Blandt Monokulturs legioner af læsere spørges der ind imellem om, hvorfor jeg skriver om det ekstremt usexede emne, klima. Quadrant Online leverer et svar i form af et citat fra FN’s Klimapanels formand Rachendra Panchauri

We have been so drunk with this desire to produce and consume more and more whatever the cost to the environment that we’re on a totally unsustainable path,” he says. “I am not going to rest easy until I have articulated in every possible forum the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development. That’s the real issue. Climate change is just a part of it.

Det turde være svar nok. Anledningen er en ny bog, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, af Donna Laframboise om FN’s Klimapanels forståelse af forskning, kompetence og konsensus.

Peer Review and the IPCC 

In 2008, Pachauri addressed a committee of the North Carolina legislature:

…we carry out an assessment of climate change based on peer-reviewed literature, so everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry [the] credibility of peer-reviewed publications, we don’t settle for anything less than that.

The reality:

• Of 18,531 citations in the 2007 IPCC Assessment Report, 5,587 or 30% were non-peer-reviewed material, including activist tracts, press releases, and in one amazing case, “Version One” of a Draft. 
   
• Of the 44 chapters, 12 chapters involved a majority of non-peer-reviewed citations. Five chapters involved 71-85% non-peer-reviewed material. Overall, in 21 chapters 59% or less of the citations were peer-reviewed-material. Conversely, only eight chapters scored 90% or better for using peer-reviewed material.
   
• Not one of hundreds or even thousands of in-the-know IPCC scientists sought to correct Pachauri’s misleading claim to legislators. 
   
• In important instances, IPCC lead authors chose non-peer-reviewed material, or papers of low credibility, favoring their argument, in the face of prolific peer-reviewed material to the contrary. Instances include alleged climate relevance to malaria, hurricanes, species extinction, and sea levels. 
   
• IPCC rules were that non-peer citations could indeed be used but should be flagged as such. But out of the 5,587 non-peer citations, a grand total of six, or 0.1% , were flagged as per IPCC rules. After the InterAcademy Council in 2010 demanded that the flagging be strengthened and enforced, the IPCC in May 2011 dispensed with the flagging rule altogether! 

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