About AccessIPCC

December 5, 2010: Please note that this page (originally published on May 21, 2010) has been updated to reflect the current state of FAR_OUT.

IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) – Accessible for All

Here’s what they say they do

Here are questions that some have asked

The IPCC Process

is the review process as rigorous as claimed? is all “peer-reviewed” literature treated equally? does the IPCC follow its own rules and procedures? how is research by lead authors or contributors vetted? are reviewers provided with all material that is being cited? how is material that has not been peer-reviewed handled? Until today, getting answers to the above has proven to be both time-consuming and challenging.

Thanks to AccessIPCC – the product of extensive programming by Australia’s Peter B. – a few clicks of your mouse will help you find the answers to these questions, and more.

FAR_OUT (Fourth Assessment Report – Objectively, Uniformly Tagged) enables users to click a citation within the text of AR4, e.g. “(Jones P. et al, 2006)” – and immediately see not only the actual Reference, but also those which we have also “tagged” with additional potential concern(s) in accordance with criteria we have specified (and which at this point in time are preliminary and subject to change and refinement).

We have identified a number of key individuals involved in the Climategate emails whom we have designated as Persons of Concern [PoC]; a Journal in which a PoC has published has been designated as a Journal of Concern [Joc].

We caution that at this stage, FAR_OUT is not complete – and far from perfect; but we do believe that there are indications of areas of concern of which many unsuspecting readers of AR4 may be unaware.

Each annotated chapter also includes a summary of Reviewer Comments on the Second Order Draft which indicates the number and percentage of reviewer comments that can be unambiguously identifed as “Accepted” by the “Chapter Teams”.

Our intention is not to analyse the science endorsed and promoted by the IPCC, but rather to examine the extent to which the 4th Assessment Report lives up to its “advertising”.

You may be familiar with a recent Citizen Audit project, initiated and led by Canada’s Donna Laframboise. The sole purpose of the audit was to verify whether or not the “all peer reviewed” claim stood up to scrutiny. The actual audit – by which 3 individuals examined the references cited in each of the 44 chapters – determined that in 21 chapters, fewer than 60% of the References could be sourced to peer-reviewed journals.

At the same time, we conducted a parallel “computerized” audit, using the same criteria as the above project. The results were quite similar – and you can view them at http://tinyurl.com/citizenauditdata (an Excel spreadsheet housed on Googledocs).

AccessIPCC, takes this concept several steps further – in that the text in each chapter is annotated by information in a database, so that we are able to “tag” a citation in the text in accordance with a variety of parameters, as well as linking the citation to the actual Reference.

We are aware of other work that has been done, e.g. Dr. Roger Pielke Sr’s analysis of that which was omitted in AR 4’s Working Group 1 Chapter 3, as well as compilations of public statements by key people and our intention is to seek the appropriate permissions (as we have done with John Costella’s commentary on the Climategate emails in FAR_OUT’s companion database, with which FAR_OUT will eventually be directly linked) so as to link relevant names, and/or parts of the text to these additional dimensions.

This will permit members of the general public to determine for themselves whether the myth of IPCC infallibility is merited. It will also facilitate research on other quantitative and qualitative aspects of AR4.

This is not to suggest that we believe references cited in AR4 are necessarily flawed, but rather that, as Joseph Alcamo noted at Bali in October 2009, “as policymakers and the public begin to grasp the multi-billion dollar price tag for mitigating and adapting to climate change, we should expect a sharper questioning of the science behind climate policy”.

Site Contacts:

Hilary Ostrov (aka hro001)	Hilary0001 at gmail.com
Peter B.	pjb253 at gmail.com