Sunday, May 07, 2006

What should the IPCC do....


As many are aware, the US government has widely distributed the second order draft of the fourth IPCC climate change evaluation. This has opened the document up to sniping, both in an indirect (and CYA manner) and more directly (see the comment by Vincent Gray.

This raises the issue about what the IPCC should do.

The first is that the IPCC should refuse to respond to comments by anyone who has publicly broken their agreement to keep the draft confidential.

The second is that the IPCC should inform the US government that they have seriously damaged the process.

While it would be very difficult to implement, the IPCC should take over distribution of all future drafts in the US and not leave this to US government agencies.

1 comment:

Hank Roberts said...

I think we should wait until someone at IPCC has proofread what the US government released against the official text and confirmed that the US climate change office was able to copy text accurately. Heck, someone should check for leftover hidden editing, if nobody's done that yet, in the computer files.

It's certainly possible that the US actually distributed a completely accurate copy.

But we have been well counseled:
"trust, but verify" what governments say.

Time will tell, if there is enough time.
-- Hank Roberts