Friday, March 09, 2012

Has the IPCC Outlived its Usefulness?

This is a serious challenge posed by Judith Curry, as can be seen in her interview by Oilprice.

She expresses her concerns for climate science, how climate change is affecting the planet, reasons for the increase in scepticism and why climate scientists have lost touch with the public. As she puts it:

"The IPCC might have outlived its usefulness. Let's see what the next assessment report comes up with. But we are getting diminishing returns from these assessments, and they take up an enormous amount of scientists' time."

Among the questions put to her are:

Q. You have said in the past that you were troubled by the lack of cooperation between organizations studying climate change, and that you want to see more transparency with the data collected. How do you suggest we encourage/force transparency and collaboration?

Q. Do you feel climatologists should be putting more effort into determining the effect of the sun on our climate? As the IPCC primarily focuses on CO2 as the cause of climate change - Is the importance of CO2 overestimated and the importance of the sun is underestimated?

Q. What are your views on the idea that CO2 may not be a significant contributor to climate change?

Her responses are timely and will almost certainly stoke further debate.

The full interview is at: http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/The-IPCC-May-Have-Outlived-its-Usefulness-An-Interview-with-Judith-Curry.html

2 comments:

Natural Gas in PA said...

Does she have any suggestions for what should be created to replace the IPCC?

Professor Chris Rhodes said...

She seems to be calling more generally for "transparency" over data and communication between different research groups. I don't see any suggestion by her of a new formal body to follow the IPCC... perhaps that's her point, that there shouldn't be one.