» John Christy: IPCC authors are gatekeepers - Climategate.nl

In February of this year, Nature magazine asked me for a brief discussion about the IPCC and a way forward (Appendix D, last page). My main concern there was to define a process that would let the world know that our ignorance of much of the climate system is simply enormous and we have much to do. Mother Nature has a tremendous number of degrees of freedom up her sleeves, many of which we don’t even know about or account for.

So, I suggested a living, carefully-managed, wikipedia-style process. Important questions, most of which are already laid out in the IPCC manifest, would be addressed by teams of Lead Authors who would be far less constrained by the word-count rules, and so would allow fuller expression of uncertainty and disagreement – expressions contributed by the specific people who perform whatever research is being discussed. The Lead Authors main task would be to organize and summarize the information on each question, acting strictly as Brokers, not Gatekeepers.

With web-based links to actual text (and data) the Lead Authors would be far less tempted to be biased. Lead Authors need to know they do not have to agree with the findings they report. I believe such transparency would spur the Lead Authors to be fairer and more humble in their summary comments.

A reply to some Warmist rubbish

The George C. Marshall Institute has published a reply to the book, "Merchants of Doubt", which is just another vehicle for the usual "ad hominem" accusations from Warmists. Such accusations are of no scholarly or scientific worth but non-scholars sometimes are influenced by them so some reply is needed. Below is a summary of the full reply which the Institute has circulated by email.

The Reference Frame: Antarctica 4 °C warmer 130,000 years ago

Unless you are a young Earth creationist, it should be obvious to you that the paper shows that comments that 4 °C or even 2 °C of warming would be threatening for life don't seem compatible with the reconstructions of the climate. Pretty much all important organisms were the same 130,000 years ago as what they are today.

Climate change threatens food supply of 60 million people in Asia

The size and discharge of Himalayan glaciers are experiencing significant decline due to climate change. "However, observed glacial decline varies greatly from region to region, and there is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the speed of decline," says Marc Bierkens, hydrology professor at Utrecht University. "However, the trends identified in the river discharge forecast do not take this uncertainty into account." The researchers based their results on a combination of hydrologic models, climate forecasts from five different climate scenarios, and satellite images depicting snow and ice, rainfall, and changes in the Earth's gravitational field.