Anthropogenic Global Waming Story #2 – IPCC and Peer Review

Ok, from my previous post it is obvious that the IPCC was formed with CO2 based global warming as a foregone conclusion. The survival their massive organization depends on it. They would be forced to close their own doors to conclude otherwise. How do they overcome this credibility hurdle.

Much the credibility for their policy comes from peer reviewed research work. This work is primarily funded through government agencies of various kinds. The IPCC approves and compiles the work into reports to the United Nations which is then used to set global policy.

Peer review means that papers submitted for publication are reviewed and critiqued by other scientists having expertise in the same field. Therefore those who review the papers are in the same or similar fields.

Climatology is not a big field, the papers are often not very technical and the datasets used to generate the papers is too large to include easily, so it is almost standard practice for Climatologists to leave out the data and state their conclusions in the papers.

There was a large paper written about the actual peer review process of the IPCC. This came about through continued obfuscation of the facts when IPCC people were questioned directly. You can read the full text of Steve McLean’s paper here.

The crux of the paper is that the review process is highly political and completely dysfunctional. You have a government agency who’s survival depends on global warming, researchers who are paid by the governments and reviewers which work directly or indirectly for the government agency.

I found the section on the reviewers comments very interesting. To me it shows a clear bias toward the need to sensationalize global warming for the promotion of their own policies.

Below is an plot of the suggested changes by the reviewers and the number of changes rejected. You can see chapter 9 has by far the most rejected comments.

From the text of the link above you get this paragraph.

Chapter 9 is the single most important chapter of the entire report because it is where the IPCC states, “it is very highly likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed global warming over the last 50 years”.

If you are an organization who’s survival is at stake then you will certainly overstate this paragraph as much as possible. The reviewers comments clearly back my assertion. I would encourage you to review page 20 of the link above to get the complete picture.

These are some of the actual comments to the IPCC from the reviewers (scientists who are part of the “CONSENSUS”) .  Sorry for the caps, I didn’t want you to miss that one.

1.05 DELETE THE ENTIRE MATERIAL BEGINNING WITH “IN ADDITION” as all of this
is highly contentious has all sorts of implicit ethical and moral judgments which you have
not even begun to address, and goes way beyond the core science, which is the only thing the WG1 should deal with. (2-1026)

1.06 As written it implies 100% attribution, which is misleading, since the idea that all climate
change is attributable to GHG forcing is an extreme position held by few if any experts.
Insert “partially” after the word “been” and before “attributed”. This suggestion was made
in the FOD review and ignored. It is hereby repeated, for the same reason: the present
wording is deliberately misleading. (3-223)

1.07 This conclusion comes out of nowhere! After reading the past two-to-three pages about
differing precipitation, soil moisture, and stream flow trends all over the place, I was quite
surprised to read “The global increase in both sever drought and large floods suggest that
hydrologic conditions have become more extreme.” Apparently my definition of “global”
is quite different from yours. (3-421)

1.08 You MUST insert here a proper Figure showing the radiosonde records, preferably those
from Figure 9 of the paper of Thorne et al (2005). Figure 3.4.2 is deliberately designed to
conceal the true facts about both the radiosonde and the MSU records. The pretence that
these three records are virtually identical is a plain lie. [part only] (3-467)

1.09 This is pure speculation. The sondes in these studies have not been corrected for instances
where spurious warming occurs as shown in for example in Christy and Norris 2004,
Christy and Spencer (2005) and the other papers to appear soon. (3-543)

1.10 1998 is quoted here as the warmest year for the global mean, without qualification. This is
at odds with page 3-3, lines 15 to 19, which point out that NCDC and GISS have 2005
warmer than 1998, in contrast to the CRU/UKMO estimate. (3-702)

I have attached an additional link to a scientist who was forced to quit working with the IPCC because he knew they were deliberately overstating hurricane dangers due to global warming for political reasons. Here.

Just from this alone people should understand the heavily biased nature of the government panels on global warming. Since the IPCC controlls the biggest stage, authors are compelled to agree or are made to appear to agree by the inclusion of works in IPCC reports.

This does not mean the IPCC is wrong about global warming. It just means we’re hearing from a blatantly biased source.