Candidate Stocker?
Feb 17, 2015
David Holland

This is a guest post by David Holland

I have heard rumours that Thomas Stocker might be a candidate to take over from ‘Pachy’ as the next Chairman of the IPCC. This now seems more likely than not (H/T Judith Curry). I’m not sure how many decision makers will see this but perhaps some letters to MPs might be in order.

For some of us Stocker first came to our notice in Climategate 2009. In May 2009, Phil Jones told Peter Thorne at the Met Office:

I did send an email to Thomas Stocker alerting him up to comment #17.[on ClimateAudit] These are all about who changed what in various chapters of AR4. I expect these to get worse with AR5.

Then, in July 2009, Tim Osborn asked Stocker for a letter to convince the Information Commissioner to refuse my information requests. Several letters were sent to the UEA and Met Office referring to an “overarching principle of confidentiality” and a vague threat to UK institutions. These resulted in their refusal to disclose critically important information and the notorious statement in the evidence of Universities UK to the Justice Committee

In another matter, we recently received exactly such representations from the IPCC TSU [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Technical Support Unit] based in Geneva, Switzerland in which they explicitly noted that release of such material would “…force us to reconsider our working arrangements with those experts who have been selected for an active role in WG1 AR5 [Working Group One, Fifth Assessment Report] from your institution and others within the United Kingdom”.

We saw the first fruits of Stocker's reconsideration of working arrangements at the the 36th Session of the IPCC in September 2013. The  Review Editors Reports which had played a critical part in both Climategate and Glaciergate, were not going to be made public in AR5. Instead government officials could view the 100 page document on a screen. If they wanted a copy - and DECC did not - an individually serial numbered copy with a bar code on every page would be emailed with the recipient's name and email address in its properties. They were eventually published after an MP had correspondence with DECC. 

However, stepping back to later in July 2009, Jones had told Thomas Peterson

I have got the IPCC Secretariat and Thomas to raise the FOI issues with the full IPCC Plenary, which meets in Bali in September or October [2010]. Thomas is fully aware of all the issues we've had here wrt Ch 6 last time, and others in the US have had.

As we know just a few weeks later in 2009, Climategate, Glaciergate and the InterAcademy Council (IAC) gave the IPCC Plenary in Bali some other important matters to discuss. Although no government or the IAC had asked for it, Stocker slipped, into the recommendations of the IAC, his request for confidentiality. These were eventually watered down on page 16 of the Report of the May 2011 IPCC 33rd Plenary Session at Abu Dhabi to

 ...during drafting and review...IPCC considers its draft reports, prior to acceptance, to be pre-decisional, provided in confidence to reviewers, and not for public distribution, quotation or citation.

A point to note here is that the Aarhus Convention in its Article 4(4)(d) explicitly requires information on emissions to be disclosed regardless of confidentiality.  Also, and perhaps unnoticed by many, on page 32 the same 33rd Session Report, the IPCC recorded its decision on the Principles of its Communications Strategy, which the InterAcademy Council had advised.  Item one is

The Panel’s communications approach and activities should, at all times, be consistent with the IPCC overarching principles of objectivity, openness and transparency.

In asking the Met Office for the AR5 Zero Order Drafts to be disclosed, I was directly challenging Stocker's omertà and a few weeks later at the Met Office’s request he issued a new edict.  In the first sentence, Professor Stocker acknowledges that the “the IPCC principles state that the assessment process should be on an open and transparent basis”, but not that it had just been decided that it is its “overarching principle”. He then seeks to redefine what the word “transparency” means, stating

Transparency implies that the public should be informed about the mechanism of an IPCC assessment and about the framework within which an IPCC Working Group (WG) carries out its assessment.

 Stocker then goes on to state, presumably because the IPCC has no recorded position on the ZODs, but ignoring the IPCC own overarching principle of transparency, restated just weeks earlier

The ZOD is a preliminary, internal draft only that is not subject to formal review and is clearly a pre-decisional document. It is therefore not in accordance with IPCC Procedures for this draft, and documents associated with its development such as the review comments and lists of reviewers, to be made public.

I think transparency means much more than seeing documents on mechanisms and frameworks.  It means seeing what actually happens in practice and the ZODs are part of that. Regardless of it not being subject to formal review, the recorded decision of the IPCC on 'drafts' is clear.  They are only considered confidential prior to 'acceptance'.  The penultimate paragraph of Stockers edict is utterly incompatible with the IPCC's own overarching principle. It states

As an overarching principle, all material sent by the Co-Chairs of WGI or by the WGI Technical Support Unit to members of the IPCC WGI author teams, past and present, is intended solely for the addressee. It is provided for a specific purpose and readership and is not intended for public distribution. We therefore do not give permission for its disclosure.

For the purpose of this post, and in the mind of any objective person, the comments above should be enough to disqualify Stocker as a candidate for to be Chairman of the IPCC.  However, were you believe that you and he are saving humanity he might be just person you want.  You might also applaud the Met Office which has refused to disclose the the 16 year old TAR ZODs claiming

The IPCC has an unwritten agreement of confidence with authors in relation to all ZODs produced as part of its assessment reports, and the understanding that they are not for public disclosure.

If you really believed that you and Stocker are saving humanity, you might also be prepared to state to a Tribunal, as Dr Peter Stott has supporting the Met Office refusal to disclose the 10 year old AR4 ZODs,

...While the 2011 [Stocker’s] document on confidentiality sets out the position of Working Group 1 this position has clearly been endorsed by the IPCC Panel at the 33rd Session of the IPCC in Abu Dhabi in May 2011.  It is therefore the agreed position of Governments that are party to the IPCC, as agreed by Government representatives.

I would like to ask BH readers if I have missed some thing in the Report of the 33rd IPCC Session or am I making a fair comment to say that the above statement of Stott is just not true? Yesterday was the deadline, set by the Tribunal on the AR4 ZODs, for further representations and I had made some robust but fair comments, on Stott's statement which was only revealed to me on 30 January 2015. The Met Office is now demanding a two day oral hearing. Words are beginning to fail me, but let me close by quoting from what might be Pachy's swan song to the 41st Session of the IPCC later this month.

IPCC BRAND – Specifically, when deciding on the format and approach for future products of the IPCC, it is useful for the Panel to keep in mind what makes the essence of IPCC assessments, namely scientific rigor and comprehensiveness. It is essential that any format decided for the future products of the IPCC does not allow for any compromise on their robustness, comprehensiveness, rigour and transparency, as these qualities guarantee the authority of IPCC assessments as providing the most up-to-date and best scientific information available in the field of climate change.

 

 

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