[Link: reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net...]

Today (30 Aug) the InterAcademy Council (IAC) released its review of the IPCC process.

The link takes you to the IAC web page dedicated to the report.

According to the Preface and Executive Summary, the Chair writes:

[…] The Committee found that the IPCC assessment process has been successful overall. However, the world has changed considerably since the creation of the IPCC, with major advances in climate science, heated controversy on some climate related issues, and an increased focus of governments on the impacts and potential responses to changing climate. A wide variety of interests have entered the climate discussion, leading to greater overall scrutiny and demands from stakeholders. The IPCC must continue to adapt to these changing conditions in order to continue serving society well in the future. […]

The recommendations the IAC propose mostly deal with the ever increasing size of the body of scientific work and how the IPCC ought to change to deal with increasing work loads.

Another recommendation the IAC makes is to stick to qualitative descriptions rather than quantitative ones, when discussing summaries for policy makers, in discussing confidence of outcomes (of whatever climate change effect) unless there is sufficient evidence to assign actual probabilities. Let me clarify - consumers of information often want definitive numbers (say 90% probability of an outcome) even when coming up with such a number is questionable. Unfortunately that can be misleading as in the science of Probability “90%” can mean something quite rigorous, but laymen often want numbers anyway, even if such rigor can’t be maintained.

The problem the IPCC faced (which the IAC obviously wants to encourage them to overcome) is that as a political body the IPCC, in the Summary for Policy Makers (and not in the science summaries), had to write (to satisfy the various views of the members) some sufficiently vague sentences and then had to assign confidences to them. The IAC recommends dropping the confidence level numbers in these circumstances (something with which I heartily agree, but I have to say the real problem is the political nature of Summary for Policy Makers.)

Overall, the IAC report acknowledges the strengths of the IPCC but also on how it ought to change in order to adapt to its increasing responsibilities.

The IAC gave a press briefing at the UN today on this:
[Link: webcast.un.org...]

Boring (like most press releases), but it gives an idea of what the IAC was tasked to do.

Funnily - and sadly - the first question comes from a whack job of a denier (talking about the problems of computer models, and that the last decade was cooling!) - I think he said he was from the “Canada Free Press”, which would go along with him being a whack job!

Indeed, the reason I’m posting this is that in the denial-o-sphere today (and it will continue) there is quite a bit of spin going on about today’s released report. Some are trying to make out today’s report as something damning - which it is not. For example, Fox uses the headline: “Independent Audit Panel Slams U.N.’s Climate Group”. NO, the IAC did not “slam” the IPCC.

The IPCC responded with a press conference of their own:
[Link: webcast.un.org...]