I was involved in ISO9001 some years ago. Many firms achieved this certification through the consultant apportioning the various clauses to various managers and other staff and asking them to write a paragraph on each. In this way the various boxes were ticked and the quality or correctness of the paragraph was immaterial, in as much just writing it satisified the requirement.

I wonder if the IPCC operate in a similar way in as much they are instructed to produce say 500 papers covering 500 topics that have been identified as being ‘important’. Most of these are viewed as cannon fodder and used for ticking boxes, whilst the important ones (important in the sense of being key to whatever the overall brief was) are then utilised as core information.

The political brief given to the summarisers of the papers seems more important than the science if I read Steve’s, Ross’s and David’s pieces correctly, and having met one of them nyself I think your description of David Karoly fitted him pefectly. It was like speaking to someone overcome by a religious fervour which I found very unsettling and he refused to believe he could be wrong whilst making the most astonishing statements on the MWP-of which I do know something.

Whilst a lot of the science in the IPCC documents falls into the category of highly theoretical (i.e unproven in the real world) I increasingly tend to think that the summarisers have been given the answers the politicians want to see and they adjust the interpretation of the research accordingly. Accordingly I suspect it is politics rather than science that will eventually derail the bandwagon, but unfortunately not many leaders are brave enough to stand up and say this is nonsense.

Tony B

Somwhere I have seen an estimate of how many people were involved in the 2007 IPCC, but I did not bother with it much because of a concern with quality rather than quantity.

When you talk of large numbers, I wonder how the few Review Editors can (such as in the case of Chapter 9 I quoted above) cope with the 500 papers cited in their chapter when many of them have just come out and some are still in prep.

Then I wonder (like Steve has before me) how such Editors can sign off an official document saying effectively that all disagreements have been reconciled. If this is what did happen, then I must say that we are dealing with an unusually compliant lot of contributors. Having helped manage teams of 50 graduates at times, we could hold 5-day seminars that ended with more disagreement than we started with. As one famous guest Professor said at one such conference “People do not start to think properly until their equilibrium is disturbed”.

I have seen Review Editor David Karoly perform on TV in response to criticism of the Gore movie. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed, devoted to the cause, unswayed by questions he did not want to answer, pushing the Party line, forever butting in…. and unelected.

So, I think that science would be better served if a climate of healthy argument was fostered and reported in the IPCC. It is not in the nature of several hundred scientists to meekly agree to important propositions. They are usually human enough to want their favourite hobby horse stressed and can get quite agitated if overruled. “Prima donna” comes to mind.

I gathered the material for # 39 from the online publication of Chapter 9. Elsewhere on CA, about a year ago if I recall, someone (who was probably Steve McIntyre) gave a link to the instructions that authors and editors of various categories were supposed to follow. He would have access to this from his official participation. I do not.

Re # 40 David Holland

(I enjoy seeing your name on a post). It seems to me that a few years before the 2007 SPM, various subjects were divvied up and various people told to write papers about them. The quality of the paper was secondary to its formal existence, as the main ideas had already been formulated by the masterminds and all they needed was peer-reviewed evidence that their own agenda represented the consensus. A fair amount of subsequent CA discussion is about poor science in such papers.

I have seen this formula work before in older radical debates, like nuclear power and man-made carcinogens and the Club of Rome. Some years ago when the IPCC was being formed I looked at a list of names and addresses of the principal groups and members promoting it. There was a cluster around western Germany and another in California, as I recall. Even since, I have been of the opinion that these events are planned, nteworked, not spontaneous, and as earlier ones have fallen by the wayside through poor science, the newer ones have to be made ever more apocalyptic to strive for the attention of governments and their policy makers.

Unfortunately for the UN, I think this effort will eventually sink them. Just a matter of time before people relise the puffery of the UN and its horrible lack of performance, time and again.

Can I refer to 2.5g -ref 4.4.3.4 ‘Consequences of wind driven redistrtibution of sea ice.’ The wind would seem to me to be a key reason why ice would disappear or reappear. I have lived in two places with extensive sand dune systems. Even over a period of just one season they can be destroyed, grow or move considerable distances. The driver in our case is the wind, with the critical factors being wind direction,(easterly) its speed (over 10knots) and whether there has been recent precipitation causing the sand to be loaded with moisture which prevents almost all movement. A major engineering firm is doing a study of the dunes just down the coast which are disappearing, threatening both the tourist industry AND the main line railway.
I sit on a committee that will be examining the report. Are the results of interest to you or your colleagues, or is sand too far away from ice to be relevant?

Second, I noted the sparse references to previous historic warm periods. Here in South Devon (England) we have an excellent record of habitation that has advanced and declined on the local moors over the past 5000 years as the temp warmed then cooled. There is a mass of actual evidence (the buildings and fields are still there) and recorded evidence. In addition Britain as a whole has numerous written references to climate, from Tacitus the Roman general through the Venerable Bede, the Anglo Saxon chronicles, the Domesday book, Chaucer and Pepys diary, which then ties in with the CET records starting in 1659.
I have expresed my disappointment in this blog before as to how theoretical computer modelling-using all sorts of exotic and unlikely proxies- seem to take precedence over actual observed real life data. Your critique of the summary demonstrated that theoretical science wins over recorded fact every time!
A great piece of work. Thank you

Tony B

I merely go into this detail to ensure we are comparing my summary with YOUR detailed report. I have written so many exclamation marks across my copy and circled so many items as being highly contentious that I can barely read the print!

Over the next few days I will be reading David Hollands and Tim Balls contributions about the IPCC plus other papers, so the next questions may be contained in them.

Is there an organisational chart that shows the various IPCC committees, what subject they covered, who they report to (i.e. draft contributing authors report to Drafting authors who report to lead authors etc..) how many people are involved in each committee and what their specialities were?

The reason for that is to gain a better understanding of how many scientists in TOTAL were involved in the process. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

Whilst on the subject would it be fair to say there is no such thing as a ‘climate scientist’ -but only many ‘experts in their field’. The media is forever quoting a ‘Consensus of Climate scientists’ when banging on about AGW, as if there are thousands of them, all united in their agreement that WE are at fault.

In reality, surely there are dozens of different disciplines involved, each with a variety of subsets that make up the whole? As far as I can see there are few -if any- people who understand-as an expert-ALL the various discipline strands and can assemble a report. This task is done only by the IPCC. In effect therefore the IPCC are the world’s sole ‘climate scientist’ and even that is comprised of a committee. Would that be a reasonable summary?

Tony B

More seriously has any one looked to see if these cites add anything really important to the Chapters? So far as I can see no chapter 10 reviewer asked for this one.

2 Coordinating Lead Authors:
Gabriele C. Hegerl (USA, Germany), Francis W. Zwiers (Canada)

7 Lead Authors:
Pascale Braconnot (France), Nathan P. Gillett (UK), Yong Luo (China), Jose A. Marengo Orsini (Brazil, Peru), Neville Nicholls (Australia), Joyce E. Penner (USA), Peter A. Stott (UK)

3 Review Editors:
David J. Karoly (USA, Australia), Laban Ogallo (Kenya), Serge Planton (France)

38 Contributing Authors:
M. Allen (UK), C. Ammann (USA), N. Andronova (USA), R.A. Betts (UK), A. Clement (USA), W.D. Collins (USA), S. Crooks (UK), T.L. Delworth (USA), C. Forest (USA), P. Forster (UK), H. Goosse (Belgium), J.M. Gregory (UK), D. Harvey (Canada), G.S. Jones (UK), F. Joos (Switzerland), J. Kenyon (USA), J. Kettleborough (UK), V. Kharin (Canada), R. Knutti (Switzerland), F.H. Lambert (UK), M. Lavine (USA), T.C.K. Lee (Canada), D. Levinson (USA), V. Masson-Delmotte (France), T. Nozawa (Japan), B. Otto-Bliesner (USA), D. Pierce (USA), S. Power (Australia), D. Rind (USA), L. Rotstayn (Australia), B. D. Santer (USA), C. Senior (UK), D. Sexton (UK), S. Stark (UK), D.A. Stone (UK), S. Tett (UK), P. Thorne (UK), R. van Dorland (The Netherlands), M. Wang (USA), B. Wielicki (USA), T. Wong (USA), L. Xu (USA, China), X. Zhang (Canada), E. Zorita (Germany, Spain)

I counted the number of cited authors among the 12 people who were Lead Authors or Review Editors for Chapter 9, leaving out for this exercise the 28 Contributing Authors. These 12 people contributed 55 papers as first-named authors and were co-authors of another 28 papers. That is, some 17% of all references mentioned the people involved in assessing the work. Was it Narcissus who looked at his reflection?

I do not know the last date by which publication could happen for papers to be accepted in this IPCC report. However, of the 83 papers above, 5 are cited with a 2007 date and 7 with 2006 dates.

Checking but one, we find – “Estimates of Uncertainty in Predictions of Global Mean Surface Temperature”

Journal of Climate, Volume 20, Issue 5 (March 2007) J. A. Kettleborough, B. B. B. Booth, P. A. Stott, M. R. Allen (Manuscript received 21 July 2005, in final form 12 June 2006).

This Lead Author Peter A Stott, if the same person throughout, contributed to 22 of the 83 papers I have mentioned. If you believed in conspiracy theory, you might feel (with no evidence, of course) that a group of people had got together in 2003-4 and divided up some themes among themselves, aiming to publish with a “final form” target of just before the IPCC deadline and a late tidy-up afterwards. But, it is dangerous and unrewarding to meddle with conspiracies.

Poor P A Stott, he seems to have been of a clerical bent, fond of writing. His first paper cited here was in 1998, then he had a slowdown before he let rip about 2003-4. Four papers dated 2006, two for 2007. I marvel at the patience of the Review Editors, bringing together these 500 papers, so that they could sign a paper dated 11/20/06, as Review Editor Prof David Karoly did, stating “ ….. I can confirm that all substantive and expert and government review comments have been accorded appropriate consideration …..”

Lovely words, “substantive” and “appropriate”. Could set lawyers arguing for months.

Steve, it may be abysmal, but it’s not abysmally incompetent management. It looks just like outright corruption. By now, with all their experience in the process and all their knowledge of outside criticisms, these people must know exactly what they’re doing. There is no tolerance for contradiction.