Bishop Hill Madrid ’95: What went wrong?
Aug 20, 2012 Climate: IPCC This is a guest post by Bernie Lewin.
I have noticed around the blogs some patient and kindly folks attempting to summarise my overly verbose account of investigations into the background of the Chapter 8 controversy. I welcome these. And I welcome various interpretations. I am purposely inconclusive. However, I may have confused some folks as to what I am suggesting it was that went wrong in Madrid. Therefore, I thought it might be useful at this stage to explicitly clarify my current understanding of how the Scientific Assessment of the IPCC was first corrupted in its first positive human attribution claim.
What was the purpose of the Madrid Plenary?
According to IPCC Procedures set for the Second Assessment, the purpose of the Working Group 1 Inter-governmental Plenary meeting in Madrid was two-fold. Firstly, it was to 'accept' the 'final draft Report' as a thoroughly peer reviewed assessment that presented a 'comprehensive, objective and balanced view' of the science. Secondly, it was to 'approve' every line of a Summary for PolicyMakers (SPM) as 'consistent' with the underlying Report. The 'acceptance' is not about accepting or contesting the scientific grounds of the Report, but about whether the process by which its findings are established is thorough and proper according to the best practice of science. In theory an Inter-governmental Plenary could change a Report to make it acceptable in this sense. However, the Procedures point out that the extent to which it could agree to such changes is limited by practical constraints.
What has consensus got to do with it?
As for the vexed issue of consensus, there is a common misconception that the IPCC enforces an oxymoron, namely, consensual science. In fact, there is no obligation upon the Report authors to find or present a consensus. On the contrary, the Procedures makes a point of asking Lead Authors 'to clearly identify disparities of view,' saying that 'it is important that the reports describe different (possibly controversial) scientific or technical views on a subject, particularly if they are relevant to the political debate.' Where the consensus is required is among the government delegations at their Plenary. Full inter-governmental agreement is required for the Plenary to acceptance the scientific assessment and to approve the Summary in fidelity with it.
What went wrong at Madrid?
At Madrid it appears that the SPM was already inconsistent with the Report and that further inconsistencies were introduced. There were also inconsistencies between the Report and the underlying evidence-base to which it referred -- inconsistent in such a way as to affect a conclusive and consistent positive human attribution in place of the Report's scepticism.
How does the justification for changing the original assessment stand up?
The explicit justification offered in Madrid for re-drafting the SPM out of alignment with the Report was to reflect important new evidence. This justification is without foundation. In the first place, this 'new' evidence had been incorporated into the 'final draft' of the Report after it had been extensively discussed during the final Lead Author Plenary drafting of the SPM in Asheville. Secondly, the new evidence does not even address, let alone over-turn, the grounds for the Report's original scepticism (thus explaining why Chapter 8's sceptical conclusion remained after Asheville). Finally, some of these distortions of the SPM out of alignment with the underlying Report were 'approved' without the full agreement of the Plenary. In fact, some were made in the face of explicit, sustained and entirely legitimate objections by governmental delegations on the very grounds of inconsistency with the Report.
What is wrong with the defence of the post-Madrid chapter changes?
When the controversy over the post-Madrid changes to Chapter 8 broke in the spring of 1996, the scientists involved offered three post-facto justifications: Chapter 8 contained inconsistencies; the US Government had made (extraordinary, belated and unsolicited) requests for changes to the underlying Report in its (solicited) comments on the SPM; and the Plenary had agreed to these changes in advance -- not specifically, but at least consistent with what had been agreed. There is truth in each of these claims. But it is difficult to see how any of them justify the post-Madrid changes in accord with the IPCC Procedures -- which had been designed expressly to achieve an independent scientific assessment.
In what way was the authority of science abused?
What sent the Madrid Plenary off the rails was the way the representative expert scientists permitted and promoted the re-opening of the attribution question for assessment at a meeting of governmental delegations. Not only did the scientists present a distorted view of the evidence, but their audience had no time nor means for evaluating whether their conclusions upon this evidence were 'comprehensive, objective and balanced.' The recent positive results promoted in Madrid (as also the sceptical results there obscured) lacked adequate scientific scrutiny due to the simple fact that they had not been published. Perhaps this course of action would be acceptable at a conference of scientific experts (as at Asheville) and the matter might have been resolved there. (It was not.) But to re-open the controversy in Madrid was an abuse of process: it removed the IPCC assessment on the human attribution question further from its already dubious grounding in peer-review science.
Reader Comments (12)
It seems to me that this post does add focus to the earlier work. The main point is very clearly stated in the final paragraph. I heartily agree that the attribution question should not have been reopened.
I posted the following comment under the Part II account, "Madrid 1995: The Last Day of Climate Science", but the above author removed it. Let's see if it stays here:
You have it wrong; Madrid 1995 might be the "first day of global political climate science" or something, but the last day of climate science itself was when the "greenhouse effect" was accepted as the basis for a "runaway global warming", more than 20 years ago now. There is no greenhouse effect, of increasing temperature with increasing carbon dioxide; it is simply false, and that would have been obvious to any competent climate scientist, if there had been any, 20 years ago.
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Bottom line: It was a quite general scientific incompetence that did in cllimate science, not political abuse of a valid and worthy scientific process. And that incompetence continues unabated on both sides of the global warming debate, or you wouldn't have deleted the above comment from your site, Mr. Lewin.
I'm sorry, cancel that, I found the proper page, with my Aug. 7th comment intact. Too many parts to the work.
I said in an earlier comment to this series that I thought Bernie's piece was rivetting.
But one thing which I found particularly interesting (but only very obliquely referred to here) is the political nature of the IPCC's work.
Now EVERYONE knows that the IPCC is fundamentally a political construct. (not everyone admits it, naturally)
But I had assumed that it was primarily a case of the underlying political leanings of Watson, Houghton, Trenbath and the rest which fed into the IPCC politics.
I hadn't previously seen evidence that this was in fact actively orchestrated by Clinton's State Department apparatchiks.
Possibly just me being dozy. But I think this (apparently unremarked) fact is significant.
"but the last day of climate science itself was when the "greenhouse effect" was accepted as the basis for a "runaway global warming", more than 20 years ago now."
Mr Huffman,
I am sorry you missed your comment in my blizzard of posts. EnthusiasmScepticism&Science does not pull many comments and I was most appreciative of yours. It does seem you would like to engage and so here goes...
You might be right that there is no greenhouse effect. Late on wintery southern nights I also have doubts about the CO2 greenhouse effect. But I take your challenge to me in the claim that climate science accepted the "greenhouse effect" as catastrophic before 1992.
What interests me is that this claim is difficult to support. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was enormous pressure upon science to accept catastrophic AGW. It did not. There was significant resistance among scientists and by its institutions. You could perhaps argue that the CO2 greenhouse effect was accepted as a real effect (and not just an hypothesis to be tested) by the IPCC assessments, but catastrophic?...not so sure. Even the claims of prominent scientists in and around the IPCC, like Bolin and Zillman, that they did not proclaimed catastrophic AGW...that the IPCC was in a large part about pulling in the claims of catastrophe...I cant find strong evidence to refute them.
In my first post on Madrid I inserted an extended quote from an Australian Academy of Science report assessing the scientific grounds of the Ice Age Scare. The point was that the situation of state-funded institutional Science in the late 70s on the Ice Age Scare is very similar to the situation in the AGW Scare up until November 1995.
There have always been apocalyptic scares, and these did not stop with science and scientists. (The transition was in Astrological scares during the 15th to 17th centuries. Those who compare the recent pseudo-science scares with those based in (advanced mathematical) Astrology I suspect sometime do not know just how right they are! And they are interwined as today: the science drove the scares, while the scares drove the $cience.)
The history of science is littered with a trail of Hansens. My point is that institutional science -- practices, protocols, journals, associations -- did not just role over and die. Scientists did not just take the money and run. Science resisted its own corruption.
But when the Chapter 8 scandal broke, this was the test. And what do you know...My analogy with the Battle of Hastings, with levees breaking...they are excessively melodrama, but appropriate nonetheless. How quick were 'Nature' and 'Science' to step up and proclaim the Faustian bargain!...I will write more about the that side some time.
Martin Brumby,
"I hadn't previously seen evidence that this was in fact actively orchestrated by Clinton's State Department apparatchiks."
Singer and others (eg C. Booker) discuss the State Dept request for Houghton to 'prevail upon' the authors to change the chapters. I have never seen it mentioned that this was just the cover letter of the duly submitted comments on the SPM. I am not sure whether anyone writing about it has even seen the orginal letter, as they may well have just drawn the quote from multiply places in Santer and Houghton.
I obtained the full letter from Mike MacCracken. Also provided by MacCracken were the attached line-by-line comments. This is where I found the comment attributed to Robert Watson on the critical detection & attribution section -- which says 'concluding sections of the chapter may need to be revised.' Finding no other requests to change a chapter in these comments, this suggestion that the cover letter request to change the chapters is in fact a request to change one of the chapters, Chapter 8's, and specifically its (sceptical) Concluding Summary (which, as we know, Santer would remove entirely). Thus, while we might presume there were casual discussions, phone calls etc., they are not required. Robert Watson's specific request in the comments explains why Houghton read the request in the cover letter as he did, and as he would later explain.
Maybe 'orchestrated' is a bit strong, but the push from the Clinton Administration was certainly active, but also formal and open.
"Possibly just me being dozy. But I think this (apparently unremarked) fact is significant."
In 1995 we were all dozy except Pat Michaels, on his lonely vigil, and a few others bell-ringers like Fred Singer. In 1996 Singer was as astonished as I am today that Santer and Houghton pointed to the (otherwise unnoticed) late request by the US State Dept to change the underlying Report. Their deferral to this request in statements defending their complete scientific integrity, the complete a-political motivation of the changes...the independence of their actions...well, what can you say?
Zillman continues to insist that I am too 'conspiratorial' and he berates me for not recognising that these were 'intelligent men of goodwill' trying to do the right thing. For me, this gives all the more reason to pay attention to the self-confidences in this self-contradiction that appears to the outsider as delusional -- it is hard not to compare this with the delusional irrationality developing in isolated extremist cults.
No conspiracy theory is required. In 1995 the environment movement was as the height of confidence, they felt invincible, and on the surface of this bubble of confidence the difference between the assessment of good/evil and of truth/false faded away. No matter what he said, in Madrid Dr Al-Sabban of Saudi Arabia could never be anything else but Dr Big Oil. Singer and Seitz remain 'Merchants of Doubt.' I can find no finer example of what Aynsley Kellow calls 'virtuous corruption.'
BernieL
Thanks for that and agree with your comments on conspiracy, although there is a fine line between what some of the "intelligent men of goodwill" have got up to and what the Mob might decide in a strategy meeting.
Of course, the former justify themselves by sticking out their chests and preening themselves that, after all they just want to save the planet (and, sure, the fame is nice and the research grants come in VERY handy but they aren't motivated by that, obviously!).
It is hard to rationally discuss people's motivations, even if you know them personally. But I have to say the likes of Santer & Watson seem untroubled by any humility and self questioning.
Unfortunately intelligence and goodwill may not be enough. I'm certain that even Pol Pot's men with the pick axes told themselves they were building a better, happier Khmer state, even as they chopped up their victims.
There are few things more dangerous than well intentioned ignorance on the march.
I understand why the IPCC was created. It is a political entity, created by politicians, for the purpose of creating a product with the veneer of scientific expertise which would be useful to politicians. We should be thankful that the sausage is produced with such readily apparent incompetence and manipulation (see also e.g. the UK whitewashes). Politicians love it.
What I don't understand is why honest scientists aren't horrified by the entire concept -- especially those who are alarmists. Who could possibly be dumb enough to think that politicized science would be a good thing for science or society in the long run?
There must be a thousand good reasons for being a skeptic, but this is one of the simplest and most basic -- anyone stupid enough to think that the IPCC is a good idea obviously lacks sufficient quality judgment to be regarded as a worthy adviser to society on policy matters with life changing implications.
I think this really started to get the Western socialist support was when the walls fell down? It started in USRRR as innocent clubs in the western world for peace and for the environment?
Not to arm the western world and to cripple the western world economically?
Does anyone who has read Harry Dale Huffman's article on the error that everyone is making have a comment on it. The error that Huffman means is the assumption that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that increasing its concentration will increase the temperature of the atmosphere. Huffman disputes that assumption and to prove that it is wrong and has compared the temperature at altitudes from 1000 mb up to 200 mb on Venus and Earth. He finds that the temperature differences at the various pressure levels to be completely explained by the fact that Venus it closer to the sun than Earth. This similarity in temperatures at similar levels in the two atmospheres exists in spite of the differing concentrations of carbon dioxide, 96% vs 0.04%.
He goes on to describe how the albedo effect is nil.
I find all of this fascinating, yet disturbing. How can so many scientists been so wrong for so long? Yet he is persuasive.
Thanks for all of the effort that went into this, Bernie.
Regards
Bishop Hill: If you would, please email me. Thanks.