THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) commissioned a review of its processes and procedures with a report handed down in October 2010, but only just now made publically available at its website.[1]
I’ve only just started to examine the 100 plus page document, but my first impressions are that finally we have an official report that may impose a level of accountability on the IPCC.
OK. I’m expecting too much!
Well at least the report highlights past errors and acknowledges that they have been significant.
The section on “Evaluation of evidence and treatment of uncertainty” includes comment that:
Authors reported high confidence in statements for which there is little evidence, such as the widely quoted statement that agricultural yields in Africa might decline by up to 50 percent by 2020. Moreover, the guidance was often applied to statements that are so vague they cannot be disputed. In these cases the impression was often left, incorrectly, that a substantive finding was being presented…
Assigning probabilities to an outcome makes little sense unless researchers are confident in the underlying evidence…
The Working Group II Summary for Policy makers in the Fourth Assessment Report contains many vague statements of ‘high confidence’ that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put in perspective, or are difficult to refute. The Committee believes it is not appropriate to assign probabilities to such statements.
[Read more…] about IPCC Commissioned Report Damning of IPCC Processes and Procedures
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.