is the following: “The IPCC strengths of taking time to consider all the evidence and subject it to careful review before drawing any conclusions…” He DOES realize that most rational human beings will ROTFLOL when they read that, DOESN’T HE?
Kurt in Switzerland
Amazing that people would go to such lengths to “protect” such a banal document.
Why the heck did they keep this secret? What were they afraid of? Shadowy organizations, that have their HQ in a vulcan?
The thing that stands out like a sore thumb on the IPCC correspondence is the lack of a date.
REPLY: Agreed, but according to the PDF document properties timestamp, it was authored on 2/26/2010
– Anthony
The one thing the IPCC has never had, and sure doesn’t want, is funding governments carrying out the due diligence they should have done decades ago:-
And they sure would not like it to be announced that they were about to be investigated and held to account.
IPCC whilst your shield went up, your slip is showing even more.
I was thinking, what’s the big deal? Then I saw this sentence:
“In addition, a number of governments are considering beginning their own investigations or are asking IPCC to conduct a review. ”
Publicly at the time, governments weren’t saying much. But obviously behind the scenes there were a few “WTF” memos from a number of countries.
I’m really sorry, but what am I missing here?
Having read the letter, I can’t see anything in the least bit controversial about it, other than why anyone would want to prevent its disclosure.
Is it simply that Stocker didn’t have the authority to write it on IPCC paper? The letterhead says Working Group 1, and he’s the WG1 co-chair. I don’t see any duplicity.
I just can’t grasp the significance of this. Help please?
“there would be an adverse effect on international relations between IPCC WG1 and academic institutions within the United Kingdom”
Taking the name in vain.
The IPCC Chair, Vice-Chairs and Co-Chairs are working on a strategy to ensure
that work on the AR5 is as effective as possible whilst at the same time emphasising the robustness of the AR4 findings.
This is not particularly heartening to read in a document purporting to be about scientific investigations.
They admit that they have already decided the answer, and that the purpose of AR5 is merely to strengthen those findings.
New evidence be damned! What matters is how effectively the already decided message can be pushed.
Ah, yes “strict adherence to IPCC procedures”, the most relevant, transparent and least practiced of which Stocker subsequently succeeded in “disappearing”.
See: When task group says let’s “disappear” a rule, IPCC agrees.
But obviously behind the scenes there were a few “WTF” memos from a number of countries.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hmmm. FOIA follow up request? A list of said governments and the correpondence with them regarding “beginning their own investigations or are asking IPCC to conduct a review.”
I can hear the sphincter valves snapping shut all over the world as the specific beauracrats who wrote said correspondence go…. oh sh*t!
They must have fought the disclosure out of spite. There is nothing dodgy in telling authors to carefully consider their findings before jumping to conclusions. It is a totally banal memo, as jaycurrie just noted. Unless, of course, the idea of careful consideration was so shocking to the members of the club that they were afraid to talk about it.
Dermot,
I think the significance of the letter is that admits openly the failed strategy of using ‘activist generated’ material. This was underplayed by the IPCC and Warmist media.
It also expresses concern that the Climategate expose caused real damage to ‘the cause’. The Warmist position has always been and still is, that Climategate was insignificant and irrelevant. This document shows the extent to which they were rattled by it and the co-ordinated effort they put in to shore up the entire rotten heap.
You linked the wrong memo re Peterson, in the second part….
The letter shown appears quite unremarkable and hardly worth the effort to keep secret. The article does not describe how the letter was obtained. Is it common practice for the IPCC to issue undated, unsigned letters? Is there any way to verify, either forensically or by confirming with original recipients, that this attachment is actually the letter of interest? Presumably now that it is out recipients will be free to provide confirmation.
The letter does seem rather bland for such secrecy, except as a matter of perverse habit, but there are 3 aspects which are in fact embarrassing to the IPCC:
1) admission of the problem of past reliance upon “grey” literature;
2) noting that some govts are considering their own inquiries and/or pressuring the IPCC a bit behind the scenes;
3) the statement that AR5 is nothing more than a continuation of and pre-ordained confirmation of AR4’s “robust results”…. i.e., undermines any pretense that AR5 is supposed to be a serious, new, genuine re-assessment of all available data.
Sure, IPCC apologists can spin away on each of those three points, and nothing much does seem to happen from the standpoint of any critical media or governmental attentions, but it is still embarrassing (and disgraceful) for the IPCC’s WG1 to state those three points.
It’s all about failure being a fatherless child. Nobody wants anything in writing regarding how the process went wrong. Once there is perception of a downside to the IPCC process, producing AR5 gets less glamorous and more like work. The whole ball of string is dangerously close to unraveling.
Redaction and subterfuge mania.
This constant cloak and dagger secrecy smacks of ‘something to hide’ paranoia, of bad science, political meddling nonpareil and of bum ‘papers’ written by Greenpeace activists and as we are all already aware of, that is what the IPCC/WG 1. is all about:
“not science just advocacy”.
The first paragraph of the letter says it all; they are not able to deal with criticism either quickly or slowly. I think the word “pathetic” is a good description of the bureaucrats who will wreak havoc on the world economies with their bigoted views on climate change.
The sooner these clowns leave the AGW circus, the better!
Comedy gold.
The PDF file properties indicates “Melinda Tignor” as the author.
Here is the metadata from the pdf file of the just released letter.
What modifications were made on 10/2/2010 1:50:16 PM? Where is the original document created on 2/26/2010 10:10:31 AM?
NOAA, I request to see the original created on 2/26/2010 10:10:31 AM.
John
jaycurrie, exactly. This is pretty ridiculously tame, as it’s been properly sanded and polished for a mass audience.
This letter doesn’t seem to be the one instructing governments on their respective FOIs and adverse effects thereof….? But I do like the part where the Chairs are figuring out how to paper over the fact that AR4 used non-peer reviewed literature yet has robust results. Rock and Hard Place.