I have read the book
The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken For The World’s Top Climate Expert” by Donna Laframboise
and highly recommend it. The book effectively summarizes a number of substantive issues with the IPCC assessment process. We need more such investigative examinations of the objectivety (actually its lack) in the reports on our current knowledge of the climate system. There is a book by Marcel Crok that also adds significant information to this subject, but it is in Dutch [with an English version expected soon hopefully!].
In reading the book, I found one significant misstatement. It is reported that referees of peer reviewed papers are made unaware of who the authors are (i.e. that they would be doing blind reviews). This is not correct for any paper that I have been involved in, both as an author and as a referee. The author(s) of the submitted manuscript are known.
The message of an inadequate climate assessment, therefore, also carries over to peer reviewed papers, and biased Editors can exclude articles by certain scientists that conflict with their world view of the climate debate. Since the IPCC is supposed to use peer reviewed papers [although as Donna reports, they have violated this rule numerous times], this means that Editors have a major role as to what gets into the IPCC report.
I wrote Donna the following e-mail after reading her book
Hi Ms. Laframboise – I am enjoying reading your excellent book!
In case you have not seen my experiences with the IPCC and a USA report that was prepared for the 2007 report, please see, for example,
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. https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/nr-143.pdf.
Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy. Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp. https://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/testimony-written.pdf
My Comments For The InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/my-comments-on-questionnaire-on-ipcc-processes-and-procedures/
Keep up the really important service you are doing!
Roger Sr.
In my comments for the InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC, I include the statements
I have had a long experience with the IPCC assessment process starting in about 1992.
As I have written on in papers and on weblog posts….. the IPCC involves a top down management of the chapters. The 2007 Statement for Policymakers is a narrowly focused summary which was used to promote the perspective of climate variability and change of the organizers and leadership of the IPCC assessments.Without new scientists leading the IPCC process as LAs and CLAs who are not assessing their own research work, the next IPCC report is doomed to continue to be completed by an oligarchy that is using its privileged position to advocate for a particular perspective on the role of humans within the climate system which conforms with their published research.
The next IPCC report will not be a balanced assessment, but continue to be real conflict of interest with policy advocacy in the guise of a scientific framework.
Future assessment Committees need to appoint members with a diversity of views and who do not have a significant conflict of interest with respect to their own work. Such Committees should be chaired by individuals committed to the presentation of a diversity of perspectives and unwilling to engage in tactics to enforce a narrow perspective. Any such committee should be charged with summarizing all relevant literature, even if inconvenient, or which presents a view not held by certain members of the Committee.
Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. 