Climate Audit

David Holland has written in raising an excellent point about the failure of IPCC WG1 to release the Review Editor comments.

In our examination of specific issues e.g. the Briffa truncation, the handling of trends, etc., the Author Responses (online through an earlier CA initiative) show that the IPCC authors often made unconvincing and tendentious responses to comments. IPCC policies provide that these exchanges should be considered by Review Editors. David observes that IPCC failed to place the Review Editor comments online (and, BTW, I did ask for Review Editor comments in my FOI request [to NOAA asking for IPCC Review Comments].)

David wrote:

Not only is there a lack of due diligence on the science but the IPCC does not seem too fussy about demonstrating that they operate as laid down in their Governing Principles, mentioned by Dan in #17, which call for a “comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis” etc. Clause 10 says “Differing views on matters of a scientific, technical or socio -economic nature shall, as appropriate in the context, be represented in the scientific, technical or socio-economic document concerned”

That Steve and Ross thought Wahl and Ammann was inappropriate, seeing as how the IPCC never considered the accepted version, is to be expected. However when the reviewer for the Government of the United States points out that it does really does not cut the mustard ( see reviewers comment ID #: 2023-415) one might expect some mention in the text. The umpire on Chapter 6 was a Brit, the Chief Scientist of the of our Met Office, sent, I presume, at the taxpayers expense to act in accordance with paragraph 5 of Annex 1 to Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work which say the Review Editors function is to “assist the Working Group/Task Force Bureaux in identifying reviewers for the expert review process, ensure that all substantive expert and government review comments are afforded appropriate consideration, advise lead authors on how to handle contentious/controversial issues and ensure genuine controversies are reflected adequately in the text of the Report.”

Clearly the Review Editors’ advice would be interesting to read and paragraph 5 goes on to say that “Although responsibility for the final text remains with the Lead Authors, Review Editors will need to ensure that where significant differences of opinion on scientific issues remain, such differences are described in an annex to the Report. Review Editors must submit a written report to the Working Group Sessions or the Panel etc.”

From the reviewers’ comments it is clear that many areas are contentious in several of the chapters but I have seen no annexes. “Rejected” hardly seems “appropriate consideration”. Clearly the Review Editor’s written reports are something we would all like to see. In reply to my request to the British Chapter 6 Reviewer Editor I was directed to TSU who were said to be in the process of disbanding. Perhaps this is the Littauer hand off.

I shall, of course, be pressing to get see the review editors reports through FoI in the UK (did no one get sent a copy in the UK?) but in these matters some of you are in more congenial jurisdictions and I hope that someone might press to see these reports which must have been circulated to their governments – or the IPCC is even less in anyone’s control. Either the Review Editors’ reports say nothing because the umpires are biased which means the checks and balances are worthless or they were ignored. Either way the system does not work as specified.

I think that this is an excellent initiative and I would encourage other CA readers to make FOI requests for the Review Editor comments to relevant government agencies in the U.S., U.K, Canada and Australia. In the U.S., in response to our earlier FOI requests, NOAA mendaciously said that they had no IPCC review comments in their possession – given that Susan Solomon, Chairman of WG1, used NOAA email for her correspondence and NOAA praised many of their scientists for their contributions to IPCC, the idea that they were not in possession of any IPCC review comments defies credulity.

While readers can expect similar mendacious answers from government authorities, why not put them to the test? In the earlier instance, IPCC responded by putting the comments online, saving the national authorities from further examination. Maybe something similar can happen again.