IPCC Should be Audited

[Keepitsimple]

The IPCC is the driving force behind the information that feeds the Global Warming debate. IPCC's mandate and funding is provided by the United Nations. It's accepted that the United Nations has credibility problems. Kyoto/IPCC have driven an agenda that rightly or wrongly, will result in the expenditure of billions of dollars and the transfer of billions from rich countries to poor countries. Developed countries all have some sort of Auditing function (e.g. Canada's Chief Auditor, Sheila Frasor) for verification that departments are working efficiently and that taxpayer's money is getting value. I am not aware of any truly independent "audit" that has been done to ensure that the scientific process that is actually carried out, and the manner that "results" are reported meets the generally accepted criteria of the Scientific community. By an audit - I mean a comprehensive and independent look at the processes and interpretations - not hearsay and rhetoric or simply reading IPCC guidelines. I have heard the word "consensus" far too many times - a word that real scientists usually frown upon. It has been said that all 2500 of IPCC's scientists and researchers agreed with their last Summary Report. That in itself is a dubious claim, to say the least - and should raise a giant red flag. When have 2500 people ever agreed on anything, let alone scientists? If there is a consensus, that means there is disagreement. What do those who disagree have to say?

As the world begins to expend these many billions, if not trillions of dollars, surely it is not too much to ask that we collectively enlist scientific auditors (independent and separate from the UN and IPCC) who will, on an annual basis, audit the processes and reporting methods to ensure that goals and objectives are clear, the Science is indeed being conducted properly and thoroughly, and the resulting reports are truly independent and unbiased.

The world would be negligent in not doing so.

[geoffrey]

The idea behind an audit is to create assurance that the information as stated is true. Having an independant come in a look at it certainly would add credibility to the claims. That being said, where the hell would you find said independant? A group of scientists with absolutely no bias on the topic?

Not likely. Like I've said before, the current climate in the scientific community is that dissenters from the status quo are immediately cast aside. No one would ever risk saying there is errors in the IPCC report, they'd never get a teaching spot or research grant again.

[Keepitsimple]

The idea behind an audit is to create assurance that the information as stated is true. Having an independant come in a look at it certainly would add credibility to the claims. That being said, where the hell would you find said independant? A group of scientists with absolutely no bias on the topic?

Not likely. Like I've said before, the current climate in the scientific community is that dissenters from the status quo are immediately cast aside. No one would ever risk saying there is errors in the IPCC report, they'd never get a teaching spot or research grant again.

You don't necessarily need a scientific team - auditors look at the processes that are involved in gathering various reports, collating the data, coming to conclusions, and reporting. I don't know all the ins and outs but we're looking at the integrity of the process. Johanne Gelinas, our former environment commission, who worked directly for Sheila Fraser, might be someone who could lead such a team.

Having said all the - you're right in that the whole process has become so politicized that common sense is lost.

[geoffrey]

You don't necessarily need a scientific team - auditors look at the processes that are involved in gathering various reports, collating the data, coming to conclusions, and reporting. I don't know all the ins and outs but we're looking at the integrity of the process. Johanne Gelinas, our former environment commission, who worked directly for Sheila Fraser, might be someone who could lead such a team.

Having said all the - you're right in that the whole process has become so politicized that common sense is lost.

Hmmm my friend, this is my line of work. I wouldn't touch this one with a 10 foot pole. When it's so complex an issue like climate change for instance, you have to bring in scientific experts, of which none exist that are neutral. It'd be a tough thing to do.

From a functional process viewpoint, what is there to audit? A bunch of like minded scientists sat at a table and said, 'ok, this is what is true' and all signed. It's not like there is any fundamentally original research backing this, and any that is would be way beyond the scope of your everyday auditor. The actual backing is from thousands of studies, impossible to review and confirm. I couldn't look at a climate change model and determine if it was a reasonable disclosure of Earth's future. I've taken a geology course (whoop-de-do, I understand how a Chinook works!!!), and I'm going to say it's likely that most of the other auditors are in the same boat as I'm in, non-experts in environmental science and completely unqualified to have an opinion on this matter.

By the way, Ms. Gelinas was not an auditor by the traditional accountant definition (as Ms. Fraser is). She's an environmental science expert... of course she'd believe in the plan and wouldn't be an independant voice. She's an expert on the environment, not processes and controls and reporting.

Ms. Gélinas received an undergraduate degree in Human Geography and a Master's degree in Environmental Sciences from the Université du Québec à Montréal and is widely published.

Source: http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/other.nsf/...e.html#jgelinas

[Keepitsimple]

Climate Change is indeed complex and a compete audit process would be a challenge. But when you break it down to fundamentals, much of the Science involves the compilation, quantification, and presentation of raw data. Mathemeticians and statisticians should play a large role in the Audit process. If we had this type of oversight, the "Hockey Stick", which was thoroughly debunked by data and statistical auditing, would never have seen the light of day. Perhaps this might be deemed to be Quality Assurance more than Audit, but they really do go hand-in-hand.

[geoffrey]

Climate Change is indeed complex and a compete audit process would be a challenge. But when you break it down to fundamentals, much of the Science involves the compilation, quantification, and presentation of raw data. Mathemeticians and statisticians should play a large role in the Audit process. If we had this type of oversight, the "Hockey Stick", which was thoroughly debunked by data and statistical auditing, would never have seen the light of day. Perhaps this might be deemed to be Quality Assurance more than Audit, but they really do go hand-in-hand.

Perhaps, but I still really am unsure of how much of a quality audit could be performed here. And who would pay for it?

Again, I doubt if any auditor would want to touch this at all. It's too politically charged and a negative audit would likely result in the destruction of the auditors character (corporate or personal) before it ever resulted in a change in the models.

Scientists should be auditing themselves, thats why they have academic journals and the such. If your not confident in that, then we've got some serious issues in the science side of academia.

[Keepitsimple]

In most respects, scientists do audit themselves through the peer review process - and it works quite well. The problem with Climate Change "science" is that to arrive at a conclusion, or at least a workable "consensus (I hate that word in the context of science), one has to traverse many areas of scientific research - oceans, clouds, land-use, solar influence, carbon sinks, ice-cores, proxies, etc. Each piece of work should (we would hope) pass a peer review process. The problem is that IPCC has a process whereby it selects what pieces of work to give credence to, and what weighting factor to give it - all in the context of their stated goal - to prove that man is the major contributer of GHG and that CO2, or more correctly, the burning of fossil fuels, has a definable/measurable impact on climate change. It is this selection, cumulation, conclusion and reporting process that, at a minimum, I would like to see audited. My point really is that if this is the greatest and most expensive challenge that humans will face - does it not make sense to make sure that the science is done thoroughly, and reasonably free of bias? Taxpayers can be audited. Companies are audited. Organizations are audited. Governments are audited. Why on earth would the IPCC be exempt from independent oversight?

[B. Max]

IPCC Should be Audited

I was thinking more along the lines of arrested.

http://www.bloggingtories.ca/btFrameset.ph...mear%20Campaign

[jdobbin]

Gelinas is not popular with the Frontier Policy Center.

http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=1532

Of course this was written by Tim Ball who hasn't taught in many years and has not done any peer review work in just as long. Take it as you will.

As far as scientific audits go, some groups worldwide are already forming to do just that. I have yet to see any of their reports though or research.

Financial audits of the IPCC are done and each member country receives one.

[JerrySeinfeld]

IPCC Should be Audited

I was thinking more along the lines of arrested.

http://www.bloggingtories.ca/btFrameset.ph...mear%20Campaign

This is an excellent link. As this fad continues to run it's course I become more and more convinced that these people (the eco-nazis) are a dangerous group.

I had suspicions about the inner workings of these fanatics, but some of the "instructions" on climate change PR are eery and surprised even me:

Much of the noise in the climate change discourse comes from argument and counter-argument, and it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. This must be done by stepping away from the ‘advocates debate’ described earlier, rather than by stating and re-stating these things as fact. (my emphasisThe ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken. The certainty of the Government’s new climate-change slogan – ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) – gives an example of this approach. It constructs, rather than claims, its own factuality.

Free speech, the scientific method, rational public debate and prudence of action seem to be completely absent in any of their thoughts.

The most scary part of this is the concept: Left wing people have always felt that they knew better and were smarter than everyone else - just look on this forum. Harken back to the days of high school, debating about the pros and cons of government intervention in the domestic economy. The lefties always thought they knew best and argued for socialism and big, expensive government programs to fix all of society's ills.

The dangerous part about climate change is that the "leave the big decisions to the smart people in government" crowd has gone global. They've hijacked the earth's natural climate fluctuations as a basis for massive global social engineering on a never-before-heard-of scale.

Think about it: Isn't Kyoto just one big wealth transfer from rich countries to poor ones? Isn't this global socialism?

Even in recent David Suzuki rants, you can hear his ideas about global social policy and economics leaking into his weakly veiled comments about the temperature of a Greenlandian glacier. It's no accident these subjects are becoming more and more intertwined.

This is just another veiled global attempt to demonize "industry" , "big business" , "america" and "free will" - all enemies of the watermelon left.

[shoggoth]

The CFC/ozone depletion issue is a mini example of the current global warming issue in that it was a political issuse based on a climate science. It was full of the same kind of stuff - environmental advocates, industry skeptics, media articles, global meetings, treaties, etc. Similar arguments about hidden motives were made about the cfc issue that we hear today in the global warming issue. I think a lot of them were true - a lot of envioronmentalists will just jump on any issue that supports their position, and they jumped on CFC-ozone depletion link for that reason.

Yet the CFC-ozone depletion link turned out to be true. Which demonstrates that while hidden motives and politics among environmentalists and skeptics exist in the global warming issue, it's likely irrelevant to the validity of the issue.