Coming soon … Busy bees in the hive: IPCC’s AR5 (the movie)

In a somewhat remarkable departure from the longstanding IPCC tradition of delaying by several months the release of the “reports” underlying its Summaries for Policymakers (and the very carefully prepared Press Releases on the line-by-line Approval of the latter), it seems that when the IPCC gathers for the “very intensive” process of “approving” the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of Working Group I’s contribution to the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report, the powers that be have decreed that the “approved” SPM and the underlying (subject to final editing) Report will be released almost simultaneously) [h/t Marcel Crok] – although it is not yet clear when the earlier drafts, Expert Reviewer Comments, author responses thereto and Review Editors’ findings will be released.

This giant leap forward in “transparency” is a decision that appears to have been made by the Executive Committee of the IPCC, back in February:

SEVENTEENTH MEETING OF THE IPCC EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Geneva, Switzerland – 27 February 2013, 2:00-7:00PM

Participants:

Members:
R. K. Pachauri (Chair); all Members of the Executive Committee.

Advisory Members:
R. Christ; P. Midgley; D. Dokken; J. Minx; L. Meyer.

Others:
G. Leone (minutes); J. Lynn; N. Leprince-Ringuet (silent observer upon request of the Chair).

Hmmmm … “all Members of the Executive Committee”?! You’d think that if they found enough space on the page to list someone who wasn’t going to be speaking anyway, they could also have listed all those whose voices might have been heard, even if they weren’t! Then again, perhaps a “super executive” decision had been made not to draw any unnecessary attention to the fact that – in keeping with so many of the “responses” and “decisions” made pursuant to the recommendations of the InterAcademy Council (IAC)’s review of the IPCC in 2010 – the IPCC powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, had simply thumbed their noses at the IAC’s recommendations, while pretending to be following them!

But the minutes record that, as part of the discussion on:

2. COMMUNICATION AND OUTREACH ACTIVITIES
2.1 AR5 Outreach Programme

[…]

The Head, WGIII TSU, enquired about the IPCC Facebook account. It was agreed that this issue would be discussed at the next ExCom meeting.

[Which resulted in the following “Action Item” to be acted upon by the Secretariat with a “Deadline” of April 2013]:

To include the item IPCC Facebook account to the agenda of the 18th Meeting of the ExCom (3 April 2013).

This suggested to me (albeit, in hindsight, quite wrongly) that the IPCC Executive Committee (and/or the Secratariat) was looking into the possibility of acquiring a Facebook account. So I decided to do my own due diligence. Turns out that the IPCC has apparently had a Facebook account since at least … 1990 (or 1988 when something was “created” and included):

If you’re wondering about the fuzzy fine-print preceding the image above, here it is:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. The UN General Assembly endorsed the action by WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC.

Isn’t it amazing that even in 1990 (or 1988) it had been determined (although I’m not sure by whom!) that the IPCC was the “leading international body for the assessment of climate change”. In light of the IPCC’s documented parentage, it does present somewhat of a challenge to the current Chair, Rajendra K. Pachauri’s repeated claims to the effect that the IPCC is not a UN organization.

So let’s take a Facebook fast-forward, so to speak to the IPCC’s posting of November 2011 which includes the following:

Just in case you happened to miss it (and/or decided not to view the video in all its alarming glory) note the “we can have things both ways” disclaimer at the end of this “outreach via Facebook” video:

But I digress …

If you happened to choose to peruse these Feb. 2013 minutes of the IPCC Executive committee, you will have also noted that:

In response to the concern expressed by T. Stocker, Co-Chair, WGI, that time may be tight for the preparation of an AR5 video before the WGI approval session, the Communications Manager commented that he had already been in touch with a number of individuals interested in producing it, and that the request for proposals had been launched by WMO. He expressed confidence that the film can be prepared in time.

[Source]

OMG, another “outreach” movie in the making! I wonder if it will end with the same disclaimer as that which concluded their “we can have it both ways” SREX “outreach” movie.

Don’t know about you, but prior to November 2009, I had never even heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Nor of one of its great Canadian novellists contributors, climate modeller, Andrew Weaver.

Weaver is British Columbia’s newly-minted Green Party member of the provincial legislature, who seems to never have recognized a conflict of his many interests. Not the least of which is his Lead Authorship of a chapter of the soon to be released (parts of which were recently – and perhaps conveniently – leaked) report of Working Group 1 (WG1) of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

Weaver’s contributions to the annals of “climate science” – and the IPCC process – have included such memorable depictions as:

“climate change [will be shown to be] a barrage of intergalactic ballistic missiles”

As I had also noted, Weaver’s descriptions of the IPCC process have included:

In a Feb. 10 interview with CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonte on The Current, Weaver spoke of the IPCC’s “incredibly intense peer review process” and averred that the IPCC reports are intended to “inform policy”. During this interview, he also spoke of those poor conservative scientists putting together their contributions to the Assessment Reports “off the side of their desks”. [emphasis added -hro]

Coloured by these Weaver-generated perceptions, my latest “visual” image of the IPCC is that of a beehive/honeycomb … from which all the designated drones [aka Lead Authors] dutifully venture forth to buzz around gathering only the right kind of pollen to please the [drama] Queen bee.

Over the years, the Queen has declared:

… We think it might be bad [First assessment report]

… Oh, it’s bad [Second Assessment Report]

… It’s very, very bad [Hockey-stick dominated Third Assessment report]

… It’s worse than we thought [Fourth Assessment Report]

… Now it’s even more worse than we thought; it’s gonna be extremely, disastrously terrible [Anticipated finding of Fifth Assessment Report … and/or IPCC’s AR5: The Movie].

Seems to me that in light of everything we know now that we did not know then, this latest IPCC Movie should be accompanied by (if not entitled) the music of Joplin/Hamlisch’s The Sting