It wasnât because they werenât trying every underhanded trick
A little bit of context goes a long way.
Wahl and Ammann produced two papers in 2005. Paper #1 was a
comment submitted to GRL, on another paper. Paper #2 (WA2007) was the one cited in the IPCC report.
Paper #2 was accepted in December of 2005 prior to the IPCC AR4 cutoff date, subject to the
addition of some tables of numbers and some cosmetic changes to the figures â changes that were insignificant enough that the editor told them that provided the requested changes were made it wouldnât need another round of peer review. This modified version was accepted for publication in February 2006. âNone of the primary results or arguments, not even in detail â including those mentioned in the IPCC AR4 noted in section (2) â changed between preliminary acceptance in December 2005 and the published paper.â (
cce-review.org/evidence/Supp%20info%20from%20Briffa%20re%20Wahl_Ammann.pdf)
What
didnât make the IPCC deadline was paper #1, which was
rejected, not âfor its scientific content nor for technical issues, but rather for editorial purposes related to a sequence of comment-reply pairs.â (ibid.)
In other words, there was nothing wrong with the
science in paper #1 â which
wasnât referenced in the IPCC report anyway, remember â but rather the editor thought it should not be published as a
comment. So Wahl and Ammann submitted the same scientific content as paper #1 as a full-blown paper and it was accepted and published (as AW2007).
Since the
content of paper #1 was unaltered, and since paper #2 cited paper #1 but did not
depend on it, the editor allowed Wahl and Ammann to
update the citation in paper #2 so that it pointed to the new reference for paper #1.
Thatâs it.
Now, if what matters to you is the science and what it actually
says, then there is nothing wrong with the original date for paper #2 because
the science didnât change. If you believe that the IPCCâs role is to report all of the
science available at the cutoff date, then there is nothing wrong with what they decided to do. If, however, you think that an entire paper should be eliminated from the report
not because it is
wrong, but rather because it was modified after the cutoff date to
change a citation, then I guess theyâre guilty as charged.
The amazing thing is that if Jones et al were using
this kind of argument to prevent one of the âskepticsâ papers from being published, youâd be accusing them of trying to keep dissenting opinion out of the report on a technicality.
The science was good. The science was accepted. The reviewers had ample time to comment on the science, and they did. To throw the paper out because it needed a
citation updated would be an underhanded trick.
I like to think that people are a little more sophisticated than that. If a rule has unintended consequences that are
obviously against the spirit of the exercise, people can update the rules to avoid those consequences â which, by the way, is exactly what they did.
Here are the comments of Professor John Mitchell, one of the two Review Editors for that chapter, on the issue:
Mitchell said:
âI was not aware of the debate about whether the Wahl and Ammann paper had or had not met the deadline for the 2nd order draft for chapter 6, until after the event. The concentration on specific deadlines however misses the larger point. It must be recognised that if only published sources were used, the report would be two years old by the time of publication. In a fast-moving area such as climate change research, assessments could be significantly behind the times if important, but as yet unpublished, new results could not be used. The assessments for policymakers could also therefore be behind the timesâ.
âIn earlier assessments, there had been a relatively liberal regime in using unpublished material provided that there was a sound basis for regarding it as rigorous or reliable, although priority was always given to finding published sources. In AR4 however, the regime was tightened significantly, so that such material was only to be used under exceptional circumstances, but the use of unpublished material was not prohibited. âHockey-stickâ issues were regarded at the time as sufficiently important to justify using new data. The dilemma between using only published material and being out of date, or using more recent unpublished material was increased in AR4 as the âlatest publication dateâ was about 12 months earlier than in the process than in the previous assessmentâ.
So what are we talking about here?
The paper that McIntyre wrote, that Jones et al tried to keep out of the IPCC report because it was scientifically flawed, was included in the IPCC report, and you criticise their attempts to keep it out.
The paper that Wahl and Annann wrote that
not only showed that McIntyreâs paper was scientifically flawed but explained his mistake, that
McIntyre tried to keep out of the IPCC report â not because it was scientifically flawed, but because he didnât like the fact it was altered after the deadline, no matter how trivial the alteration was â was included as well, and yet you
donât criticise McIntyreâs efforts.
McIntyre
raised this issue
during the review process and the IPCC acknowledged his complaint about deadlines but decided that giving
you the most up-to-date and accurate assessment possible was more important. Ruling out a paper that showed he was wrong
not because he found a flaw in it but purely because of trivial changes to it
that in no way affected the science would have been âunderhandedâ.
