Friday, March 23, 2007

Strong evidence that policy is driving the science

Correction: Editors of Junkscience.com WorkGroup 1 of the UN's IPPC 4th Assessment Team is are throwing out the yellow flag.

Make that the red flag.

Despite the exhortation: "PLEASE DO NOT CITE, QUOTE, OR DISTRIBUTE THE DRAFT REPORT"we feel we have been left with no choice by the bizarre actions of the IPCC. What kind of "science" distributes a summary and then withholds the underlying report for a further three months editing to make it concur with the already distributed summary? Don't believe it? Neither did we but the plain language statement of intent is here (search for "grammatical" -- it's on page 4 of 15) and the original IPCC procedures document is (was) here -- in their words:

"Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter."

Surely science has not degenerated to the point that research must now conform to pre-released summaries, even in the purely political IPCC.


That's right. We, the politicians have made the statement we wanted to make. We will spend the next three months editing what the scientists wrote to make sure it is consistent with what we said. That way we can say "The worlds top scientists agree. We have consensus."

Hello, people!!!!


So it wasn't the scientists on the assessment team that made the statement -- it doesn't make the point any less valid.

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