A senior Canadian climate scientist says the United Nations’ panel on global warming has become tainted by political advocacy, that its chairman should resign, and that its approach to science should be overhauled. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria, was interviewed by Canwest News Service and said that the leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has allowed it to advocate for action on global warming, rather than serve simply as a neutral science advisory body.
“There’s been some dangerous crossing of that line,” he said on January 26, 2010. “Some might argue we need a change in some of the upper leadership of the IPCC, who are perceived as becoming advocates,” he told Canwest News Service. “I think that is a very legitimate question.”
Dr. Weaver also says the IPCC has become too large and unwieldy. He says its periodic reports, such as the 3,000 page, 2007 report that won the Nobel Prize, are eating up valuable academic resources and driving scientists to produce work on tight, artificial deadlines, at the expense of other, longer-term inquiries that are equally important to understanding climate change. “The problem we have is that the IPCC process has taken on a life of its own,” says Dr. Weaver, a climate-modelling physicist who co-authored chapters in the past three IPCC reports. “I think the IPCC needs a fundamental shift.”
Dr. Weaver says Dr. Pachauri, the panel’s chairman, should resign, not only for his recent failings but because he was a poor choice to lead the IPCC to begin with.
He still believes in Global warming and being an “insider”, his comments are significant. Terence Corcoran of the National Post comments on this report with:
That Mr. Weaver now thinks it necessary to set himself up as the voice of scientific reason, and as a moderate guardian of appropriate and measured commentary on the state of the world’s climate, is firm evidence that the IPCC is in deep trouble. He’s getting out while the getting’s good, and blaming the IPCC’s upper echelon for the looming crisis.
In the language typical of an IPCC report, one might say that the radiative forcing created by Climategate and Glaciergate strongly suggest this is very likely to bring about cataclysmic melting of the organization within the next portion of the current decadal period. The words “very likely” in IPCC risk assessment terms mean a 90% or greater probability that something will happen. As it looks now, the IPCC is burnt toast and unless it is overhauled fast there’s a 90% probability the climate-change political machine is going to come crashing down.
See Corcoran’s comments here and news story here.
