Discussion > Writing and reviewing IPCC AR5
The expert review of the First Order Draft of the IPCC Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) volume will be from 11th June to 6th August.
If you are interested in participating, the email address for registration details is tsu@ipcc-wg2.gov
Cheers
Richard
Richard Betts
Richard, I am reposting this question from the now inactive St Andrew's thread, on the assumption that you will not have seen it:
I am interested to know if your AR5 working group is considering beneficial aspects of warming as well as potential adverse effects. For instance, off the top of my head: reduced winter deaths in cold climates; reduced need for heating of buildings in cool temperate and sub-arctic areas (hence less use of fossil fuels, surely a negative feedback on global warming, if the CO2 meme is accepted); and enhanced agricultural production in countries like Canada and Russia. I cannot see any logical rationale for not considering such potential benefits, unless the IPCC charter precludes it, which is its own indictment.
I don't wish to be importunate, and simply believe it to be a given that the integrity and credibility of the AR5 process can only be much enhanced if all relevant effects of warming, actual or potential, good or bad, are duly considered. Looking forward to your reply.
Chris M
Hi Richard,
Do you have any details on how many representatives of the insurance (and reinsurance) industries are contributors, authors and/or reviewers of AR5?
Appreciate that this may not be immediately of interest to you but maybe you could point me to where the info maybe available?
TIA, regards
GS
Green Sand
Richard,
Will you try to ensure they no longer try to airbrush the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age from the historical record and portray them accurately?
Let's face it, A warming of 0.8C over 150 years, which statistically stopped 15 years ago [excluding the 1998 El Nino blip], can hardly be portrayed as a hockey stick unless intended to deceive.
And people don't forget the prophecy of the chief druid Hansen that New York would be under a foot of water by the year 2000.
Keep the smoke and mirrors out of AR5 or see it torn apart like the previous piece of Soviet style politicised 'science'
regards,
RKS
Richard,
One more thing you might be able to enlighten me about.
I hear a lot of talk, often attributed to the IPCC, that the rate of warming of 0.8C over the past 150 years is 'unprecedented'.
Is this backed up by empirical data and if so over what period, or is it just plain alarmist hyperbole?
Best regards,
RKS
May 4, 2012 at 10:56 PM | Green Sand
Here is the up-dated listing for AR5 authors as of 7 March 2012
Ctrl F will lead you to the desired candidates.
Brownedoff
May 5, 2012 at 12:49 PM | Brownedoff
Many thanks! Excellent!
Green Sand
Chris M
Yes, opportunities as well as threats are looked at.
This was already done for the UK Goverment's Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), in which I was involved. You'll note that summary document highlights some potential health and agricultural benefits.
Agricultural benefits depend critically on the strength of CO2 effects on photosynthesis and water use efficiency, in comparison with the effects of higher temperatures and possibly increased drought. Large uncertainties there, unfortunately!
Cheers
Richard
Richard Betts
Thanks Richard for the reply, much appreciated!
Chris M
Review of the Second Order Draft begins on 28 March 2013. Pre-registration for this review will open on 22 February 2013 here - as before, I expect the process will be very simple and merely require you to self-declare your expertise.
Richard Betts
Richard, thanks for re-activating this thread. I missed it the first time around, and it was well worth reading.
Have to agree with the Uncle (speaking as an ex-bureaucrat close to the centre of power) that the IPCC is just a consultant hired by governments, who get to vet the final report before release. Also, he is spot-on when he says that the pain in the wallet is what will finally kill the ghastly CAGW meme. That said, wars are fought on many levels, and the work of people like Donna and Hilary resonates in a different, but important, sphere of influence.
johanna
The review of the Second Order Draft of the AR5 Working Group 2 (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) report opens tomorrow. If you want to review it, email the Technical Support Unit on tsu@ipcc-wg2.gov for information on how to register.
Further details are in the open invitation from the IPCC here.
Johanna, I disagree with your comment above. The report is written by scientists. At the final plenary, government representatives provide their feedback on the report and can ask for re-wording of the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) (eg: to express things more clearly) - but re-wording can only be done by the Coordinating Lead Authors, who are scientists, and they will ensure that any re-wording for clarity does not change the scientific meaning. If you want to see the current draft of the SPM, which is entirely written by scientists (including input from me), sign up as a reviewer and you can get a copy tomorrow.
There is a also a Technical Summary (TS, with more detail than the SPM) which again is entirely written by scientists and is not subject for requests for re-wording at the final plenary - so this provides a means of checking whether the SPM still says what the scientists said.
Then of course there's the chapters themselves. All statements in the SPM and TS refer to the relevant section of the chapter upon which they are based, so their provenance can be traced. Again, you can get copies of the Second Order Drafts of the chapters by signing up as a reviewer.
Richard Betts
Details of the IPCC plenary meeting to accept the WG1 AR5 report (23-26 September) are here.
Richard Betts
Jun 5, 2013 at 2:07 PM | Richard Betts
Thanks, for posting this, Richard.
Perhaps you can clarify something for me, because I noticed that the line by line "Approval" process will actually be conducted during the 12th Session of WG1 (which "national delegations" are invited to attend), but that the IPCC "plenary" - which is not scheduled to commence until Sept. 26 - will merely "accept the actions taken" at the 12th session of WG1.
This was the same "process" that led Damian Carrington (and Richard Klein) to mistakenly assert that all 194 nations of the world had "approved" the SRREN.
In fact, the national delegations who participated in the WG session - of which the line by line "Approval" process was one agenda item - was 91 (i.e. less than 50%), at least according to the IPCC's own numbers [pls see Of IPCC reports … and press releases in which they “hide the declines”]
So my question to you is, has this two-step [line by line] Approval (by WG)--> [pro forma] Acceptance (by the IPCC Plenary) process always been in effect for previous Assessment reports, or is this a new, improved, streamlined process for AR5?
Thanks :-)
Hilary Ostrov
I am probably not alone in thinking science by committee isn't going to get us very far. I doubt very much whether any of the delegates are able to talk outside of their own specialism, and the non-scientific delegates not at all. So apart from putting millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in a typical IPCC jolly, what is the point?
I, of course, believe I know the answer to that question, it is to lend legitimacy to the scary science so the dim-witted, non-scientific, warmists like Carrington can parrot the fact that the whole of the scientific world is in agreement and frighten the public into believing they are seeing scientists foretelling the future and that the all agree it's going to be disastrous unless we forfeit our democratic freedoms to the environmentalists. It stinks Richard, it really does, and scientists should have no part in it. There will be hell to play when this farce unravels. Which it will.
geronimo
Jun 6, 2013 at 7:14 AM | geronimo
It stinks Richard, it really does, and scientists should have no part in it. There will be hell to play when this farce unravels. Which it will.
Setting aside the fact that this particular farce is unravelling, but speaking of that in which scientists should have no part ...
I wonder if Richard, an IPCC Lead Author for AR5 WGII - and a member of the
Ediitorial Board of the Journal of Environmental Investing [JEI], declared what could be perceived by some as a conflict of interest.
And if he did, I wonder what the IPCC might have had to say about it. My guess: sounds of silence all around.
Founded in 2010 - and partially inspired by the encouragement of the late, great communicator of "science", Saint Stephen (Schneider) of Stanford - JEI's missiion includes:
[the facilitation of] the flow of capital to solutions to problems arising from natural resource depletion, pollution, demographic changes, sustainability, and climate change.
Considering his role within the Met Office, a "jewel in the crown, of British and global science", and his role within the IPCC's AR5 (the authorship of which is purported to be a veritable stable of "objective, transparent inclusive talent", some might think that Richard should have withdrawn* from participation.
But I couldn't possibly comment.
* While I cannot imagine that I would ever agree to serve on the Editorial Board of a publication, with a mission I could not wholeheartedly support, I do recognize that others may not have such scruples.
Hilary Ostrov
Richard Betts, I did not see your response in March, so apologies for tardiness.
No reputable firm of consultants will lie in their findings under pressure from the client. But, having managed more than a few consultancies, I can assure you that the process of drafting the final report with the client's comments is a lot more fluid than you seem to think. Further, while no self-respecting consultant would change data in technical appendices (which almost no-one reads anyway) to placate a client, there are many ways to present data.
I also wonder if you have read Bernie Lewin's admirable essays on the IPCC process, which cast a rather different light than the rosy one you portray. Google "Enthusiasm, Scepticism and Science" to find them. His well-researched essays indicate that the process is somewhat less pure than you portray it. Finally, there is this woman called Donna Laframboise, who wrote a book about the IPCC that again does not reflect the picture you painted.
Richard, I'm an old bureaucrat. As the saying goes, "don't shit a shitter". Claiming that your process is beyond reproach is the oldest trick in the book.
johanna
Hi Hilary
I'm afraid I don't know whether those aspects of the process that you mention are the same as last time, or whether they've been changed.
I don't think being on the editorial board of JEI constitutes a conflict of interest with IPCC. The journal is about objective information, so members of the board don't have to either support or oppose any particular mission.
Hi Johanna
I don't claim the IPCC process is perfect - nothing ever is - and the IAC made significant criticisms of AR4, particularly WG2, as you are no doubt aware. However, my experience in WG2 in AR5 has so far been generally positive in respect to the areas of concern to the IAC, and that's my honest view and not an attempt to "portray" things as anything other than how I see them. Of course it's not done yet, and there are debates on several areas still going on. When it's published you'll be able to see both my own authorship contributions (WG2 Chapter 4) and my review comments on other chapters.
Richard Betts
Hello again Hilary
Another point I should have made regarding your query about JEI is that I also carry out and review scientific work done for a wide range of organisations in many different industry sectors. This includes major oil and mining multinationals, the energy sector (including fossil fuel-based, renewable and nuclear), the transport sector (including air, rail and road) and many others. Our work is used by these organisations for their future business and investment planning.
I expect some people would consider the 'environmental' credentials of these organisations to vary considerably, but that's not an issue for me - my role is simply to ensure that everyone gets the same objective climate science advice, regardless of whether investing in the companies concerned would be considered 'environmental' or not.
Richard Betts
(...). As the saying goes, "don't shit a shitter". (...)
Jun 6, 2013 at 12:14 PM johanna
Martin A
Martin, thanks - Ketty is awesome!
I do want to clarify that I never engaged in misrepresenting data. But, my job was to present data, and when the Premier or the Prime Minister read out my answer to a question, it was always the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth. I don't apologise for that. It was not my job to provide the Opposition with ammunition. Finding holes was their job.
johanna
Well, I suppose the drafts are largely done, model runs have been shared and compared by climate workers like gardeners at an annual show, effects of all sorts have been wondered at under numerous scenarios and hopes of further research grants will be high. For the time being, for this report, their work is largely over. But wait! Some others are stirring themselves. Soon the schemers and wheelers and dealers will be hard at work to harvest what they can, for their purposes, starting with the SPM:
If the IPCC was a scientific body, the science section of its upcoming report would be summarized by scientists and that would be the end of the matter. Instead, the science summary will be the battleground at a 4-day political gathering.From September 23 to 26, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will host a meeting in Stockholm, Sweden.
The purpose of that meeting should raise eyebrows. There, in the historic Brewery Conference Centre, with its “breathtaking views” and “large terraces and balconies” all pretense that the IPCC is a scientific organization will vanish.
Representatives of national governments – diplomats, politicians, and environmental bureaucrats – will gather to do something extraordinary. They will take a document authored by scientists and spend four days rewriting it.
Source: Donna Laframboise
And so the next SPM will be produced. This, after all is what the IPCC was set up to do, leaning heavily where it suits on the relatively tiny SPMs, but more conspicuously on the press conferences and other lobbying devices to further more power grabs, more budgets, more furthering of agendas for which the shoddy arts of hyping climate alarm from CO2 are but one strategy. Albeit perhaps the most promising one they have ever had. May they rot in whatever circle of hell is reserved for would-be totalitarian destroyers of human progress and freedom. We had quite enough of them in the 20th century, so let us hope they founder soon in this one.
John Shade
Richard,
Only vaguely on-topic, but...
Research labs I have worked in have all had programmes of internal seminars, presenting topics of interest, sometimes discussing tentative ongoing work, sometime outlining recently published papers originating elsewhere, but relevant to the interests of the lab. I would imagine the Met Office has such a programme.
I wonder if the MO has held such a seminar on Murry Salby's Youtube presentation on "The Relationship between Greenhouse Gases and Global Temperature".
He's clearly a climate scientist of stature - I have his text Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate (Cambridge, 2012) - all 666 pages of it - and his work for NASA was not something that any old office boy could have done.
I enjoyed watching his Youtube presentation, as I was steeped in some of the basics (Fourier transforms, estimation of cross spectra, coherence spectra, phase spectra) in previous incarnations. I'm now going through it at a slow pace, to take in every step and attempting (successfully so far) to reproduce his graphical results from the basic data. It seems to hang together and I haven't yet spotted any fallacies - something I am always watching for, hawklike.
I'd summarise his work as follows:
- CO2 and oxygen diffuse in ice, so the proxy record of temperatures and CO2 concentrations have high frequency components significantly attenuated. When this is compensated for, recent rapid changes are by no means unprecedented.
- After diffusion is allowed for, CO2 and temperature are strongly correlated in both the ancient proxy record and in the recent instrumental record and in a similar fashion, with CO2 lagging temperature. The implication being that CO2 responds to temperature, rather than the opposite, even for recent history.
I think that his work has not been formally published as yet, so it falls outside the scope of material considered by the IPCC. However, unless what he says is fallacious, then it has great relevance to the climate work of the Met Office.
Has a seminar on Prof Salby's presentation been held in the Met Office? Is so, what was the audience reaction? If not, is one likely to be held?
I think the answers to my question would provide an interesting metric of the MO's progress in its evolution.
Regards, Martin A
Martin A
Martin A
Sorry, I missed your post above when you made it.
Yes, CO2 responds to temperature, and temperature responds to CO2. It's not an either/or - both do happen. The ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2 is faster in ENSO years which are typically warmer, and slower in years following a major volcanic eruption, as these are typically cooler - see this paper.
The current rate of rise of atmospheric CO2 is only about half of the rate of anthropogenic emissions, so there is more than enough CO2 emitted by human activity to explain the observed CO2 rise. The other half is being taken up by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere. However, the rate of this net uptake will probably become slower as the climate warms, so the atmospheric CO2 rise will increase to a higher fraction of the rate of emissions.
Basic radiative physics shows that increased CO2 has a warming influence.
So, no, we haven't had a seminar specifically on Salby's presentation, but we're aware of the arguments and do not agree that only the one side of the CO2-temperature relationship exists. Both directions of interaction take place, and the leading one in the long term is CO2 rise due to anthropogenic emissions, but interannual climate variability also affects the rate of CO2 rise and in the longer term the impacts of anthropogenic emissions will probably become larger due to warming causing a weakening of the natural net carbon sink.
Richard Betts
I have posted the ZOD for WG1 Ch4 at:
http://www.davidappell.com/ZODS/
and am looking to host the other chapters. If you have copies and will share, please click on that link and write me.