Phil Jones, in a now famous email, indicated that he intended to keep out of the IPCC report a paper that had been published in a peer-reviewed journal. This paper met all the requirements for inclusion but did not comply with Jones’ and the team’s world-view. Jones’ conduct and that of his associates is now subject to an University of East Anglia investigation and also a UK Parlimentary inquiry.
Employee of the century Syed ‘My job is not to point out mistakes’ Hasnain tells us, ‘you know the might of the IPCC‘. In this instance the IPCC was able to convert a cut and paste job from the internet, ‘misattribute’ the citation, into peer-reviewed literature. They didn’t do that once, they did it twice.
Poger Pielke Jr. now shows another problem with the IPCC and the meaning of peer-review. This time in the area of insurance. I have highlighted the problem with insurance before but now it can no longer be passed off as a mistake or some sort of misunderstanding. Pielke demonstrates that the IPCC has not followed its own proceedures and ignored reviewer comments that highlighted the problem.
The issue now in dispute relates the following graph produced in the IPCC report. This graph is apparently from a background paper presented at a conference in 2006.
That paper was not published by the IPCC deadline for inclusion, nor was it peer reviewed, nor did it include the graph shown above, nor did it strongly support the claims being made. But it was highlighted anyway.
That is pretty damning. When the paper was eventually published as a book chapter it stated
In sum, we found limited statistical evidence of an upward trend in normalized losses from 1970 through 2005 and insufficient evidence to claim a firm link between global warming and disaster losses.
How does Pielke summarise?
Contrary to its procedures the IPCC chose to emphasize a paper that was not peer reviewed to support claims that were contrary to all of the peer reviewed literature on this topic. The IPCC created (or had others create) a graph that appeared nowhere in the literature and was highly misleading. When the paper was eventually published several years later as a book chapter, it was revised in such a substantial fashion so as to eliminate unambiguously any basis for the claims that had been made by the IPCC justified by the earlier version of the paper.
The claims made by the IPCC about the relationship of disasters and climate change, expressed most clearly in the figure above, were not simply made in violation of IPCC procedures. The claims were not just wrong. The claims were based on knowledge that just doesn’t exist. Again, not good.
I was particularly taken by a comment made by one of the IPCC reviewers.
As reviewer for WG2 I have repeatedly (3 times) asked to put a clear statement in the SPM that is in line with the general literature, and underlying WG2 chapters. In my view, WG2 has not succeeded in adequately quoting and discussing all relevant recent papers that have come out on this topic — see above-mentioned chapters.
Initial drafts of the SPM had relatively nuanced statements such as: “Global economic losses from weather-related disasters have risen substantially since the 1970s. During the same period, global temperatures have risen and the magnitude of some extremes, such as the intensity of tropical cyclones, has increased. However, because of increases in exposed values …, the contribution of these weather-related trends to increased losses is at present not known.”
For unknown reasons, this statement (which seems to implicitly acknowledge Roger’s and the May 2006 workshop conclusion that societal factors dominate) was dropped from the final SPM. Now the SPM has no statement on the attribution of disaster losses, and we do not know what is the ‘consensus’ here.
The general question is whether this sort of wholesale misrepresentation is important. Yes it is. Looking at the CPRS White Paper we find this statement at page 2-13 (emphasis added).
Intense extreme weather events, which are expected to occur more frequently under climate change, will damage or compromise infrastructure, increase the costs of clean-up operations and increase insurance premiums:
• Drought has the potential to disrupt electricity generation capacity and affect the reliability of electricity supplies. Reduced water availability affects coal-fired power stations, which require water for cooling, and hydro-electric stations because of low storage dam levels. Prices in the National Electricity Market in 2007 were highly variable as a result of drought conditions in Australia.
• Drought threatens water security. Infrastructure projects to boost water supply will be costly. For example, to address current water supply problems in south-east Queensland, a $1.2 billion desalination plant is being constructed as a part of a $9 billion upgrade to the south-east Queensland water grid.
• Hailstorms lead to extensive property damage and insured losses. The 1999 Sydney hailstorm resulted in $1.7 billion insured losses and 500 people left homeless.
• Changes in the intensity and geographical distribution of cyclones will place additional infrastructure at risk. A 25 per cent increase in wind gust speed can lead to a dramatic increase in damage costs for buildings, largely because existing building or engineering standards have been exceeded (Figure 2.7).
Now we heard just this week that the CSIRO ‘has backed away from attributing a decade of drought in Tasmania to climate change, claiming ”the jury is still out” on the science.’ We also know that the wind damage argument is false and that the IPCC lied about that argument. As I asked before, will the Rudd government retract these false arguments and claims?
We now know that the 2007 IPCC Report is riddled with error and misrepresentation. These are not just the usual mistakes that creep into a document and project of this size. There is a systematic dishonesty in the IPCC Report.
(HT: dover_beach)
Update: CL points to the Times Online coverage of this story.
