From: Eystein Jansen To: Richard Somerville Subject: Re: [Wg1-ar4-clas] Responding to an attack on IPCC and ourselves Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 08:16:33 +0100 Cc: wg1-ar4-clas@joss.ucar.edu Hi, just a quick reply. I am in on this, and will respond to a draft letter, in the hope that you will make the first, Richard? I agree that it can be short. It is strange to see this, knowing that the delegations I spoke to in/after Paris clearly said that the CLAs got it their way, and that I believe this is the strong common perception we also had as CLAs about the outcome. Best wishes, Eystein Den 8. mar. 2007 kl. 03.11 skrev Richard Somerville: Dear Fellow CLAs, The British magazine *New Scientist* is apparently about to publish several items critical of the IPCC AR4 WGI SPM and the process by which it was written. There is an editorial, a column by Pearce, and a longer piece by Wasdell which is on the internet and referenced by Pearce. I think that this attack on us deserves a response from the CLAs. Our competence and integrity has been called into question. Susan Solomon is mentioned by name in unflattering terms. We ought not to get caught up in responding in detail to the many scientific errors in the Wasdell piece, in my opinion, but I would like to see us refute the main allegations against us and against the IPCC. We need to make the case that this is shoddy and prejudiced journalism. Wasdell is not a climate scientist, was not involved in writing AR4, was not in Paris, and is grossly ignorant of both the science and the IPCC process. His account of what went on is factually incorrect in many important respects. New Scientist inexplicably violates basic journalistic standards by publicizing and editorially agreeing with a vicious attack by an uncredentialed source without checking facts or hearing from the people attacked. The editorial and Pearce column, which I regard as packed with distortions and innuendo and error, are pasted below, and the Wasdell piece is attached. My suggestion is that a strongly worded letter to New Scientist, signed by as many CLAs as possible, would be an appropriate response. I think we ought to say that the science was absolutely not compromised or watered down by the review process or by political presure of any kind or by the Paris plenary. I think it would be a mistake to attempt a detailed point-by-point discussion, which would provoke further criticism; that process would never converge. Please send us all your opinions and suggestions for what we should do, using the email list [1]wg1-ar4-clas@joss.ucar.edu I am traveling and checking email occasionally, so if enough of us agree that we should respond, I hope one or more of you (not me) will volunteer to coordinate the effort and submit the result to New Scientist. Best regards to all, Richard Richard C. J. Somerville Distinguished Professor Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, Dept. 0224 La Jolla, CA 92093-0224, USA -- Here's the editorial that will appear in New Scientist on March 10. Editorial: Carbon omissions IT IS a case of the dog that didn't bark. The dog in this instance was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For several years, climate scientists have grown increasingly anxious about "positive feedbacks" that could accelerate climate change, such as methane bubbling up as permafrost melts. That concern found focus at an international conference organised by the British government two years ago, and many people expected it to emerge strongly in the latest IPCC report, whose summary for policy-makers was published in Paris last month. It didn't happen. The IPCC summary was notably guarded. We put that down to scientific caution and the desire to convey as much certainty as possible (New Scientist, 9 February, p 3), but this week we hear that an earlier version of the summary contained a number of explicit references to positive feedbacks and the dangers of accelerating climate change. A critique of the report now argues that the references were removed in a systematic fashion (see "Climate report 'was watered down'"). This is worrying. The version containing the warnings was the last for which scientists alone were responsible. After that it went out to review by governments. The IPCC is a governmental body as well as a scientific one. Both sides have to sign off on the report. The scientists involved adamantly deny that there was undue pressure, or that the scientific integrity of their report was compromised. We do know there were political agendas, and that the scientists had to fight them. As one of the report's 33 authors put it: "A lot of us devoted a lot of time to ensuring that the changes requested by national delegates did not affect the scientific content." Yet small changes in language which individually may not amount to much can, cumulatively, change the tone and message of a report. Deliberately or not, this is what seems to have happened. Senior IPCC scientists are not willing to discuss the changes, beyond denying that there was political interference. They regard the drafting process as private. This is an understandable reservation, but the case raises serious doubts about the IPCC process. A little more transparency would go a long way to removing those qualms. -- Here's the Pearce column: Climate report 'was watered down' * 10 March 2007 * From New Scientist Print Edition. [2]Subscribe and get 4 free issues. * Fred Pearce BRITISH researchers who have seen drafts of last month's report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claim it was significantly watered down when governments became involved in writing it. David Wasdell, an independent analyst of climate change who acted as an accredited reviewer of the report, says the preliminary version produced by scientists in April 2006 contained many references to the potential for climate to change faster than expected because of "positive feedbacks" in the climate system. Most of these references were absent from the final version. His assertion is based on a line-by-line analysis of the scientists' report and the final version, which was agreed last month at a week-long meeting of representatives of more than 100 governments. Wasdell told New Scientist: "I was astounded at the alterations that were imposed by government agents during the final stage of review. The evidence of collusional suppression of well-established and world-leading scientific material is overwhelming." He has prepared a critique, "Political Corruption of the IPCC Report?", which claims: "Political and economic interests have influenced the presented scientific material." He plans to publish the document online this week at [3]www.meridian.org.uk/whats.htm. Wasdell is not a climatologist, but his analysis was supported this week by two leading UK climate scientists and policy analysts. Ocean physicist Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge, who made the discovery that Arctic ice has thinned by 40 per cent over the past 25 years and also acted as a referee on the IPCC report, told New Scientist: "The public needs to know that the policy-makers' summary, presented as the united words of the IPCC, has actually been watered down in subtle but vital ways by governmental agents before the public was allowed to see it." "The public needs to know that the summary has been watered down in subtle but vital ways by governmental agents" Crispin Tickell, a long-standing UK government adviser on climate and a former ambassador to the UN, says: "I think David Wasdell's analysis is very useful, and unique of its kind. Others have made comparable points but not in such analytic detail." Wasdell's central charge is that "reference to possible acceleration of climate change [was] consistently removed" from the final report. This happened both in its treatment of potential positive feedbacks from global warming in the future and in its discussion of recent observations of collapsing ice sheets and an accelerating rise in sea levels. For instance, the scientists' draft report warned that natural systems such as rainforests, soils and the oceans would in future be less able to absorb greenhouse gas emissions. It said: "This positive feedback could lead to as much as 1.2 °C of added warming by 2100." The final version does not include this figure. It acknowledges that the feedback could exist but says: "The magnitude of this feedback is uncertain." Similarly, the draft warned that warming will increase atmospheric levels of water vapour, which acts as a greenhouse gas. "Water vapour increases lead to a strong positive feedback," it said. "New evidence estimates a 40 to 50 per cent amplification of global mean warming." This was absent from the published version, replaced elsewhere with the much milder observation "Water vapour changes represent the largest feedback." The final edit also removed references to growing fears that global warming is accelerating the discharge of ice from major ice sheets such as the Greenland sheet. This would dramatically speed up rises in sea levels and may already be doing so. The 2006 draft said: "Recent observations show rapid changes in ice sheet flows," and referred to an "accelerating trend" in sea-level rise. Neither detail made the final version, which observed that "ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica... could increase or decrease in future". Wasdell points out recent findings which show that the rate of loss from ice sheets is doubling every six years, making the suggestion of a future decrease "highly unlikely". Some of the changes were made at the meeting of government invigilators that finalised the report last month in Paris. But others were made earlier, after the draft report was first distributed to governments in mid-2006. Senior IPCC scientists contacted by New Scientist have not been willing to discuss how any changes took place but they deny any political interference. However, "if it is true, it's disappointing", says Mike Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and a past lead author for the IPCC. "Allowing governmental delegations to ride into town at the last minute and water down conclusions after they were painstakingly arrived at in an objective scientific assessment does not serve society well." From issue 2594 of New Scientist magazine, 10 March 2007, page 10 -- -- _______________________________________________ Wg1-ar4-clas mailing list [4]Wg1-ar4-clas@joss.ucar.edu [5]http://lists.joss.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/wg1-ar4-clas _________________________________ Eystein Jansen, prof., Director Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research Allégaten 55 N5007 Bergen phone: +47-55583491, fax. +47-55584330 [6]eystein.jansen@geo.uib.no www.bjerknes.uib.no _______________________________________________ Wg1-ar4-clas mailing list Wg1-ar4-clas@joss.ucar.edu http://lists.joss.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/wg1-ar4-clas References 1. mailto:wg1-ar4-clas@joss.ucar.edu 2. file://localhost/tmp/convertmbox32286.html 3. http://www.meridian.org.uk/whats.htm 4. mailto:Wg1-ar4-clas@joss.ucar.edu 5. http://lists.joss.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/wg1-ar4-clas 6. mailto:eystein.jansen@geo.uib.no