What’s wrong with the IPCC?A proposal for radical reform

Ross McKitrickProfessor of Economics

University of Guelph

September 17 2012

Introduction

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Personal background IPCC service The GWPF project

Why reforms?

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Continued extent of criticisms Continued high level of IPCC influence Continued misunderstanding of IPCC process

What reforms?

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Principle: IPCC review process should be made as rigorous as an ordinary academic journal

Changes needed to make this happen will sound “radical”

Structure of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

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3 levels Plenary panel (“IPCC”) Bureau in Geneva Working Groups

WGI (physical science) WGII (impacts) WGIII (mitigation)

Structure of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

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3 levels Plenary panel (“IPCC”) Bureau in Geneva Working Groups

WGI (physical science) WGII (impacts) WGIII (mitigation)

Assessment Process: Personnel

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Member governments submit nominations: Coordinating Lead Authors (CLA) Lead Authors (LA) Contributing Authors (CA) Review Editors (RE) Focal Points

IPCC Bureau makes selections and releases list

CLA’s recruit CA’s as needed

Assessment Process: Drafts

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WG writes Zero Order Draft, circulates for preliminary review Revisions made

First Order Draft released for expert comment Revisions made

Second Order Draft released for expert and government review Revisions made, review process ends

Report subject to further editing and rewrites

Summary for Policymakers (SPM) negotiated by Plenary

Final rewrite of report to reconcile to SPM

Assessment Process: Drafts

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WG writes Zero Order Draft, circulates for preliminary review Revisions made

First Order Draft released for expert comment Revisions made

Second Order Draft released for expert and government review Revisions made, review process ends

Report then rewritten again, changes not subject to review.

Summary for Policymakers (SPM) negotiated by Plenary

Final rewrite of report to reconcile to SPM

Problems

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1. Bureau control of CLA and LA selection

2. No effective requirement for full representation of views; no rules against LA’s reviewing their own work

3. CLA’s and LA’s have authority to overrule reviewers; reject comments

1+2+3 = Too much Bureau control over final conclusions

Bureau selection of Lead Authors

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Opaque process, criticized by past LA’s during IAC review

“There are far too many politically correct appointments, so that developing country scientists are appointed who have insufficient scientific competence to do anything useful. This is reasonable if it is regarded as a learning experience, but in my chapter in AR4 we had half of the [Lead Authors] who were not competent.”

“The most important problem of the IPCC is the nomination and selection of authors and Bureau Members. Some experts are included or excluded because of their political allegiance rather than their academic quality. Sometimes, the “right” authors are put in key positions with generous government grants to support their IPCC work, while the “wrong” authors are sidelined to draft irrelevant chapters and sections without any support.”

Bureau selection of Lead Authors

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Laframboise (2011) explored links between IPCC and World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

28 of 44 chapters written by teams that included at least one WWF campaign advisor

15 chapters: at least one CLA was a WWF advisor

3 chapters: both CLAs were WWF advisors

WGII report: all 20 chapters had WWF advisor on team WGI report: 6 of 11 chapters

Range of views

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Wording up to 2011: The composition of the group of Coordinating Lead

Authors and Lead Authors for a section or chapter of a Report shall reflect the need to aim for a range of views, expertise and geographical representation

Revision after criticism: …shall aim to reflect a range of scientific, technical and

socio-economic views.

CLA & LA authority

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Do Review Editors require Lead Authors to respond to criticisms? Yes, but “Respond” can mean anything, including “Reject” Not the same as academic journals

Email from IPCC co-chair Susan Solomon, March 2008, to RE John Mitchell:

The review editors do not determine the content of the chapters. The authors are responsible for the content of their chapters and responding to comments, not REs. Further explanations, elaboration, or re-interpretations of the comments or the author responses, would not be appropriate.

Also, CLAs have chance to rewrite entire document after the close of peer review

Case Studies in Report

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1. Long Term Persistence2. Surface Temperature Data3. Climate Sensitivity4. Chapter 9 Review5. “Hide the Decline”

Long Term Persistence

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Text at end of review process, based on responses to expert comments:

Table 3.2 provides trend estimates from a number of hemispheric and global temperature databases. Determining the statistical significance of a trend line in geophysical data is difficult, and many oversimplified techniques will tend to overstate the significance…As some components of the climate system respond slowly to change, the climate system naturally contains persistence, so that the REML AR1-based linear trend statistical significances are likely to be overestimated (Zheng and Basher, 1999; Cohn and Lins, 2005).

Text as published:

In Table 3.2, the effects of persistence on error bars are accommodated using a red noise approximation, which effectively captures the main influences…. long-term persistence models (Cohn and Lins, 2005) have not been shown to provide a better fit to the data than simpler models.

Climate Sensitivity

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Model based estimates (relatively high) vs empirical estimates (relatively low)

Douglass & Knox (2005): empirical paper finding low sensitivity

Wigley, Ammann, Santer & Taylor: Comment on D&K (2005)

Douglass & Knox: Reply (2005)

Climate Sensitivity

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Model based estimates (relatively high) vs empirical estimates (relatively low)

Douglass & Knox (2005): empirical paper finding low sensitivity

Wigley, Ammann, Santer & Taylor: Comment on D&K (2005)

Douglass & Knox: Reply (2005)

Climate Sensitivity

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Model based estimates (relatively high) vs empirical estimates (relatively low)

Douglass & Knox (2005): empirical paper finding low sensitivity

Wigley, Ammann, Santer & Taylor: Comment on D&K (2005)

Douglass & Knox: Reply (2005)

Hide the Decline

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Circa 1999 IPCC leaned on LA’s Mann&Folland to include a

paleoclimate graph in summary 3 candidates: MBH, Briffa, Jones Problem: Briffa’s shows decline after 1950

WMO asked Jones to prepare graph for special edition report to go to world leaders Same problem: Briffa data

IPCC report then being drafted: The dilemma

“My concern was motivated by the possibility of expressing an impression of more concensus than might actually exist . I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not 'muddy the waters' by including contradictory evidence worried me . IPCC is supposed to represent concensus but also areas of uncertainty in the evidence.”

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>> >>A proxy diagram of temperature change is a clear favourite for the>> Policy>> >>Makers summary. But the current diagram with the tree ring only data>> >>somewhat contradicts the multiproxy curve and dilutes the message rather>> >>significantly.

IPCC report then being drafted: The dilemma

“I know there is pressure to present

>> a nice tidy story as regards 'apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand

>> >years or more in the proxy data' but in reality the situation is not

>> quite so simple. We don't have a lot of proxies that come right up to date and

>> >those that do (at least a significant number of tree proxies ) some

>> >unexpected changes in response that do not match the recent warming. I do

>> >not think it wise that this issue be ignored in the chapter.

…. I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago. I do not believe that global

>> >mean annual temperatures have simply cooled progressively over thousands

>> of years as Mike appears to…”

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IPCC report then being drafted: The outcome That author fell on his sword His data was presented with post-1960 portion

deleted; issue ignored in chapter

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Briffa data

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Original and as used: post-1950 deleted

Jones’ WMO cover

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As published: post-1960 decline deleted, instrumental temps used, splice smoothed

Jones’ version

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Without these steps

IPCC version

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Post-1960 decline deleted

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Surface Temperature Data Quality

By 2004, findings published by 2 independent teams showing evidence of contamination of data with warm bias

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McKitrick and Michaels 2004, 2007

Tested if spatial pattern of temperature trends in CRU data over land are independent of spatial pattern of socioeconomic development

The answer is no, they are strongly correlated(even after adjustments)

Can account for ~ 1/3 to 1/2 of post-1980 warming over land

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IPCC position

Acknowledges local urban heat island problem, but denies it affects large-scale data patterns

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CRU Chief: Phil Jones

Produces CRU data for IPCC

Was lead author of IPCC Chapter assessing his own work

Email to Mann, July 2004:

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

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IPCC 2007 Report

1st draft: no mention of critical papers Reviewers demanded it be addressed

2nd draft: still no mention Reviewers again demanded it be addressed

Peer review closed July 2006

IPCC 2007 Report

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Published text: Issue dismissed with fabricated evidence

McKitrick and Michaels (2004) and De Laat and Maurellis (2006) attempted to demonstrate that geographical patterns of warming trends over land are strongly correlated with geographical patterns of industrial and socioeconomic development, implying that urbanisation and related land surface changes have caused much of the observed warming. However, the locations of greatest socioeconomic development are also those that have been most warmed by atmospheric circulation changes (Sections 3.2.2.7 and 3.6.4), which exhibit large-scale coherence. Hence, the correlation of warming with industrial and socioeconomic development ceases to be statistically significant. In addition, observed warming has been, and transient greenhouse-induced warming is expected to be, greater over land than over the oceans (Chapter 10), owing to the smaller thermal capacity of the land.

IPCC: Summary of problems

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Bureau selects Lead Authors in conflicts of interest, then: Allows them to review their own work and that of

their critics Allows them to ignore and override reviewers Allows them to rewrite text after close of peer review

The record shows this leads to distortions of the text and suppression of the full range of evidence

Recommendations: Make the IPCC work more like an academic journal

Proposals for reform

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1. An objective and transparent Lead Author selection procedure.

2. A transparent Contributing Author recruitment process.

3. Appointment of an Editorial Advisory Board and identification of potentially controversial sections.

4. Explicit assignment of both section authorship and reviewer positions.

5. Adoption of an iterative process to achieve a final text under the joint supervision of authors, reviewers and editors.

Proposals for reform

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6. Adoption of a procedure for seeking technical input when necessary from outside the list of authors and reviewers during the assessment process.

7. Due diligence regarding key supporting papers and full disclosure of all data and methods used to produce original IPCC Figures and Tables.

8. Immediate online publication of the full report upon finalization, prior to production of summary.

9. Production of Summary by Ad Hoc group appointed by the Panel based on recommendations from the Editorial Advisory Board.

10.Release of all drafts, review comments, responses and author correspondence records within 3 months of online publication of the full report.

Proposals for reform

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11. That the nations involved in the IPCC Panel begin these reforms at once, and if such a process cannot be initiated then those national governments that seek objective and sound advice on climate change issues should withdraw from the IPCC and begin the process of creating a new assessment body free of the deficiencies identified herein.

See thegwpf.org