Åbent brev fra Karl J. Hansen på klimabedrag.dk til den danske delegations chef for IPCC Mette K. Jørgensen 16. maj 2010.

Kære Mette K. Jørgensen,

jeg er blevet opfordret til at klage over misbrugt kompetence i forbindelse med Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen og Jørgen E. Olesen's citering af af ikke udgivne og ikke peer reviderede afhandlinger til IPCC's fjerde rapport fra 2007.

På baggrund af begrundet mistanke om at IPCC er politisk biased og den store modstrid, der er mellem IPCC AR-4 og et stadig stigende antal forskere, som anser rapporten for stærkt overdrevet og på væsentlige punkter i komplet modstrid med termodynamikkens anden lov, er denne misagt for korrekt protokol ikke at bagatellisere.

Opfordringen lyder således:

Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen og Jørgen E. Olesen citerede en IKKE udkommet artikel hhv 20 og 15 gange i Kapitel 11 og 12.

Det er simpelthen en skandale uden sidestykke og viser helt tydeligt at de begge er 'politiske klima-forskere'

Du bør spørge Anne Mette K. Jørgensen (Dansk delegations chef IPCC) hvordan i himlens navn det kan lade sig gøre at to af hendes forfattere misbruger deres kompetence på denne grove måde i 'Den globale opvarmnings Hellige navn'

Problematikken klargjort af Donna Laframboise fra Canada i følgende indlæg:

IPCC Cites an Unpublished Journal 39 Times

We read a lot of magazines in our house. Occasionally, an issue arrives in which nearly every article is engaging and (in the case of cooking magazines) every recipe sounds amazing. In short, the issue is a keeper.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had an experience like that. It was so impressed by one edition of the academic journal Climatic Change that it cited 16 of the 21 papers published that month. The journal editors should take a bow. When three-quarters of a single issue of your publication is relied on by a Nobel-winning report, you're doing something right.

Except for one small problem. The issue in question - May 2007 - didn't exist yet when the IPCC wrote its report. Moreover, none of the research papers eventually published in that issue had been finalized prior to the IPCC's cutoff date.

As the IPCC chairman recently reminded us, that organization's 2007 report:

...was based on scientific studies completed before January 2006, and did not include later studies... 

That's what the rules say. And that's what was supposed to have happened. But according to the online abstracts for each of the 16 papers cited by the IPCC and published in the May 2007 issue of Climatic Changehere): (see my working notes

• 15 of them weren't accepted by the journal until Oct. 17, 2006

• the other wasn't accepted until May 18, 2006

 The first date is highly significant. As the second box on this page makes clear, the IPCC expert review period ended on June 2, 2006 for Working Group 1 and on July 21, 2006 for Working Group 2. This means the expert reviewers had offered their comments on the second draft and had already exited the stage. It means the IPCC had reached the utmost end of a process that represented years of collective labour.

So how could 16 papers, accounting for 39 new citations across fours chapters and two working groups, have made it into this twice vetted, next-to-finalized IPCC report? Those citations don't reference research papers the wider scientific community had already digested. They don't even reference papers that were hot off the press. Instead, in 15 of 16 cases, no expert reviewer could possibly have evaluated these papers since they hadn't yet been accepted for publication by the journal itself.

Where do these 39 citations of the May 2007 issue of Climatic Change turn up in the IPCC report? [working notes here]

• Chapt. 11 by Working Group 1 references ten papers (20 citations in total)
• Chapt. 12 by Working Group 2 references nine papers (15 citations in total)
• Chapt. 2 by Working Group 2 references two papers (2 citations in total)
• Chapt. 3 by Working Group 2 references two papers (2 citations in total)

Among the 10 papers cited in Chapter 11 three were co-authored by Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen. I'm sure it's sheer coincidence that this gentleman served as one of two coordinating lead authors for that chapter.

• see the first abstract here (cited twice as Jacob et al. 2007 on this page of the IPCC report)
• second abstract is here (cited as Déqué et al. 2007 on this page)
• third abstract is here (cited as Christensen et al. 2007 on this page)

I'm equally certain there's no connection whatsoever between the fact that Jørgen E. Olesen was a lead author for the IPCC's Chapter 12 and that a paper he co-authored in the May 2007 issue of Climatic Changehere. Cited as Olesen et al., 2007 four times on this page.)

Welcome to the strange world of the IPCC. Whenever one turns over a new rock there's something shady beneath.

Venlig hilsen
Karl J. Hansen, klimabedrag.dk

Svar fra Anne Mette K. Jørgensen, DMI

Som svar på din henvendelse af 16. maj 2010 om review af IPCC's fjerde hovedrapport AR4
kan jeg oplyse, at IPCC's regler og procedurer for udarbejdelse af rapporter (se
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf) ikke er overtrådt,
som du anfører. De refererede artikler var accepteret og/eller i trykken og var således
peer reviewede, da arbejdsgruppernes rapporter blev afleveret fra forfatterne. Samtidig
er det vigtigt at understrege at de studier, som ligger til grund for artiklerne, var
afsluttet og kendt i forskerkredse længe inden. På grund af lange publikationsprocesser
er det almindeligt i videnskabelige manuskripter også at referere til artikler, som er i
trykken. Ikke at medtage dem i AR4 ville være et problem, fordi den så ikke ville være
baseret på den nyeste viden, som var tilgængelig i januar 2006.