by frog
In some circles the IPCC is dismissed as “alarmist” or fuelling a left-wing conspiracy to “de-industrialise” modern society. I would have thought that the world’s largest collection international experts would have been the a pretty reliable place to get hard facts from, but maybe that’s just me…
Perhaps some insight into how the IPCC works will put a few minds at rest:
From http://blogs.abc.net.au/events/2009/11/conspiracies-and-the-ipcc.html (emphasis added)
While it is called a ‘panel,’ the IPCC is actually one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings in history bringing together hundreds of scientists and other experts who are generally nominated by their governments or by non-government organisations (such as the Australian Academy of Science or the CSIRO). But the IPCC is also policy-neutral. Its job is to present the best science. There is not a single policy recommendation in its reports.
A different group of scientists is picked for each report and it is not just climate scientists – but biologists, physicists, geologists, economists, engineers, health experts and so on. Each report deals with three categories: the physical science, or how climate change works; impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, or how to deal with it; and mitigation, or how to minimise it.
Each of these working groups is headed by two scientists, one each from a developed and developing nation, supported by up to 500 other scientists known as lead authors who in turn are supported by up to 2000 further expert reviewers. Together they evaluate thousands of pieces of peer-reviewed research from around the globe.
Here is how Queensland University’s Professor Ove Heogh-Guldberg, a world expert on coral reefs and climate change, describes what happened when he contributed a small slice of the 2007 IPCC report:
“The IPCC has one of the most rigorous review processes I have ever experienced. There are various stages of review. The first round involves the working groups picking over the text (hundreds of eyes and opinions). If you have been involved in this process, it is a quite an experience taking months and years – involving a lot of pedantic haggling over detail – but always using the peer-reviewed literature as the base.
“When this is complete, then the documents are sent to signatory governments for review. Leading scientists from each of the countries pick over the details. And after this, the documents are placed for open comment (on the web). At this point, any government, industry, science group, special interest group, or individual is invited for comment, recommendations, amendments etc. At each of these points, the lead and contributing authors are required to respond to each comment or suggestion in a precise fashion, however correct or off-the-wall they may be.“The responses from the specialists are independently reviewed to ensure that the documents have been amended or the comment/suggestion/objection refuted scientifically (i.e. with peer-reviewed literature). I had to respond to 87 comments on a relatively small contribution to the Australian and NZ chapters within working group 2 of the IPCC report in 2007. At the end of the day, I don’t think you could have a more rigorous process. The only problem is that it ends up being conservative (e.g. failure to predict the dramatic decline of Arctic sea ice). That may be its only flaw.”
There were more than 30,000 comments from the open public review process for just one of the 2007 working groups – all of them given a written response that is publicly available.
One of the lead authors on the 2001 and 2007 reports, UNSW’s Professor Andy Pitman, also worries it is unduly cautious especially because in the final stages all governments, including those with vested interests in fossil fuels like Saudi Arabia, have to approve what has been written “line by line.”
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Thu, November 12th, 2009
Tags: climate change, IPCC, UN
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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3 (+12)
“We recommend that the IPCC assessment, its projections, and the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report, which represent a consensus on the scientific evidence, underpin New Zealand’s future international policy negotiations. We note that there are some uncertainties in the science and these are not yet adequately included in the models. However, we do not consider that these uncertainties undermine the main conclusions of the IPCC, or that they should be a reason to delay action by the international community, particularly as recent scientific analysis of actual trends strongly suggests that the worst-case IPCC projections are already being realised. (Opposed by the ACT New Zealand Party).”
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“..Or how about a list of 450 peer-reviewed papers supporting scepticism?:.”
and you’d have to ask..
how many of those ‘papers’..and those ‘peer-reviewers’..
were funded by those oil company-funded climatechange-denial front-groups..?
all of them…?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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You could also look up a swedish chemist called Svante Arrhenius who published a paper on the role of CO2 in warming the climate in 1896. His calculations show that the math, chem and physics around CO2 and the Greenhouse effect are very well known.
The tricky bit is the effect interactions between all the different parts of the system, that can amplify or mute the response – including Humans.
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Where is that conspiracy again?
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” – Adam Smith
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BP
The peer review process is not “the peer review process of the IPCC” and there is no reason to believe it excluded good papers. Jones may have exerted his influence to keep some marginal or bad ones out, but the fact is that some EXTREMELY bad ones went through… and some editors resigned behind that issue.
The science from the denialsphere is just as sh!t as it has always been… because it is hard to write a good paper supporting a false premise. It is likely that we would have benefited from seeing some of the marginal papers published and publicly dismembered… in particular anything submitted by McIntyre. That would have strengthened the science. Even if it embarrassed some scientists. I think that is the principle issue here. Scientists cannot properly put themselves ahead of their service to science… which is something I believe Mann and Jones certainly did.
The call for openness was never (by me) argued… go ahead and look. I know for a fact that I have a philosophical belief in complete openness, to the extent that some of my friends regard it as a personality defect. So be it.
Nothing in this however, indicates that there is anything wrong with the science.
Harry’s readme: He’s apparently trying to rebuild old datasets from previous machines, decades and operating systems. A nasty time was had by all. This is quite precisely the problem I was alluding to previously, that datasets must be actively maintained to remain valid.
Letting Scientists write their own code, document it and make up their own names for things is a cr@p idea, and it always has been.
I have on at least one occasion, after having had to prepare some of his work for publication, suggested to a chief scientist that he would be well advised to let his WIFE name his kids.
Scientists just don’t usually get past the algorithm development. Data organization is bad and code management is worse. That isn’t just climate science.
respectfully
BJ
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