University College London has set up a grandly-named "Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science" and today the team, led by Professor Chris Rapley, has issued its much anticipated report.
Having scanned a few pages, it comes over as just what you'd expect: we learn that GWPF is a "right-wing think tank" and that "Riley Dunlap and Peter Jacques, based on a study of over 100 climate-change-dismissive books, identify strong links to conservative think-tanks". (The latter paper was covered at BH here, where I noted its bonkers allegation that my publisher is "overtly conservative"). There is also an approving link to Suzanne Goldenberg's specious claim that we sceptics have a billion dollars a year to spend and another to Skeptical Science. Still, this sort of idiocy is no doubt good enough for a Very Important Policy Commission.
But these are peripheral points. The guts of the report is the usual climate-communication navel-gazing enlivened only by a marginally less defensive posture with regard to the misdeeds of climate scientists:
Accounts of [Climategate] and the associated ‘hockey stick controversy’ can make uncomfortable reading for those with high expectations for standards of scientific conduct.
A strong public backlash is to be expected if a mismatch is exposed between expectations and reality. A salutary example is provided by the public dismay and loss of confidence following the release in 2009 of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which cast the behaviours of leading climate scientists in a poor light (‘Climategate’).
The recommendations are equally dull. For example, making sure that scientists enjoy a privileged position in the policymaking process:
Decision-making should not be through the ‘linear’ mode, characterized as ‘truth speaks to power’, but by a collective process (‘co-production’) in which all interested parties, including the public, play their part.
...a new learned society:
New organisational mechanisms are required to support the public discourse on climate science and to achieve necessary professional reforms – notably a forum for active public discussion and a professional body for climate scientists.
...but more amusingly a new "narrative":
A climate science ‘meta-narrative’ is required that delivers the results of climate science in a manner that is accurate, engaging, coherent, relevant, and which – by making clear the limits of certainty and knowledge – is robust against new discoveries and unfolding events.
Someone more cynical than me might suggest that climate science has already shown itself well able to, ahem, "deal with" new discoveries. Indeed, it has sometimes appeared to be entirely immune to them.