IPCC’s AR5 “The Movie”: No comments or ratings allowed

A few days ago, I had posted what presumably was an “outreach” effort on the part of powers that be at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This unmitigated propaganda with its “three key messages” hasn’t exactly gone viral. This isn’t surprising considering that – as Paul Matthews had noted in his review – the general … uh … consensus seems to be that:

[…] It’s nine minutes of climate cliché bingo. I lost count of the number of crumbling blocks of ice, dried out lake beds, floods, and dark backlit water vapour shots, all delivered in a fast, almost “subliminal advertising” style. The only disappointment was the lack of stranded polar bears on ice floes. The commentary regurgitates all the usual mantras […]

Anthony Watts, at WUWT had also posted the video, as had Reiner Grundmann at Die Klimazwiebel and Pierre Gosselin at his NoTricksZone blog.

More recently, IPCC “insider”, economist Richard Tol has posted a poll (you might want to cast your vote, if you haven’t already done so!)

Turns out that, apparently, the powers that be at the IPCC are still dancing as though it is 2007, when from their cloistered view of the world, communication was only a one-way street. This was back in the good old days, when inconvenient comments of “expert reviewers” could be haughtily ignored except when the number thereof were being paraded as “evidence” of the “thoroughness” “inclusiveness” and “transparency” of their “process”.

As I had noted in my earlier post no acknowledgement or credit was given to the contributions of those who donated their time and expertise to participate in the IPCC’s much vaunted “Review Process”. Here’s a screen-cap from their self-glorifying “background“:

Impressive, eh? But obviously not impressive enough to rate a mention in The Movie.

This scornful attitude towards reviewers and their comments has now been (somewhat belatedly) demonstrated once again in response to ratings and comments on The Movie. As WUWT commenter, Scute observed:

Comment and ratings were on until at least 2:00 UTC today (25th Nov). They obviously couldn’t take the heat of all the critical comments and downratings were a third of the total.

And sure enough, if you go to the ‘tube you will find:

Talk about hiding the decline, eh?!

But, not to worry. At least Thomas Stocker’s “three key messages” made it into at least one decision of the COP flop in Warsaw’s “achievements”:

DRAFT TEXT
on ADP 2-3 agenda item 3
Implementation of all the elements of decision 1/CP.17

Version 2 of 20 November 2013 at 17:00 hrs

Draft decision proposed by the Co-Chairs

The Conference of the Parties,

Expressing serious concern that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia, as indicated by the findings contained in the contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

Warning that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet,

Also warning that continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system and that limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,

Underlining its grave concern about the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C or 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels,

And by the time this draft reached Version 4 of 22 November 2013 at 05:45 hrs, the above had been slightly modified, to read:

Expressing serious concern that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia, as indicated by the findings contained in the contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,

Warning that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet, that continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system and that limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,

Underlining the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with having a likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C or 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels,

Look at the progress between version 2 and version 4, folks! Two warnings rolled into one, and no more “grave concern” about the “significant gap”.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

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A somewhat related footnote: The list of the Warsaw COP participants (as of Nov. 20) is now available in a 228 page pdf, with the arcane filename of FCCC/CP/2013/INF.4. In case you were wondering, here’s a screen-cap of the “official” head-count (my highlight added):