The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC) assesses the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change.
This week, the IPCC was thrown into controversy when it was revealed that its long-held claim that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 has was sourced from pure speculation published in a non-academic pop-science magazine.
So just how does the IPCC arrive at its conclusions? What sort of material does it trust and what are the checks and balances that weed out the fact from fiction? Andrew Macintosh, associate director at the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy, explains:
Given that there are so many levels of review within the IPCC, how could they possibly miss this kind of error?
The IPCC process basically works like this. Experts in relevant fields are nominated by governments and others to be lead authors and contributors to specific parts of the assessment reports. After the lead authors are appointed, relevant material is submitted by people in the field for consideration in the report. A substantial proportion of the submitted material consists of, or is drawn from, peer-reviewed articles that have been published in academic journals. However, other material can be accepted in certain circumstances. On the basis of the material submitted, and other peer-reviewed and internationally available literature, first drafts are prepared. The drafts are then reviewed by experts in the field and revised to take into account their feedback. The revised drafts are then reviewed by governments and a wider group of experts and authors. After this, the final report is prepared.
This process is supposed to be objective, transparent and representative. It is also meant to be exhaustive and robust. These goals are supposed to be guaranteed by the fact that material contained in the final report usually undergoes four layers of review — first when papers are peer reviewed for publication in academic journals, second when the materials are reviewed by the lead authors before the preparation of the first draft; third when the first draft is reviewed; and finally when the revised draft is reviewed by governments and experts. So how could an error like that concerning the Himalayan glaciers get through this process? (I assume for these purposes that the statement about the glaciers is erroneous)
The answer is that the process is human and all human processes are fallible. It would be astounding if the IPCC reports did not contain errors. The four reports that constitute the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report contain thousands of facts, covering a multitude of areas. Authors make errors, as do reviewers. In this case, a statement made by a scientist to a reporter from New Scientist appears to have been taken as scientifically based when it was conjecture. The scientist may even have been misquoted. Either way, what appeared in the New Scientist report was not backed by rigorous science. This should have been identified in the IPCC review process and the material should have been omitted from the final report. It wasn’t and that is deeply regrettable.
I have no doubt that the lead authors of the relevant chapter and other reviewers are embarrassed by the mistake. As they would know, this type of error undermines public confidence in the IPCC and its processes. The only positive that can be taken from this incident is that it has demonstrated how science tends to be self-correcting. People questioning facts identified the error and the error should now be removed from the report, or corrected in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.
How common is it for the IPCC to cite lobby groups such as WWF or magazine interviews as sources?
Material that is not from an academic or governmental source can be included in IPCC reports. However, it is supposed to meet certain quality standards. In this case, it appears the process has broken down and the gatekeepers of quality have failed to perform their task.
How does this kind of error compare to the leaked Climategate emails in terms of denting the IPCC’s credibility?
We are still waiting for the full story behind Climategate and this incident. However, from what has been reported, this error appears to be of greater import. The expected rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers is not a trivial matter. Their rate of loss will have important implications for several significant human and natural systems. Claims of rapid glacier loss should have been thoroughly checked and it appears they weren’t. If the story as reported is correct, this is a serious error and the IPCC should take steps to ensure that all similar statements are subject to more rigorous evaluation.
Sceptics’ hysteria aside, what does this mean for the credibility of the IPCC within the scientific community?
This incident should not permanently stain the credibility of the IPCC. Most people recognise that the peer review process is not infallible and that errors are made. In the case of IPCC assessment reports, the error rate is likely to be very low, and well below that in most other scientific publications. The challenge is to ensure that errors such as this are not repeated.
How can the IPCC best address this problem?
The existing processes should have weeded out this sort of material. In the future, the IPCC should ensure that greater attention is paid to its existing processes, reviewers are given greater time and resources to verify facts, and that claims about key issues are thoroughly evaluated.
Given that this report is from 2007, how significantly has the science around glaciers changed since then? What does this mean for IPCC reports in the future?
Beyond my area of expertise.
How much of this and the Climategate affair is a lesson in PR for the IPCC, something scientists don’t usually have to contend with to such an extent?
If the IPCC needed these incidents to alert them to the political context in which they operate, I think we are in trouble. Climate change is a highly politicised issue that attracts strong ideological responses. This has been the case since climate change became a significant issue in the late 1980s and, no doubt, it will continue to be the case. Most people working in the field are aware of the context in which they operate and the potential for their work to be misconstrued and for errors such as this to have serious consequences. The glacier incident has provided a vivid illustration of the need for the IPCC to be exacting in its standards and for scientists to be cautious when engaging with the media.
The key point is:
Science is a self-correcting method, based on continuous recording of new observations and refinement of theory, which outline patterns and trends subject to continuous testing and revision.
Which is a process based on scepticism and intellectual honesty, the method by which major insights have been gained into natural processes and laws.
Nothing would have pleased scientists more than if they discovered climate change is not actually happening, or the Earth started to cool, or in the very least humans emissions and land clearing are not responsible for climate change.
By contrast, the so-called “climate change sceptics” have an ideological position of “No global warming” or “no anthropogenic global warming”, in support of which they have a standard 10 or so long-refuted arguments. Some of them manufacture “data” and ignore the basic laws of physics and chemistry, yet they have the support of powerful vested interests and major platforms in the media, including hundreds of bogus internet sites.
A disinformation campaign whose cosnequences defy contemplation.
“the peer review process is not infallible and… errors are made”
Whoever wrote this still doesn’t get it. Climate science “peer review” is hopelessly compromised at present. The practitioners themselves are highly politicised, not just “the context in which they operate”. As one of the chief protagonists (Trenberth) says himself in the well-known email and in a recent survey paper, climate science is full of uncertainties. There’s no question the dominant climate scientists have felt under siege for many years and that this has clouded their judgement, so to speak. Any deviation from The Line is punished severely. The recent global temp plateau and failure of many lesser predictions has generated paranoia. Read all the emails to see this, not just the handful of allegedly scandalous ones.
Annabel Crabbe was inadvertently right in denigrating “East Bumcrack” academics- status is everything in academia. The Cinderella climate scientists almost all hail from Bumcrack universities…they struggled to get money and attention in the 80s and early 90s (read the emails), then came the big breakthrough. More money and attention (but not academic status) than they ever dreamed possible. As their dubious practices have been exposed and as the AGW hypothesis has lost headway since 2000, panic set in. They have a long way to fall. They know there’s a real risk that their cascading series of computer models could end up revealed as an intellectual Ponzi scheme.
Andrew: read the emails. No one would argue with your abstract idealisation of scientific method. That’s not the point. But ignore sociology at your peril.
“Nothing would have pleased scientists more” to discover they were wrong. Read the emails. You couldn’t be further from the truth- their careers are on the line. If observations invalidate AGW, they’ll be ridiculed. Hence the desperation.
@Frank Campbell,
Still hanging on by fingernails to wishful thinking are we? As usual, you have drawn your conclusion from a single data point – an error in the review process. How you explain the very significant preponderance of error-free statements in the IPCC report is yet to be disclosed. It is certainly not just luck.
Nice it is to note that you now claim a “Global Temp Plateau” in lieu of a posited decline post 1998 or some such. I must have been asleep for a while, because I didn’t notice your retraction of your previously held belief that temps were falling.
Yes, new and forgotten facts do come to light and people – even your good self – do change opinion. Errors are made and corrected. Yet the overall truth remains, that the IPCC reports are the best that human frailty can deliver and that these reports, including the predictions within them, correlate very well indeed with the observed facts.
I choose to rely on advice which has been subjected to wide peer critique. You have again identified yourself as one who does not. Best of luck, because you and Tamas Calderwood are betting on a guess.
John Bennetts:
You must be confusing me with someone else. I’ve never said that post 1998 temps were falling. Plateau is my favourite word.
As for relying on a ‘single data point’, can you read? I edited the whole 14 years of climate emails. Took 3 miserable weeks.
And I’ve written often about the failings of “peer review”.
Not sure what your problems is John…