Climate Audit

bender

But Lee will be along any second now to tell us that the purpose of this was to centralize services to make them more efficient.

Steve McIntyre

What’s the over/under on how long it will take for Lee to say that the IPCC graciously permitted me access to the reviewer comments

despite your whinging at them here, about their valid application of a valid policy. You have no valid complaint about this treatment. None. So apologize, and stop complaining.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1584

Jim Edwards

Hey, just be glad they didn’t locate the archive in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia …

James Erlandson

Perhaps Harvard should walk across the street to MIT and ask for advice on how to set up a server. Although Harvard is rumored to have its own engineering school.

Any prestige that Harvard gains from administering the archives is tiny compared to the damage to its reputation that will come from being part of a scheme designed to inhibit the free flow of important and valuable information.

bender

Ah, yes, here’s the beleagured victim now. I have accued HIM of mind-reading. This is rich. I know this will get deleted so …
Lee, you are delusional. Go get help.

bender

Lee, go read what Dardinger wrote in the original thread. If you can follow it you will be laughing your butt off. I have another prediction, however.

Steve McIntyre

I sent the following email to Renate Christ, Secretary of the IPCC,

Dear Dr Christ,

I was a reviewer of the WG1 report. On January 24, 2007, prior to completion of the IPCC review process, I requested a copy of review comments on chapter 6 of the WG1 Second Order Draft. Last week, I was advised by the WG1 TSU that I could access the review comments by personally attending at a library at Harvard University. Traveling to Boston for the purpose of accessing review comments imposes an unreasonable and unnecessary cost. Reviewers submitted comments in digital form and the review comments could readily be provided by the TSU in digital form, which would save onerous costs,

Accordingly, I request a copy of the chapter 6 expert and government review comments to be made available to me in digital form either by email or online.

Thank you for your attention.

Steve McIntyre

Gary

Making Steve drive from Toronto to Boston instead of sending him a digital copy of the information makes the IPCC responsible (in their minds anyway) for more global warming than is really necessary. Maybe CA can sell them some carbon credits?

Jim Bilodeau

I read this and remembered a passage from the book “The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” by Douglas Adams and his trials with bureaucracy and them bulldozing his home.

“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display …”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a torch.”

“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.”

See Steve it could be worse 🙂

Harold Vance

Re: #16

>Presidential libraries could put all the pre-digitized e-mails and documents on a publicly accessible servers, but they don’t.

But if the comments are already digital, there would be no need to digitize them. Did I miss something?

>A paper depository is easy

A virtual depository is even easier, especially if the comments were submitted and received in digital form. What would it take, a couple of directory copies to an ftp folder?

>with a lump sum to pay for archiving

Ibiblio.org offers free and highly secure storage for sites and material that are of public interest, such as Groklaw.org. I see no reason why they would turn down something as important as IPCC comments. My guess is that this form of archive won’t cost the IPCC dime other than the time it took to gather the docs and to request the space.

btw, “ibiblio.org is a collaboration of the Center for the Public Domain and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”

>A digital archive has to be continually maintained and could be a target of modification by e-attack.

The same principle applies paper archives, which have to be protected from the warming climate and from people who might want to destroy them. Note that digital archives are much easier and cheaper to replicate and to back up than the paper equivalent.

>An honest bureacrat at IPCC could reasonably believe that the comments’ value is historical only, and insignificant compared to the report.

If the report is significant, then it follows that comments pertaining to the report have the potential to be very significant.

You guys need to watch an old Nike commercial. “Just do it” and cut out all the hemming and hawing.

John Hekman

Steve
They didn’t guarantee you would be granted admission to Littauer or Widener Library, only that the reviews are there and that you have their permission to see them at that location.

Maybe Lubos can tell us whether Harvard would even allow Steve in the library.

Luboš Motl

Dear John #23,

I think that Steve would have to get a Harvard ID before he would be allowed to enter the main libraries. It’s probably not so unusual.

More generally, I am confident that these steps are much easier if you know someone. For example, our colleagues at Columbia University – one of them very famous 🙂 – wanted a video tape or DVD of some Sidney Coleman’s old lectures.

The right method for them was to contact someone they know and I was doing the internal work with our librarian who was extremely co-operative. It is conceivable that without such an insider, it would be more difficult for someone outside to get a copy of this VHS tape.

To some extent, it is obvious that these things work more quickly if there is some friendly pressure around. Needless to say, things are easier for alarmists to get materials from libraries surrounded by alarmists. But I guess that Steve would have fewer problems when he tried to get materials from the Harvard physics library now (before June) or from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 😉

Best
Lubos

A. Sinan Unur

Correction to 26: I was referring to post 70 by Steve in GISS Interruptus.

Jim Edwards

#21, Harold Vance

I’m not sure who the “you guys” refers to in your post. I hope Steve gets a fat email tomorrow with all of the comments attached. If he doesn’t preserve them, there’s no guarantee they’ll exist in the official archive for more than 5 years. Nobody at this blog is on the IPCC Secretariat, to the best of my knowledge, so none of “us guys” was in on the decision regarding how to archive comments.

If you read my post [#16], you’d see that my point was that the decision to archive was typical bureaucratic behavior, not likely IPCC-specific, conspiratorial behavior. Douglass Adams and Franz Kafka were writing about bureaucracies in general, not the IPCC in particular.

Don’t confuse logic and reason with the behavior of government bureaucracies.

Steve McIntyre

Renate Christ, Secretary of IPCC, responded as follows:

Thank you very much for your message. I will advise the TSU to facilitate your access to the review comments. Can you however, just for my records tell me when you have initially requested the review comments.

I replied as follows:

Thank you for your prompt response. As noted below, I initially requested the review comments for the Second Order Draft on Jan 24, 2007 as shown below. On an earlier occasion, I had requested review comments for the First Order Draft and was sent a computer printout in hard copy. The review comments are all submitted in digital form. I presume that the review comments were sent to authors in digital form. I request that I receive the review comments in the same format as they were communicated to chapter 6 authors ‘€” in digital form if that is how they were communicated.

I notice that the IPCC Secretariat has the authority to determine the archive location. The comments are obviously intended to be public. I suggest that the comments be located online at an appropriate website in addition to any hard copy archive.

Regards, Steve McIntyre

—– Original Message —–

From: Steve McIntyre

To: Martin MAnning

Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:58 AM

Subject: Review Comments – Second Order Draft

Dear Dr Manning, Pursuant to the following IPCC policy,

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process and will be retained in an open archive in a location determined by the IPCC Secretariat on completion of the Report for a period of at least five years. http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf

I would appreciate a copy of all written expert and government review comments on chapter 6 of the Second Order Draft. Thank you for your attention.

Yours truly, Stephen McIntyre

Steve McIntyre

#32. Ok, Boris, give me a reason.

I’m not suggesting “ire and indignation”, but I’m suggesting that people should NOT accept this type of bureaucratic obfuscation. I don’t get angry about it; it amuses me that organizations behave so foolishly.

As to motive, they put material online when it suits them and they chose not to here. They email review comments when it suits them (e.g. to authors), but they chose not to email them to me. Why should I have to go to Harvard library for a snail copy when a digital version is emailed to Keith Briffa? Why defend this sort of behavior?

Steve McIntyre

#34. I agree that much IPCC behavior is classic bureaucratic behavior and that it is not necessarily unique among bureaucracies. I filed a complaint against a policeman in Toronto who destroyed a witness statement in an incident where one of my sons received serious head injuries in an assault by bouncers. The complaint got nowhere. I appealed and the appeal got nowhere. A couple of years later the policeman in question was on the front pages of Toronto newspapers due to corruption charges. He got caught in a federal police wiretap talking to organized crime.

If you’re just writing letters, it was hard not to get pretty mad about it. One nice thing about having a blog with traffic is that when I get one of these silly bureaucratic responses, I can display it to others. I don’t waste one second getting angry or indignant with bureaucrats (contrary to what people allege), but I don’t accept it either. I’ve got a large enough audience that some bureaucrats may not want the bad publicity of having their pointless obstruction exposed and hopefully will redress the situation.

Of course, not all people think that way’ some e.g. Jones prefer to just tough it out and litigate every step of the way. But that too must surely impose its own cost on the credibility on the climate science community and I’m hopeful that an increasing number of climate scientists will say to people like Jones (and perhaps even Thompson) – enough is enough; your behavior is intolerable.

Steve McIntyre

#36. Notwithstanding #16, I think that my ascription of motives is the most plausible of any alternatives put forward so far. First of all, there is conclusive evidence that the IPCC TSU decided that they didn’t want to put the comments online – their actions speak for themselves. Second, they decided that they didn’t want to send me a digital version or they would have done so. I believe that the most plausible interpretation of events is that TSU selected the snail archive to comply with the letter of the IPCC policy while making it as difficult as possible for the comments to turn up in digital form.

Jim Edwards

#33, 34, 35

I agree with you that just b/c every gov’t org is doing it doesn’t make it right. Sometimes it seems like Steve is Don Quixote, tilting windmills and “the Team” is in the business of building windmills. Like many here, I’m glad he’s still taking on the windmills that pop up. It’s absurd differential access to data issues keep popping up. This one sounds like it will be resolved.

I think it’s important to keep in mind who “they” are to get the best results. It’s probably not any of the functionaries that Steve often has to deal with.

I believe the IPCC itself, like other bureaucracies, probably acts in a fairly neutral, retarded manner. I expect that the reason some may get special treatment is explained by Lubos’s comment above [#25]; it’s good to have a friend in the inside. This is just like what we see at UEA w/ Dr. Jones. Dr. Jones sends data quickly to his friends on the outside; everybody else has to go through the bureaucratic ringer with the information officer. “They” are the Team members or allies who create an information superhighway for buddies while everybody else has to hack their way though the jungle. It’s corruption.

Ken Fritsch

Re #38

Public comments could be interpreted as 1) Criticisms by scientists trusted by the IPCC and 2) Evidence of non-consensus within the IPCC community. It might not be good PR for these comments to be freely available and visible.

This comment makes a credible point in my mind in that we can readily have (1) the stumbling and bumbling but neutral bureaucracy at one level, (2) while at another level the bureaucracy administered by those who use this stumbling and mumbling passively to slow the flow of information for unnamed reasons (but indicating that they are not particularly interested in seeing it widely distributed) and finally at a level where (3) those who use the bureaucratic retardation of information flow in a more political an active mode to prevent bad PR as suggested in the comments above. There is no doubt that mode 3 can and does occur and I would suggest that many observers have contended that it has for the Bush administration and in things scientific. That the IPCC is playing a strong political/advocacy role in these matters is not in doubt in my mind. One can put these observations together in whatever manner that suits one’s good judgment or prejudices. Of course if the information were freely provided the opportunity to judge the intentions of the providers would not be available.

Michael Strong

While I remain agnostic regarding the substance of the issues involved, the documentation that this blog reports on this sort of behavior thoroughly exposes the IPCC as a politically-motivated body. Steve’s earlier report on how his comments were ignored, the endless reluctance to share data, the lack of a clear and consistent commitment to transparency and cooperativeness, are all disappointing. The scale of expenditure involved is so great the case for a thorough audit of every aspect of the case for AGW should be indisputable and welcomed by all sectors of the scientific community. If, indeed, the alarmists are right they should be in the vanguard of insisting on IPCC transparency (as well as transparency from each individual climatologist). Independent observers, accustomed to the standards of transparency expected in many sectors of the business community, and implicitly expecting science to be far more honorable than the business community, can’t help but be disgusted by the IPCC’s behavior. The cliimatologists who defend IPCC behavior undermine the credibility of AGW and the broader (admittedly naive) reputation of science as a disinterested enterprise.

Steve McIntyre

MArtin Manning of the WG1 TSU replied:

The Secretary of the IPCC, Renate Christ, has forwarded on to me the message below from you to her.

May I point out that the WG I TSU has never said or implied that you would need to travel to Boston to access the written review comments. We checked again yesterday with the curator of the Harvard archives library, George Clark, and he confirmed that he is very willing to copy and send you the comments you require. Could I suggest that you communicate with him via phone or email and clarify your requirements as I am sure these can be met quite quickly and reasonably.

I suppose that WG1 TSU didn’t say that I had to travel to Boston, but the curator asked me to send him my “desired time to visit (no later than one week prior) so that I can make sure the materials will be ready for you,” which initially indicated the need for personal attendance. In further correspondence with George Clark, he said that photocopying of up to 100 pages would be available on the following terms:

I have the material only in print form. I can provide a photocopy of up to 100 pages for research purposes only (not republication) for our interlibrary loan fee of $34 plus 40 cents per page. Copyright of the material resides with its authors.

It may be possible for you to hire a research assistant locally to look over the materials if that would be helpful in selecting materials of most interest. I can recommend someone if you like.

I replied to TSU and Renate Christ that I saw no reason why I should either have to incur these costs or accept a truncated version of the comments as follows:

Clark said that it would be $34 plus 40 cents per page and that he would only permit the copying of 100 pages. If I were not present in person, he said that he would recommend a research librarian that I could hire to select the 100 pages and do the copying. I was entitled to receive the review comments on January 27, 2007 when I requested them. I see no reason why I should incur expense now or why I should I accept a truncated version of the review comments, merely because of your failure to send me the comments when I requested them. Your proposal is unacceptable to me.

Please send me the comments in the same form that you supplied them to the section authors ‘€” digital if that’s how you provided them, by mail if that’s if how you provided them.

Steve McIntyre

Here’s one of the interesting subtexts: The 100-page restriction on copying imposed by the Harvard library appears to exist because of standard library policies on copyright (I don’t know this, I surmise this).

So let’s pose the question differently :should IPCC go open source on review comments? Why is IPCC demanding copyright protection for review comments? Maybe IPCC adopt wikipedia-like attitudes towards copyright (“copyleft”).

Is IPCC protecting its copyright on review comments for commercial reasons? I sincerely hope not.

So maybe we should start by people writing to IPCC asking them to waive their copyright on review comments (or better still, just put them online). Write to Renate Christ, Secretary of the IPCC at RChrist at wmo.int .

MarkR

The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant…..

PRINCIPLES GOVERNING IPCC WORK

John F. Pittman

Steve, if the IPCC resides, or has offices in US or other nations with FOI laws, why don’t you attack the problem with a FOIA letter to IPCC requesting specifically (it must exist as requested) what you want in a certified letter and point out failing to comply will be a violation of US law and will be treated as such. Here in the US, a copy of your request and the certification reciept is a federal document that you can use in court for either civil action or criminal action. Under the FOIA, the 100 page limit has little, if any standing. It may for the purposes of copywrited material, but this is supposed to be IPPC’s response to its own policy. Thus, you may prefer to talk directly to IPCC and point out that they have chosen an archiving solution that fails to meet their own policy, and by their own policy need to correct it, and have them pursue Havard to provide you the material. I think I like the latter method since it would be interesting to see how they answered if you included the obvious initial requirement to visit, and now the 100 page limitation. I would ask in what way did these two requirements become part of their policy and where (what paragraph) was this policy requirement stated.

Reid

I will be emailing Senator Imhofe and Congressman Barton alerting them that the IPCC is not allowing open access to the 2,500 scientists commmentary.

This is not bureaucratic bungling as some on this thread have claimed. This is willful obstruction.

If the commentary confirmed there is a real consensus it would be online for all to see. The comments would be numbered like Talmudic commentary on the Bible.

Jim Edwards

#51, John Pittman:

Federal FOIA is only good against agencies of the US gov’t. It has no effect against alternate sovereignties within US territory like the Chinese embassy, the state of Michigan, or agencies of the United Nations.

John F. Pittman

#55 True. However, states often have their own FOIA. From Havard’s site.

As many of you know, last year Congress passed and the President signed new law requiring that research data gathered under federally funded projects be made available to the public via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The law required the Office of Management and Budget to implement this requirement through a revision to OMB Circular A 110 which governs research grants to non profit institutions. Harvard University, along with many other institutions, opposed the broad application of FOIA to data collected under research grants and attempted, unsuccessfully, to repeal the new law or revise it statutorily.

So was this research part of the federally funded projects?

Open Records Law G.L. c. 66, sec. 10.
Exempt: Information that would invade individual privacy; trade secrets; public policy development memos; and investigative materials.

Or just use the state law to determine if the response was legal?

Jim Edwards

#57

I’d think a small percentage of ‘research’ in comments to 4AR was conducted since last year. The new federal law probably can’t be used to force private institutions to disclose data produced with federal money before the law was passed. I haven’t read the new law, but federal grants are like contracts – the government can’t arbitrarily add conditions seven years later. Maybe the law says: ‘disclose all of the old data or you’re ineligible for future grants.’ It’s possible waivers were signed by the researchers or private research institutions for older data. If not, the remedy would probably be an option for the gov’t to stop future funding [not enforceable by the requestor], rather than for a Fed Court to order release of data to a private party requestor.

If the law does require disclosure of older data, I’d expect private institutions to band together and fight it to the Supreme Court.

The state laws are generally mirrors of the fed law. They only apply to state agencies. Harvard is private, so unless there is some tie-in to the state re: the documents of interest, Mass FOIA is likely inapplicable to Harvard.

Steve McIntyre

#59. Jim, can you refresh me on what’s new about the new law in terms of applicability or refer me back to a prior mention? When did it come into effect?

Jim Edwards

RE: #62

Last Amendments were dated 9/30/1999 – but not effective until published in the Federal Register. Let’s be generous and say policy effective date December 2000.

John F. Pittman

Sorry had to cook dinner.

The other point is that FOIA means that there is no third party in a very real sense. Judicial rulings may preclude this, but this is just “bad law”; and most probably be shortly reversed. FOI means there are no disenfranchised parties. An example of this is where PIRG (public interest reasearch??? group, whatever) was allowed to get information from FOI, yet be unable to sue for damages since they were technically not “hurt”. Steve as an accepted research felllow can claim “hurt”, and thus all the allowances for a legitimate requested entity apply, which means they are not complying with state, federal, and their own regulations. For those not used to regulations, if you claim, as Havard has admitted, that your entity complies, writes, publishes, or otherwise acknowledges these regulations, you are not only covered by the regulations but also by your own statements. I spent much time aguing with clients who wanted to include some general “feel good” statement. “Are you doing it”, and “Can you prove it”…both are necessary. And if they could not provide the documentation, they could be fined, prosecuted (your verb of choice). Many have found to their regret that my above argument is true.

Steve your requests are legitimate. From my point of veiw, as a member of the regulated community, I hope you continue, if for no other reason that you are polite and considerate. Because at this point, the only conclusion I can make is that the science is not determined, and as I have stated publically, “I can’t design to a philosophy, I design to numbers”. Numbers and their proof are surely lacking, at this point. Your pursuit is admiarable (sp).

John F. Pittman

Yes #64 that is one of the great!?! insidiuos (sp) ?!? results of FIOA. If a government angency has a document, they must find a reason NOT to give it up. My point was how in the regs and law, how exclusive these reasons must be. PLease read the rest of the post with the belief and understanding that IPCC stated they would make the documents avaialable and IPCC is somewhat recognized as a government funded agency. See start of thread. I think I confused people about tactics for handling a problem versus the legality of a problem.

You said

My question is, where is the public entity

My post was of Havard’s own admissions to the expansive nature of Federal (and from what I googled) state requirements. They take money, they are held to a standard. If they didn’t take the money, fine, but from my quote from their site, they have taken public monies (I assume, since if IPCC is private, why their title?). Taking public monies always has strings attached.

As far as can be reasonably determined, Havard has agreed to take the job of being a curator for documents that are to be dissemilated. The post, if true, of arranging a time to reveiw, or the next post (if true) of 100 pages limit, indicate a position not stated by the IPCC regs quoted. Also, by inference indicate either FOIA does not apply, or it is not a repository according to IPCC rules, which means Havard took the money but refuses to do the work…always grounds for dismissal and loss of creditability, not a great stance for such a prestigious institute to take. I dont care what stance they take per se. But the question did IPCC meet its own requirements or not? My suggestions, I think would help clarify their position.

made available to reviewers on request

.

The question is not of whether Havard is necessarilry a public entity, but that 1) they recognize the aspects of FOI 2) and have documents that could reasonably requested under FOIA. or 3) they recognize their postion of disseminating information (true if posts on this thread are real).

.e) The Federal awarding agency, the Inspector General, Comptroller General of the United States, or any of their duly authorized representatives, have the right of timely and unrestricted access to any books, documents, papers, or other records of recipients that are pertinent to the awards, in order to make audits, examinations, excerpts, transcripts and copies of such documents. This right also includes timely and reasonable access to a recipient’s personnel for the purpose of interview and discussion related to such documents. The rights of access in this paragraph are not limited to the required retention period, but shall last as long as records are retained.

The problem for the “Federal awarding agency” and others is that once in the public domain, unless exempted by FOI regulations they must surrender the documents or face criminal (however unlikely) charges. With respect to the FOIA regs I am familiar with paragrah e). is not a limiting paragraph but an expansive paragraph. The burden is on the Federal awarding agency, not the general public.

In this case Havard has agreed to be a repository (retained in an open archive), according to the email Steve has attributed to them,

Martin Manning

and IPCC. Whether it is FOIA or fullfilling being a open archive.
This is what IPCC said:

All written expert, and government review comments

By defintion government reveiw comments can be legally obtained unless specifically exempted here in the US. But this is moot, the IPCC was talking of OBTAINABLE documents. The question is how can a agency potentially covered under FOIA, or their own rules, or someone who has agreed to follow certain rules that require providing documents, can refuse to give requested documents.

You are correct about Havard being a private entity, but that does not necessarily mean the papers are, or the position they have agreed to be, are private.

If you read further their only fig leaf is

during the review process and will be retained in an open archive in a location determined by the IPCC Secretariat on completion of the Report for a period of at least five years. http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf

Perhaps they wish to claim even though they just set it up 5 years have come and gone.

57. If state law were involved, presumably it would be Colorado since IPCC WG1 is located in Boulder. I have no idea how they are financed other than it’s inconceivable that it’s not 99.99% U.S. federal funding. But what programs? what’s the budget? Good questions. I’d love to know the answer if anyone knows.

Steve brings out an important point, just who and what is at Colorado? Who pays for it? In fact, if it could be maintained that IPCC was required to comply with FOIA and sent info to a private entitiy not required to comply with FOIA, it would just mean that each time they referred someone to the private entitiy that they were admitting to trying to circumvent or refusing to comply with a law. Not a pleasant position to take in front of a judge. I agree with Steve and think this was alluded to in Wegman’s statements, not sure, need to research. But if not publically funded, surely Wegman could have pointed out all this was “private” speculation to the Senate and everybody should ignore their statements. And Al Gore could take his Hollywood trophy and pawn it, for all it is worth.

Good point Jim, I will research this.I thought IPCC was covered as public. But good news if not, that means that when someone tries to enact laws, we need only point out that a private group with an unknown agenda is claiming we need to do something and can’t be trusted especially if they don’t provide data, equations and anything else that is reasonable.

paul

Can I just say that having sought information under the OIA here in NZ a large number of times for various reasons it is very clear that there is only ever one reason why people attempt to either withold or make it difficult to obtain information and that is that they are attempting to hide something they don’t want you to see. Don’t complicate it and try to understand deeper reasons, it is just that simple. Proceed on that basis.

John F. Pittman

Jim, I agree. I have not been able to find anything that would compel them as far as state or Federal requirements indicate.

Secretary-General reaffirms freedom of information bedrock principle’,

From the UN site. There is a Section 631 (VII) that reaffirms “that freedom of information is a fundamental human right and is the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated” I was unable to find a better source…this is listed as part of the UN’s future work, and is from December 1952.

Perhaps Steve should direct his attention to IPCC through the UN. I suspect that the IPCC policy is due to they are WMO and UNEP established. FOI is implemented at UNEP as guideline 41(j)
http://www.unep.org/dec/onlinemanual/Enforcement/
InstitutionalFrameworks/PublicAccesstoInformation
/tabid/91/Default.aspx

It appears that UNEP is an endorser of FOI. IPCC may be required by UNEP to follow FOI guideleines. I am not familiar enough with UN or UNEP guidelines to state the best way to address the IPCC issue. However, if the UN and UNEP state they support something such as FOI, they are almost certainly required from an institutional point of veiw to enforce it on themselves. Perhaps Steve should contact UNEP for their official policy and how they enforce it.

iii) Used by the Federal Government in developing an agency action that has the force and effect of law is defined as when an agency publicly and officially cites the research findings in support of an agency action that has the force and effect of law.

Would this mean in that the Supreme court who told the EPA that they did have authority to regulate car mileage due to its pollution; that if the Supreme court quoted in general or specific works of climatology, they now come under iii if EPA does regulate car mileage?

John F. Pittman

True about WMO, but the UN endorses FOI and UNEP has its guidelines. It would be considered appropriate for WMO as well which appears to be where the Swiss are heading. From UNEP guideline 41(j):

in accordance with national and international laws concerning access, transparency and appropriate handling of confidential or protected information. Empowering the citizens and NGOs with information as recommended, and involving them in decision process expands the knowledge base and resources for developing laws and policies, as well as improving compliance, implementations and enforcement of these laws.

Perhaps IPCC is in violation of international law. or the UNEP’s regulations concerning a funded agency of UNEP. I have been looking for something along these lines but only found 41(j).
UNEP lists IPCC as a partner. UN has the AARHUS Convention

Rights-based approach: The Convention adopts a rights-based approach. Article 1, setting out the objective of the Convention, requires Parties to guarantee rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters.

Click to access cep43e.pdf

Article 2 1., 2. (a), (b), (c). Article 4 has some interesting conditions such as (b) (to provide information 4.1) in the form requested unless; (i) it is reasonable for the public authority to make it available in another form. Their definition of what is a public body is quite broad. But considering it was for Europe and appears to be voluntary, UNEP may be exempt.

Perhaps it should be pointed out to UNEP that a partner of a UN program is not complying with the Aarhus Convention.

Reading all these suggestions and findings about how environmental and even climate changes are supposed to be discussed with engineers, politicians, and a host of other people per UNEP, that the UN endorses access, I think IPCC is headed for a political train wreck if they don’t provide the data reasonably, especially here in the States. A good number of Americans and their Congressional representatives don’t like the UN and particularly don’t like the hypocrisy and graft that seems to be ongoing. I wonder if the most appropraite path for Steve to take would be to go through Canada’s UN rep site and ask them why is a partner allowed to circumvent the Aarhus Convention. They might be able to direct Steve to a form, a site, or a regulation, that could mount some real pressure on IPCC or UNEP to make sure that any of the IPCC data, remarks, conclusions, etc., can be readily and easily obtained.

Matthew Drabik

RE: FOIA (US Govt only)

Steve, long time listener, first time caller. Love your site.

I am a Contracts Manager for a defense contractor and I have some familiarity with FOIA (US federal government version only). If you want to employ FOIA to see the comments that are being archived at Harvard, you need to know how Harvard is being compensated for maintaining that archive. If they are being paid directly by a federal agency, it is to that agency that the FOIA request needs to be addressed.

Without knowing who is paying for that archive, or how the comments were transferred to the archive (e.g. directly from IPCC or through a federal agency, in hardcopy or electronic format, etc.) drafting an effective FOIA request can be like playing darts while blindfolded.

The text of FOIA can be found here:
http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foiastat.htm

jae

The review comments have presumably been emailed to AR4 chapter authors in digital form. Authors are listed for each chapter (AR4 is here http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html ).

If this is true, there is no reason you should not be able to obtain the comments you seek. The longer these folks stall, the poorer their new breed of “science” appears from the outside.

Steve McIntyre

James Annan http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/ writes of his own identical experience with IPCC. He condemns their “pettifogging” in similar terms to me and calls on other climate scientists to protest their behavior.

Reid

Since the IPCC is part of the UN they may have diplomatic immunity to any legal action. I don’t think the legal route will produce results. Publicising the situation will hopefully help. If a major news outlet reports on the situation it will prove embarassing to the IPCC. If the situation is raised in a Congressional hearing it will help.

The IPCC will claim they are protecting the 2,500 scientists by not allowing open public access. Protecting them from ExxonMobil hired thugs, campus Republicans, etc.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #81

Since the IPCC is part of the UN they may have diplomatic immunity to any legal action. I don’t think the legal route will produce results. Publicising the situation will hopefully help. If a major news outlet reports on the situation it will prove embarassing to the IPCC. If the situation is raised in a Congressional hearing it will help.

I agree that “official” organizational rules are either worded sufficiently vague or interpreted so that one can be rather arbitrarily excluded from most data access — and particularly so when your purposes in seeking that data are from the POV of a small minority. Jim Edwards’ comments on the FOIA would appear to make its worth depend on interpretations and arbitrariness and in the end appear to be implemented into law more for political cover than making government dealings more transparent.

I would suggest that if Steve M’s complaint was for the lack of information concerning a popular environmental issue, his chances of success would increase many fold. Given the consensus surrounding the climate issue, I see little hope for Steve M succeeding in many of his pursuits for information. On the other hand, I hope he continues, as it provides an object lesson in the bureaucracy and hypocrisy as the system now operates and contains his critics who would say, “Well, you never tried”. It gives those of us more skeptical viewers of the situation insights into why we should be skeptical. It has helped in getting the attention of NAS (sort of) and Wegman (definitely). The question still open is how much attention has been widely afforded to what NAS (with reasonable interpretations) and Wegman have said on this matter.

fFreddy

Re #54, Steve McIntyre

BTW don’t assume that the IPCC is suppressing stadiums of scientists arguing against AGW or that the review comments will show great divides or lack of consensus among IPCC reviewers. The comments to chapter 6 of the First Order Draft weren’t like that and there is a consensus among climate scientists.

How many are presenting thoroughly equivocal data with a “this is consistent with AGW” tacked on the end ? How much of the consensus is people agreeing with the consistency, and not actively looking for alternatives ?
I speak English as my native language, which is consistent with my being an American born and bred. But, in fact, I’m an Englishman.
“A is consistent with B” only means “A does not disprove B”; it does not mean “A proves B”. The constant reassignation of grey to white or black according to rhetorical need is highly pernicious.

Steve McIntyre

On May 24, I wrote to Geo Clark of Harvard as follows:

I responded to IPCC that these terms are not satisfactory for me. I requested these review comments on January 24, 2007 during the review process and should have received the review comments then without incurring any copying expense, having to hire a research assistant or having to try to guess at which 100 pages to have copied.

I wrote to IPCC that their principles require them to have an “open and transparent” process and this system does not meet those standards. I’ve suggested that they should put the review comments online, or, if they are unwilling to do that, they should provide them to me in the digital form that they were provided to authors.

I hope that IPCC comes to their senses and sees that these are good suggestions and plan to allow them time to consider these suggestions. In the event that they decide to be obstructive, I’ll think about what to do at that point. If you have any constructive suggestions, I’d appreciate them.

By the way, can you explain to me how the 100 page copying limitation was determined?

On May 25, George Clark of Harvard wrote:

I’m sorry that you are finding the process frustrating. The 100-page copy limit is one of long-standing practice in the Environmental Science and Public Policy Archives. In fact, it is unusual for us to provide copies at all to patrons who do not visit in person. We do not hold copyright to most of our materials and do not have the resources to provide unlimited copies or the research service to determine which parts of the collection would be of interest to users. These types of restrictions are by no means unusual in scholarly archives. However, if you find this a hardship, I would be willing to make an exception in this instance and work with you to provide copies of a reasonable number of pages over our limit at the rate quoted. Please let me know if you would like to proceed, and we can get started. I’ll need to fax you the request form and look in more detail at your request to figure out what to copy.

On May 29, Martin Manning OF IPCC wrote:

It appears that the Harvard archive library has some constraints on how it can provide copies of WG I review comments that were not anticipated. Also they are involved in a physical relocation of their holdings.

I will look into other options that the Technical Support Unit may have for providing copies of these comments and get back to you shortly.

Today George Clark of Harvard wrote:

There are 1834 pages of expert and government review comments on the second order draft.

At our copy rate, that would be $34 + $733.60 in page charges, or $767.60 total. If that amount is a hardship, I can cut the page charge in half to $366.80 or $400.80 total.

If the 1834 pages seem like more than you want to go through, perhaps we could talk in about your specific research needs in more detail and we can figure a way to get the total page amount down to something more manageable.

I don’t want deadwood copy. This could be emailed to me in the form that I want with a click of a mouse. Plus I don’t see why I should have to pay $400.80 for something that can be sent in one second with the click of a mouse. (I wonder if that includes sales taxes and shipping and handling.) They sure are twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid providing a digital version.

Reid

1834 pages of comment from 2,500 scientists seems small. It seems to indicate that a large number of the 2,500 scientists didn’t comment or involve themselves in a debate.

I wonder if the deadwood copy has restrictions on copying and distribution on the web?

Steve McIntyre

#90. Yes. I wrote back to Clark as follows:

Dear Dr Clark,

While I appreciate your offer, I am now puzzled. Earlier you said that the limit of 100 pages existed because of copyright issues and now you have kindly offered to copy all 1834 pages for a reduced fee. I certainly wouldn’t want you to be providing copies to me in breach of any copyright and could you elucidate for me why you are now able to offer this service.

Regards, Steve McIntyre

Boris

So are the IPCC sicentists still cunning? Apparently they devised this whole scheme to make Harvard library a cool 400 bucks gross.

jae

Boris, how can anybody, especially scientists, have any respect for the IPPC? They release the summary three months before the report and admit they would adjust the report to fit the summary. They essentially ignore all the literature that contradicts the CO2 hypothesis (like the Solar stuff). Now this game. I see no reason the information would not be available in elecronic format.

Boris

but the important question that you should attempt to answer is whether the IPCC is truly doing a reasonable job of efficiently getting the comments out to the public

Ken, do you honestly think the best way to improve the IPCC is to call them “cunning” and decide that they must be hiding somehting?

I don’t know why the IPCC doens’t provide electronic versions. Perhaps it doesn’t want to bother with throwing up and maintaining an archive. Perhaps they are hiding a huge conspiracy in climate science. I know if I were hiding something, I would keep it at the Harvard library.

Reid

Boris says “Perhaps they are hiding a huge conspiracy in climate science.”

They are hiding that there is no consensus. A significant portion of the 2,500 scientists don’t agree with the scientific report. It also now appears a significant portion of the 2,500 were not seriously involved in debating the report but only lent their names to a cause.

John F. Pittman

From ABC news. Apparently the IPCC and Hansen seem to think trees help cause globally warming. Perhaps this is what they are trying to hide. LOL.

As the tipping points pass, “there is an acceleration, potentially uncontrollable, of emissions of vast natural stores of greenhouse gas,” according to Hansen, who reviewed the study for ABC News today.

Hansen explains that dangerous feedback loops are being tracked in various regions of the planet.

Many studies have reported feedback loops already observed in thawing tundra, seabeds and drying forests.

Hansen also points out that dark ‘€” and therefore heat-absorbing ‘€” forests are now expanding toward the Arctic, replacing lighter-colored areas such as tundra and snow cover.

The NASA research also reasserts the importance of the disappearing Arctic sea ice and snow, whose reflectivity has helped cool the planet by bouncing warm sunlight straight back into space.

The disappearance of that bright sea ice and snow is uncovering more and more dark water and bare ground ‘€” creating another dangerous feedback loop.

Boris

Ken,

I agree that the IPCC should provide electronic copies of these comments. I do not agree that they neglected to do so to hide something.

As to inferring that Steve was talking about a conspiracy, I did not infer it, I read it:

Their selection of a snail archive requiring a personal visit can surely have no other purpose than to comply with the letter of IPCC policy while making access as onerous as possible. Martin Manning and Susan Solomon must be very proud of themselves for this manouevre.

According to Steve M, Susan Solomon and Martin Manning not only planned to poorly distribute the comments, once they had done so, they sipped margaritas in celebration. Is it any wonder that this blog then attracts folks who will claim that the CO2 increase isn’t caused by humans?

The language that Steve and others have chosen to use does nothing other than stir up nonsense conspiracy theories like Reid’s above.

Reid

Re #103 Boris says “The language that Steve and others have chosen to use does nothing other than stir up nonsense conspiracy theories like Reid’s above.”

Conspiracies are by definition hidden from view. The IPCC is openly obstructing access to both who the scientists are and what their views are. You don’t have to be a public relations genius to understand the actions of the IPCC. Eventually all the information will be made readily available. By then the IPCC 4AR will be old news not worthy of Big Media coverage. When the IPCC eventually gets confronted with their politicized science their answer will be that it will be addressed in 5AR. And the IPCC will claim it needs much more money to address the issue of data accessability.

John F. Pittman

#103

The IPCC as part of the UN is supposed to have open access. In fact, the UN claims this is a fundamental human right: to be able to obtain information in order to make good and reasoned choices. The question begs itself to be asked: if the UN and its chartered organizations are supposed to be open, how does, and what purpose does it serve for IPCC NOT to follow its parent’s guidelines; and open data and procedures to the scientific community, especially the sceptics? As Einstein remarked to the reporter who asked how he felt about 200 Nazi scientists working to prove him wrong, he said “It only takes one.” Apparently for IPCC, it is better not to let just one sceptic veiw all the raw data and procedures than 2500(?) who have.

MarkW

Boris,

As usual, you either lie, or your memory is extremely faulty.
I never said such a thing, and I really doubt MarkT did either.

S. Hales

109 MarkW, But Boris is making progress he’s beginning to see that purposely creating a paper archive in today’s world is stupid. At least he is recognizing that the IPCC has been stupid. As the argument progresses we can assess whether this claim of stupidity makes any sense considering the high IQs of the people involved. If it cannot be claimed that the IPCC decision makers unwittingly committed a stupid act then we must explore alternative explanations.

We have certain facts in evidence:

1. The IPCC WG1 report and SPM. All digital format and publically accessible
2. The reviewers comments in digital format not publically accessible in digital format paper accessible only at one location in a permanent archive.
3. The reviewers comments serve as a kind of audit trail for the decision making of the final scientific content of WG1.
4. Decision to provide reviewers comments only in paper format effectively severs the audit trail from the report.
5. Difficult to independently evaluate WG1’s work product to determine if it represents consensus or bias without much special effort.

The decision making process of the IPCC obviously included a conscious decision to sever the audit trail from the work product. What then are the motivations to do so? Perhaps the content of the reviewer comments is politically damaging. Perhaps it exposes a non or weak consensus. Perhaps it puts the problem of climate change in a different perspective. Perhaps it is supportive of the final product. Whatever the nature of the reviewer comments the fact remains that they are effectively inaccessible. My only conclusion is that the reviewer comments, if widely known, would create problems for the IPCC and the governments involved.

Boris

Boris,

As usual, you either lie, or your memory is extremely faulty.
I never said such a thing, and I really doubt MarkT did either.

Well, it was mostly Mark T, but you did say this:

I’m guessing that you are unaware that warming waters release CO2. This runs counter to your claim that it is completely proven that 100% of new CO2 is produced by man.

So I guess you were arguing that the CO2 increase isn’t 100% manmade. That’s less wrong, I suppose.

The whole discussion is here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=640

Ken Fritsch

Yes, the IPCC was stupid and careless for not properly arhciving the comments.

Boris, thanks for using the word stupid and IPCC in the same sentence and answering my question.

Angela

This is the second important failing of the IPCC this year. In a recent article by Prof. Bob Carter he noted that the global average warming data the IPCC rely on, the IPCC will not release the raw data from which it was calculated.

Given the importance of the IPCC claims, this is outrageous. Independent verification goes to the heart of scientific credibility.

Even the authors of least important scientific papers make available primary materials and data used to generate the findings.

Indeed, with the advent of the internet and large databases, raw data are typically archived on servers as “supplementary materials, available for public scrutiny.

The IPCC omission in this regard is very surprising.

Boris

Ken,

No problem. Now if someone here would use the word stupid along with Monckton, Michaels, the CEI, CATO, Swindle…

Nicholas

Well, it’s pretty obvious that some stupid mistakes were made in the filming of Swindle. Like, for example, plotting at least one graph (and IIRC actually two) wrong.

IMO, though, the most stupid thing they did was not make it clear when they were talking about CO2 fluxes, that although most CO2 emitted in a given year is natural in origin, that doesn’t necessarily mean that if humans affect that balance in a small way, it can’t built up. I don’t think they actually lied, but rather, said things in a way that’s easy to misinterpret, the end result being such events as Carl Wunsch (sp?) being upset about his involvement. If they had been more clear on that topic, or skipped it altogether, it would not be such a great distraction for people who want to attack it to grab onto and ignore the real and much more substantive issues discussed.

So, yeah, they made some stupid mistakes. I do think, however, that they made a far stronger attempt at telling the truth than the conveniently named An Inconvenient Truth. That section where they show a clip from AIT then critique it was shocking to me. I had never see AIT and had no idea that it made such a dubious claim about the ice core record.

Steve McIntyre

Maybe someone can explain copyright rules to me. Originally George Clark of Harvard said that he could only make 100 pages available because of copyright rules. Then he said that he could make all 1834 pages available (for over US$400). I asked him why he was now able to do so, when he wasn’t previously as follows:

Dear Dr Clark,

While I appreciate your offer, I am now puzzled. Earlier you said that
the limit of 100 pages existed because of copyright issues and now you
have kindly offered to copy all 1834 pages for a reduced fee. I
certainly wouldn’t want you to be providing copies to me in breach of
any copyright and could you elucidate for me why you are now able to
offer this service.

Regards, Steve McIntyre

He replied as follows:

It is not a standard practice but I am trying my best to meet your needs.

This makes no sense to me as an explanation and I wrote back:

You didn’t answer my question.

Previously you said that copying more than 100 pages was not permissible under copyright regulations. Now you say that you can copy and make available all 1834 pages. I understand that you’re trying to be helpful, but I presume that you were trying to be helpful previously, when you said that this wasn’t possible. What’s happened in the mean time? Has the copyright holder waived their copyright? If so, could you provide some documentation of this? Otherwise what authority do you have to now copy all 1834 pages available?

Regards, Steve McIntyre

Maybe one of our lawyer readers can clarify something for me. Where did the previous 100 page restriction arise? Is that just a library policy for their own operating convenience, with the prior explanation linking it to copyright being a charade?

If IPCC gave him permission to copy all 1834 pages and send them to me, would that constitute a waiver of copyright? If the IPCC did not give him explicit permission, would Clark’s new offer be a violation of copyright regulations? If so, why would Clark do so now?

Steve McIntyre

#124. I’m puzzled by the “copyright” issue as it applies to IPCC review comments. Copyright exists to protect novelists and recording authors, etc. who are for-profit. Obviously IPCC should adopt wikipedia “copyleft” policies. Also does the HArvard library return part of the copying fees to IPCC? If so, I wonder what proportion? I doubt that there’s any such agreement in place. I’m puzzled as to whether the Harvard library is free-lancing or is working with IPCC in this offer. Clark was not very forthcoming.

jae

I do, however, see the IPCC and their AR4 report as the single most influential group and document on climate change and thus judge that the importance of its critiques must be placed a level or two above those of other individuals and groups involved in the discussion. Would you agree?

No.

Mark T.

Depends upon whether or not a copyright agreement was signed as a condition of reviewer status.

Mark

Boris

The 100 page limit is probably a protection for Harvard library and is likely a standard for all requests. I doubt it’s a charade, as you are not supposed to walk into a library and copy a book. Ask Kinko’s to copy a book and you’ll see what I mean.

Perhaps the IPCC has commenters waive their copyrights and Clark became aware of this? This seems a fairly minor point to me.

Steve McIntyre

Boris, it seems “plausible” to me that the HArvard library policy on 100 pages is based on a reasonable interpretation of copyright law. If so, then is the copying of 1834 pages a violation of both library policy and copyright law? If so, you haven’t explained why Clark would do this. If he got new information about IPCC waivers, why wouldn’t he just say so. None of this makes any sense to me. I don’t like things that don’t make sense. Maybe it’s minor, maybe it isn’t. You never know until you tug the string a little.

Philip B

What I find surprising (to say the least) is that the exchange indicates Steve is the first person to request all the comments, with the implication that no one has even looked into the much vaunted consensus claimed for the IPCC report.

jae

I just can’t believe there is a legal issue here. Maybe it is just simple bureaucratic inefficiencies. Why is it so tough to get basic information in the Climate Science arena? Anyway, it is very intriguing, and I’m glad Steve M is pursuing it. Another mini-novel.

Ken Fritsch

I do not think the specific details of the reasons for the inefficient public access to the AR4 review comments will essentially change a reasonable person’s judgment of the AR4’s approach, i.e. they were either willfully negligent or were coincidentally negligent due to a lack of concern for public access. Either way, the result and IPCC’s hypocrisy are the same, notwithstanding Boris’ humorous (to me) and heroic efforts to mount a defense.

Steve McIntyre

IMHO there’s no evidence here of simple inefficiency or “negligence”. In my opinion, the arhiving of a non-digital version was intentional not negligent; if IPCC wanted to provide a digital version, they could have done so far more easily and with far less effort than it’s taking them to try to justify what they’re doing.

jae

140: Maybe I misread your post. I agree with you. Of course IPCC is the most influential source of information. I guess I was conflating “influential” with “factual.” So many shortcomings of the AR4 and the whole IPCC system have now come to light that I would have a hard time using it to guide my actions, if I were a policy maker.

Jim Edwards

Re: 100 pp and copyrights

I don’t know much about copyright law, other than that a copyright is a piece of property that has value and can be ‘stolen’ [infringed upon] and that there are often ‘fair use’ provisions in play that would allow incomplete copying of a work for nonprofit, academic purposes.

Harvard’s 100 page limit is probably some attempt to keep from being sued for copyright infringement. [As Boris noted.] If the starving English professor goes into Harvard library and copies too many documents with the Librarian’s facilitation, it’s the party with the deep pockets [i.e. – Harvard] that’s going to get sued, not the judgment-proof egghead. An enforced copy limit policy might help as a defense.

This policy should become unnecessary when the Library is dealing with public documents, of course. Some posters above suggested competing copyright claims. Unlike most documents produced by government agencies, the IPCC report relied on private, ‘volunteer’ assistance. Do these academics have an copyright interest in the AR4 reports ? It’s probably not an easy question to answer, considering the international nature of the problem. Maybe Dr Schmidt from Germany has rights and Dr Xhang from China doesn’t. Is US law even applicable ? Assuming waivers were signed, is the waiver language actually binding on the scientists in different countries ?

Let’s assume IPCC gives the documents to Harvard and assures Harvard that these are public documents w/o any competing copyright interests. What should Harvard do ? How does a Harvard Librarian know one or more of the 2500 scientists won’t pop up with a copyright infringement claim if they allow the whole 1800+ pages to be copied ? If the choice of defendants is: a Canadian, an American University worth billions, a poor government official who made the false promise on the IPCC’s behalf, or the IPCC itself [which for practical purposes is immune to lawsuits], the choice is obvious. Harvard’s best interests are served by limiting the number of copies. If they want to risk complete copying, they might need to pay for a legal opinion to give themselves the confidence to proceed.

MarkR

Could this be a case for a demonstration of the power of the web?

A whip round, copy the documents, scan them, and post them on a copyright claim proof server (ie China or similar).

Then we can all see what’s what.

I will put my $10 in first if required, and I am sure Boris and Dano and Eli and Tim Lambert and Gavin and Michael will contribute too, as I’m sure they want the evidence to support their claims out in the open.

Mark T.

I agree, Harvard is probably not the problem here as they are more than likely simply following their own rules. Now that the IPCC is (supposedly) aware of the problem, they should be the ones that work to rectify the situation.

Mark

Ken Fritsch

The difference is that I don’t see it as some conspiracy to hide the comments or make them as inacessible as possible. I think such talk of conspiracy is unproductive. Apparently you disagree. Fine.

Boris, I believe that you have stated that we do not know whether or not a politically motivated IPCC would willfully make access to the comments more difficult than necessary. Neither you, nor anyone else, can read their minds so we can only judge based on the evidence as it is disclosed.

As you properly noted libraries in general have certain rather commonly applied rules regarding copying of documents. These rules would be rather well known among just about anyone who has done any library searches and research. I would doubt that the IPCC people would be unaware of those policies. Had they been sincerely interested in making the reviews public in an efficient manner they would certainly have followed through on the process instead of handing it off to a library clerk.

The IPCC 4AR report is a well orchestrated and thought out document that in my judgment was presented with a consistent story line (almost like a plot of a fiction writing) that selects data to show that effects of AGW need urgent attention. Why should that seemingly efficient approach breakdown suddenly when it comes to making the reviews of it public? Would that political awareness and astuteness suddenly desert them if making the reviews public would have helped them make their point? Their liberal use of bolded terms such as likely, very likely and almost certainly that are well interspersed in the 4AR demonstrates that the IPCC places great importance on showing the reading public that a consensus of expert opinion backs their conclusions.

By the way, would you or anyone here know how the different levels of likely are determined by the authors of the 4AR?

Boris, what I find funny is that you seem to skirt around these questions, which I think are important to the issue, by focusing on the phraseology of participants here, attributing conspiracy theories, worrying about how the IPCC will respond (they won’t) to the criticism and noting obvious and predictable reactions of the involved bureaucrats but never questioning why the IPCC then did what they did in the light of these predictable reactions.

Reid

What would be the legal consequences of scanning the documents and posting them on a public access website?

jae

There certainly can’t be a legal problem with Steve viewing the comments, since IPCC has formally granted permission for reviewers to access them. Maybe there is a problem if he were to post them, but he can certainly post his reviews of the comments. That would be enough for me. The lawyers have made everything so darn complicated.

paul

You need to be careful you don’t give the IPCC too many ideas. They may claim cpyright on climate. Whoops, too late.

Mark T.

Uh, Steve M. made it pretty clear, and nobody has disagreed, that he did not expect to find much dissent. Most of those that did, probably didn’t do so in “gold nugget” fashion anyway. Your point is rather immaterial. Falsifiability hinges on access to everyone’s comments, good or bad. The fact that you try to belittle the comments to the “there’s not much out there to challenge the consensus position” is rather humorous, particularly given that the IPCC reviewed what, 70 papers, authored by how many, maybe 20 lead authors?

Mark

Matthew Drabik

#151 “By the way, would you or anyone here know how the different levels of likely are determined by the authors of the 4AR?”

Check footnote 6 at the bottom of page 4 of 18 of the recent SPM.

Click to access SPM2feb07.pdf

Am I right in thinking that these are estmated coefficients of determination? Therefore, any assesment below ‘extremely likely’ would be statistically insignificant?

If so, then the IPCC would not have to defend most of 4AR on scientific grounds since they would not be making scientific (causal) claims.

Back to the topic, the comments might not include any ‘gold nuggets’, but might review some interesting assumptions made while determining ‘assessed likihood’.

Ken Fritsch

Re: #161

Matthew, specifically from the foot notes I get the excerpt quoted directly below. I have seen it before but failed to see how it’s actually determined. I was hoping that someone more convinced of a consensus like, Boris, would be able to answer the question. They certainly must have based their conclusion on something more than someone simply telling them this was the case. Who were the experts and how did the vote would be questions that come to my mind immediately.

6 In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood, using expert judgement, of an outcome or a result: Virtually certain > 99% probability of occurrence, Extremely likely > 95%, Very likely > 90%, Likely > 66%, More likely than not > 50%, Unlikely

From Box TS 1.1 we have:

The importance of consistent and transparent treatment of uncertainties is clearly recognised by the IPCC in preparing its assessments of climate change. The increasing attention given to formal treatments of uncertainty in previous assessments is addressed in Section 1.6. To promote consistency in the general treatment of uncertainty across all three Working Groups, authors of the Fourth Assessment Report have been asked to follow a brief set of guidance notes on determining and describing uncertainties in the context of an assessment . This box summarises the way that Working Group I has applied those guidelines and covers some aspects of the treatment of uncertainty specific to material assessed here.

Uncertainties can be classified in several different ways according to their origin. Two primary types are value uncertainties’ and structural uncertainties’. Value uncertainties arise from the incomplete determination of particular values or results, for example, when data are inaccurate or not fully representative of the phenomenon of interest. Structural uncertainties arise from an incomplete understanding of the processes that control particular values or results, for example, when the conceptual framework or model used for analysis does not include all the relevant processes or relationships. Value uncertainties are generally estimated using statistical techniques and expressed probabilistically. Structural uncertainties are generally described by giving the authors’ collective judgment of their confidence in the correctness of a result. In both cases, estimating uncertainties is intrinsically about describing the limits to knowledge and for this reason involves expert judgment about the state of that knowledge. A different type of uncertainty arises in systems that are either chaotic or not fully deterministic in nature and this also limits our ability to project all aspects of climate change.

This box also referenced 1.6 of the 4AR where I found a reference to Moss and Schneider, 2000.

The paper references the use of Bayesian approaches and in its outline of procedures under 6 refers to a traceable account of how the estimates were constructed. How would one go about obtain/trace that “account”?

Thus in the TAR, we expect Bayesian approaches to be what is most often meant when probabilities are attached to outcomes with an inherent component of subjectivity or to an assessment of the state of the science from which confidence characterisations are offered.

6. Prepare a “traceable account” of how the estimates were constructed that describes the writing team’s reasons for adopting a particular probability distribution, including important lines of evidence used, standards of evidence applied, approaches to combining/reconciling multiple lines of evidence, explicit explanations of methods for aggregation, and critical uncertainties.

Ken Fritsch

Since I have been able to follow the references in the AR4 report to the Moss and Schneider, 2000 paper that recommends preparing a “traceable account” for describing and explaining each working groups methods for determining the critical levels of uncertainties (likely, very likely etc.), I wanted to determine whether these accounts are available for public viewing. I would think that these documents should be since they provide the critical basis that purportedly would make the report’s conclusions, tentative or otherwise, worthy of policy consideration.

Before emailing the potential sources of information at the IPCC organization, I wanted to put out a general query here to those with more direct exposure to the 4AR process asking whether they are familiar with these “traceable accounts” and to whom should I address my request for obtaining these accounts.

Steve McIntyre

Can any interpretation be put on this other than that IPCC WG1 doesn’t want the public to have convenient access to the review comments.

There’s a legal issue here which I’d appreciate some clarification on: it seems to me that if the comments are available in an “open archive”, then IPCC cannot demand confidentiality for comments mailed to me. Obviously this little game being played by IPCC is at odds with:

The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. …

Review is an essential part of the IPCC process

Steve Sadlov

“Open Government” is a concept that has never been heartily embraced by the UN or its panels. Talk about an org crying out for proper governance.

bernie

Ken:
The mind boggles at how estimates of the structural uncertainties was actually done. In a certain sense if you have to that kind of assessment you don’t really have a meaningful model. For example, not including adequate models for water vapour and clouds presumably introduces a structural uncertainty as would precipitation into the proxy models. Do I have this right?

Steve McIntyre

#172, It’s probably meaningless in the sense that they couldn’t sue me if I disregarded it, but, in their own self-righteous world, they would take the position that I had breached an agreement and had behaved dishonorably, rather than thinking that they had behaved dishonorably in attaching unjustified restrictions.

Take a look at my FOI request to NOAA – new post.

Jim Edwards

Confidentiality
Copyright
Fair Use
Distribution

I think the above terms are all knotted together in this controversy. A reviewer gets to look at comments, but not necessarily distribute them. Why ? Because the reviewer’s use would be a fair use, and probably not a violation of any copyrights that might exist, b/c reviewers submitted comments w/ the understanding that they would be available to the other reviewers during the review period. This is a very limited use contrary to any authors’ copyrights. Distribution of the comments en masse is not a fair use, in the same way that distributing bootleg copies of a movie to the public is contrary to copyright law. Printing a short excerpt of a book for a book review is a ‘fair use’, I believe. Publishing a short excerpt from one or more of the comments might be a fair use; I’d contact an attorney who specializes in copyrights to make sure. Distribution of comments is otherwise at your own risk.

The open archive at Harvard, you’ll note, is set up to provide something closer to academic ‘fair use’, rather than distribution to the general public.

A major question would be what would happen if a reviewer published comments in their entirety. If copyrights are violated, the holder of the copyrights would have legal recourse. If IPCC doesn’t hold any copyrights on the comments, they probably wouldn’t have legal recourse. Presumably, it would be possible to seek the written permission of a given author to distribute his comment. Don’t forget that an angry IPCC could possibly deny a person future rights to participate in 5AR.

Steve McIntyre

Here’s how I replied to Manning.

“Dear Dr Manning,

I remain puzzled by several aspects of your response.

First, could you please clarify what you purport to be requiring when you state “the compiled comments are not for re-distribution to others.” Are you prohibiting the quotation of any comments that you are proposing to provide? Or are you prohibiting the re-distribution of the entire compilation?

Second, can you cite the specific IPCC policy that authorizes you to issue either prohibition. IPCC rules require you to maintain an “open archive”; so the comments are obviously not confidential. IPCC rules state that the “review process should be objective, open and transparent” and that “the role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis”. Neither of these rules support the prohibition that you purport to be issuing, the effect of which appears to substantially exceed your authority as Director, IPCC WG I Support Unit, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.

Third, may I point out that you incorrectly cited IPCC policy when you purported to refute my request for access in January 2007. You stated:

IPCC rules require that comments are made available during the review periods and through an archive library after completion of the report. January 2007 was not during a review period and the WG I report was not completed until April 27th, 2007.

IPCC rules distinguish between the “review process” and “review periods”. IPCC policies require you to make the comments available during the “review process”:

All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process.

The term “review process” is defined in Appendix A as consisting of three stages:

The review process generally takes place in three stages: expert review of IPCC Reports, government/expert review of IPCC Reports, government review of the Summaries for Policymakers, Overview Chapters and/or the Synthesis Report.

Since government review of the Summary for Policy-makers was taking place in late January, my original request was made during the “review process” and the obligation to deliver review comments arose at that time. The term “review periods” is used in the WG1 Timetable to describe something other than the “review process” as defined in Appendix A and is obviously not relevant for the interpretation of Appendix A.

Regards, Steve McIntyre”

bernie

#177
Steve:
Game, set and match methinks!

Jim Edwards

#178, Ken Fritsch

Well, I didn’t say that copyright law was behind their (in)actions.

If IPCC was trying to stall, it would be smartest for them not to tell Steve what their complete reasoning was, b/c then they’d be boxed in to a position and if he found a way to address their specific concerns they wouldn’t be able to stall anymore. If IPCC is obtuse, it requires Steve to spend weeks just trying to pin down the problem, before even attempting to address it [hypothetically…].

My post above refers to what somebody who receives the full stack of comments might do. It sounds like IPCC is saying he can have them, but he doesn’t get to own them, or redistribute them to others who might find them an interesting read. It’s not clear to me that IPCC can stop him, or do anything if he did redistribute them; it’s also not clear to me that he could publish the whole 1800+ pages w/o facing potential problems.

Many of the threads on this blog begin with academic / technical commentary combined with selective quotation of copyrighted academic papers. I’m not 100% positive, but I think that is ‘fair use’. It’s like a critical book review. I don’t know, but it seems like selective quotation from individual comments coupled w/ academic / technical commentary might be ‘fair use’, and free from copyright entanglement.

#180 Ken

The difference between the report and the comments is that the report was written by a small number of authors who, presumably, sign over their rights to IPCC when they took the job. IPCC can do whatever they want with their copyrighted report. The copyright covers the WG1 report, itself, not all the notes compiled when writing the report. It sounds like the numerous reviewers might have potential copyright claims on their comments. If so, IPCC [and IPCC officials…] can’t distribute them to the general public, w/o permission from each reviewer – or w/o facing potential liability.

Steve McIntyre

#166. Less than 24 hours after saying that they would send out comments on chapter 6, I received a FedEx package this morning. Since Manning purported to attach conditions to this form of delivery that would not apply to comments received from the Harvard Library, I’m not going to open the package until this issue is clarified.

jae

Since Manning purported to attach conditions to this form of delivery that would not apply to comments received from the Harvard Library, I’m not going to open the package until this issue is clarified.

LOL!

Armand MacMurray

Re:#182
A quick search provides counterexamples to your DA hypothetical (e.g. Sudan Open Archive), thus it shouldn’t apply here.

Ken Fritsch

A quick check on the internet found that a copyright can be claimed without afixing the copyright symbol — according to current US law.

Looking at what qualifies for copyright under the US law, I would, however, have my doubts about the reviewers comments. Certainly the comments were not made in a commercial pusuit and under the auspices of the UN I would not think that they would intend for them to be used by the reviewers as a source of monetary enrichment.

Jim Edwards

188, Ken Fritsch:

I take no position on whether anybody has a valid copyright under the laws of one or more nations. I defer to others on whether “open” in “open archive” usually means open to some or open to all.

I’m only opening a can of worms and suggesting examination before action.

Let’s assume there is some very weak copyright claim that could be made. [Not hard to imagine under the facts reported, as we are dealing with many parties and many countries’ law.] I predict that a slip up could lead to messy legal problems, b/c the visceral hatred directed at certain parties would make this more like divorce court than a typical court case. Some readers may be aware that businesses often write off debts rather than pursue them in court, b/c it’s not worth their time. Divorcing spouses, on the other hand, have been known to spend $20k in legal fees to fight over a $50 couch. I fear parties who have secure gov’t jobs w/ little to do and who hold certain reviewers in contempt could let their self-righteous anger get the better of them if they feel slighted in the least.

Steve Sadlov

RE: #191 – Indeed, it could be a trap. Watch out Steve M!

S. Hales

#194 Oh come on Boris, A DA could have been created on a secure system with restricted access and all the provisos on distribution. The creation of a paper archive has only one purpose, to make the comments as difficult as possible to retrieve. If there is nothing to hide why the subtrefuge? The review comments are AR4’s audit trail. IMO every citizen has the right to look over the shoulder of those who spend their money. They have a right to know that is why the FOIA was passed, to deal with petty bureaucrats and those who wish to obfuscate policymaking. Why do you work against the rights of the proletariat? 🙂

steven mosher

RE 194

Boris, that sounds like Cheney’s defense for not revealing notes of his meetings with
Big Oil about energy policy.!

Now, the reviewers comments can fall into THREE categories.

1. They are largely in line with the final report ( consensus!)
2. They imply a stronger case than the final report ( we are MELTING!)
3. They imply a weaker case than the final report: Consensus? we got no consensus.

So, if 1 were the case, it would be in their intrest to release the comments publically.

So, that leaves option 2 or 3. you think it’s #2?

Steve McIntyre

Here’s what Manning wrote today:

Thank you for informing us that you have received the package containing the comments and responses for Chapter 6 of the WG I report as you requested.

Our conditions for use of these are stated in the package simply as follows:

“The following compilation of review comments and author responses is being supplied by the Working Group I Technical Support Unit to you as an expert reviewer of the Working Group I report.

These comments and responses are for your information only. They are not to be re-distributed in part or in full to others.

Please note that under IPCC procedures authors are required to take account of all substantive review comments in both review rounds. Thus responses to individual comments may be influenced by comments from other reviewers.”

I trust that this is clear, but it may help if I reiterate that because chapter authors had a responsibility to deal with all comments received it would be inappropriate, and a disservice to both authors and reviewers, if anyone were to consider just some selected subset of the comments.

In connection with your other points, I do not accept your interpretation of IPCC procedures in regard to the duration of the review process. There was no opportunity to comment on any chapter material after June 2nd, 2006, so there can be no basis for considering that the review process for these comments continued until January 2007. We are following procedures set by the Panel and precedent established in previous assessments. These are intended to strike a reasonable balance between the interests of authors, reviewers, and others interested in the assessment. 👿

This gets more and more bizarre. If a government institution purchase a photocopy from Harvard library, they are allowed to quote review comments from the “open archive”, but Manning is prohibiting me from quoting the review comments even “in part”. Then he’s cheeky enough to say that the prohibition is to prevent quotation of a mere subset, when I’ve asked them to make all the comments available online.

Gerald Machnee

Well, the title of this thread is “Cunning IPCC Bureauc rats”.

Boris

I trust that this is clear, but it may help if I reiterate that because chapter authors had a responsibility to deal with all comments received it would be inappropriate, and a disservice to both authors and reviewers, if anyone were to consider just some selected subset of the comments.

That’s very close to what I said. The IPCC doesn’t want people taking the comments out of context. This is perfectly reasonable. Do you guys really want scientists to be super conscious of how their comments might be used as they work on the AR5?

And 202, it’s not the duplication of part of the comments, but the selective republication that would be a problem.

Jim Edwards

#204, Steve M.

So:
1. open your package of comments
2. Find the twenty pages out of 1800+ that you find interesting.
3. order those twenty pages from Harvard [keep your receipt]
4. Do what you want with the Harvard copies.

[just a thought…]

Ken Fritsch

I want to be sure that I have all the revealed information on the matter of the reviewer’s comments correct and so will reiterate my understanding in this post.

The reviewers’ comments from Working Group I of the AR4 report are in archives at a Harvard Library in the form of a hard copy of some 1800 plus pages. This information is not available by way of the internet. If it were available by way of the internet none of the issues in contention for the hard copies would apply. It would appear from Manning’s comments posted here by Steve M that there are no known or divulged rules applying to the handling of the comments, except Manning’s personal appeal to comment context.

Hypothetically, I could legally and at some personal expense go or send a representative to the Harvard Library and copy 100 pages of the reviewers’ comments at a setting until I have all the comments copied and scanned into digital form and then post the entire document on the internet, providing I identified and credited the proper sources.

Could an organization such as the IPCC with its stated policy of transparency and concern for their public image in marketing their AGW policy, in good faith press any repercussions on an individual or organization that might take the action outlined above?

In matters of government workings that might be more readily defended in withholding information than in this case, one normally gets public viewing through leaks ‘€” and leaks the source of which are never, or very seldomly revealed. I would be surprised if that was not a possible source here (attention NYT).

If all else fails perhaps we can recruit Sandy Berger to go the Harvard Library with baggy socks and to do his thing. Certainly he appears to have worked a documentary disappearing act without repercussions.

Armand MacMurray

Re:#203
Boris, my point was that the curator of the archive apparently believes otherwise than Manning, as he is — mostly! — imposing a 100-page limit on the number of pages that may be duplicated at a time. At least one of the two must be wrong.

Armand MacMurray

A quick look at Harvard’s web sites shows that the Phillips Reading Room in Widener Library (where the IPCC materials will be available) has a self-service scanner (for scanning to USB drive or FTP transfer); there is no fee for use of the scanner. This would seem to reduce the duplication costs substantially for someone who is able to visit that library.
Regarding copyright, the web site says “Copyright laws require that users digitize library materials for research/educational purposes only.”

Reid

In my opinion, the IPCC will not use legal means to attack anyone who publishes the reviewer comments. The reason is simple. Any legal proceeding will attract mainstream media attention. Even if the IPCC has the legal right to withold the names and comments of the 2,500 scientists they are first and foremost in the AGW catasphophe business. Taking the AGW catastrophe business to a US or Canadian court will clearly show that they have an agenda that is not science based.

Steve, take the leap. Order all 1800+ pages and post them on the net. Either there will be no legal consequences or you will be a world class heretic no longer relegated to a specialty blog. If the IPCC attacks you, you will go from mainstream obscurity to a 21st century Galileo style heretic. Attention will be paid.

As I said in an earlier post, all reviewer comments will be on the web in a few months. Who posts them on the net is the wild card.

Nicholas

It’s going to be hard for Mr. McIntyre to continue his research if he’s shunned as a result of publishing these comments – even though they are SUPPOSED to be open and there would not be anything wrong with doing so.

If one of us should visit Harvard Library, scan some of the more interesting pages, and post them, without involving Steve, it would be in the interests of science but without dragging him into it. It’s a sad state of affairs but I understand why he doesn’t want to be seen to be too reckless or untrustworthy, even if the person placing these conditions upon him has no valid basis in doing so.

Earle Williams

I’m not entirely certain that there is any copyright applicable here, at least in countries that are parties to the Berne convention. For employees of the U.S. government who made comments as a function of their job there is no copyright involved, as all works of the U.S. government are not copyrightable.

Jim Edwards

#167, Steve M.

You asked a question earlier that I don’t think was addressed.

Can IPCC place restrictions on comments they send you as a reviewer that wouldn’t exist if you had received the comments from the “open archive” at Harvard ?

I think the answer could be yes.

The answer likely lies not in copyright law, but in laws of agency / employment. If we assume for a moment that a reviewer is a type of employee of IPCC (not a small assumption), then a duty of loyalty would apply (at least in common law countries…). The master (IPCC) can grant access to information to the servant (a reviewer) with an expectation that the servant will use the information to further the master’s purposes and not the servant’s.

IPCC is granting special access to comments that is superior to access available to the general public. This special access is only given to persons with this special relationship to IPCC.

Are reviewers employees ? I don’t know. Presumably, they could be fired, like employees. I’m guessing they weren’t paid. This isn’t necessarily a barrier; I’d expect that Red Cross volunteers would be liable under an unjust enrichment theory if they exploited an investment opportunity that was meant to go to the non-profit organization.

I’m only saying it doesn’t sound crazy to me for IPCC to argue special restrictions when they grant special access to somebody with whom they have a special relationship.

Of course, even if the above argument applied, it’s hard for me to see where there are any recoverable damages. If he weren’t selling the information, or advertising on the site, where would the offending reviewer’s ill-gotten gains be ? I suppose it would be possible for IPCC to seek an injunction against the reviewer to cease publication, assuming the comments hadn’t been mirrored already.

If IPCC could make the case that it had encountered unnecessary financial injury as a result of publication, there might be liability there. But how can this be when the “open archive” exists, with an expressed purpose of providing access to the information in question ? [Unless Harvard were paying for the right to host the archives and that relationship was severed as a result of the alternate publication…]

An unanswerable question would be how third parties would respond to a hypothetical breach of a duty of loyalty.

Steve McIntyre

Manning says:

Finally, may I clarify an apparent misunderstanding. I am not employed by NOAA, but by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) which administers the Working Group I TSU in Boulder, Colorado, just as it did the previous US based WG II TSU during the third IPCC assessment round.

The role of UCAR deserves a little airing. It’s a “private” corporation whose main source of revenue is an administrative markup for running NCAR. UCAR is not subject to FOI as far as I know. So it can fund IPCC activities using federal funds without IPCC financing turning up as a line item in anyone’s budget. It’s the climate equivalent of “off balance sheet” financing. Enron isn’t the only organization that knows about keeping things off the balance sheet.

MAnning’s email to me saying that he is not a NOAA employee came from the following email address mmanning at al.noaa.gov . Why would he have a NOAA email address if he is not a NOAA employee?

Steve McIntyre

At this poster http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_Poster.pdf Manning is identifed as IPCC TSU, but Solomon is identified as NOAA. Even if Martin Manning is found to be off balance sheet, I don’t see how Susan Solomon can. There are other NOAA employees as well .

John A

Martin Manning:

We would not be promoting a transparent and open process, nor would we be acting responsibly to our authors and many expert reviewers, if there were no restraint on others selectively editing and redistributing review materials. As the comment files are made available to anyone on request, such a restraint in no way prevents others from retrospective consideration of the report drafting and review process, but rather, to the best of our ability, encourages them to take proper account of all relevant material.

Did I miss a nuance or did Martin Manning basically say that in order to have a transparent and open process, the review materials must be under permanent embargo?

This is the logic of Wonderland.

S. Hales

#225 Having a free and frank discussion is what motivates many such government bodies to keep ‘sausage making’ behing closed doors. The US Fed Board of Governor’s Open Market Committee minutes come to mind in the more distant past. The OMC minutes being published in recent years in a more timely manner does not seem to have encouraged selective quoting, etc., and does not seem to have stifled debate among committee members. What it has done is given us a glimpse at the degree of agreement/disagreement on the future course of policy and whether the chairman is strong or weak. Mr. Manning should take note. If the FED can stand the heat of intense scruitny and still defend its decisions then a bunch of college professors can stand a little of the same or is climate science more nuanced?