Comments on: Stocker’s Earmark: An Update

By: Did we say more secrecy? We meant more openness! « Tallbloke's Talkshop

Did we say more secrecy? We meant more openness! « Tallbloke's Talkshop — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:03:29 +0000

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By: Alexej Buergin

Alexej Buergin — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:47:14 +0000

If ever “nomen est omen” was valid, this is it. If my name were Sticker, I would be an alarmist, too.
But let us remember the guy from the same University of Bern who resigned after the CERN-neutrino fiasco. A real scientist.
And the actual hockey-stickers of Bern, who placed a very good second in the Swiss championship (this is a bit of a joke on the good people of Bern who are probably still crying about that last second decider).

By: Punksta

Punksta — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:53:01 +0000

What is amazing in that Rahmstorf email, is this notion that what scientists paid by government do is “science”, whereas those paid by anyone else is “lobbying”.

By: matthu

matthu — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:43:40 +0000

Or:

A drafting error is when someone transcribes a document and, for example, inadvertently INSERTS the word “not” into a sentence such as this: “The IPCC will not tolerate compromises in its policy of openness and transparency.”

By: Punksta

Punksta — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:22:54 +0000

I think it is a big mistake to go along with ‘secrecy’ being spun into ‘confidentialty’.

By: Jeff Alberts

Jeff Alberts — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:29:51 +0000

Maybe they deleted it due to that erroneous comma after “expert”.

By: observa

observa — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:07:56 +0000

Yes Minister, we are aware of the problem but with such limited resources we will clearly need more funding to set up a proper Committee to deal with the issue more appropriately.

By: Manfred

Manfred — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:38:00 +0000

Stocker already teamed up in 2003 with Rahmstorf in a bizarre “critique” of the cosmic ray/climate link.

http://www.sciencebits.com/ClimateDebate/
“The assault by Rahmstorf et al. (in EOS Forum)”.

The political motivation of this group is revealed in the climategate emails:
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/1981.txt

By: Lucy Skywalker

Lucy Skywalker — Mon, 14 May 2012 23:04:02 +0000

Has someone kept a chronicle of the attempts to subvert transparency in IPCC while proclaiming adherence to same? IIRC, first there was Santer's last-minute tinkering with the Summary for Policymakers. Then Caspar and the Jesus Paper. Then the exclusion of Steve and Ross's report on UHI. Now Stocker (see CG2 emails quoted by Steve in last Stocker post, between him and Jones) tries to formally (or otherwise) amend the IPCC rules to keep out transparency again, in ways strongly reminiscent of the familiar "hide the decline". From Simon Anthony at Bishop Hill

[Prof Stocker is] an intelligent, well-mannered and rational man, in a position of great influence... It was striking that not once did he suggest that the models' uncertainties (or "errors" in Oldspeak) should be established by comparing their "predictions" against measured data. The only sources of uncertainty with which Prof Stocker seemed concerned were between and within models. It seemed comparison with what was supposedly modelled was not relevant. There was another troubling note in that Prof Stocker referred several times to "deniers"...

This feels like an iron fist in a velvet glove.

By: hro001

hro001 — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:54:45 +0000

Hmmm … well, according to http://www.ipcc.ch/meetings/session35/doc11_correctionApendixA.pdf there is the following proposed amendment to Appendix A on the table:

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

The rest of us peons will, of course, not be privy to this material until after publication. What is not indicated is:

a) Whether or not the material to be made available includes the “chapter team’s” responses

b) Whether or not such disclosure will require that the requestor agree not to quote, cite, distribute, etc before receiving such material.

Perhaps between now and June 6, Stocker the stick-handler will succeed in engineering a further delaying tactic in order to advance the need for “confidentiality” about which he and Jones were so concerned [she says somewhat skeptically].

Not to mention that the IPCC does not have a particularly good record when it comes to following its own procedures.