As we know the IPCC has been rocked by scandal – ClimateGate, GlacierGate and so on. Pat Michaels suggests IPCC-gate, and some wit I saw in a comments thread suggested FloodGate. The New Scientist has an editorial discussing these issues and the IPCC.
So let the IPCC embrace such debates, rather than retreat from them in the name of spurious consensus. Climate scientists have felt under siege from critics, as leaked emails last year amply demonstrated. But that is no reason to dismiss all criticism as necessarily unwarranted, uninformed or politically motivated.
Some argue that the views of an untutored blogger, or even a scientist from another discipline, should never carry the same weight as those of someone with a lifetime’s expertise in a relevant field. But if occasionally the emperors of the lab have no clothes, someone has to say so. The wider review of science made possible by the blogosphere can improve science and foster public confidence in its methods. Scientists should welcome the outside world in to check them out. Their science is useless if no one trusts it.
No nitpicking – I think that’s fair enough.
What I want to draw attention to these two sentences.
The IPCC was established before the internet revolution. Like it or not, its closed world of peer review is no longer possible, let alone desirable.
Is the New Scientist suggesting that the IPCC abandon its own peer-review process (something it looks like they have already done, without telling anybody) or that the IPCC abandon its reliance on peer-reviewed literature (something it looks like they have already done, without telling anybody)? I am not convinced that were they to do so that the IPCC would be adding any value. Without the peer review process the IPCC become just another lobby group. While I’m not opposed to lobby groups – debate, discussion and dispute play a very important role in the market for ideas – I can’t see why we would then place any credence in yet another UN lobby group (financed by our tax dollars).
