IPCC AND THE PEER REVIEW PROCESS
Dr JENSEN (Tangney) (4:22 PM) —I wish to speak on something that I
am profoundly concerned about and disturbed by, and that is the
politicisation and corruption of the entire peer review process of the
IPCC and other organisations relating to climate change. This came to
light with the release of certain emails between certain individuals
concerned. I will read some of them to give you some flavour. This is
regarding the WWF:
Hi Mike. I am sure you will get some
comments direct from Mike Rae in WWF Australia, but I wanted to pass on
the gist of what they have said to me so far. They are worried that
this might present a slightly more conservative approach to the risks
than they are hearing from CSIRO. In particular, they would like to see
the section on variability and extreme events beefed up if possible.
Here is another one, to do with some papers that were published:
The other paper by MM is just garbage—as you know. De Freitas again.
Pielke is also losing credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn
as well—frequently as I see it. I can’t see either of these papers
being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out
somehow—even if we have to redefine what peer review literature is!
Here is another one, to do with De Freitas, the editor of Climate Research, a peer-reviewed journal:
One approach is to go direct to the publishers and point out the fact
that the journal is perceived as being a medium for disseminating
misinformation under the guise of refereed work. I would use the word
‘perceived’ here, since whether it is true or not is what the
publishers care about.
Here is another one from Kevin Trenberth on actual climate:
The fact is, we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and
it is a travesty that we cannot. The series data publishing in the
August BAMS 09 supplement 2008 shows that there should be even more
warming: but the data is surely wrong. Our observing system is
inadequate.
Here is another one, from Phil Jones again:
So once again there is a blip in temperature that they don’t find
convenient. If we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degrees
Celsius, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d
still have to explain the land blip.
This is of grave
concern. We have Dr Clive Spash with CSIRO being censored by the
government. He has a paper that is critical of the ETS. That is not
being published. Are we wanting further censorship? We are getting
internet censorship and indeed censorship of our own mail to our
electorate. (Time expired)