Al Gore und Rajendra Pachauri, der Chef des Weltklimarates (IPCC), haben heute in Stockholm den Friedensnobelpreis entgegengenommen. Eine von mir dieser Tage herausgegebene Sondernummer der wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift Energy & Environment beschäftig sich recht kritisch mit der Struktur und Politik des umstrittenen Weltklimarates. Eine genau Inhaltsangabe der E&E Sondernummer findet sich am Ende meines editorials:

IPCC: THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN?

Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, Faculty of Science, Liverpool L3 23ET, UK,
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/EE%2018-7+8-editorial.pdf

During the last decade, climate experts and government officials from more than 100 countries have unanimously agreed the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s analysis, its review of scientific literature and its predictions have been carefully scrutinised by governments and generally accepted. The unanimous political support the IPCC has obtained from the international community represents a comprehensive consensus on the science and economics of climate change.

Despite this globally sanctioned agreement, there have been serious reservations about the way the IPCC works and how it produces its conclusions. Two years ago, the Economic Affairs Committee of Britain’s House of Lords concluded that there are concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, and the influence of political considerations in its findings.

In this special issue of E&E, a number of authors have raised some of the pertinent problems of the IPCC and its political culture. They range from the conflict of interest notable among IPCC editors who are charged with assessing their own research, to the political selection of IPCC officials and administrators.

There can be little doubt that the IPCC and its scientists have been instrumental in turning doom-laden computer models into an apocalyptic consensus. Despite attempts to tone down some of the more alarming language, the latest IPCC report (AR4) predicts that unrestrained CO2 emissions may cause mass extinctions, devastating floods, heatwaves, storms and droughts that, in course, may trigger economic disaster and social upheaval.

For the last 10 years, one IPCC report after another has been responsible for a relentless outpouring of disaster predictions that have been published and promulgated with little hesitation and rising alarm. Any lingering reservation about looming catastrophe that can be found in the small print of the latest IPCC report are routinely ignored, while uncertainties are conveniently disregarded and highly unlikely worst case scenarios exaggerated.

There can be little doubt that the IPCC’s disaster scenarios have been converted into a general consensus among the world’s political and academic elites. Ironically, the apocalyptic predictions of the future are politically sanctioned at the same time as a growing number of scientists are recognising that environmental and economic computer modelling of an inherently unpredictable future is illogical and futile. As the eminent mathematician David Orrell has pointed out:

“The track record of any kind of long-distance prediction is really bad, but everyone’s still really interested in it. It’s sort of a way of picturing the future. But we can’t make long-term predictions of the economy, and we can’t make long-term predictions of the climate. Models will cheerfully boil away all the water in the oceans or cover the world in ice, even with pre-industrial levels of CO2 When models about the future climate are in agreement, it says more about the selfregulating group psychology of the modelling community than it does about global warming and the economy.” (David Orrell, The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction, New York 2007)

Be that as it may, the reality of the IPCC consensus should not be underestimated. Its political weight and growing demands for drastic economic intervention is posing a serious political predicament for many governments, most of which find themselves unable to control let alone reduce rising CO2 emissions.

Despite the international consensus among climate scientists, science organisations and governments, there is a small minority of researchers and economists who are deeply concerned about the apocalyptic nature of the climate discourse and the potential risk collective anxieties and mass hysteria pose for political and economic stability.

It is this concern about the potentially destabilising consequences of imprudent policies based on unbalanced expert advise that have led to calls for a reform of the IPCC. At the recent UN meeting on climate change in New York on 24 September 2007, for instance, Václav Klaus, the Czech president, called on the international community to radically reform the IPCC process:

“The UN should prepare two parallel IPCC’s and publish two competing reports. To get rid of the one-sided monopoly is a sine qua non for an efficient and rational debate. Providing the same or comparable financial backing to both groups of scientists would be a good starting point.”

At the same time, there is also growing criticism among environmental researchers and campaigners who are concerned that the IPCC consensus is far too “conservative”. According to these critics, the alleged shortcoming has prevented the IPCC from including the views of climate modellers who advocate worst-case scenarios. These campaigners, too, are calling for IPCC reform: in future reports, the IPCC should include minority views of “unlikely but plausible processes,” thus “emphasizing areas of disagreement that arose during the assessment” (Oppenheimer et al., Science, 14 September 2007).

Economic critics, such as David Henderson, on the other hand (this issue), have called on the world’s economic and finance ministers to get involved in the IPCC process which, until today, has been dominated, from top to bottom, by environmental departments, their ministers and green bureaucrats.

What then are the chances of significant reforms of the IPCC in the near future? What is the likelihood that its intergovernmental structure and workings will change?

I think it would be wise to remain realistic. After all, the IPCC merely reflects the ecological paradigm and political will of most of its member states. Most governments in the developed world have either integrated the green wing of their parties or have come under escalating pressure by the environmental movement. The IPCC’s agenda and its catastrophic framing of climate change is thus driven by government departments staffed by green ministers, civil servants and researchers, most of whom have strong personal backgrounds in environmental campaigning and ecological ideologies.

Given the supremacy of environmental rhetoric and philosophy among the political elites in the Western world , it is highly unlikely that there will be significant changes to the IPCC in the near future. As long as Western governments (who are basically running and funding the IPCC bureaucracy) are convinced that its structure and policies are in their overall interest, they are unlikely to create any incentives or political pressure to reform a body widely regarded to be working in the West’s very own interest.

More than 30 years ago, Anthony Downs demonstrated persuasively that public attitudes towards environmental problems always go through what he called an ecological “issue-attention cycle”. According to his model, the typical issue-attention cycle is started off with alarmed discovery and euphoric attempts to solve “the problem” – until the realisation of insupportable costs eventually brings about a gradual decline of intense public interest (Anthony Downs, “Up and down with the ecology: the “Issue-Attention Cycle”, The Public Interest 28:1972, 38-50).

It is far too early to consider whether or not the current climate change anxiety will fit Downs’ predictive model. Nonetheless, it is more than likely that any significant IPCC reforms will ultimately depend on the economic and political cost its workings will burden national economies. If governments were to concede that the cure promoted by the IPCC turns out to be worse than the ailment, only if the price of climate hysteria eclipses the value of political and economic stability, can we realistically hope for a comprehensive reorganization of international climate science and policy-making.

-----------
IPCC: STRUCTURE, PROCESS AND POLICY

Energy & Environment 18:7-8, December 2007 http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mscp/ene/2007/00000018/f0020007;jsessionid=s4kk8elw7mh3.henrietta

Editorial
IPCC: The Only Game in Town?
pp. i-iii(1)
Author: Peiser, Benny

Some Observations on the IPCC Assessment Process 1988-2007
pp. 869-892(24)
Author: Zillman, John W.

Digging Up the Roots of the IPCC
pp. 893-907(15)
Author: Gilland, Tony

Unwarranted Trust: A Critique of the IPCC Process
pp. 909-928(20)
Author: Henderson, David

Biased Policy Advice from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
pp. 929-936(8)
Author: Tol, Richard S.J.

Taking Greenhouse Warming Seriously
pp. 937-950(14)
Author: Lindzen, Richard S.

Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process: The “Hockey-Stick” Affair and Its Implications
pp. 951-983(33)
Author: Holland, David

The Fraud Allegation Against Some Climatic Research of Wei-Chyung Wang
pp. 985-995(11)
Author: Keenan, Douglas J.

Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts
pp. 997-1021(25)
Authors: Green, Kesten C.; Armstrong, J. Scott

Is a Richer-but-warmer World Better than Poorer-but-cooler Worlds?
pp. 1023-1048(26)
Author: Goklany, Indur M.

A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies
pp. 1049-1058(10)
Author: Loehle, Craig

Temporal Variability in Local Air Temperature Series Shows Negative Feedback
pp. 1059-1072(14)
Authors: Kärner, Olavi

The IPCC: Structure, Processes and Politics Climate Change - the Failure of Science
pp. 1073-1078(6)
Author: Alexander, William J.R.

Fuel for Thought: May - August 2007
pp. 1079-1158(80)
Author: Boehmer-Christiansen, Sonja