[Vision2020] IPCC Errors: Facts and Spin

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin/#more-2832

IPCC errors: facts and spin

Filed under:

   - Climate Science<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/>
   - Communicating
Climate<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/communicating-climate/>
   - IPCC<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/ipcc/>
   - Reporting on
climate<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/communicating-climate/reporting-on-climate/>
   - skeptics<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/communicating-climate/skeptics/>

— group @ 14 February 2010

Currently, a few errors –and supposed errors– in the last IPCC report
(“AR4″) are making the media rounds – together with a lot of distortion and
professional spin by parties interested in discrediting climate science.
Time for us to sort the wheat from the chaff: which of these putative errors
are real, and which not? And what does it all mean, for the IPCC in
particular, and for climate science more broadly?

Let’s start with a few basic facts about the
IPCC<http://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm>.
The IPCC is not, as many people seem to think, a large organization. In
fact, it has only 10 full-time staff in its secretariat at the World
Meteorological Organization in Geneva, plus a few staff in four technical
support units that help the chairs of the three IPCC working
groups<http://www.ipcc.ch/working_groups/working_groups.htm>and the
national greenhouse gas inventories group. The actual work of the
IPCC is done by unpaid volunteers – thousands of scientists at universities
and research institutes around the world who contribute as authors or
reviewers to the completion of the IPCC reports. A large fraction of the
relevant scientific community is thus involved in the effort.  The three
working groups are:

*Working Group 1 (WG1),* which deals with the physical climate science
basis, as assessed by the climatologists, including several of the
Realclimate authors.

*Working Group 2 (WG2)*, which deals with impacts of climate change on
society and ecosystems, as assessed by social scientists, ecologists, etc.

*Working Group 3 (WG3)* , which deals with mitigation options for limiting
global warming, as assessed by energy experts, economists, etc.

Assessment reports are published every six or seven years and writing them
takes about three years. Each working group publishes one of the three
volumes of each assessment. The focus of the recent allegations is the
Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), which was published in 2007.  Its three
volumes are almost a thousand pages *each*, in small print. They were
written by over 450 lead authors and 800 contributing authors; most were not
previous IPCC authors. There are three stages of review involving more than
2,500 expert reviewers who collectively submitted 90,000 review comments on
the drafts. These, together with the authors’ responses to them, are all in
the public record <http://hcl.harvard.edu/collections/ipcc/>.

*Errors in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)*

As far as we’re aware, so far only one–or at most two–legitimate errors have
been found in the AR4:

*Himalayan glaciers:* In a regional chapter on Asia in Volume 2, written by
authors from the region, it was erroneously stated that 80% of Himalayan
glacier area would very likely be gone by 2035. This is of course not the
proper IPCC projection of future glacier decline, which is found in Volume 1
of the report. There we find a 45-page, perfectly valid chapter on glaciers,
snow and ice (Chapter
4<http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter4.pdf>),
with the authors including leading glacier experts (such as our colleague
Georg Kaser from Austria, who first discovered the Himalaya error in the WG2
report).  There are also several pages on future glacier decline in Chapter
10 <http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf>(“Global
Climate Projections”), where the proper projections are used e.g.
to estimate future sea level rise. So the problem here is not that the
IPCC’s glacier experts made an incorrect prediction. The problem is that a
WG2 chapter, instead of relying on the proper IPCC projections from their
WG1 colleagues, cited an unreliable outside source in one place. Fixing this
error involves deleting two sentences on page 493 of the WG2
report<http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter10.pdf>
.

*Sea level in the Netherlands:* The WG2 report states that “The Netherlands
is an example of a country highly susceptible to both sea-level rise and
river flooding because 55% of its territory is below sea level”. This
sentence was provided by a Dutch government agency – the Netherlands
Environmental Assessment Agency, which has now published a
correction<http://www.pbl.nl/en/dossiers/Climatechange/content/correction-wording-flood-risks.html>stating
that the sentence should have read “55 per cent of the Netherlands
is at risk of flooding; 26 per cent of the country is below sea level, and
29 per cent is susceptible to river flooding”. It surely will go down as one
of the more ironic episodes in its history when the Dutch parliament last
Monday derided the IPCC, in a heated debate, for printing information
provided by … the Dutch government. In addition, the IPCC notes that there
are several definitions of the area below sea level. The Dutch Ministry of
Transport uses the figure 60% (below high water level during storms), while
others use 30% (below mean sea level). Needless to say, the actual number
mentioned in the report has no bearing on any IPCC conclusions and has
nothing to do with climate science, and it is questionable whether it should
even be counted as an IPCC error.

*Some other issues*

*African crop yields:* The IPCC Synthesis Report states: “By 2020, in some
countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%.”
This is properly referenced back to chapter 9.4 of WG2, which says: “In
other countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate
change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed
agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-2020 period, and reductions in crop
growth period (Agoumi, 2003).”  The Agoumi reference is correct and reported
correctly. The Sunday Times, in an article by Jonathan
Leake,<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017907.ece>labels
this issue “Africagate” – the main criticism being that Agoumi (2003)
is not a peer-reviewed study (see below for our comments on “gray”
literature), but a report from the International Institute for Sustainable
Development and the Climate Change Knowledge Network, funded by the US
Agency for International Development. The report, written by Morroccan
climate expert Professor Ali Agoumi, is a summary of technical studies and
research conducted to inform Initial National Communications from three
countries (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, and is a perfectly legitimate IPCC reference.

It is noteworthy that chapter 9.4 continues with “However, there is the
possibility that adaptation could reduce these negative effects (Benhin,
2006).”  Some examples thereof follow, and then it states: *“However, not
all changes in climate and climate variability will be negative, as
agriculture and the growing seasons in certain areas (for example, parts of
the Ethiopian highlands and parts of southern Africa such as Mozambique),
may lengthen under climate change, due to a combination of increased
temperature and rainfall changes (Thornton et al., 2006). Mild climate
scenarios project further benefits across African croplands for irrigated
and, especially, dryland farms.” *(Incidentally, the Benhin and Thornton
references are also “gray”, but nobody has complained about them. Could
there be double standards amongst the IPCC’s critics?)

Chapter 9.4 to us sounds like a balanced discussion of potential risks and
benefits, based on the evidence available at the time–hardly the stuff for
shrill “Africagate!” cries. If the IPCC can be criticized here, it is that
in condensing these results for its Synthesis Report, important nuance and
qualification were lost – especially the point that the risk of drought
(defined as a 50% downturn in rainfall) “could be exacerbated by climate
change”, as chapter 9.4 wrote – rather than being outright caused by climate
change.

*Trends in disaster losses:* Jonathan Leake (again) in The Sunday
Times<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece>accused
the IPCC of wrongly linking global warming to natural disasters. The
IPCC in a statement
<http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/statement_25_01_2010.pdf>points out
errors in Leake’s “misleading and baseless story”, and maintains that the
IPCC provided “a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue”.
While we agree with the IPCC here, WG2 did include a debatable graph
provided by Robert
Muir-Wood<http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipcc-mystery-graph-solved.html>(although
not in the main report but only as Supplementary Material). It
cited a paper by Muir-Wood as its source although that paper doesn’t include
the graph, only the analysis that it is based on. Muir-Wood himself has gone
on record <http://www.rms.com/Publications/2010_FAQ_IPCC.pdf> to say that
the IPCC has fairly represented his research findings and that it was
appropriate to include them in the report. In our view there is no IPCC
error here; at best there is a difference of opinion. Obviously, not every
scientist will always agree with assessments made by the IPCC author teams.

*Amazon forest dieback: *Leake (yet
again)<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009705.ece>,
with “research” by skeptic Richard North, has also promoted “Amazongate”
with a story regarding a WG2 statement on the future of Amazonian forests
under a drying climate.  The contested IPCC
statement<http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch13s13-4.html#13-4-1>reads:
“Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a
slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation,
hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to
another steady state, not necessarily producing gradual changes between the
current and the future situation (Rowell and Moore, 2000).”  Leake’s problem
is with the Rowell and
Moore<http://data.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/2000-047.pdf>reference, a
WWF report.

The roots of the story are in two blog
<http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/and-now-for-amazongate.html>pieces<http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/corruption-of-science.html>by
North, in which he first claims that the IPCC assertions attributed to
the WWF report are not actually in that report. Since this claim was
immediately shown to be false,  North then argued that the WWF report’s
basis for their statement (a 1999 *Nature *article by Nepstad et al.) dealt
only with the effects of logging and fire –not drought– on Amazonian
forests. To these various claims Nepstad has now
responded<http://www.whrc.org/resources/online_publications/essays/2010-02-Nepstad_Amazon.htm>,
noting that the IPCC statement *is in fact correct*. The only issue is that
the IPCC cited the WWF report rather than the underlying peer-reviewed
papers by Nepstad et al. These studies actually provide the  basis for the
IPCC’s estimate on Amazonian sensitivity to drought. Investigations of the
correspondence between Leake, scientists, and a BBC reporter (see
here<http://climatesafety.org/swallowing-lies-how-the-denial-lobby-feeds-the-press/>and
here <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8488395.stm> and
here<http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/02/forest-scientis.html>)
show that Leake ignored or misrepresented explanatory information given to
him by Nepstad and another expert, Simon Lewis, and published his incorrect
story anyway. This “issue” is thus completely without merit.* *

*Gray literature:* The IPCC cites 18,000 references in the AR4; the vast
majority of these are peer-reviewed scientific journal papers. The IPCC
maintains a clear
guideline<http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/press/ipcc-statement-principles-procedures-02-2010.pdf>on
the responsible use of so-called “gray” literature, which are
typically
reports by other organizations or governments. Especially for Working Groups
2 and 3 (but in some cases also for 1) it is indispensable to use gray
sources, since many valuable data are published in them: reports by
government statistics offices, the International Energy Agency, World Bank,
UNEP and so on. This is particularly true when it comes to regional impacts
in the least developed countries, where knowledgeable local experts exist
who have little chance, or impetus, to publish in international science
journals.

Reports by non-governmental organizations like the WWF can be used (as in
the Himalaya glacier and Amazon forest cases) but any information from them
needs to be carefully checked (this guideline was not followed in the former
case). After all, the role of the IPCC is to *assess *information, not just
compile anything it finds.  Assessment involves a level of critical
judgment, double-checking, weighing supporting and conflicting pieces of
evidence, and a critical appreciation of the methodology used to obtain the
results. That is why leading researchers need to write the assessment
reports – rather than say, hiring graduate students to compile a
comprehensive literature review.

*Media distortions*

To those familiar with the science and the IPCC’s work, the current media
discussion is in large part simply absurd and surreal. Journalists who have
never even peeked into the IPCC report are now outraged that one wrong
number appears on page 493 of Volume 2. We’ve met TV teams coming to film a
report on the IPCC reports’ errors, who were astonished when they held one
of the heavy volumes in hand, having never even seen it. They told us
frankly that they had no way to make their own judgment; they could only
report what they were being told about it. And there are well-organized
lobby forces<http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/exxonmobil-report-smoke.html>with
proper PR skills that make sure these journalists are being told the
“right” story. That explains why some media stories about what is supposedly
said in the IPCC reports can easily be falsified simply by opening the
report and reading. Unfortunately, as a broad-based volunteer effort with
only minimal organizational structure the IPCC is not in a good position to
rapidly counter misinformation.

One near-universal meme of the media stories on the Himalaya mistake was
that this was “one of the most central predictions of the IPCC” – apparently
in order to make the error look more serious than it was.  However, this
prediction does not appear in any of the IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers,
nor in the Synthesis Report (which at least partly explains why it went
unnoticed for years). None of the media reports that we saw properly
explained that Volume 1 (which is where projections of physical climate
changes belong) has an extensive and entirely valid discussion of glacier
loss.

What apparently has happened is that interested quarters, after the Himalyan
glacier story broke, have sifted through the IPCC volumes with a
fine-toothed comb, hoping to find more embarrassing errors. They have
actually found precious little, but the little they did find was promptly
hyped into Seagate, Africagate, Amazongate and so on. This has some
similarity to the CRU email
theft<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/>,
where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a
few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like
“hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.

As lucidly analysed by Tim
Holmes<http://climatesafety.org/swallowing-lies-how-the-denial-lobby-feeds-the-press/>,
there appear to be a few active leaders of this misinformation parade in the
media. Jonathan Leake is carrying the ball on this, but his stories contain
multiple errors, misrepresentations and misquotes. There also is a sizeable
contingent of me-too journalism that is simply repeating the stories but not
taking the time to form a well-founded view on the topics. Typically they
report on various “allegations”, such as these  against the IPCC, similar to
reporting that the CRU email hack lead to “allegations of data
manipulation”. Technically it isn’t even wrong that there were such
allegations. But isn’t it the responsibility of the media to actually *
investigate* whether allegations have any merit before they decide to repeat
them?

Leake incidentally attacked the scientific work of one of us (Stefan)
in a Sunday
Times article<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6982299.ece>in
January. This article was rather biased and contained some factual
errors
that Stefan asked to be
corrected<http://www.realclimate.org/docs/rahmstorf_leake_email.txt>.
He has received no response, nor was any correction made. Two British
scientists quoted by Leake – Jonathan Gregory and Simon Holgate –
independently wrote to Stefan after the article appeared to say they had
been badly misquoted. One of them wrote that the experience with Leake had
made him “reluctant to speak to any journalist about any subject at all”.

*Does the IPCC need to change?*

The IPCC has done a very good job so far, but certainly there is room for
improvement. The review procedures could be organized better, for example.
Until now, anyone has been allowed to review any part of the IPCC drafts
they liked, but there was no coordination in the sense that say, a glacier
expert was specifically assigned to double-check parts of the WG2 chapter on
Asia. Such a practice would likely have caught the Himalayan glacier
mistake. Another problem has been that reports of all three working groups
had to be completed nearly at the same time, making it hard for WG2 to
properly base their discussions on the conclusions and projections from WG1.
This has already been improved on for the AR5, for which the WG2 report can
be completed six months after the WG1 report.

Also, these errors revealed that the IPCC had no mechanism to publish
errata. Since a few errors will inevitably turn up in a 2800-page report,
obviously an avenue is needed to publish errata as soon as errors are
identified.

*Is climate science sound?*

In some media reports the impression has been given that even the
fundamental results of climate change science are now in question, such as
whether humans are in fact changing the climate, causing glacier melt, sea
level rise and so on. The IPCC does not carry out primary research, and
hence any mistakes in the IPCC reports do not imply that any climate
research itself is wrong. A reference to a poor report or an editorial lapse
by IPCC authors obviously does not undermine climate science. Doubting basic
results of climate science based on the recent claims against the IPCC is
particularly ironic since none of the real or supposed errors being
discussed are even in the Working Group 1 report, where the climate science
basis is laid out.

To be fair to our colleagues from WG2 and WG3, climate scientists do have a
much simpler task. The system we study is ruled by the well-known laws of
physics, there is plenty of hard data and peer-reviewed studies, and the
science is relatively mature. The greenhouse effect was discovered in 1824
by Fourier, the heat trapping properties of CO2 and other gases were first
measured by Tyndall in 1859, the climate sensitivity to CO2 was first
computed in 1896 by Arrhenius, and by the 1950s the scientific foundations
were pretty much understood.

Do the above issues suggest “politicized science”, deliberate deceptions or
a tendency towards alarmism on the part of IPCC? We do not think there is
any factual basis for such allegations. To the contrary, large groups of
(inherently cautious) scientists attempting to reach a consensus in a
societally important collaborative document is a prescription for reaching
generally “conservative” conclusions. And indeed, before the recent media
flash broke out, the real discussion amongst experts was about the AR4
having underestimated, not exaggerated, certain aspects of climate
change. These include such important topics as sea level rise and sea ice
decline (see the sea ice and sea level chapters of the Copenhagen
Diagnosis<http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.org/>),
where the data show that things are changing faster than the IPCC expected.

Overall then, the IPCC assessment reports reflect the state of scientific
knowledge very well. There have been a few isolated errors, and these have
been acknowledged and corrected. What is seriously amiss is something else:
the public perception of the IPCC, and of climate science in general, has
been massively distorted by the recent media storm. All of these various
“gates” – Climategate, Amazongate, Seagate, Africagate, etc., do not
represent scandals of the IPCC or of climate science. Rather, they are the
embarrassing battle-cries of a media scandal, in which a few journalists
have misled the public with grossly overblown or entirely fabricated
pseudogates, and many others have naively and willingly followed along
without seeing through the scam. It is not up to us as climate scientists to
clear up this mess – it is up to the media world itself to put this right
again, e.g. by publishing proper analysis pieces like the one of Tim
Holmes<http://climatesafety.org/swallowing-lies-how-the-denial-lobby-feeds-the-press/>and
by issuing formal corrections of their mistaken reporting. We will
follow with great interest whether the media world has the professional and
moral integrity to correct its own errors.

*PS.* A new book by Realclimate-authors David Archer and Stefan Rahmstorf
critically discussing the main findings of the AR4 (all three volumes) is
just out: The Climate
Crisis<http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/climate_crisis.html>.
None of the real or alleged errors are in this book, since none of those
contentious statements plucked from the thousands of pages appeared to be
“main findings” that needed to be discussed in a 250-page summary.

*PPS.* Same thing for Mike’s book Dire Predictions: Understanding Global
Warming <http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/news/DirePredictions/index.html>,
which bills itself as “The illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC”.
Or Gavin’s “Climate Change: Picturing the
Science<http://ghgphotos.com/picturingclimatechange/>”
– which does include a few pictures of disappearing glaciers though!

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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