I was mulling over the IPCC release schedule, which has a procedure that is, shall we say, unprecedented in my experience with public disclosure documents. The schedule has been available for some time, but, to my knowledge, no one has commented on its combination of absurdity and condescension.
On February 2, 2007, they are releasing the Summary for Policy-Makers to great fanfare. But the actual WG1 Report will not be published on Feb 2, 2007. Amazingly, the actual release of the 4AR (Fourth Assessment Report) does not come until a few months later in May 2007. Thus, there will be no possibility for external readers to verify what IPCC insiders say will be an “iconic statement” against the actual WG1 report during that period.
By making access available only to insiders, IPCC has created a structure where IPCC insiders will try to shape perceptions of the WG1 report for 3 months before any critical appraisal of the final report (available since October 2006) is possible.
Here’s what the schedule at the IPCC-UCAR website says:
It is expected that the approved text of the Summary for Policymakers will be released at a press conference in Paris on February 2, 2007, and that it will also be available on this web site from that date.Prior to its final approval on February 2, the content of the report is embargoed in order to allow the final stages of review and revision to be carried out in a balanced way. Speculation as to the content of the report has been inaccurate and unhelpful. All those interested in this new assessment of climate science are asked to accept the need to wait for the report to be completed according to normal IPCC procedures.
The full Working Group I report will be available online from May 2007. It will also be published by Cambridge University Press and is expected to be available in book form by late June 2007.
In an electronic era, it is completely trivial to post chapter pdf’s online. Indeed, that’s what IPCC WG1 did during the review process and plans to do in May 2007. The Second Draft was distributed in April 2006.
The Fourth Assessment Report should be released online on Feb 2, 2007 concurrently with the Summary for Policy-Makers.
Update (p.m.): If you’re wondering about this procedure which, to my knowledge, is unprecedented in public commission reporting, here’s what IPCC procedures (section 4) say about Technical Report acceptance:
Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.
So the purpose of the three-month delay between the publication of the Summary for Policy-Makers and the release of the actual WG1 is to enable them to make any “necessary” adjustments to the technical report to match the policy summary. Unbelievable. Can you imagine what securities commissions would say if business promoters issued a big promotion and then the promoters made the “necessary” adjustments to the qualifying reports and financial statements so that they matched the promotion. Words fail me.
IPCC insiders should not be allowed to change a comma of the WG1 Report after Feb 2, 2007 to “ensure consistency” with the Summary. If the two are inconsistent, let the chips fall where they may.
Climate Audit 
55 Comments
Google “ipcc 4ar” and see what comes up first. I’m sure that this will please IPCC no end. (In fairness, if you google “ipcc ar4”, there is a very different top item).
If the embargo ends on Feb 2 as the above quote says, it’s going to be pretty hard/impossible for IPCC to keep the Second Order Draft out of circulation.
So why can’t the IPCC members shut up about it until it is released? As a widely picked-up AP article, “Report Has ‘Smoking Gun'” States:
…”The smoking gun is definitely lying on the table as we speak,” said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who reviewed all 1,600 pages of the first segment of a giant four-part report. “The evidence … is compelling…”
…Andrew Weaver, a Canadian climate scientist and study co-author, went even further: “This isn’t a smoking gun; climate is a batallion of intergalactic smoking missiles…”
…includes “a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate,” said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday.
That report will feature an “explosion of new data” on observations of current global warming, Solomon said…
…Look for an “iconic statement” — a simple but strong and unequivocal summary — on how global warming is now occurring, said one of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, director of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also in Boulder…
…The February report will have “much stronger evidence now of human actions on the change in climate that’s taken place,” Rajendra K. Pachauri told the AP in November. Pachauri, an Indian climatologist, is the head of the international climate change panel…
…The future is bleak, scientists said.
“We have barely started down this path,” said chapter co-author Richard Alley of Penn State University…
At http://www.ipcc.ch/ they say February 2, Paris, the 1st volume will be released. But if ‘released’ means neither posted on the web nor available in print, maybe they should tell us how we’re supposed to see it.
Maybe something like: “1998 was the warmest year of the millennium and the 1990s the warmest decade.”
Ross, has there been any (media) reaction to your Stern critique?
As with all political documents the facts will be adjusted afterwards to fit the policy. I note that this report will be based on 19 – count ’em – 19 models so therefore the results just have to be better, right? The only good thing about this whole sorry scheme is that it largely will be abandoned when the economics start to squeeze people who don’t want to give up their comforts.
Jean, nope; not that I know of.
#7. Economics has nothing to do with whether the science is right and the science won’t be affected by people’s willingness or unwillingness to give up comforts. Let;s stay away from this line of discussion please.
…The future is bleak, scientists said.
They are raising the threat level to 11 on a 1 to 10 scale. Bush will be compelled to authorize the creation of the Office of Climate Inquisition to protect the nation from environmental terror enablers such as Steve McIntyre and the many renegade denier scientists who post here. Universities will have to add climate denial eradication seminars to their diversity training for incoming freshman.
The urgency may in part be due to the knowledge that the next few years may show a sharp drop in temps as the lower SST cools the atmosphere.
Well now that the US is going to try to create artificial scarcity of oil (e.g. by doubling the strategic petroleum reserve) while simultaneously reducing usage of gasoline, subsidizing ethanol production, de facto capping emissions (e.g. once a critical mass of states join “Kaleefornia,” industry and auto makers will demand a single Federal GHG emission standard and EPA enforcement) and doing a free market trading scheme (e.g. once we are capping, wily firms will start to hook up US emitters with overseas emitters who want to buy emission headroom), we are rapidly heading for Kyoto participation in all but the formality. The AGW alarmists have already won. It’s too late.
There should be no surprise in these tactics and order of issuances, if one assumes that the main purpose of the report is to present a summary of it that can be spun for the policy makers, and then provided, with an attention getting event, to make a call to arms. As political strategies go, this would be considered, in my judgment, typical.
All of the information presented in the report will have been revealed in individual publications to the public already. We can all read or be aware of this information and draw our own conclusions — and the more interested parties probably already have.
What does that leave for the IPCC to do? It would appear that their job, in my view, is to take the less than certain scientific results and put labels on them in their totality, e.g. with terms such as “likely” and “very likely”, that provides the cover of a non-scientific assessment. I would think that a scientific assessment would require some methodology for arriving at the numbers and could not be accomplished with a show of hands.
Coming back after the fact with explanations of these terms such as likely means 66% to 90% chance (or whatever the limits chosen) and very like means 90% to 95% chance (or whatever again) just points to the split personality operating here, since one must question then why were (are?) not the numerical quantities used in the summary in place of the vague terms.
Do they mean some completely new unpublished data?
Re #11 Steve Sadlov comments: “The AGW alarmists have already won. It’s too late.”
Bush is a stubborn politician. He has never wavered in his opposition to mandatory CO2 cutbacks despite many claims over the years by journalists that he was about to change. Support for CO2 cap and trade may be growing but it is not yet a majority or the required veto proof majority. And Bush is a lame duck which means he can veto with impunity.
Unforeseen events have a way of throwing a monkey wrench into the best laid plans. War with Iran in the Persian Gulf may damage petroleum infrastructure to the point that supply shortages significantly cut CO2 emissions. Or the EU may go into a recession that doesn’t affect the US and the blame may blowback squarely on the energy deniers.
It ain’t over till it’s over.
I completely agree that the Summary for Policymakers and the full report of Working Group 1 should be released concurrently in all forms. The only exception that I can conceive is if the Summary for Policymakers was released ONLY to policymakers (not publically), to allow policymakers to mull it over and ask questions directly to the scientists that could be clarified in the full report. Sure it would get leaked, but “officially”, at least there would be a process.
“I’m sure that this will please IPCC no end.”
Haha. Have you tried some other things such as naomi-oreskes (#2), christopher-monckton (#3), al-gore co2 temperature (#1), coldest-year (#1), 800-year-lag co2 (#1), global-warming jupiter (#2) etc.
We should perhaps make and share some semi-peer-reviewed, dynamical, discussable etc. home pages of all important climate topics. 😉
I wonder how much of the 4AR will be based on proxy temp reconstructions?Is the HS alive and well? As
Steve wrote in another thread, thier conclusions not to mention thier language concerning global SST
trends are questionable.
It was an inevitable wacko conclusion/propoganda: climate change causes terrorism.
This seems completely backwards to me. The technical and scientific evidence should be released first, not the summary for the politicians.
Re #13 **explosion of new data**. Will they print a list of the studies used? I looked at the Guidance Notes for Lead Authors. There is a section on unpredictability, level of confidence, etc. I did not see the term “strongly” there.
RE: #18 – I would however concede that global cooling has been known to push certain terror oriented peoples of the Eurasian steppes southward and westward. Ask Atilla about that!
Steve: the schedule for the release of IPCC AR4 documents has been in place for a long time. This is not some sudden change of mind by the IPCC. If you didn’t know this months ago then it only shows you are not well-informed. Also, if you don’t think it is a good way to do things, then why don’t you become part of the system and help organise things so they are more the way you would like them? – instead of behaving like a spoilt child who won’t come to the party but then howls about the games all the other children are playing at that party?
I’ve edited this a little including the tag line.
It’s not that they’ve changed their mind, but that their process gives insiders exclusive access to the WG1 Report for 3 months in order to shape perceptions. Can you give me a precedent for this time of behavior – releasing a Summary to huge publicity without the report. It’s bizarre.
Jim Barrett, I was a reviewer for IPCC 4AR and made many constructive suggestions on the Paleoclimate chapter both in the first draft and second draft. Most of my comments were ignored, but it’s not that I didn’t participate.
Also when I tried to get supporting data on two unpublished paleoclimate studies from the authors (after IPCC refused to provide it and referred me to the authors), IPCC gave me notice that I would be expelled as a reviewer if I attempted to get supporting data on unpublished studies from the authors.
Barrett: I’m still waiting for you to tell me how the Earth warmed during the Mwp.
This may be off topic but maybe they are working to this spin manual:
http://tinyurl.com/2vr9du
One of its conclusions is: “This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The “facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.”
RE #23:
Wow! You were expelled?! Wear it like a badge of honor Steve! I’d bet some hacker could break into the IPCC website to get an advance copy… any takers?… LOL
Ooops! I misread #23… Steve isn’t expelled… yet… 🙂
Re: #22
This seems to be the mantra of more than one of the antagonists who posts here, and I, perhaps incorrectly, interpret it to mean if you do not have the current clout to change these things you see as being wrong, then shut up. I do not think things would change much under those conditions, but that’s just me.
re 22:
Jim, Even I , following climate related news nearly every day, was under the false impression that 4AR WG1 would be released on Feb 2. Tells you something about communication.
From my dutch news source I was even under the impression that SPM would be published in november:
http://www.klimaatnieuws.nl/200701/publicatie_ipcc_klimaatrapport_2007.php
“IPCC publiceert nieuw klimaatrapport in vier delen
Het Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), het gezaghebbende klimaatpanel van de Verenigde Naties, brengt verspreid over dit jaar in vier delen het vierde klimaatrapport uit (Fourth Assessment Report -AR4).”
“IPCC publishes new climate report in four parts
The IPCC, the authoratitive climate panel of the United nations, will issue the Fourth Assessment Report -AR4 in four parts spread out over the year”
WG1 Feb 2
WG2 Apr 5
WG3 May 3
synthesis report for policymakers 12-16 nov
http://www.klimaatnieuws.nl/200701/ipcc_vn_klimaatcommissie_minder_somber.php
Much of climate science appears to be bizarre: the statistics in dendroclimatology, the physics regarding sensitivity, the spin by certain “scientific” journals, failure to release data, etc. So I’m certainly not surprised by anything IPCC does.
Ok, folks, you want to read something that will make your jaws drop. From IPCC procedures in section 4:
So the purpose of the three-month delay between the publication of the Summary for Policy-Makers and the release of the actual WG1 is to enable them to make any necessary adjustments to the technical report to match the policy summary. Unbelievable. Go read for yourselves.
The way in which this thing is being released, and the quote in #31 makes it quite clear that this report is first and foremost a policy vehicle. The science takes a back seat, or maybe even relegated to the trunk (‘boot’ for those of you on the other side of the pond).
My experience is that any person or organization doing brazenly foolish things eventually does themselves in. An organization that was established as an international expert science panel that is obviously operating with more concern for a political agenda than a scientific result is doomed. It may still take a while but with the prominence of the dubious hockey stick in the TAR Summary for Policy Makers, and now this carefully crafted schedule establishing that the reported science will be adjusted to the summary conclusions, they are well on the road to wider credibility problems.
If they just stuck with a scientific method and not an agenda the worst they could do is report some bad science that would likely get quickly corrected. If the agenda runs the day, correct science will be ignored, and the predictions will be more inaccurate, sooner.
The Appendix A Review procedures goes on to say this, starting right after Steve’s quote ended: “These changes shall be identified by the Lead Authors in writing and made available to the Panel at the time it is asked to accept the Summary for Policymakers, in case of reports prepared by the Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories by the end of the session of the Panel which adopts/accepts the report.”
So, the question is, do we all get to see this written catalogue of changes made, or do the Lead Authors keep them secret?
Dear Steve #31, I usually trust you but this was extraordinary enough statement from you that it required extraordinary evidence, so I had to open the PDF file. Your quote is really there. Am I the only “radical” who thinks that these people should eventually be treated as what they are, namely criminals? 300 bn USD per year wasted, a nonzero part of it goes to their pockets, and they openly declare that the “science” is only created to confirm predetermined conclusions for policymaking. Wow.
#22 Jim Barrett wrote: “Steve: the schedule for the release of IPCC AR4 documents has been in place for a long time.”
Yes, but it appears they changed the original sequence. See here: http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/ar.htm
The sequence of release decided in 2001 was: “Working Group I report would be finalised during the first quarter of 2007, Working Group II and Working Group III reports in mid-2007 and that the AR4 Synthesis Report (SYR) would be finalised during the last quarter of 2007.”
The SYR includes the Summary For Policy Makers as part of it. So, the original idea was to first release all the analyses, and then release the summary report. Now we have the opposite sequence.
JB: “This is not some sudden change of mind by the IPCC.”
It was a significant change, however — sudden for those outside the know, perhaps, but also perhaps not so sudden for those who planned the inverted sequence.
As an isolated event, it might not be suspicious that policy advice is given before the data and analysis are revealed.
However, in the superheated advocationalist context of climate science and the IPCC, a ‘trust us’ change is very suspicious. They will be releasing the SPM and having their very public press conference, followed by several months made available for hypergolic heavy breathing by climate-smut peddling NGOs, followed by pressure on governments worldwide (read US Congress) to pass draconian legislation, all before anyone gets a chance to put a critical eye on the 4AR itself. Leaving even more time for political and social pressure before dissenting voices are raised. Expect the sources of those voices to be personally vilified in the context of the recriminating atmosphere created by the 6 to 12 months of unopposed precursory and preparatory publicity.
It all looks very studied to me. The IPCC is become blatantly corrupt. And with no protest by the leaders of any of the major scientific institutions. It is the attitude of Phil Jones and Mike Mann writ large. We are witnessing the most incredible and widespread display of patholgical science in modern history. And the pathology comes from politics. Objective knowledge has been broken to sentiment, and by physicists! (with apologies to Luboà…⟩
The timelines for distribution are designed, of course, to allow the maximum media spin to be placed on the conclusions so that they enter the mass “common knowledge” before the actual studies and data and uncertainties are exposed by the likes of Climate Audit, for example.
I believe it will be a storm of gloom and doom and blame and catastrophe. Droughts, hurricanes, sea innundations, frosts, locusts, and plague.
How much power (and hence, CO2 emissions) do all those supercomputers require?
36 Pat Frank: you are RIGHT ON TARGET!
What a bastardization of science! The climate scientists will have to answer to this, in the long run. I have never respected the UN, and now I really know why.
As reported in the “Report has ‘smoking gun’ on climate” Houston Chronicle article linked above, #3:
Well, that’s three self-inflicted smoking guns right there. Even the “smoking gun” slant is a smoking gun to anyone having a nose for propaganda.
These ipcc emissions have the strong smell of mendacity. But let’s just say that denying access to the bases for scientific conclusions while instead releasing only the conclusions is not scientific.
The IPCC will also promote the term “heretic” to be used on place of “denier” during the 3 month period between volume releases.
I’ve re-posted the update as a separate post.
Time for scientists of all persuasions to speak up about the bizarre and unscientific processes being adopted by IPCC. Even if anonymous, a storm of protest here will attract media coverage and bring pressure to bear on IPCC to behave in accordance with accepted norms.
#36
Pat,
Well said. There will be a barrage of public bombast before the underlying support documents
are made public. How convenient. “Skeptics” cannot argue the facts since they are not available
, and the partisans can purport the most outlandish “theories” without fear of retribution.
Fourth Assessment Report – Sythesis Edition. FAR-SE.
Fourth Assessment Report – Technical Summary FAR-TS
RE: #33 – But when it’s part of an overarching mass hysteria or societal madness, things can go pretty far before the collapse in on themselves. Dangerously far …..
RE: #35 – Lubos, I know where you are coming from. We here in the Anglo Saxon world can be incredibly naive about confronting evil when it has just sprouted rather than once it has become an entrenched weed.
Who are these “governments officials” that are colluding to draft the UN policy document that is suppressing publication of the science? “Environment Ministers”, or lower level bureaucrats from national regulatory agencies (only)? Are “governments” economists etc also participating, or is this diktat a global power play by the collective global environmental regulatory bureaucracy?
And perhaps of no small interest to many: how is the USA represented, and by whom?
RE: #50 – Us Reps: Schmidt, Amman, Mann, Pierrehumbert, Curry, etc?
Battle of Antarctica
While we have these difficulties with the procedures of IPCC, there are “experts” who criticize IPCC for being too “conservative” because the IPCC won’t predict any catastrophe in Antarctica and it will say that the mass of ice is going to increase and the overall heat is gonna be unchanged.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2000533,00.html
On the other hand, these “experts” think that catastrophes must be predicted for every point of the Earth including Antarctica. 😉
Via Benny Peiser
Re #53: Puzzled by this post, I clicked on the header/identifier which took me to a very interesting post on the Candy Slice of Life blog which discusses global warming scepticism. The Chris Landsea letter is reproduced in full. What a powerful and articulate exposition of the issues. While that letter did seem to get widespread coverage, it is very interesting to re-read it in the context of the release of the SPM for 4AR.
I am not sure if the link will work. The Vancouver Sun apparently got hold of a report that will
be released on Friday. If it does not work, go to http://www.Canada.com, scroll down and click the
“Environemnt” tab.
Headline reads: 30% of earth’s life forms at risk
href=”http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=db486a89-d89c-4aa0-8acb-e2855183c153&k=48241″>
I give IPCC all the credit in the world for at least making fence sitters take notice. Every environmental cause should have such a mechanism for churning out science to overcome and overwhelm the skeptics. I noticed that this past weekend the biodiversity camp is getting closer to its own version of IPCC, only they call it IMoSEB. I’ve summarized the report in my frog blog, and the link to the report is in there, too: http://frogmatters.wordpress.com/2007/11/20/can-this-acronym-do-for-biodiversity-what-ipcc-has-done-for-global-warming/
I perhaps was a littly too rosy in talking about that French summit on biodiversity that was going to ramp up an IPCC like group about what’s happening to plant and animal life. A grim story just came out about the French meeting about IMoSEB: http://frogmatters.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/biodiversitys-equivalent-to-ipcc-gets-grim-news-report/
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More Global Warming Shenanigans…
Here’s a good question.
Can you imagine what securities commissions would say if business promoters issued a big promotion and then the promoters made the “necessary” adjustments to the qualifying reports and financial statements so that they…
[…] Steve McIntyre has figured out that the climate science follows very different rules than science. On 2/2/2007, i.e. next Friday, the summary of the IPCC international climate report for policymakers will be released. However, the full report won’t be released until May 2007. What will the IPCC people do in these three months? Well, the answer can be found on page “4 of 15″ of this […]
[…] Steve McIntyre has figured out that the climate science follows very different rules than science. On 2/2/2007, i.e. next Friday, the summary of the IPCC international climate report for policymakers will be released. However, the full report won’t be released until May 2007. What will the IPCC people do in these three months? Well, the answer can be found on page “4 of 15″ of this […]
[…] Steve McIntyre has figured out that the climate science follows very different rules than science. On 2/2/2007, i.e. next Friday, the summary of the IPCC international climate report for policymakers will be released. However, the full report won’t be released until May 2007. What will the IPCC people do in these three months? Well, the answer can be found on page “4 of 15″ of this […]