Bishop Hill The Economist on the IPCC
Jun 18, 2011 Climate: IPCC L'affaire Greenpeace continues to stir media interest. The Economist's Babbage column is the latest to weigh in, with this:
...the authors of the IPCC chapter involved declined to evaluate the scenarios they looked at in terms of whether they thought they were plausible, let alone likely. Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist who was one of those in overall charge of the report, gives the impression that he would have welcomed a more critical approach from his colleagues; but there is no mechanism by which the people in charge can force an author team to do more, or other, than it wants to.
If the authors were not assessing the material critically and nobody picked this up in the review process, and nobody was in a position to get the author team to change anything then it is a pretty damning indictment of the IPCC process. I should add a word of caution here though - as one correspondent has pointed out to me, the authors are chosen by national governments and anyone can be a reviewer. The IPCC process is clearly bust, but who is to blame?
More remarkably, the Greenpeace chap in question seems to want us to think that he would have loved the rest of the authors to ignore his paper but was forced to toe the line by the sheer number of people in opposition:
Mr Teske says; he was one of twelve authors on the relevant chapter, and over 120 authors overall, and had no peculiar Greenpeace lantern with which to bend them all to his will.
And then there's this:
Arthur Petersen of the Dutch environmental-assessment agency, PBL... takes the position that the IPCC has procedures on author selection, author-team balance and newly reinvigorated procedures on conflict of interest which, if properly and transparently enforced, don’t need further tightening.... “All the rules the IPCC needs are in place now,” says Dr Petersen. “It is up to the leadership and coordinating lead authors to implement them.”
Except, as readers here probably know, the rules on conflict of interest and author selection do not apply until after the Fifth Assessment Report. If you scroll right down to the bottom of the report, you find a mention of this fact:
B: Are you happy with the IPCC’s new conflict-of-interest policy? [adopted at the panel’s recent plenary]
RP: Absolutely. I must say that was a very heartening piece of work. People put in a lot of effort to come up with what I think is a very robust policy in terms of conflict of interest.
B: At what point should it start to apply?
RP: It’s applicable right away. Of course if you look at conflict of interest with respect to authors who are there in the 5th Assessment Report we’ve already selected them and therefore it wouldn’t be fair to impose anything that sort of applies retrospectively.
B: And that would be true for members of the Bureau [the IPCC’s senior personnel, such as chairs, co-chairs and vice chairs] as well?
RP: No, I think as far as members of the Bureau are concerned there’s really no such issue. I don’t see any problem with applying it immediately.
B: So it would be OK to apply it retrospectively to you.
RP: Oh absolutely, yeah. Why not?
But I think it's fair to say that the reader is not left with a clear view of the problems that the IPCC still has.
Reader Comments (13)
What is also becoming quite clear is that it is the blogosphere that is driving the MSM on these issues.
andyscrase - yes, agreed it is the blogosphere that is driving the MSM on these issues. But sometimes the MSM deliberately confuse the issue The Guardian tries to muddy the waters:
I suppose this is simply a misguided attempt to retain falling readership. But if The Economist and even The Independent is beginning to see the writing on the wall ... as one commenter whatcanisay on the original article said:
The IPCC, with its unsustantiated speculations, has provided wonderful opportunities for economists to make untestable, unsustaniated speculations. Please refer to Stern (now lord, though lord knows why) for details.
Stern never evaluated any benefits of a warmer world, lord knows why not, nobody else does either
We know Teske report was any good becasue Teske told us so as a lead IPCC author , after all his asked Teske a number of important and deep question on this work and Teske has answered these to the complete satisfaction of Teske. How can anyone else complain ?
Is Teske pronounced Tsk, as in: "Tsk, tsk"?
RP: Absolutely. I must say that was a very heartening piece of work. People put in a lot of effort to come up with what I think is a very robust policy in terms of conflict of interest.
Oh God, not robust again. As soon as I read/hear that word I know the science/policy/procedure/inquiry is highly dubious at best and most likely fundamentally flawed.
I love the fact that "fairness" to authors already selected is more important than the integrity of the IPCC process. That really backs up the suspicion that the IPCC is junket-fodder for the great-and-good of climate science.
They either need to worry about conflict of interest, or they don't. Saying that conflict of interest only matters starting 2014 is a joke.
The upcoming AR5 is probably the IPCC's last stand because the leadership knows that the organization is losing public confidence. So the intent is to deal again with a stacked deck while pretending not to cheat.
In his post Babbage seems to acknowlege at least one past error by the Economist. Is this the start of a climb-down from that paper's position on CAGW?
the authors of the IPCC chapter involved declined to evaluate the scenarios they looked at in terms of whether they thought they were plausible, let alone likely.
I've been banging on about this for years.
What experts furnished the climate modellers with "reliable" (ha ha) estimates of energy production, consumption, and price 100 years into the future? If you don't know price you don't know demand, and if you don't know demand you don't know consumption, and if you don't know that then you don't know emissions.
Or, putting it the other way, in assuming similar levels of emissions as today did they consider what these implied about the other variables and whether those were in fact plausible?
Stupid, stupid, stupid people.
re: this commentary from Dead Doug Bounce, above:
Yes, exactly.
Bishop, good to see you posting at The Economist, which seems to have abandoned its former rigorous analysis, particularly when it comes to CAGW. Happily, they've been getting a caning on this issue from posters over the last 2-3 years, there has been a big sceptical shift among posters if not authors. I note from the blog that the particular Babbage (several authors write under the name) and his brother are in fact closely involved in the CAGW field, and should surely be aware of the many flaws in it.
One point in Teske's favour is that he reads enough comic books to be able to make a small joke about Green Lanterns's power being controlled by will power.
Not really relevent to him being a Greenpeace fraudster but it appeals to me.