Saturday 31 March 2007

Climate Change Part 5 (No Data Provided)



Steve McIntyre was nominated to serve as an Expert Reviewer for the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. The following is a brief statement on his experience as a IPCC Expert Reviewer:

One of the most important IPCC representations is the supposedly tremendous quality control of its review process. I’ve mentioned in passing on a number of occasions that, when I sought to obtain supporting data for then unpublished articles, IPCC threatened to expel me as a reviewer.

When Steve tried to get the supporting data for the unpublished articles he was asked to review, this is the reply he received:

The IPCC process assesses published literature, it does not involve carrying out research, nor do we have the mandate or resources to operate as a clearing house for the massive amounts of data that are used in the climate science community or referred to in the literature used by our authors.

So lets get this straight, out of the 2500 scientists on the IPCC consensus, 1200 are employed as "expert reviewers". These experts are reviewing and recommending unpublished articles without access to the supporting data. This tells me that any Tom, Dick or Harry can submit a scientific article which will be published by the IPCC without any genuine scrutiny of their work.

Steve McIntyre's full account of his time spent as an Expert reviewer for the IPCC can be read HERE.

Please take time to read his article, it will give you an idea of how the IPCC works.

Hat Tip Ranting Stan

2 comments:

Sarawa said...

and your point is what, exactly?

Daily Referendum said...

Hello Steve,

Nice of you to drop in, however it would have been nice if you could have stayed longer than the 55 seconds it took you to read the post and then comment on it.

I know it is April Fools Day but I'll clarify that the IPCC reviewers are expected approve unpublished articles without access to the supporting data. Therefore they are not reviewing but rubber stamping the articles.

Regards

Steve