IPCC reform time now…
Most Climate negotiators and decision makers, political parties and governments are now demanding an independent review into how the IPCC conducts itself, how it cuts it’s work and how well its conclusions stand up to scientific scrutiny.
But the decision of just how to proceed has been taken at the governing council meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bali.
This potentially offers everyone a way out of the mire currently engulfing climate science, from top-name researchers to the Joe and Joanna Public whose taxes fund them and who expect them to get things right.
The review should be finished within about six months, and the results discussed and changes instituted at the IPCC’s meeting in October 2010.
This would allow the organisation to re-shape itself prior to major work beginning on the next big global assessment, due out in 2013.
In some quarters this is being touted as an investigation of IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri, who certainly annoyed some (not least in the Indian government) when he initially rebutted criticism of the Himalayan glacier date of full-melt by 2035 error, in a manner lacking much diplomacy or Savoir Faire.
But then the IPCC head job has never been about Diplomacy. It has been like a watchdog. As it rightfully should be…
So what about a few extra barks? They are useful – maybe – keeping the foxes at bay.
In fact, though, it is envisaged as a process that will be thorough and rigorous, but constructive and what is an easy sell for most participants.
There is no point in governments either soft-soaping or lambasting the organisation to the extent that it loses all its credibility. After all, its conclusions should in principle have a major role in determining what policy options those self-same governments pursue in the arenas of disaster preparedness and energy supply.
So yes, it is possible that Dr Pachauri will not survive the process; and indeed it is possible that he will not want to, if the job description gets so heavily amended that continuing would result in him having to give up all his other interests…
Remember He has been really good to all of us. He is a great man and we must support him in this difficult hour.
But there are more important questions to be addressed.
To what extent do conclusions of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report (AR4) from 2007 stand up to scrutiny?
Should its processes for gathering and sifting information be amended – and in particular, is there a case for excluding “grey literature” (anything other than peer-reviewed science)?
Does it select its major contributors as objectively as it should? Does it communicate its conclusions effectively to policymakers and the public?
“Climate-sceptical” organisations may already be in ecstasy about a process that – they will argue – may bring down the IPCC, and by extension block political moves towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
And this, in turn, may prompt some people involved with the IPCC to put their heads in their hands and complain that the last thing they need is another process that will see lances levelled at the edifice of anthropogenic climate change.
That, I suggest, would be a mistake.
Many commentators sympathetic to the organisation have insisted in recent months that it could do with a dose of reform; so why not have reforms recommended by a review that aims for a constructive outcome, rather than by a host of unsympathetic and unaccountable bloggers whose scientific or pseudo-scientific utterings are sometimes impelled by political theologies?
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, reform ideas for the IPCC produced by sympathetic academics so far include producing shorter, more focused and more intelligible reports; setting itself up as a wiki-form web-based platform; and farming out parts of its function to regional organisations or national science academies.
There are some who’ve argued that because the actual number of mistakes in the AR4 was triflingly small, there is no need for review or reform.
But in significant parts of politics, the media and the public, that argument has already been lost, and now it has been lost in reality as well - the review will happen.
What we can expect from it depends on its precise terms of reference.
But conclusions we might expect, would include:
- unequivocal backing for the overall conclusion that anthropogenic greenhouse warming is happening and does present real dangers to some societies
- “professionalisation” of the IPCC – ie having full-time staff dominating the process rather than a disparate grouping of academics, many of whom give their services gratis
- tightening of rules for using “grey literature” – abandoning it entirely is not really feasible given that the IPCC’s remit includes areas such as economics where data has to be drawn from government agencies
- streamlining the process of disseminating conclusions. A partial example of how that might be done emerged last week with the publication of a “consensus” study into climate change and hurricanes, which observers with long memories will note saw academics previously opposed, Kerry Emanuel and Chris Landsea, joined in academic embrace. And the World Meteorological Organization has just signalled a push for much greater transparency and clarity in providing data.
Questions remain. Will long-time critics be invited on board, either for the review or during the compilation of future reports?
Is there a way to involve the conscious sceptics, making use of their expertise while also ensuring that the conclusions of self-appointed climate auditors are subject to audit themselves?
Do we need all major scientific papers on climate to be available to all, rather than hidden from most behind the subscription-only business plans of journals such as Nature and Science?
Another reason for getting such a review up and running now is that in June, governments are due to decide whether they will establish an organisation loosely modelled on the IPCC that will collate and sift scientific evidence on biodiversity loss.
Proper assessment of the IPCC’s qualities and faults should help build a strong foundation for that organisation, if it comes into existence. Continued doubts over the IPCC could, on the other hand, make governments less likely to sanction investment in a parallel body.
Although governments have decided the IPCC needs a review, they have also decided that the world needs an IPCC.
And that should come as welcome news to those who feared that a tide of “denialism” was about to swamp the world’s body politic.
IPCC has the most useful think tank we’ve ever had for proper Climate Information. Period.
The IPCC and its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, have come under unprecedented pressure following a false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 and the controversy over the hacked climate science emails at the University of East Anglia.
Yet before that, the IPCC was credited with having settled the debate over whether human activity was causing global warming, sharing the 2007 Nobel peace prize with Al Gore. Here we ask experts around the world what needs to change to enable the IPCC to continue to play a central and positive role in enabling the world’s governments to take the right action against climate change
The IPCC says its reports are policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive. Perhaps unknown to many people, the process is started and finished not by scientists but by political officials, who steer the way the information is presented in so-called summary for policymakers [SPM] chapters.
The Nobel prize was for peace not science … government employees will use it to negotiate changes and a redistribution of resources. It is not a scientific analysis of climate change. For the media, the IPCC assessments have become an icon for something they are not. To make sure that it does not happen again, the IPCC could change its name and become part of something else. The IPCC should have never allowed itself to be branded as a scientific organisation. It provides a review of published scientific papers but none of this is much controlled by independent scientists.
William Connolley, a former climate modeller with the British Antarctic Survey, had this to say: “I think it is inevitable that there will be enormous and pointless fighting over the exact wording of the SPM. And [that is] to some extent, desirable. The science is done by the scientists. The SPM headlines, that the politicians are going to have to act on, will have some political spin, and before the sceptics run wild, let me add that the spin so far has always been in the toning-things-down direction. It would be better written just by scientists, but too hard to manage to be worth wasting much time about.”
The world does spend about £3.6m on IPCC. A tiny budget considering it’s successes.
The reports rely on the unpaid work of thousands of researchers, but is there a case to make the process more professional?
Pachauri, IPCC chair, told the Guardian last week that the IPCC was already moving to beef up the organisation with full-time staff, such as in communications.
Chris Field, new head of one of the IPCC’s working groups, said: “I do think that the 2035 [glacier melting] error could potentially have come out, just by having a stronger editorial component that was part of a professional staff. We need to really be training the authors. There is a huge emphasis on engaging authors from all over the world who have different scientific backgrounds and different training experience.”
The questions IPCC will address should come from governments. However, once those questions are settled, the IPCC needs to run the process independent of the governments. This may require a larger permanent professional [staff] for the IPCC, as the US National Academy of Science has.
The IPCC was set up in 1988 to advise governments on the emerging problem of climate change. It produced its first report in 1990, and three more since. It is made up of three working groups (WG) which assess the science (WG1), impacts (WG2) and response to global warming (WG3) respectively. Scientists from WG1 blamed the mistake over the Himalayan glaciers, on “sloppy” researchers from other disciplines from WG2.
They said: While some of the WG2 is fine, it is clear that some sections have been edited by people who should not have been trusted with the job.It should be done more on merit. At the very least, get someone competent to review the edit comments for their sections.
Field, the new head of WG2, believed ensuring existing rules are implemented is key: “The IPCC needs to make 100% sure that the procedures that have served well in the past are applied.”
A more radical suggestion came from John Robinson, professor of resources, environment and sustainability at the University of British Columbia. He said: “The IPCC should continue to improve its elaborate quality control processes, but perhaps make them more transparent. Few people know anything at all about the process works, or what the checks and balances are. Perhaps there should be journalists embedded in the process.”
Others argue that the science report, which relies almost exclusively on peer-reviewed research, should be separated from the other reports which researchers say necessarily rely more on “grey” literature, ie, reports that have not been peer-reviewed.
Robert Muir Wood, head of the research group at Risk Management Solutions, said the current IPCC report system was “fossilised” and that the organisation needed to move into the 21st century by setting up Wikipedia-style rolling publishing, that could be updated each month. Others suggested changes almost as radical. Connolley said the “useless” synthesis reports should be ditched, while Robinson said: “There needs to be continuous review of what the timing and topics should be.”
The IPCC reports are mammoth productions, taking up to six years to complete. The last one contained 900 pages. Is it still relevant for experts to produce such weighty volumes that wait several years to be updated? And should the emphasis of the reports be changed, given that the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming has been firmly established?
But significant changes may have to wait until after the next assessment report, expected in 2013, said Mike Hulme, climate scientist at the University of East Anglia. “We can do lots of little tweaks but I can’t see governments willingly going back to the drawing board.”
Hulme wanted to see the social and cultural aspects of the impacts and response to climate change reflected in different ways in future reports, such as by drawing more on local knowledge, and distinguishing more between the way different societies may react.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Maybe we should be careful of a fix too soon, too deep a cut, too drastic a step and we might not cross the chasm all together.
And You now what?
That’s fine too.
At least let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater….
PS2:
Environmental Parliament holds a Town Hall meeting about reform of the IPCCC at LSE Sunday the 28th of February at the Old Building. Founder’s room in the Shaw library.
Join us with your views and the freedom of expression the EP supports, and your privacy since the Parliamentary debate will be held under Chatham House rules.
