Tag: IPCC

IPCC report: done well, could do better

The InterAcademy Council report on the IPCC — Climate Change Assessments: Review of the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC — released yesterday, calls for “fundamental reforms” to the IPCC’s management structure and review processes. Climate Central provides a useful summary of the key findings:

  • The IPCC should create an Executive Committee to run the organization in between major conferences.
  • Rather than have the IPCC director serve for two six-year terms, a new director should be appointed for each major assessment report (there have been four so far). Since the IPCC is well into the fifth assessment, it isn’t clear whether Dr. Pachauri will step down (he’s evidently said that any decision will have to wait for the next IPCC meeting, in Korea in October).
  • The reviewers who decide what makes it into the final report and what doesn’t should work harder to address comments from authors, and to let dissenting views be reflected more fully in the finished product.
  • Statements about certainties and uncertainties about climate science need to be more explicit, need to be based on a more uniform set of criteria, and need to be clearer about how they were calculated.
  • The IPCC in general needs to be more open and transparent about how it goes about its business.
  • The IPCC needs to improve the way it deals with so-called “grey literature”– that is, non-peer-reviewed reports that contain valuable information, but which haven’t already been subjected to strict scientific scrutiny.

Professor Martin Manning, Director of the Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington told the Science Media Centre that he welcomed the report:

The IAC has run a detailed review of the process used by the IPCC for assessing scientific understanding and this has produced a number of useful comments that I think most climate scientists will agree with. Their report accepts that scientific understanding of climate change is developing rapidly and this means that the process for assessing it for policymakers needs to become more dynamic.

More reaction: Roger Harrabin at the BBC, Guardian, New Scientist, plus the UN webcast of the press conference is here.

My take? It would be a miracle if a 22 year old organisation with minimal full-time staff that has seen its raison d’être move up to the top of the list of global priorities couldn’t be improved. The suggestions look sensible, and if they help to defuse the continuing attacks from the usual suspects, so much the better.

Report clears IPCC head Pachauri, UK paper apologises

Back in March I posted on IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri’s stout defence of the IPCC report against the attacks to which it was being subjected by hysterical denialism.  But he has also had to defend himself against accusations in an article by Christopher Booker and Richard North in the Sunday Telegraphin December which claimed that the UN climate chief was “making a fortune from his links with ‘carbon trading’ companies” and that payments from his work for other organisations “must run into millions of dollars”.

KPMG was engaged by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the non-profit organisation Pachauri heads, to conduct an independent review of personal financial records of Dr Pachauri and other records of TERI to confirm if there is any evidence that suggests that Dr Pachauri misused his position for personal benefit as alleged.

The KPMG report has now been made public.  The Guardian reports:

 

“The KPMG audit, completed in March, showed the allegation that Pachauri had made millions of dollars could not be further from the truth. In addition to his annual salary of £45,000, the auditors found that in the period 1 April 2008 – 31 December 2009, Pachauri received 20,000 rupees (£278) from two national power commissions in India, on which he serves as director; 35,880 rupees (£498) for articles and lectures; and a maximum of 100,000 rupees (£1,389) in the form of royalties from his books and awards.

“Any money paid as a result of work that Pachauri had done for other organisations went to TERI. The accounts also show that Pachauri also donated to the institute a lifetime achievement award from the Environment Partnership Summit – a 200,000 rupee prize he would have been entitled to keep.”

The Sunday Telegraph has removed the article from its website and apologised, hardly handsomely but apparently to avoid libel proceedings:

“[The article] was not intended to suggest that Dr Pachauri was corrupt or abusing his position as head of the IPCC and we accept KPMG found Dr Pachauri had not made ‘millions of dollars’ in recent years. We apologise to Dr Pachauri for any embarrassment caused.”

George Monbiot has made trenchant comment.

“Has anyone been as badly maligned as Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ?

“…The story immediately travelled around the world. It was reproduced on hundreds of blogs. The allegations it contained were widely aired in the media and generally believed. For a while, no discussion of climate change or the IPCC appeared complete without reference to Pachauri’s ‘dodgy’ business dealings and alleged conflicts of interest.

“There was just one problem: the story was untrue.

“It’s not just that Pachauri hadn’t been profiting from the help he has given to charities, businesses and institutions, his accounts show that he is scrupulous to the point of self-denial.”

The Sunday Telegraph article also complained that we don’t know “how much we all pay him” as chairman of the IPCC. The answer, as Monbiot reports, is nothing.  This was information that the journalists could easily have obtained but driven by their intention to malign preferred not to.

This won’t be the end of the matter for denialists of course. North on his blog puts the apology down to the paper’s need to avoid libel proceedings from an “unethical law firm” and continues undaunted:

“If you wish to believe that means Pachauri didn’t make millions of dollars, that is your affair. But the crucial thing is that the paper has not apologised for accusing Pachauri of making millions of dollars. That accusation stands uncorrected. The paper simply accepts that KPMG has a claim in this respect.”

Monbiot expects that the smear campaign will continue, and become ever more lurid as new charges are invented.

“The best we can do is to set out the facts and appeal to whatever decency the people spreading these lies might have, and ask them to consider the impact of what they have done to an innocent man. Will it work? I wouldn’t bet on it. As we have seen in the United States, where some people (often the same people) continue to insist that Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born abroad, certain views are impervious to evidence.”

If we need reminding, denialism will stop at nothing in its campaign to denigrate the science of climate change. That is what the attacks on Pachauri are about. He is chairman of the IPCC. Portray him as dishonest and hope thereby to spread doubt about the IPCC reports. It is determination to suppress the science which informs the attacks on him and on the scientists who have been falsely accused of various malpractices.

We call upon the author…

I must have been asleep last week when the IPCC announced its selection of authors for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), due in 2013/14. As usual, NZ scientists are making a significant contribution:

  • Tim Naish is a lead author for Working Group 1 (The Physical Science Basis) chapter 5, Information from Paleoclimate Archives.
  • Jim Renwick is a lead author for WG1 Chapter 14, Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change.
  • David Wratt is a review editor for Chapter 14 (as is Kevin Trenberth)
  • Phil Boyd (NIWA) is a lead author for WG2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), Chapter 6, Ocean Systems.
  • Alistair Woodward is one of the two Coordinating Lead Authors for WG2, Chapter 11, Human Health.
  • Andy Reisinger is a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 25, Australasia, Paul Newton (AgResearch) and Andrew Tait (NIWA) are lead authors, and Blair Fitzharris is a Review Editor.
  • Ralph Sims is a Coordinating Lead Author for Working Group 3 (Mitigation of Climate Change), Chapter 8, on Transport.
  • Harry Clark is a lead author for WG3, Chapter 11, Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses (AFOLU).
  • Complete author lists: WG1, WG2, WG3.

Congratulations to all. Now the hard work starts…

And a plug: Jim Renwick is giving a talk on climate change at the Hurunui Library (yes, the one in the heat pump ads) in Amberley on Monday, July 5th at 7-30pm. All welcome. I’ll be heckling from the cheap seats…

[Thanks to Frogblog]

[Nick Cave]

Sceptics face yawning credibility gap

We know that the vast majority of climate scientists support the explanation of anthropogenic climate change set out by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. That majority is now quantified in the first study of its kind published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Expert credibility in climate change.

“Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of anthropogenic climate change are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.”

The study explains the criteria by which these conclusions were reached, paying particular attention to the question of expertise, where weight was given to the number of climate publications of researchers and to their citation levels.

“We show that the expertise and prominence, two integral components of overall expert credibility, of climate researchers convinced by the evidence of ACC vastly overshadows that of the climate change skeptics and contrarians. This divide is even starker when considering the top researchers in each group.”

The team of four has obviously put a good deal of time into the study which was contributed for publication by Stephen Schneider (pictured). Why bother, one might ask.  Surely it’s all too apparent. It may be to readers of Hot Topic but the study notes that considerable and even growing public doubt remains about the anthropogenic cause and the level of scientific agreement about the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in climate change. The vocal minority of researchers and other critics who contest the conclusions of the mainstream scientific assessment has received large amounts of media attention and wields significant influence in the societal debate about climate change impacts and policy.

An analysis such as the study offers has not been conducted before, and the writers observe that it can help inform future ACC discussions. Translated into common parlance I guess that means they hope this will put paid to the idea still abroad, in at least the American media, that denial of anthropogenic climate change retains a respectable level of scientific credibility.

That may be optimistic. Journalism in general still has difficulty getting its head around the reality of mainstream climate science. The idea that there is a realistic alternative shows remarkable persistence. When I was writing occasional columns for my local paper, the Waikato Times, I discovered that my attempts to explain aspects of the current science eventually came up against an anxiety that the paper was not presenting a balanced picture. There was finally talk of pairing my column with another which would meet the paper’s obligation to offer its readers more than one opinion. I protested that I was representing mainstream science and asked why the paper should feel that needed to be balanced. I made that my last contribution and escaped the indignity of a balancing viewpoint. It seemed fairly clear that the East Anglia emails and the baseless attacks on the IPCC report by the likes of Jonathan Leake were enough to unsettle the journalists with whom I was dealing and bring back to life concerns which I thought had long been laid to rest.

One nevertheless hopes that  surveys and appraisals such as this one in a highly regarded journal will make a difference to media perception and help establish in the public mind the seriousness of the scientific understanding and predictions. It seems inconceivable that we should continue much longer refusing to face the reality.  But I’ve been thinking that for four years now.

Sunday Times apologises for “Amazongate” misinformation

Three months after Simon Lewis laid a complaint with the UK’s Press Complaints Commission, which I reported here, the Sunday Timeshas retracted Jonathan Leake’s disgraceful Amazongate article and apologised to Dr Lewis. The article has been removed from their website. Here’s the apology:

The article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim” that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for WWF by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’ research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.

 

In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We also understand and accept that Mr Rowell is an experienced environmental journalist and that Dr Moore is an expert in forest management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.

The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that, in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time, including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change.

In addition, the article stated that Dr Lewis’ concern at the IPCC’s use of reports by environmental campaign groups related to the prospect of those reports being biased in their conclusions. We accept that Dr Lewis holds no such view – rather, he was concerned that the use of non-peer-reviewed sources risks creating the perception of bias and unnecessary controversy, which is unhelpful in advancing the public’s understanding of the science of climate change. A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.

Leake’s article was not only celebrated ad nauseam in the denialist community but also taken up by mainstream media in many countries.  Here in New Zealand the Dominion Post used it in an editorial claiming that the ethics and integrity of climate scientists is being called into question. I wrote about that here. The editorial accepted that human activity is contributing to global warming, but drew this appalling conclusion about the IPCC:

“Why trust a panel that confuses opinion and fact, wrongly attributes that opinion, tries to shout down critics and displays a determination to make the facts fit the theory rather than the other way around.

“The IPCC should leave the spin to the politicians and get on with its real job – establishing the facts. By glossing over inconvenient truths and misrepresenting opinion as scientific fact, it has undermined its credibility.

“It now has a great deal of work to do if it is to persuade peoples and governments that its findings should be taken seriously.”

Jonathan Leake and the Sunday Times have a lot to answer for, but so do journalists in many places who allow themselves to be so easily misinformed. The credulity with which they have received accusations of malpractice by the East Anglia scientists, and alleged IPCC errors (beyond the acknowledged and regretted error relating to the Himalayan glaciers) is astonishing. Where on earth did the Dominion Post find the confidence to make such a declaration about the IPCC?  Not by reading the science, that’s for sure.  And that’s the nub of the matter: the media generally gives the impression that it has not ensured that enough of its journalists are informed about climate science. That’s why the mischief wrought by disinformers, especially when they’re backed by seemingly reputable papers, can reach global media proportions overnight.

Perhaps any of our readers who see the Dominion Post might consider writing to the editor and inviting them to retract their editorial, or at least to write another acknowledging that they have reason to reconsider their verdict on the IPCC.

The Sunday Times correction has been published on their website here, but be warned that you have to go through a full registration procedure to view it.