This is a guest post by David Holland
Readers may be aware that after WGI’s AR5 Report was released last year, I requested the Review Editors’ Reports from DECC, and from the Universities of Reading and Cambridge. The officials at DECC, who had moved across from Defra, followed their custom of making sure they do not to hold anything they might have to disclose. They took no steps to possess them and denied holding them. Reading appeared to have learnt from its AR4 experience and released the ones it held without a fuss. But Cambridge refused. I did not choose the title, “Regulator Capture”, in the Bishop Hill post on this matter, but now as I deal with my Tribunal written submission on Cambridge, it looks appropriate. The University of Cambridge claim that Professor Peter Wadhams’ records were not held to any extent for its own purposes because he had served the IPCC in a private capacity - just as Met Office Chief Scientist, John Mitchell, and others had claimed, unsuccessfully, in 2008. For this excuse Cambridge are relying on a relatively new Advice Note that I hope to convince the Tribunal has no basis in law.
However, as a second string to my bow, I think the claim that IPCC assessment records are not held to any extent for the purposes of the University looks improbable as its employees have contributed to all 5 IPCC reports and Peter Wadhams’ papers are are cited in them all. Moreover, the University has published every IPCC report including AR5. The copyright agreement, which all working group members including Review Editors had to sign in AR4, and will have had to sign for AR5, implies a formal agreement between the IPCC and the University of some kind, or it would not have been mentioned. In the email from WGI TSU to which the agreement was attached it stated:
The publisher, Cambridge University Press, requires a certain format for this and will require that we have everyone's signature before the report can go to press
The agreement itself includes this recital:
WHEREAS the Syndicate of the Press of the University of Cambridge on behalf of the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge has decided to publish at its own risk and expense a work edited by Susan Solomon, Qin Dahe, and Martin Manning (hereinafter called “the Editors”), and entitled Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (hereinafter called “the Work”)
To establish the facts, I asked DECC to let me see the AR5 WGI application form, redacted if necessary, which Wadhams had submitted. If DECC were to refuse to disclose the form, I had asked to be informed if Wadhams did use his private postal address and a private email on the form. However, DECC have refused, saying whether he applied privately, or as a University employee is personal information. I have some trouble with this. All 250 WGI writing team members are listed as affiliated to universities or public research establishments and I can’t see how WGI could have listed them all correctly if the individuals had not written the information on their forms. If, as I suspect, Wadhams put the University and his department down on the form as his address and used his University email, I do not see how that could be personal information as it's on his public web page and it is what the IPCC Report suggest he must have used. If he really did use his private address and a private email, that is what the University have stated publicly as being Wadhams’ claim. So as far as I can see, the only personal information DECC are withholding is whether or not someone is lying.
I may appeal DECC’s refusal, but a thought crossed my mind to ask if any reader out there has an email that will show which email server Wadhams sent and received his AR5 IPCC documents by. He certainly used his University email address in AR4 and earlier.