Is it time to overhaul the IPCC?

www.csmonitor.com...

The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – given the charge of providing world leaders with periodic updates on global warming and the policy options to tackle it -- is overdue for an overhaul.

That's the view of several climate scientists who set out their prescriptions for the embattled organization in the pages of today's issue of the journal Nature. The recommendations range from tweaks to the IPCC's procedures to scrapping the IPCC completely after it finishes its next set of reports, due out on 2014.

Over the course of its 22-year history, the IPCC has become "too cumbersome, too bureaucratic, too big, too slow, and too much aligned with government interests and not the people's interests," writes climate scientist Michael Hulme in an e-mail.

Dr. Hulme, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in England, is one of the scientists contributing to the recommendations. He also has served as a lead author and a contributing author to IPCC reports.

One result, he says, is a group that has gained too much authority, lending its pronouncements a scientifically and politically unhealthy air of infallibility.

The article continues:

As if to underscore the point, one prominent climate researcher suggests that uncertainties in projections of future change are likely to grow, at least initially, as the IPCC moves toward its fifth assessment report in 2014.

The reason, according to the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Kevin Trenberth: That effort is placing new demands on climate models in trying to project changes beyond 2100, which has been the cut-off year up to now. The models will include improvements based on recent research. The aim is to provide more realistic climate simulations that past efforts, he wrote last month in an article for the online publication Nature Reports.

But because the work is cutting edge, "the uncertainty in AR5's climate predictions and projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports," he wrote, referring to the next climate change reports.

It's the age-old scientific conundrum, he continued. Advances in understanding some aspects of climate often expose factors that either were previously under-appreciated or unknown.

The article lists some of the past 'glitches':

The IPCC has come under increasing scrutiny following Climategate -- the distribution last November of e-mails either hacked or leaked from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. They lay bare a seamier side of science often unseen by the public -- one filled with rivalries, personal invective, and threats -- if not actions -- to ostracize others who disagree with conclusions or with the high level of confidence a researcher grants their results.

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...controversy regarding faulty data it cited indicating a physically impossible rate of decline in Himalayan glaciers...

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...egregious misrepresentation of the relationship between damage costs from severe weather in the US and global warming contained in the second of 2007's climate reports. Essentially, the report claimed an increase, especially after the 2004 and 2005 hurricane season, that doesn't exist...misrepresents work...done on the topic...

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...The IPCC also neglected to include peer-reviewed studies suggesting that the technologies for dealing with climate change are not as well in hand as some economists believe...

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And here is what some are recommending to fix the problems at the IPCC:

Among the suggestions for change: Shuttering the IPCC after 2014 and replacing it with three independent groups: one that looks strictly at the science and whose members are selected by national academies of science; five to 10 regional groups to assess the effects of global warming -- putting a greater emphasis on effects where people live, than on somewhat artificial global averages; and a standing group of 50 to 100 people representing the interests of regular people, so-called "civil society" globally.

John Christy, a climate researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, suggests setting up a Wikipedia-type IPCC with clear space for scientifically credible dissenting views, as well as direct links to research and other documents contributors cite. This approach would be far more responsive to the most current results than the IPCC's reports can be.

It's good to see this debate from the 'insiders' who wish to clean things up.

In my view the best that can happen is removing much of the doubt concerning the process. Thereafter, the science can speak for itself.

[edit on 11-2-2010 by loam]

Man-made global warming is a joke. Truly. I sat in on a conferance concerning it put on by the climatologists at The University of Arizona and NASA and these guys said it wasn't real. The one quick fact that really stuck with me was that water vapor is a green house gas. As a matter of fact 97% of the green house gases are water vapor, ie clouds. How is that man made? They went on to say that the upper level of CO2 contributed by all of man kind since the beginning of time was less than .05% of al CO2. Now being responsible and taking care of our planet is just good policy because we live here don't get me wrong but keep the Governments out of it! They are only interested in further regulating (enslaving) us and taxing in the name of.....

Originally posted by loam

Among the suggestions for change: Shuttering the IPCC after 2014 and replacing it with three independent groups: one that looks strictly at the science and whose members are selected by national academies of science; five to 10 regional groups to assess the effects of global warming -- putting a greater emphasis on effects where people live, than on somewhat artificial global averages; and a standing group of 50 to 100 people representing the interests of regular people, so-called "civil society" globally.

This. But just more explicitly categorising what is happening at the moment. There are already working groups I, II, and III. Best to separate them more explicitly.

It's not a surprise that the recent sloppiness is in the latter two groups. Indeed, it was pretty crazy that those authoring in the non-basic science groups (WGII in particular) completely overlooked the scientific basis from WGI.

[edit on 11-2-2010 by melatonin]

S&F for the OP indeed. Most interested to see this, and especially that the move is from 'inside'.

Something certainly needs to be done, even if only to repair the credibility of climate scientists.