Lead global warming author quits IPCC project

Daily Mail
Don Surber

The UN’s global warming unit, IPCC, is so discredited that “it is not clear how much additional benefit there is to having a huge bureaucratic scientific review effort under UN auspices” said Ken Caldeira in announcing that he is resigning as one of its leading authors on the next IPCC report.

The previous one won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

 

Outside of a few skeptical bloggers, you will not see this story anywhere else.

If anyone doubts there is a bias in the media for the bright and shiny object called Global Warming (aka Climate Change, Climate Disruption and Global Cooling) which of these headline is not like the others:

Shocker – Ken Caldeira resigns as IPCC AR5 lead author.

Warmist Ken Caldeira resigns as IPCC lead author, says “it is not clear how much additional benefit there is to having a huge bureaucratic scientific review effort under UN auspices”.

New Directions for the Intergovernmental Climate Panel.

Now I will grant you that the first two headlines are by skeptics, Anthony Watts and Tom Nelson, respectively. But the third one is by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Shouldn’t journalists be skeptical? Isn’t Doubting Thomas the reporter’s role model?

Surely I am skeptical of what governments and government-paid PhD’s say. And I do not pretend to practice journalism here.

It took Andrew Revkin 6 paragraphs to get to Ken Caldeira, who sent him an e-mail:

Clearly, at the outset, the early IPCC reports played an important role showing that there was a high degree of consensus around the reality and basic science of human-induced climate change. It was important to show that, despite a few climate-science deniers, the fundamental science was well-accepted by the mainstream scientific community.

But can anybody point to any important positive outcomes resulting from the IPCC AR4 process? [AR4 is shorthand for the panel's fourth assessment, which was published in 2007.] Is there reason to expect a greater positive impact from the IPCC AR5 process? [This is the forthcoming fifth assessment of climate science and policies, coming in 2013 and 2014]
I am all for scientific reviews and assessments, and I think the multi-model comparisons reviewed by the IPCC have been especially useful. However, it is not clear how much additional benefit there is to having a huge bureaucratic scientific review effort under UN auspices. The multi-model comparisons have been performed under the auspices of the WCRP — The World Climate Research Program, and small nimble organizations such as the Global Carbon Project (GCP) have been instrumental on synthesizing new knowledge about CO2-emissions and the carbon cycle efficiently and with a minimum of bureaucratic overhead. (Disclaimer: I am on the board of GCP and have not shared these views with other board members.)

Again, I think the IPCC has been extremely useful in the past, and I believe the IPCC could be extremely useful in the future. But, if the IPCC is to be extremely useful, it must re-invent itself, so that it efficiently supplies decision-makers with the most important and reliable scientific information while placing a minimum of additional burden on the scientific community.

(As an aside, I recently resigned as a lead author of an IPCC AR5 chapter simply because I felt I had more effective ways of using the limited amount of time that I have to engage in scientific activities. My resignation was made possible because I believe that the chapter team that I was part of was on the right track and doing an excellent job without my contribution. Had I had a scientific criticism of my chapter team, you can be assured that I would have stayed involved. So, my resignation was a vote of confidence in my scientific peers, not a critique. It is just not clear to me that, at this point, working on IPCC chapters is the most effective use of my time. Also, I do want to be careful not to pre-judge IPCC AR5. It may turn out to be a far more efficient and effective vehicle for scientific communication than I now anticipate.)

An important question is: How can the IPCC be made into a more efficient and effective vehicle for scientific communication? It would be good to have this discussion before the AR6 train leaves the station.

So there you have it. The emperor’s new doomsday is dead. The 2007 IPCC report which won a Nobel Peace Prize and made Al Gore the king of the world is so discredited by Climategate that the guy who was supposed to help write the next IPCC report is out of here. Let us go over that again: “But can anybody point to any important positive outcomes resulting from the IPCC AR4 process? Is there reason to expect a greater positive impact from the IPCC AR5 process?”

To be sure, he caveat-ed his statement with the usual bureaucratic breeze “My resignation was made possible because I believe that the chapter team that I was part of was on the right track and doing an excellent job without my contribution.”

And Ken Caldeira remains a true believer

But post-Climategate, he is out of here.

That is front page news, New York Times. That is Andrew Revkin’s scoop of the century. And he buried the story.

I do thank him for posting the e-mail. That saves me waiting for Climategate 3.0 to read 

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