Bishop Hill Climate panel in crisis
May 5, 2010 Climate: IPCC Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 Climate: von Storch This is a translation of an article in the Norwegian newspaper Forskning. The original article was by Bjørnar Kjensli and the machine translation was tidied and corrected by readers Messenger and Geir Hasnes.
A German climate researcher says that people are beginning to lose faith in climate research, pointing to the IPPC as one of the main causes. Norwegian IPCC veterans disagree about what the organization should do about it.
After a winter of setbacks and disclosure of mistakes, many different ideas have been put forward about what can be done about the IPPC and these ideas abound in newspapers and in journals such as Nature and Science. One of the most vociferous critics has been Hans von Storch. He is a professor of meteorology at the University of Hamburg, director of the Institute for Coastal Research at GKSS in Geestacht and was the main author of the chapter on regional climate in Working Group 1 (WG1) of the Third IPCC Assessment Report (AR3), which was published in 2001.
On 22 April 2010 he was in Oslo, where he addressed the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in a lecture containing a number of objections to the IPCCs current way of working. The presentation of the lecture, you can see here.[link]
Not skeptic but a critic
Von Storch has long been critical of the way the IPCC has dealt with scientific uncertainty, and was himself described in less than flattering terms in some of the disputed emails released from the CRU at the University of East Anglia last November.
The man behind the hockey stick curve, Professor Michael Mann wrote, among other things, in an email to Phil Jones, the head of the University of East Anglia Climate Centre, that "Von Storch is a strange guy", and that it would not surprise him if he was really a climate skeptic. Von Storch says he has nothing against being a strange guy, but he is not in any doubt that anthropogenic emissions are leading to climate change. He is however very critical of the internal processes of the IPCC and the role of chairman, Rajendra Pachauri.
Von Storch also says that the current low confidence in the IPCC and climate research field is not because people do not believe that greenhouse gases affect climate, but that the main problems are the politicisation[printing error?] of the field of climate research and poor handling of criticism and objections.
A need for stronger guidelines
The IPCC was established to give advice to politicians about climate science and policy, and one of the panel's main goals is to be "policy-relevant and yet policy-neutral, never policy prescriptive". This means that the panel should not put pressure on authorities to implement specific measures nor prescribe how nations should choose to do them.
Von Storch and colleagues wrote in an article in the German newspaper Der Spiegel that the IPCC had failed its mission in this area, and that this can be illustrated by some of Pachauri's initiatives over the past year. Pachauri has urged people to eat less meat; said that 350 ppm is an appropriate measure for the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, despite the fact that the IPCC itself has not agreed to such a goal, and he has also encouraged the U.S. to strengthen their policy positions in relation to action against climate change.
Von Storch believes it is urgent that the IPCC have better guidelines about possible conflicts of interest and that the distinction between politics and science must be made clearer.
We cannot ignore the IPPC's use of grey literature
Knut H. Alfsen, research director at CICERO, [NOTE: Cicero is founded and funded by the Norwegian government to combat climate change and is wholly faithful to the AGW theory] was one of 10-15 main authors of the third part (WG3) of the fourth and most recent IPCC report (AR4). This chapter looked at how to limit emissions and included much grey literature - reports and studies not published in peer-reviewed research journals.
The report of Working Group 2 (WG2), which included the chapter entitled "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability", was the one which used the most grey literature [this is not true, 34% against 57% og WG3, but the numbers are correct, 2849 refs against WG3’s 2307] and it was also the one where the error of exaggeration of the likely glacier melt in the Himalayas was discovered in December. The assertion that the glaciers in the Himalayas would melt away by 2035 proved to be derived from a quote from an Indian expert in an article in the New Scientist, although much of the grey literature used has been found to be from industry and interest groups such as WWF and Greenpeace.
Alfsen says it would be hopeless to exclude the knowledge that exists in industry and elsewhere but that has not been published in a scientific journal [scientifically can include books and reports]. He has confidence in the IPCC guidelines, which, among other things, says that all grey literature should be openly available.
Of course, this is problematic from a purely scientific standpoint, although for Working Group 1 at least there was no problem, for all their material was taken from published and peer-reviewed research [Ed: I don't think this is true].
IPCC may employ its own scientists
Alfsen is also committed to getting the budget of the IPPC increased, currently representing about 40 million krone annually, which would allow them to use some of the money to hire full-time scientific researchers.
In any discussion on the reorganization of the IPCC, it would have to be decided how much we could actually devote to this. If one had had more resources, one could think of having several employed researchers, or you could find other ways to bring them on board.
He states that, the IPCC cannot be seen in the same way as any other organization and that criticism of the IPCC, which runs on the conflation of politics and science, is because people do not fully understand what the organization is trying to do.
The main point of the IPCC is to try to create a bridge between science and politics, and this has meant that the IPCC has had enormous success in persuading all the world's governments to accept the facts they have put forward.
- The down side of this, it has been alleged, is that politicians in a way control what the IPPC are able to say. I believe this is not the case, and that it is the IPPC reports alone which indicate that that the part of the process that science alone controls is well founded, and that it is this that is the main part of the reports of the IPCC.
However, Alfsen said he thinks we will shortly see a comprehensive IPCC reform.
-Policy analysis does not fit well with pure scientific analysis, and it will probably be necessary to separate these two types of activities.
After the media storm experienced at the IPPC, he can imagine that the volunteer scientists involved eventually get tired of dealing with it. One essential reform, Alfsen concludes, would be for the IPPC to have its own communications department.
Better media management
Eystein Jansen, of the Bjerknes Centre, [NOTE: This also is founded and funded by the Norwegian government to work with AGW] was coordinating lead author in Working Group 1 (WG1) of the IPCC assessment report referred to by Alfsen, and worked on the chapter on paleoclimatology. He supports the proposal to strengthen the IPCC's media management and dissemination of information, and believes the organization has now recognized that it is essential to have more professionalism in these areas.
The IPCC has realized that they will have to increase the budgets for central staff, including those that deal with the media, and I believe, among other things, this has been realized as a result of all the furore there has been in the last few months.
Jansen also said, "I think the organization has underestimated the need to communicate in a professional manner, and I also believe that the dissemination of the contents of the reports could have been done better."
The danger of internal group-think
Jansen, however, is strongly opposed to the IPCC employing their own researchers.
With internally employed researchers there is a danger that they will form an internal cult, and I rather support the open recruitment method employed today.
Read more about how the IPCC reports are put together here.[link]
He says that three-quarters of the personnel of the Working Group 1 was changed between the third and fourth assessment reports, and he thinks it is important to maintain such a degree of renewal each time.
Stricter guidelines for grey literature
In his lecture at the Academy of Sciences Von Storch appeared puzzled that all the serious flaws in the latest IPCC report had apparently been made by working group 2. In one chapter several errors and exaggerations were detected concerning sea level rise in the Netherlands and glacier melt in the Himalayas. Jansen says some of the problem was caused by too little use of experts in Working Group 1, and that there was insufficient time for the researchers to spend on technical cooperation.The results were seen specifically in the Himalayas case.
"If we had gone an extra round and had enough time, we would have detected this error immediately."
He says that this issue was addressed in the evaluation made in the previous assessment report, and that before the next report is completed in 2014, the two groups should be given more time. In addition, he believes that Working Groups 2 and 3 are going to have to refine the guidelines for the use of grey literature."
They must be stricter in this area" says Jansen. "It is better not to draw conclusions, if one finds that there is no basis in the scientific literature".
Reader Comments (20)
We need to use post modern decision making to deal with the IPCC, and actually, that body itself has given us the tools needed to do what passes for thinking about it in a post modern style.
If there is only the smallest chance that keeping the IPCC going could destroy all human life on earth, we must abolish it at once. On the other hand, if there is only the smallest chance that giving it more money could preserve human life on earth against all the odds, we must give it the money.
What does the post modern scientist do when asked for advice on a question of this apparently insurmountable complexity not to mention obscurity?
He or she immediately realizes that the mere fact that the question for decision is obscure, difficult, or even impossible to state clearly, or apparently completely inchoherent, is not a reason for postponing a decision. After all, the future of the planet is at stake.
What he advises is to abolish it. When asked why, he responds that in post modern science this is an ideologically weighted and inappropriate question, in fact, it is not even a question, it is a sort of unpleasant and counter revolutionary grunt which serves only to betray the speaker's bourgeois origins and gender orientation. Further grunts of this kind will, he explains, be repaid with violent revolutionary change of geographical circumstances in a north easterly direction, Siberia in short.
If the resulting civil war can be won, it gets abolished. Otherwise not. In either case, post modern reason has triumphed.
@michel: give 'em their own medicine !
@everyone:
The prosecution has had its chance and they've blown it. Instead of using a small amount of clear and strong evidence they chose to go for sheer volume of evidence. Some of this mountain of material was of very low quality - a lot was just circular reasoning and speculation.
This was a bad tactic: it's made it impossible to see if there really is any strong evidence hidden in the pile. And it's given skeptics an easy target - they just pick away at the stuff that is obviously wrong.
There is also the principle of double jeopardy. It's going to be so much harder to cry wolf again - even if there really is a wolf.
"With internally employed researchers there is a danger that they will form an internal cult, and I rather support the open recruitment method employed today."
This is a joke. The cult is already there and they are the gatekeepers. Here it is in their own words:
http://unfccc.int/files/methods_and_science/research_and_systematic_observation/application/pdf/essp_part_1.pdf
In slide 7, Susan Solomon, who was Co-Chair of WG1, says that almost half of the contributors to IPCC AR4 are WCRP/IGBP/IHDP/Diversitas associated scientists. This is who they are:
World Climate Research Program, (WRCP) is an offshoot of the WMO, which is co-sponsor of IPCC with UNFCC. Kevin Trenberth, (can't find the missing heat), is Chairman of the WRCP Observations and Assimilation Panel. He is currently head of Climate Analysis at NCAR.
www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/wcrp/documents/S10_WCRP_ReanalysesLtr.pdf
The International Geosphere – Biosphere Program (IGBP) http://www.igbp.net/ includes several of Trenberth's colleagues from NCAR and has Jean Palutikof, a former Director of CRU, and Dahe Qin, Solomon's co-chair on WG1 as International Council for Science (ICSU), appointees. Palutikof is now spreading the message in Australia:
http://www3.griffith.edu.au/03/ertiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=16801.
If you want consensus, just set up another institute and run it with people from "the Club". Diane Liverman from the Oxford Environment Institute, is currently in Arizona, having set up a new climate institute there last year with Jonathan Overpeck. All the same names all the time and the money just keeps flowing.
The International Human Dimensions Program on Global Climate Change, (IHDP), is more global governance by the UN, http://www.ihdp.unu.edu/ and again has club members on its advisory board, eg, Rik Leemans who is the Earth System Science Partnership, (ESSP) Scientific Committee Chairman, which is the umbrella group for these four organisations. It also has Katrina Brown from UEA and Frank Bierman, the founding director of the Global Governance Project (www.GLOGOV.ORG), a research programme of 12 European institutes, including the LSE, (Stern et al)
Diversitas is another group-think eco-catastrophe outfit with Paul Ehrlich on its advisory board, together with Jane Lubchenko, NOAA administrator, http://www.diversitas-international.org/
Its founding sponsors are the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) and the International Union of Biological Science (IUBS). SCOPE is an offshoot of ICSU, so the same people are yet again adding to "the consensus".
This is a summary of what Susan Solomon said in the ESSP slide:
· 91% of Co-ordinating Lead Authors on AR4 were members of this grouping, (ESSP)
· 66% of Lead Authors on AR4 were members of this grouping
· 68% of reviewers on AR4 were from this grouping
· 31% of contributing authors were from this grouping
These networks are just like one massive fungal mycelium, with the various institutions proliferating like fruiting bodies, as they cast their spores to the wind, popping up yet more "climate institutes" as they go: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/uoea-ulc042910.php, Tyndall spreads to China:
Fudan University in Shanghai is launching a Chinese hub of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in a significant and long-lasting partnership with the University of East Anglia (UEA). Professor Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer at UEA will be the Director of Strategy for Tyndall Centre Fudan.
At the onset of twenty-ten, Grey Literature emerged into the public arena after more than a quarter century in the corridors of libraries and in workplaces and meeting rooms of information practitioners and professionals. Grey Literature is now a topic of news in the world media. Coverage in magazines and newspapers e.g. Nature, New Scientist, The Economist, the Guardian, etc. carrying articles on the IPCC use/misuse of grey literature is current and in-depth. For those following these news threads, much of the publicity is less than complimentary. And, the grey literature community has not been hesitant in their response via blogs, listservs, distribution lists, etc. During the coming months leading up to GL12, the international grey literature community will have the opportunity to bundle its efforts in order to address issues that stand at the core of grey literature and which have come under fire in the public media. One thing is certain, now that grey literature has entered the mainstream press, it will not simply disappear. It is now up to the corporate authors and publishers of grey literature as well as those organizations processing and distributing it both in print and electronic formats to address the misconceptions and unknowns about this field of information science. The Twelfth International Conference on Grey Literature will provide a global forum for stakeholders in government, academics, business and industry to come together on issues formulated in the GL12 Call-for-Papers. This year’s proposed themes accentuate the transparency in grey literature and the almost seamless processes of research, authorship, publication, indexing, as well as, the uses and applications to which it is exposed in knowledge based communities. Many of these processes are the same faced by commercial publishing, where only the differences lie in grey tech approaches to high tech issues.
Is Your Grace trying to illustrate the eclectic, educated and refined nature of his readers by posting a link to an 8 page article in German yesterday, followed by a Norwegian article today?
The Norwegian article discussing other German writings.
Or is this a subtle suggestion that Hans von Storch should be read in translation, as he suffered in the original?
http://www.presse.bayer.de/baynews/baynews.nsf/id/D621100BE4512544C125770D003989B2?Open&ccm=000&presskit=1
Above is the speech given by Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, Inter-Academy panelist, at the presentation of the Bayer Climate Award 2010 for Professor Peter Lemke, IPCC lead author. One particular paragraph gives an insight into Winnacker's thinking of the role the IPCC undertakes:
"Two highlights particularly worthy of mention are his (Lemke) six years as Chair of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme from April 2000 to March 2006, and his role as coordinating lead author of Chapter 4 of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report entitled "Observations: Snow, Ice and Frozen Grounds". The latter also marks the very first time the cryosphere had been included in an IPCC report. There are extremely close links between these two areas of activity. The World Climate Research Programme develops the scientific basis required for the analysis of the world's climate. This in turn feeds into the IPCC's reports in order to inform and influence climate policy."
Here we have a good example of how an Inter-Academy panel member (Winnacker) views the actions of a leading climate scientist who is also a lead IPCC author (Lemke). A view that results in Winnacker to state that the science is 'absolutely unshakeable'.
However WG1 Chapter 4 of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report entitled "Observations: Snow, Ice and Frozen Grounds" uses grey literature, 15% in total references, to substantiate its claims.
Now that is in stark contrast to IPPC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, who recently stated, "the IPCC relies entirely on peer reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment."
So the process that Winnacker claims produces 'absolutely unshakeable' science is actually seriously flawed.
Now if Winnacker can be that blinkered on actual process what are the chances that the other Inter-Academy panel members will be too?
The Inter-Academy panel's stated 'open-mindness' is seriously compromised by having Professor Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker as a member.
Great post DennisA
It is sad there is no way to permalink to a post here.
Roy Spencer reminds us, that Science and Nature are gray-literature magazines. We tend to forget this.
A German climate researcher says that people are beginning to lose faith in climate research, pointing to the IPPC as one of the main causes.
faith = belief without evidence?
I agree that DennisA post is very interesting. What would be very nice is to have that data in a diagram with relationship between the organizations and the people...
Pachauri's dysfunctional IPCC is blasted, tainted at the root. No-one affiliated with this extreme-alarmist body can have any pretense to objective, rational evaluation of selective data, skewed methodology, spurious analytical techniques. Adding an explicit propaganda arm, salting hallowed precincts with yet more ranting ideologues, is a recipe for future contretemps which will only aggravate the larger fraud.
As Commandante Zero of this wretched enterprise, Rajendra Pachauri manifestly never even reads his own material. He is a multi-culti figurehead, a railway engineer completely out of scientific context-- no doubt the reason climate hysterics endorsed him in the first place. Last September, the pathetic Ban Ki-moon sought to extort a ten trillion --yes, trillion-- dollar "urgent appropriation" from Uncle Sugar, asserting that Planet Earth would otherwise become a baking desert by January 2010. Allied with Pachauri, such doltish pronunciamentos are quite beyond redemption, regardless of in-house PR cubicles or researchers sullied by the UN's corrupt dole.
Bag Pachauri instanter, abolish his false-pretenses IPCC, disband the kakistocratic thugmeisters constituting the UN (sic). The world will be a better, more free, and healthier place the sooner the axe falls.
John Blake
"kakistocratic"
:-)
Von Storch's presentation is here: http://www.dnva.no/binfil/download.php?tid=45203
E O'Connor:
Had to look it up. Learned a new word today thanks to you, thanks --
kakistocracy:
"Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens."
I guess I was like the fish in the sea and the last to realize that I was surrounded by water. Now I know what to call it.
Is Your Grace trying to illustrate the eclectic, educated and refined nature of his readers by posting a link to an 8 page article in German yesterday, followed by a Norwegian article today?
The Norwegian article discussing other German writings.
我們是否全部不講六種語言？
Ngyabonga Umfundisi de la Sierra, Saphila.
Sen khaluma muthle lapa i webhusayithi?
hlalagathle
You too, Chuckles?
IPCC olgeta bagarap.
For more links and connections see this new paper at SPPI, Pachauri, No fossil fool.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/no_fossil_fool.html
It takes a different tack and looks at the UN agenda on climate justice, India's energy policies and Pachauri's political influence both in India and the US and the links between policy advisers and carbon trading.
OK, so I wrote it.
Tony H, The Marine Mongolian effect indeed.
The WGI report did have the lowest amount of gray literature, but did include 7% non-peer-reviewed.references.
SATIRE
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/05/just-rumour.html
As the New Headquarters of the UN will be home to the world stable governing body, know as the NWO, it will be built of the finest, most modern building materials, be earthquake proof, volcano proof, and contain the most technologically advanced accoutrements such as geothermal heating.
After all, if one is going to rule the world, mandate universal vaccination schemes, implement global taxation, force Codex regulations on every continent and manage the world's Carbon Taxation, one must have en ediface truly
magnificient and suitable.