Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: InterAcademy Council to Review the IPCC

The IAC needs to do the utmost to ensure that the review is truly "independent" and garners the trust of the public and policy makers. This will not be easy.

For instance, to cite just one example, I note that the Interacademy Council has a strong statement about conflicts of interest on its website which includes the following checklist that it recommends for identifying such conflicts among prospective panelists
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The answer to all four questions with respect to Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, is "yes." How will the IAC review handle the issue of conflict of interest in the IPCC? Will it ignore the issue? Raise it, but offer no guidance? Or ask the IPCC to subscribe to the same standards that it holds for itself? People will be watching closely.

Prehistoric Response to Global Warming Informs Human Planning Today - UB NewsCenter

"This was a slower change," [Zubrow] says, "about one-third the rate we face today. In the Holocene period, it took a thousand years for the earth to warm as much as it has over the past 300 years -- roughly the time spanned since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
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He points out that, despite our more sophisticated prediction technology, and technologies overall, many of the world's people have residences and lifestyles that are just as vulnerable to climatic shift as those of our prehistoric ancestors. They, too, live along estuaries and coastlines subject to marked alteration as oceans rise.

Most of the ARRA stimulus money used in the project is spent in the United States on salaries and research at various universities. Zubrow reiterates a point he often makes with his students: "This research funding is good for science, good for the economy, good for the government and good for the international reputation of the United States."
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During an additional study phase funded by a $300,000 grant from NSF, through the ARRA, Zubrow will conduct archaeological research in Mexico to ascertain how arctic climatic changes during the mid- and post-Holocene era affected human populations in a changing temperate climate.   [How much value will taxpayers get for blowing the $300,000 this way, versus taking the money in $100 bills and having a nice bonfire?]

The Associated Press: World's "top" scientists to review climate panel

WASHINGTON — The world's biggest scientific guns are being called in to mop up after a trickle of unsettling errors in the authoritative reports written by a global warming panel.
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"The idea sounds fine. I hope people like me have input. Otherwise it's just the usual members of the establishment defending to themselves what's been done," said researcher John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, a prominent IPCC critic and warming skeptic.  [Who, exactly, decides which scientists are the "top" ones?   Which people are the "biggest scientific guns"?]

[Because we don't believe that carbon dioxide is dangerous, Revkin thinks that we should be psychoanalyzed?] - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

Any useful summary of knowledge on the causes and consequences of climate change and possible responses would have to include a hard look at the substantial (and sobering) body of work on what shapes human behavior: how people absorb or ignore scientific information — including the climate panel’s own reports — and what roadblocks in human behavior await the menu of possible policy options for limiting climate-related risks.

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