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Essay by Ann Henderson-Sellers: What IPCC Authors Really Think
Roger Pielke Sr has an essay online from Anne Henderson-Sellers who surveyed the IPCC lead authors shortly after completion of the AR4. There are lots of interesting quotes about their private doubts about the quality of models, their ironclad convictions about what the right answers are, the sense that what they really need to do is improve their political advocacy, and so forth. But what caught my attention was this paragraph:
In some places there is an (unhealthy?) fear of mis- (or out of context) quoting by global warming “deniers”. We are hesitant to stress comments such as “the Fourth Assessment Report missed doing this owing essentially to the timelines that were arranged.” Another interesting example of this fear is that the original suggestion was to entitle the Sydney workshop, “What did the IPCC get wrong?” This proposal was quickly squashed in the corridors of the World Meteorological Organisation lest the anti-greenhouse lobby picked it up and repeated it as criticism of the IPCC.
This attitude infects the whole IPCC organization. They can’t admit any errors or problems with their work lest their critics find out (as if we didn’t already know). So they cover it up, stick to the script and even squash the idea of asking what they got wrong. I suppose there are other organizations that operate this way, just none that one would trust.
Adapted from a comment by Ross McKitrick at Climate Audit.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:35 am
The whole debate is riddled with such problems. I think the correct course of action is simply to prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. An empirical answer, I know, but in the face of so many claims and counter-claims, what else is a sensible person to conclude?