Interacademy Council hearings

The Interacademy Council hearings into the IPCC have commenced and there are some presentations here. I can't say they look desperately interesting. No mention of the problems that the panel is to investigate as far as I can see.

Richard Black has a report here.

Comments

[Perry]

Richard Black report eh? Yeah, well, say no more!

[Mailman]

Another white wash on the way?

Mailman

[Mac]

One glaring problem is that the IAC will have appointed a review panel and it's own peer-review panel. This goes against all accepted practice that peer review is an independent process and that peer reviewers are typically anonymous. The IAC will now be open to the charge of cronyism.

The IAC are now employing a flawed process in reviewing what are certainly flawed IPCC processes that involve the appointment of controversial lead authors, the censoring of criticism, misrepresentation of scientists views, rule breaking, the use of grey literature and conflicts of interest.

Not a good start for the IAC, and considering the opening comments of IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, this review has now has all the hallmarks of another whitewash.

[Mac]

IAC "The afternoon presentations will be conducted via telephone by Janos Pasztor, Director of the U.N. Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, and Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme."

Interesting characters Janos Pasztor and Achim Steiner. Pasztor I believe is connected with the activities of the Club of Rome, and Steiner's UNEP has described environmentalism as being on a par with religion.

Yes, the IAC review is going well - NOT.

[Mac]

Pachauri's presentation to the IAC has at least two gross errors.

Pachauri has claimed the IPCC AR4 cited +18,000 peer-reviewed papers. In fact only 70% of these citations were actually peer-reviewed papers.

The graph that Pachauri used in his presentation to highlight the decrease in cumulative balance glacial mass is speculative and not authoritative. This seems to be a repeat of Glaciergate. In a study ordered Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh the appointed panel concluded that while Himalayan glaciers had long been retreating, there was no acceleration of the trend and nothing to suggest that the glaciers would vanish. Ramesh himself added that the IPCC position was not based on evidence and that the rate glacial melt was at a standstill.

[Phillip Bratby]

I wish I had bought shares in the IWC (International Whitewash Company). It's a real growth industry, taxpayer subsidised of course.

[Marcel Crok]

I went there. From the questions it was clear that the panel members are new in the climate debate. This is what you want in an independent review, but the danger is that they will not be able to get to the main issues in only three months.
We as journalists had two minutes to talk to Shapiro just before lunch. He said they will organise more public hearings like this and will also invite critics of the IPCC. Will be very interesting to see if they will chose sceptical oriented critics like Pielke sr, McIntyre, McKitrick, David Holland, or that they will chose pro-AGW scientists like Von Storch and Curry.
Shapiro also said that he was almost certain that they are going to make public all the submissions that will be sent to their website http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/index.html

[Marcel Crok]

Dijkgraaf said today on the Dutch radio that the second round of hearings will be in .... Canada.

[geronimo]

OT I know, but check out New Scientist there are articles in there this week that I can only describe as incitement to do harm sceptics. The authors seem to have adopted the techniques of the Third Reich in dehumanising "deniers".

It's pretty disgusting really and it will be interesting to see if Slingo, Pope, Jones, Briffa et al will write in dis-associating themselves from the sentiments of the (clearly deranged) authors.

[David S]

Sorry Geronimo I can't bring myself to read New Scientist after their infamous map of the world illustrating the potential effects of global warming; their examples of what they called a 2 degrees warming included conurbations on Antarctica and desert in southern Europe. There is nothing new there, and they are not scientists.

[Stirling English]

I didn't get to hear any commentary to Pachauri's slides, but they are very amateur in design....and seem to be exactly what charts shouldn't be...put up to be read out word for word. Far too text-based and wordy. Can they not do better than this?

And what on earth was the point of the glacier mass balance stuff just after the process and procedural piece? Even if it were all true, a non-scientist would soon work out that a 7 mm sea level rise is only a little more than 1/4 inch, and so pretty much irrelevant. What point was he trying to make here?

Not anywhere near the Gold Standard we should be expecting!

[DennisA]

Harold T Shapiro is a Trustee of the Alfred P Sloan Foundation:
http://www.sloan.org/pages/6/board-of-trustees The foundation is a sponsor of Pachauri's TERI-NA (North America), In 2001 Pachauri received $45,000 from the foundation for TERI-NA. Full list of sponsors here: http://www.terina.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24

Roseanne Diab
http://www.geography.ukzn.ac.za/staff_academic.asp?RecordVAR=87

Funders: WWF-SA
Primary Grant Holders: Roseanne Diab and Jennifer Houghton

http://www.geography.ukzn.ac.za/cem/reports/CEM%20Annual%20Report%202002-2003.pdf
CLIENT: WWF-SA
DONOR: EUROPEAN UNION

Maureen Cropper
Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, http://www.rff.org/About_RFF/Pages/Staff.aspx
RFF Board of Directors includes David G. Hawkins, Natural Resources Defense Council and Kathryn Fuller, former president WWF-USA, now Ford Foundation Chair. RFF sponsor and partner Pachauri's TERI-NA, as do the Ford foundation.

She believes "the world has made progress in dealing with climate change through establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"The impacts of human activities on climate are already occurring and will continue even if immediate action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Louise O. Fresco
Beyond her scientific work serves as a non-executive director of Unilever International and as a board member of Rabobank, one of the largest cooperative banks in the world. http://www.ecbs.org/banks/netherlands/rabobank/view-details.html The Rabobank Group facilitates emissions trading through CLIMEX, an electronic trading platform. CLIMEX also organises auctions of CO2 credits for a range of European public-sector organisations. Rabobank International’s Commodity & Weather Derivatives Group trades in CO2 rights and certified emission rights for large corporate customers.

Syukuro Manabe
http://en.invest.china.cn/english/environment/137958.htm Aug 2005
The first scientist in the world to build computer models predicting climate change, Professor Manabe, from the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University, is known as the forefather of greenhouse gas.

Goverdhan Mehta
Past President of the International Council for Science (ICSU) http://www.icsu.org/5_abouticsu/INTRO.php

Former director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. The Indian Institute of Science has many links with Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute and originally was set up as a Tata foundation. Member of the Board of The InterAcademy Council, (IAC) which has convened this committee to review the IPCC.

"Currently, there are four global environmental change programmes co-sponsored by ICSU—the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and DIVERSITAS (an international programme on biodiversity). Together, these programmes promote, coordinate and integrate over 2 billion euros of research and provide the scientific basis for major international assessments and conventions, including the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Mario Molina
http://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/news/archives/2009/viva_la_vida_greenfutures.pdf
Green Futures Special Publication on Mexico’s search for a sustainable future, supported by the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Dialogues, WWF, TUI Travel PLC, Grupo Bimbo and Unilever.

"Mario Molina shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on CFCs and the depletion of the ozone layer. A member of WWF-México’s Senior Advisory Council, he is involved in shaping current Mexican policy on this issue.

Sir Peter Williams FRS
Vice President and Treasurer of the Royal Society

Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker
Secretary general, Human Frontier Science Program, Germany
Former President of the German Research Foundation (DFG), also a member is John Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute and Climate Adviser to Chancellor Merkel.

Abdul Hamid Zakri
Executive Board of International Council for Science (ICSU). (see above)
Director, Centre for Global Sustainability Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia

I suspect there will be little more than cursory criticism of the IPCC and they will be exonerated from any wrong-doing.

[DennisA]

Additional to my previous post, Harold Shapiro was actually chairman of the Board of Trustees when Pachauri got his grant from the Sloan foundation, http://wws.princeton.edu/people/data/h/hts/CV.pdf. He is still a board member and Sloan still supports TERI-NA, now called THE Energy and Resources Institute, rather than Tata.

http://www.sloan.org/assets/files/annual_reports/2001_annual_report.pdf, page 21
GLOBALIZATION, OFFICER GRANT
Tata Energy and Resources Institute $45,000
Arlington, VA 22209 Support to plan a project to involve western businesses in poverty alleviation. Project Director: R. K. Pachauri, President.