Comments
NASA Scientist Rejected IPCC Summary in 2005
Blogger Bishop Hill:
While perusing some of the review comments to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, I came across the contributions of Andrew Lacis, a colleague of James Hansen’s at GISS. Lacis’s is not a name I’ve come across before but some of what he has to say about Chapter 9 of the IPCC’s report is simply breathtaking.
Chapter 9 is possibly the most important one in the whole IPCC report – it’s the one where they decide that global warming is manmade. This is the one where the headlines are made.
Remember, this guy is mainstream, not a sceptic, and you may need to remind yourself of that fact several times as you read through his comment on the executive summary of the chapter:
There is no scientific merit to be found in the Executive Summary. The presentation sounds like something put together by Greenpeace activists and their legal department. The points being made are made arbitrarily with legal sounding caveats without having established any foundation or basis in fact. The Executive Summary seems to be a political statement that is only designed to annoy greenhouse skeptics. Wasn’t the IPCC Assessment Report intended to be a scientific document that would merit solid backing from the climate science community – instead of forcing many climate scientists into having to agree with greenhouse skeptic criticisms that this is indeed a report with a clear and obvious political agenda. Attribution can not happen until understanding has been clearly demonstrated. Once the facts of climate change have been established and understood, attribution will become self-evident to all. The Executive Summary as it stands is beyond redemption and should simply be deleted.
I’m speechless. The chapter authors, however weren’t. This was their reply (all of it):
Rejected. [Executive Summary] summarizes Ch 9, which is based on the peer reviewed literature.
Bishop Hill Updates the story:
One minor criticism is that can be brushed aside fairly quickly is that Lacis’ comments were made about a draft of the report and not the final article. This seems a bit daft to me as it’s only the drafts that reviewers get to have their say on. The final report is, well, final. The important facts are the nature of Lacis’s criticisms and that they were rejected.
The major criticism though seems to be that I’ve quote mined; that Lacis’ comments were on the executive summary only and were therefore taken out of context.
I think with retrospect my headline could have been better, as it suggested that the Lacis quote I gave was on the whole report and not on the Executive Summary and to this extent I think some of the criticism is warranted. Fortunately though, in another comment on the chapter, Lacis does in fact set out his opinions on the chapter as a whole so we can assess just how badly I’ve misrepresented him by leaving out the context.
Here’s the comment, again in full:
The scientific merit of the IPCC Assessment Report would be substantically improved by simply deleting this chapter. Understanding is a prerequisite before any credible attribution can take place. The chapter starts by putting the cart ahead of the horse – attributions are made left and right without ever laying a foundation to stand on. The objective of the Assessment Report should be to present a clear and convincing documentation of climate change, and avoid becoming a punching bag for climate change critics and skeptics. The place to start is with the observed record of greenhouse gas increases. These GHG increases have physical consequences, i.e., the GHGs produce radiative forcing that is driving the climate system to a new equilibrium. And, there is a global temperature record that verifies that that is indeed what is happening. If, for political reasons, this chapter needs to be retained, it should be rewritten as a synthesis of what has been learnded in the earlier chapters, and moved to the end of the Report. If written well, “attribution” will become a self-evident conclusion that is based on the facts presented.
It’s still worse in context.