Transcript Document
What’s wrong with the IPCC?
A proposal for radical reform
Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph
September 17 2012
Introduction
Personal background
IPCC service
The GWPF project
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Why reforms?
Continued extent of criticisms
Continued high level of IPCC influence
Continued misunderstanding of IPCC process
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What reforms?
Principle: IPCC review process should be made as
rigorous as an ordinary academic journal
Changes needed to make this happen will sound “radical”
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Structure of Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC)
3 levels
Plenary panel (“IPCC”)
Bureau in Geneva
Working Groups
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WGI (physical science)
WGII (impacts)
WGIII (mitigation)
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Structure of Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC)
3 levels
Plenary panel (“IPCC”)
Bureau in Geneva
Working Groups
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WGI (physical science)
WGII (impacts)
WGIII (mitigation)
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Assessment Process: Personnel
Member governments submit nominations:
Coordinating Lead Authors (CLA)
Lead Authors (LA)
Contributing Authors (CA)
Review Editors (RE)
Focal Points
IPCC Bureau makes selections and releases list
CLA’s recruit CA’s as needed
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Assessment Process: Drafts
WG writes Zero Order Draft, circulates for preliminary review
Revisions made
First Order Draft released for expert comment
Revisions made
Second Order Draft released for expert and government review
Revisions made, review process ends
Report subject to further editing and rewrites
Summary for Policymakers (SPM) negotiated by Plenary
Final rewrite of report to reconcile to SPM
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Assessment Process: Drafts
WG writes Zero Order Draft, circulates for preliminary review
Revisions made
First Order Draft released for expert comment
Revisions made
Second Order Draft released for expert and government review
Revisions made, review process ends
Report then rewritten again, changes not subject to review.
Summary for Policymakers (SPM) negotiated by Plenary
Final rewrite of report to reconcile to SPM
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Problems
1.
Bureau control of CLA and LA selection
2.
No effective requirement for full representation of
views; no rules against LA’s reviewing their own work
3.
CLA’s and LA’s have authority to overrule reviewers;
reject comments
1+2+3 = Too much Bureau control over final
conclusions
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Bureau selection of Lead Authors
Opaque process, criticized by past LA’s during IAC review
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“There are far too many politically correct appointments, so that
developing country scientists are appointed who have insufficient scientific
competence to do anything useful. This is reasonable if it is regarded as a learning
experience, but in my chapter in AR4 we had half of the [Lead Authors]
who were not competent.”
“The most important problem of the IPCC is the nomination and selection of
authors and Bureau Members. Some experts are included or excluded
because of their political allegiance rather than their academic quality.
Sometimes, the “right” authors are put in key positions with generous government
grants to support their IPCC work, while the “wrong” authors are sidelined to
draft irrelevant chapters and sections without any support.”
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Bureau selection of Lead Authors
Laframboise (2011) explored links between IPCC and
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
28 of 44 chapters written by teams that included at least one WWF
campaign advisor
15 chapters: at least one CLA was a WWF advisor
3 chapters: both CLAs were WWF advisors
WGII report: all 20 chapters had WWF advisor on team
WGI report: 6 of 11 chapters
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Range of views
Wording up to 2011:
The composition of the group of Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead
Authors for a section or chapter of a Report shall reflect the need to
aim for a range of views, expertise and geographical representation
Revision after criticism:
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…shall aim to reflect a range of scientific, technical and socio-economic
views.
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CLA & LA authority
Do Review Editors require Lead Authors to respond to criticisms?
Email from IPCC co-chair Susan Solomon, March 2008, to RE John Mitchell:
Yes, but “Respond” can mean anything, including “Reject”
Not the same as academic journals
The review editors do not determine the content of the chapters. The authors are
responsible for the content of their chapters and responding to comments, not REs.
Further explanations, elaboration, or re-interpretations of the comments or the
author responses, would not be appropriate.
Also, CLAs have chance to rewrite entire document after the close of peer
review
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Case Studies in Report
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Long Term Persistence
Surface Temperature Data
Climate Sensitivity
Chapter 9 Review
“Hide the Decline”
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Long Term Persistence
Text at end of review process, based on responses to expert comments:
Table 3.2 provides trend estimates from a number of hemispheric and global
temperature databases. Determining the statistical significance of a trend line
in geophysical data is difficult, and many oversimplified techniques will
tend to overstate the significance…As some components of the climate system
respond slowly to change, the climate system naturally contains persistence, so that
the REML AR1-based linear trend statistical significances are likely to be
overestimated (Zheng and Basher, 1999; Cohn and Lins, 2005).
Text as published:
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In Table 3.2, the effects of persistence on error bars are accommodated using a red
noise approximation, which effectively captures the main influences…. long-term
persistence models (Cohn and Lins, 2005) have not been shown to provide a better
fit to the data than simpler models.
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Climate Sensitivity
Model based estimates (relatively high) vs empirical
estimates (relatively low)
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Douglass & Knox (2005): empirical paper finding low sensitivity
Wigley, Ammann, Santer & Taylor: Comment on D&K (2005)
Douglass & Knox: Reply (2005)
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Climate Sensitivity
Model based estimates (relatively high) vs empirical
estimates (relatively low)
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Douglass & Knox (2005): empirical paper finding low sensitivity
Wigley, Ammann, Santer & Taylor: Comment on D&K (2005)
Douglass & Knox: Reply (2005)
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Climate Sensitivity
Model based estimates (relatively high) vs empirical
estimates (relatively low)
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Douglass & Knox (2005): empirical paper finding low sensitivity
Wigley, Ammann, Santer & Taylor: Comment on D&K (2005)
Douglass & Knox: Reply (2005)
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Hide the Decline
Circa 1999
IPCC leaned on LA’s Mann&Folland to include a paleoclimate
graph in summary
WMO asked Jones to prepare graph for special edition report
to go to world leaders
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3 candidates: MBH, Briffa, Jones
Problem: Briffa’s shows decline after 1950
Same problem: Briffa data
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IPCC report then being drafted:
The dilemma
>> >>A proxy diagram of temperature change is a clear favourite for the
>> Policy
>> >>Makers summary. But the current diagram with the tree ring only
data
>> >>somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message
rather
>> >>significantly.
“My concern was motivated by the possibility of expressing
an impression of more concensus than might actually exist
. I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not
'muddy the waters' by including contradictory evidence
worried me . IPCC is supposed to represent concensus but
also areas of uncertainty in the evidence.”
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IPCC report then being drafted:
The dilemma
“I know there is pressure to present
>> a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a
thousand
>> >years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not
>> quite so simple. We don't have a lot of proxies that come right up to
date and
>> >those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies ) some
>> >unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I
do
>> >not think it wise that this issue
be ignored in the chapter.
…. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years
ago. I do not believe that global
>> >mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over
thousands
>> of years as Mike appears to…”
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IPCC report then being drafted:
The outcome
That author fell on his sword
His data was presented with post-1960 portion deleted; issue
ignored in chapter
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Briffa data
Original and as used: post-1950 deleted
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Jones’ WMO cover
As published: post-1960 decline deleted, instrumental
temps used, splice smoothed
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Jones’ version
Without these steps
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IPCC version
Post-1960 decline deleted
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Surface Temperature Data Quality
By 2004, findings published
by 2 independent teams
showing evidence of
contamination of data with
warm bias
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McKitrick and Michaels 2004, 2007
Tested if spatial pattern of temperature trends
in CRU data over land are independent of
spatial pattern of socioeconomic development
The answer is no, they are strongly correlated
(even after adjustments)
Can account for ~ 1/3 to 1/2 of post-1980
warming over land
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IPCC position
Acknowledges local urban heat
island problem, but denies it
affects large-scale data patterns
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CRU Chief: Phil Jones
Produces CRU data for IPCC
Was lead author of IPCC Chapter assessing his own
work
Email to Mann, July 2004:
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC
report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out
somehow — even if we have to redefine what the
peer-review literature is!”
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IPCC 2007 Report
1st draft: no mention of critical papers
2nd draft: still no mention
Reviewers demanded it be addressed
Reviewers again demanded it be addressed
Peer review closed July 2006
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IPCC 2007 Report
Published text: Issue dismissed with fabricated evidence
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McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and De Laat and Maurellis (2006)
attempted to demonstrate that geographical patterns of warming trends
over land are strongly correlated with geographical patterns of industrial
and socioeconomic development, implying that urbanisation and related
land surface changes have caused much of the observed warming.
However, the locations of greatest socioeconomic development
are also those that have been most warmed by atmospheric
circulation changes (Sections 3.2.2.7 and 3.6.4), which exhibit
large-scale coherence. Hence, the correlation of warming with
industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be
statistically significant. In addition, observed warming has been, and
transient greenhouse-induced warming is expected to be, greater over
land than over the oceans (Chapter 10), owing to the smaller thermal
capacity of the land.
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IPCC: Summary of problems
Bureau selects Lead Authors in conflicts of interest, then:
Allows them to review their own work and that of their critics
Allows them to ignore and override reviewers
Allows them to rewrite text after close of peer review
The record shows this leads to distortions of the text
and suppression of the full range of evidence
Recommendations: Make the IPCC work more like an
academic journal
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Proposals for reform
1.
An objective and transparent Lead Author selection procedure.
2.
A transparent Contributing Author recruitment process.
3.
Appointment of an Editorial Advisory Board and identification of
potentially controversial sections.
4.
Explicit assignment of both section authorship and reviewer positions.
5.
Adoption of an iterative process to achieve a final text under the
joint supervision of authors, reviewers and editors.
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Proposals for reform
6.
Adoption of a procedure for seeking technical input when necessary from
outside the list of authors and reviewers during the assessment process.
7.
Due diligence regarding key supporting papers and full disclosure of all data and
methods used to produce original IPCC Figures and Tables.
8.
Immediate online publication of the full report upon finalization, prior to
production of summary.
9.
Production of Summary by Ad Hoc group appointed by the Panel based on
recommendations from the Editorial Advisory Board.
10. Release
of all drafts, review comments, responses and author correspondence
records within 3 months of online publication of the full report.
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Proposals for reform
11.
That the nations involved in the IPCC Panel
begin these reforms at once, and if such a
process cannot be initiated then those
national governments that seek objective and
sound advice on climate change issues should
withdraw from the IPCC and begin the
process of creating a new assessment body
free of the deficiencies identified herein.
See thegwpf.org
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