Prejudiced Authors Prejudiced Findings

Prejudiced authors, Prejudiced findings

Did the UN bias its attribution of “global warming” to humankind?

John McLean

Many scientists have long suspected that the IPCC fails to select its chapter authors with balance and fairness to all viewpoints in mind. This paper very clearly demonstrates the extent of the prejudice, in two ways: first, by showing the numerous links between the clique of authors, and secondly, by showing the numerous downright errors in the authors' approach – errors which would not have occurred in such numbers if the views of those who do not share the supposed "consensus" had been taken into account. -- Christopher Monckton

Centre for Forecasting all report a firm downtrend in global temperature since late in 2001. Recent rapid global cooling, caused by the end of the strong 2006-7 El Nino followed by the intense 2007-8 La Nina, amplified by the prolonged solar minimum and the transition of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from a warming to a cooling phase, exemplifies the strong influence of natural climate forces in setting global temperature

All four of the major datasets that record anomalies in global mean surface air show a pronounced downtrend since late in 2001. Not one of the climate models relied upon by the IPCC had predicted this cooling. There has been no increase in worldwide temperatures since 1998. In the first five months of 2008, global temperatures were within the error margin for temperatures in 1940.

Nonetheless, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and others who share its belief in a human influence on temperature continue to insist that natural forces are merely masking an underlying pattern of dangerous anthropogenic warming.

In earlier papers, I showed that support for the contention of man-made warming was very weak among the IPCC’s own official reviewers1, and that the IPCC itself had presented little evidence to support its claim2. I now turn to the question whether the IPCC’s selection of chapter authors was itself prejudiced from the outset in order to produce a predetermined and self-serving outcome. To confine the research to a reasonable compass, I have concentrated on the authorship of chapter 9, the key chapter in which the IPCC attributes observed or imagined “global warming” to humankind. My research reveals serious problems with the selection of authors, underlain by a perhaps undue faith in climate models upon which the IPCC relies for its claim that there is increasing “proof” of a human influence on climate.

Chapter 9, entitled Understanding and Attributing Climate Change, concludes that human-induced warming of the climate system in the past half-century is widespread and detectable in every continent except Antarctica, affecting extremes of temperature, causing glaciers and sea ice to melt, altering rainfall patterns, and perhaps increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones. This chapter was the basis not only for the IPCC’s general claims about man-made “global warming” but also for the contributions from the working groups on mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.

The IPCC’s very structure reflects the stipulation in its founding document that it is to take the human influence on climate as a given. It has three working parties – on climate science, on mitigation of climate change, and on adaptation to change. The 2007 report of the science working party either overlooks altogether or dismisses unanswered the growing body of evidence in the observed record and in the peer reviewed literature to the effect that “global warming” is not occurring at the rate previously predicted by the IPCC, and is most unlikely ever to do so. The other two working parties are by their very titles compelled to start from the assumption that “global warming” is occurring, that it is our entire fault, and that we can do something about it.

The contributions of working groups II and III were developed in parallel with that from working group I, which suggests that either assumptions were made about the findings of chapter 9 or that those findings were predetermined. An alternative scenario appears in a revealing document related to the IPCC's second “scoping” meeting for its 2007 report (Potsdam, September 2003), the International Chamber of Commerce applauded the IPCC for its decision that all working groups for its 2007 report would work in parallel and noted that those on mitigation and adaptation would base their reports on that of the science working group in the IPCC’s previous quinquennial assessment report, published in 20013. If so, unless the science working group for the 2007 report was to adhere to the same working group’s conclusions in the 2001 report, the two subsidiary working groups for the 2007 report would have been working on different conclusions from those of the science working group. This circumstance may well have contributed to the unwillingness of the authors of the 2007 science assessment to take proper account of the growing body of empirical evidence and peer-reviewed research since 2001 that casts strong and growing doubt upon the reliability of the 2001 report’s conclusions. Thus the authors of chapter 9 were, in effect, expected to justify the position the IPCC had been required to adopt since its foundation. They were certainly entrusted with making decisions that would be vital to the IPCC’s claims and quite possibly to its future. For the IPCC's role is to assess the risks of “human-induced climate change”: if there were no evidence of risk, the IPCC would have no reason to continue in existence.

So, who were the authors of this chapter that forms such a vital lynchpin of the IPCC's report? The standard IPCC procedure is to appoint Coordinating Lead Authors whose authority spans the entire chapter, with a number of Lead Authors who focus on specific sections. I shall now present the IPCC’s official position on appointments in some detail, quoting from its own internal documents, and shall then demonstrate that theselection of the authors of chapter 9 and of the activities related to that chapter appears to have flouted many of the IPCC's stated policies.

Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work 4 says:

“4.2.1 At the request of Working Group / Task Force Bureau Co-Chairs through their respective Working Group / Task Force Bureau, and the IPCC Secretariat, governments, and participating organizations and the Working Group / Task Force Bureaux should identify appropriate experts for each area in the Report who can act as potential Coordinating Lead Authors, Lead Authors, Contributing Authors, expert reviewers or Review Editors. …  

“4.2.2 Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors are selected by the relevant Working Group / Task Force Bureau, under general guidance and review provided by the Session of the Working Group ... from those experts cited in the lists provided by governments and participating organizations, and other experts as appropriate, known through their publications and works. The composition of the group of Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors for a section or chapter of a Report shall reflect the need to aim for a range of views, expertise and geographical representation....The Coordinating Lead Authors and Lead Authors selected by the Working Group/Task Force Bureau may enlist other experts as Contributing Authors to assist with the work.” [Emphasis added].

In Appendix 1 of the same document the function of contributing authors is –

“To prepare technical information in the form of text, graphs, or data for assimilation by the Lead Authors into the draft section. Comment: Input from a wide range of contributors is a key element in the success of IPCC assessments, and the names of all contributors will be acknowledged in the Reports. Contributions are sometimes solicited by Lead Authors but unprompted contributions are encouraged.” [Emphasis added].

The report of the 21st session IPCC (Vienna, Austria, 3 and 6-7 November 2003)5 says –

5.4 Regarding nominations and selection of lead authors and expert reviewers the Panel noted the need for openness and transparency, the need to aim for geographical balance, involvement of new authors and for expanding the range of disciplines involved in preparing the AR4. [Emphasis added].

Although governments, participating organizations and the Working Group / Task Force Bureaux do indeed nominate potential contributing authors to any chapter, the final selection of authors is left to the Coordinating Lead authors and Lead Authors, who are also free to make appointments directly.

[ … ]

Peter Stott of the Hadley Centre in the UK was in the company of no fewer than eight contributing authors from the same establishment and one more from the University of East Anglia, a close associate of the Hadley Centre. The Hadley Centre deserves special note because not only did it supply nine authors but also 9 of the 62 reviewers of this chapter." Disconcertingly, two of the Hadley Centre’s contributing authors – Jones and Thorne – were among the reviewers of the chapter that they had themselves written. From this and other evidence, it is plain that the IPCC’s documents are not independently peer-reviewed in the generally accepted sense of that term.

Looking beyond chapter 9 for a moment, 37 of the UK's 79 reviewers of the science assessment report were employed by the Hadley Centre for Forecasting. The Hadley Centre’s strong and perhaps undue influence is not unprecedented. In the IPCC’s previous quinquennial science assessment in 2001, chapter 12 (the “attribution” chapter) had 5 of its 36 authors from the Hadley Centre - again the greatest number from a single organization. It is questionable whether a single establishment should have been permitted to exercise so much influence in what holds itself out to be a process involving the global scientific community.

Returning to chapter 9 of the 2007 science assessment, Table 3 shows that the 53 authors of chapter 9 came from just 31 organizations. Putting it another way, 30 authors of that chapter – more than half – had at least one colleague from the same establishment. Was the independence of science compromised by the collective zeitgeist of their establishments or were they deliberately drawn from such a narrow range of organizations that unanimity was effectively guaranteed in advance?

Many of these contributing authors appear to have been subordinates, either academically or professionally, to lead authors of the same chapter. Most lead authors have published many papers and appear to have worked in climatology for many years, while certain contributing authors from the same establishments have published few papers and seem to be relative newcomers. As Table 4 shows, of almost 200 nations affiliated to the IPCC only 12, or just 6%, were represented among the authors of chapter 9. Of the 53 authors, 44, or 83%, were from English-speaking countries. The United States, with 20 authors, and the UK, with 16, accounted between them for two-thirds of all the authors of chapter 9.

Table 4

Nationalities of affiliation of the authors of chapter 9

United States 20 (38%)
United Kingdom 16 (30%) 36 (67%) US and UK
Canada 5 (9%)
Australia 3 (6%) 44 (83%) English-speaking nations
France 2 (4%)
China 1 (2%)
Brazil 1 (2%)
Belgium 1 (2%)
Switzerland 1 (2%)
Japan 1 (2%)
Netherlands 1 (2%)
Germany 1 (2%) 53 authors of chapter 9 

What scientific papers did Chapter 9’s authors cite? Often, their own. Table 5 shows that, of the 534 papers cited in chapter 9, some 213, or 40 per cent, had appeared under the name of at least one chapter author6.

Of the published papers cited in chapter 9, 94 had been authored by two or more of that chapter’s authors. One cited paper had six chapter authors; five cited papers had five chapter authors each. Four chapter authors contributed to 10 cited papers, two of which were written entirely by authors of chapter 9. Three chapter authors contributed to 26 papers each, including 6 papers written entirely by chapter authors. Fifty of the cited papers listed 2 chapter authors each, and 10 of these papers were written entirely by chapter authors.

Myles Allen, a contributing author, co-authored papers with 20 other authors of chapter 9. Peter Stott, a lead author, co-authored papers with 18 other authors of chapter 9, and Simon Tett and Ben Santer had been coauthors with 16 and 15 other chapter authors respectively. These figures are not exclusive: Allen's coauthors, for instance, include Stott, Tett and Santer. Table 6 shows that 37 (or 70%) of the 53 authors of chapter 9, including both coordinating lead authors and five of the seven lead authors, are linked to one another through their co-authoring of published papers in the learned journals. Of the remaining 16 authors, two pairs, Crook & Nozawa and Wielicki & Wong, also co-authored papers cited in chapter 9.

The only truly independent lead authors are Luo and Marengo-Orsini, from China and Brazil, respectively. Among the contributing authors only Harvey, Levinson, Power, von Dorland and Rind have no apparent connections to one another or to other authors of chapter 9.

The relationships between most of the authors of chapter 9 demonstrate a disturbingly tight network of scientists with common research interests and opinions. The contrast between this close-knit group and the IPCC's stated claim to represent a global diversity of views is remarkable and does not augur well for the impartiality or integrity of chapter 9’s conclusions. Wegman et al7 identified a similar network of scientists in their notable critique of the now-discredited “hockey stick” 1000-year northern-hemisphere temperature graph by Mann et al. (1998, 1999, corrected 2004) that had featured six times, prominently, in full color and at full scale, in the IPCC’s 2001 assessment report. Wegman et al. described a closely-connected clique among palaeoclimatologists:

“One of the interesting questions associated with the ‘hockey stick controversy’ are the relationships among the authors and consequently how confident one can be in the peer review process. In particular, if there is a tight relationship among the authors and there are not a large number of individuals engaged in a particular topic area, then one may suspect that the peer review process does not fully vet papers before they are published. Indeed, a common practice among associate editors for scholarly journals is to look in the list of references for a submitted paper to see who else is writing in a given area and thus who might legitimately be called on to provide knowledgeable peer review. Of course, if a given discipline area is small and the authors in the area are tightly coupled, then this process is likely to turn up very sympathetic referees. These referees may have co-authored other papers with a given author. They may believe they know that author’s other writings well enough that errors can continue to propagate and indeed be reinforced.”

The same sentiments apply to the clique of 37 authors of chapter 9. How many had been co-authors of papers with other members of the clique, and how often were papers by clique members reviewed by other clique members?

 Under the IPCC’s procedures, the coordinating lead authors and lead authors are free to select contributing authors beyond those nominated by governments. Appointing other members of this clique as contributing authors would ensure that a particular viewpoint prevailed. On the evidence presented here, this incestuous arrangement was very much in place among the authors of chapter 9, ensuring that neither the papers nor the opinions of the growing band of serious climatologists who doubt that humankind has an actually or potentially harmful influence on the Earth’s climate are adequately represented in chapter 9.

Hegerl, one of the coordinating lead authors of chapter 9, had co-authored cited papers with two lead authors and eight contributing authors, as well as with Karoly, a review editor. "The other coordinating lead author, Zwiers, had co-authored cited papers with Hegerl, the same two lead authors as Hegerl, four contributing authors and with Karoly. Hegerl and Zwiers have also jointly co-authored papers. It is particularly regrettable that a review author should have had such close prior links with the co-coordinating lead authors of chapter 9.

Five of the seven lead authors of chapter 9 can be linked to contributing authors. Nicholls co-authored papers cited in chapter 9 with two contributing authors, Penner with four, Braconnot with five, Gillett with six and Stott with 14. In fact the two coordinating lead authors and seven lead authors in total co-authored papers with 23 of the 44 contributing authors of chapter 9. It is likely that further links would be discovered if the  search net was widened to include all peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Wegman, E.J., D.W. Scott and Y.H. Said (2006), Ad Hoc Committee Report on the 'Hockey Stick' Global Climate Reconstruction, ' available online at http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

David Karoly, one of the review editors, is an author of 13 of the papers cited in chapter 9. Seven of these papers list at least one author of chapter 9. One of the cited papers co-authored by Karoly was co-authored by 5 chapter authors. Ten chapter authors, including both coordinating lead authors and three of the seven lead authors (Gillet, Stott and Penner) were co-authors with Karoly on papers cited in chapter 9. The extent of this co-authoring makes Karoly the 38th member of the network of previous co-authorship.

For the IPCC’s 2001 science assessment, Karoly had been a coordinating lead author of the “attribution” chapter. His lead authors then were Hegerl, Zwiers, Marengo and Allen, The first two of these were to become coordinating lead authors of chapter 9 in the 2007 report. Marengo was probably the lead author noted in the 2007 report as Marengo-Orsini. Allen is also a contributing author of chapter 9.

The IPCC document has this to say about the role of review editors:

“4.2.4 ... Review Editors should normally consist of a member of the Working Group/Task Force Bureau, and an independent expert based on the lists provided by governments and participating organizations. Review Editors should not be involved in the preparation or review of material for which they are an editor. In selecting Review Editors, the Bureaux should select from developed and developing countries and from countries with economies in transition, and should aim for a balanced representation of scientific, technical, and socio-economic views.”

The close pre-existing connections between Karoly and many of the authors of chapter 9 raise doubts about the impartiality of the review process. Even if Karoly had acted entirely objectively and independently, in the circumstances he has not been seen to act objectively and independently.

The IPCC document continues – 

“5. … Review Editors will assist the Working Group/Task Force Bureaux in identifying reviewers for the expert review process, ensure that all substantive expert and government review comments are afforded appropriate consideration, advise lead authors on how to handle contentious/controversial issues and ensure genuine controversies are reflected adequately in the text of the Report.

“Although responsibility for the final text remains with the Lead Authors, Review Editors will need to ensure that where significant differences of opinion on scientific issues remain, such differences are described in an annex to the Report. Review Editors must submit a written report to the Working Group Sessions or the Panel and where appropriate, will be requested to attend Sessions of the Working Group and of the IPCC to communicate their findings from the review process.” [Emphasis added].

Though a certain political faction has attempted to present the notion that there is a scientific “consensus” about the human influence on “global warming”, there is no such consensus among scientists in climate and related fields. Since the previous IPCC climate report in 2001, a substantial number of papers frankly skeptical of the magnitude of the human influence on climate imagined by the IPCC have been published.

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