There is a news article today by Ed Barnes of Fox News titled “New Climate Agency Head Tried to Suppress Data, Critics Charge“. The article accurately summarizes issues associated with the appointment of Thomas Karl as the head of a new Climate office. As reported in the article, he
“has been criticized for trying to suppress contradictory scientific data on climate change.”
I documented the process by which Tom Karl excluded other viewpoints in my Public Comment
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“. 88 pp including appendices.
which I wrote after I resigned from the CCSP Committee (not the IPCC Committee as given in the article).
Excerpts from the Executive Summary of my report read
“The process for completing the CCSP Report excluded valid scientific perspectives under the charge of the Committee. The Editor of the Report [Tom Karl] systematically excluded a range of views on the issue of understanding and reconciling lower atmospheric temperature trends. The Executive Summary of the CCSP Report ignores critical scientific issues and makes unbalanced conclusions concerning our current understanding of temperature trends”
and
“The process that produced the report was highly political, with the Editor taking the lead in suppressing my perspectives, most egregiously demonstrated by the last-minute substitution of a new Chapter 6 for the one I had carefully led preparation of and on which I was close to reaching a final consensus. Anyone interested in the production of comprehensive assessments of climate science should be troubled by the process which I document below in great detail that led to the replacement of the Chapter that I was serving as Convening Lead Author.
Karl’s narrow and incorrect view of the climate issues is illustrated yet again in the quote from the Fox News article where it is written
“Responding to the criticism, Karl told the Washington Post, “the literature doesn’t show [Pielke’s] ideas about the importance of land use are correct.”
This statement, if he was quoted correctly, shows just one example of why he is ill-suited to serve as head of a new climate office.
The literature is extensive on the major role of land surface change within the climate system as documented, for example, in the multi-authored assessment reports
National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp
and
Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system. Springer, Berlin, Global Change – The IGBP Series, 566 pp
and summarized most recently in
Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union.
For Tom Karl to cavalierly dismiss the peer-reviewed evidence of the major role of land surface processes documents his inaccurate narrow view on the climate issue.
It is disappointing that he has chosen to use his position to promote this particular perspective, as well as deliberately worked to exclude other views.
Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. 