Actually, it is quite customary for a reviewer to be requested to destroy all his documents once the review is over. The IPCC should keep the records.

To give John Mitchell his due, he has been more forthcoming than any other WGI RE. But what exactly does he mean when he says that he ‘consulted the IPCC’ before replying? It’s certainly not self-evident that the Principles cited above impose no requirement on an RE to keep a record. If the intergovernmental panel has now authorised an RE to make such a declaration, when, how and by whom was that decision made?

I have been reading the reviewers comments on chapter 7, after having myself reviewed much of the literature on ocean-atmosphere interactions w/r to the carbon cycle. I was surprised that many of the leading researchers in the field were not amongst the contributors, let alone the coordinating authors. Furthermore, the contributors in that specific areas had all published together, so they obviously shared a particular point of view. One could say they were all part of a “Wegmanian” network. Nevertheless, they themselves made negative review comments on how their field had been poorly treated in the chapter! Actually, most of the review comments were from those contributing authors. So, even though they were “contributors”, they did not seem to have had any say on the writing itself. Looking at the list of reviewers from IPCC, I could not find anyone else involved in the field. I’m not sure if that list is exhaustive, however. Does anyone here know?

In the end, even though the IPCC boasts itself as having been written and reviewed by thousands of scientists, one finds that only a handful actually wrote the report, and they seem to represent a single point of view. Someone may be an active researcher in a field, but if she is not amongst the lead or contributing authors, her work may not be reported or cited, and not being a reviewer, she won’t even be in a position to complain about it.

John Mitchell has replied to my letter and I am very grateful for that. He says “I have not kept any working papers. There is no requirement to do so, given the extensive documentation already available from IPCC.” He say he had “also consulted the IPCC” before replying. He has not answered, in a way I can understand, the specific question I asked concerning Steve’s comments 6-1198 and 6-1208 requesting data disclosure. He made no comment on the more general question of how given that Otto Bliesner sat on the NRC panel, the report of which was in the public domain before they started the final draft of Chapter 6, they make no mention of its critical findings on the “hockey stick” even though they cite the NRC report twice.

WGI TSU have now sent me all the WGI Review Editors’ reports. Ian Castles’ sharp eye noticed that Sir Brian Hoskins’ report was dated a year later than the rest. As you might recall from my thoughts on John Mitchell’s indecision over dating I was quite willing to put it down to carelessness as I make mistakes like that. Ian persuaded me (fortunately) to press the matter and I wrote what I thought was a polite note to Sir Brian to ask if it was a mistake. I also asked to whom his report was sent, if he had sent any supplemental report anywhere and if he had any working papers that would give further information. I also mentioned that, on the face of it, the TSU did not have all the reports. This turned out not to be the case, but an innocent misunderstanding.

Sir Brian did not reply, but a rather miffed TSU did with the rest of the reports, the text of which were all identical to Jouzel’s. I quite properly apologised for having caused an obviously irate Knight of the Realm to send some stiff missive to the overworked lady at TSU, but explained what I was trying to find out, namely who had seen the reports – if any one. The reply came back the reports were “hand carried” to the February 2007 WGI meeting in Paris where in her words they were “available upon request at the approval panel session”. So I asked if anyone did request to see them or if they were copied for anyone. There has not been a reply.

My working hypotheses is that no one has read the reports or some one would have spotted the that two, besides Mitchell’s, were misdated and they would have been corrected. The same applies to the WGII reports where 3 are misdated and the create date on the consolidated pdf file I received was the same date as I received it. All but 3 of the WGI reports were held only in hard copy form. I have now written to the UK Minister, Hilary Benn, to ask who if any one in our government or acting from them had looked at them and the working papers of the IPCC assessment. I await his reply.

As a taxpayer I feel entitled to ask what oversight there is of the considerable sums spent on the IPCC jamborees. The Met Office for instance were awarded a contract (google GA01087) worth £1,436,000 to run WGII and Martin Parry Associates (google GA01056) worth £280,906 to be Co-Chair of it. I hope a reader can find the contract details for WGI and Susan Solomon. If there was some evidence of great personal sacrifice involved in bringing us their alarming conclusions and that they were scrupulous in following the Principles Governing IPCC Work I might be more disposed to believe climate scientists.
I will also mention that I have put in a submission to the Garnaut Review which some call the “Australian Stern Review” which they have just posted. Also worth noting is Nicholas Stern’s Submission.