Pachauri's racy thesis
The IPCC has just completed its 3 day meeting in Busan. The absence of any courage by any of the delegates or by their Chairman is apparent. Rather than implement all the recommendations of the IAC review they have just accepted all the easy bits and shuffled off the more painful corrections to be studied in committee. The Chairman himself has not had the courage to swallow his overweening pride and return quietly to Almora. (A psychiatrist might be able to explain the connections between his public utterances and his steamy novel).
(The IPCC) meeting in South Korea closed with many other reforms proposed in a recent review being passed to committees for further consideration. Chairman Rajendra Pachauri confirmed his intention to stay in post until the next assessment is published in 2014. In its recent review of the IPCC, the InterAcademy Council (IAC) – an umbrella group for the world’s science academies – highlighted a case in the 2007 assessment where studies projecting rapidly declining crop yields in Africa were given more weight than they merited, in the absence of supporting evidence.
The revised guidance emphasises that in future, authors must assess both the quality of research available and uncertainties within that research.
t urges authors to be careful of “group-think”, but maintains that it “may be appropriate to describe findings for which the evidence and understanding are overwhelming as statements of fact without using uncertainty qualifiers”.
Enhanced guidance on the use of “grey literature” – material not published in peer-reviewed scientific journals – has also been drawn up, and will be finalised by chairs of the IPCC’s working groups in the coming months.
Procedures for correcting errors should they arise were also approved – which means that the most serious error in the 2007 report, on the projected melting date for Himalayan glaciers, can be formally repaired.
The k2p blog 