The one about doing a Wiki for assessment was particularly amusing in a “is he silly enough to think that anyone would fall for that” sort of way.

An addition to your list might be recommendations from the IPCC to policy makers regarding climate research in their countries and/or regions that could be funded or otherwise facilitated to promote a better understanding of climate systems. This would help fill in some of the holes in our understanding.

It is apparent to me that numerous weather station records ended or became incomplete since the start of the recent warm period. At the very least the IPCC could be recommending to policy makers that these records be maintained.

Jeff

Roger, your questions are shallow. Let us look at the first three:

*Why have working groups?
*Why these three?
*Why not focus on policy recommendations?

Have you perhaps read:

Structure and Agent in the Scientific Diplomacy of Climate Change: An Empirical Case Study…
by Tora Skodvin -

or perhaps

Confronting Climate Change: Risks, Implications and Responses
by Irving Mintzer

and any number of article in various journals or are you simply trying to blow us off by generating an endless list?

Thanks for these comments.

There are a lot of potential ways that things could be done differently, and maybe these would be better, maybe not. But every organization should routinely be evaluated and compared to possible alternatives. We should not fall into the status quo trap — that things are the way they are because they represent the best possible outcome.

As examples of questions that might be raised:

*Why have working groups?
*Why these three?
*Why not focus on policy recommendations?
*Why focus on massive assessments?
*Why not a “Wiki” model for assessment, updated continuously?
*Why not start fresh each time with questions solicited from policy makers, and then issue smaller reports as appropriate?
*Why not use expert elicitation as an alternative/complement?
*Why not have people uninvolved in producing the research charged with summarizing it?
*Why not oganize assessments under policy bodies?
*Why not use assessments to do research not just summarize it?
*Why not use the NOAA RISA model? US NACC model? NRC model? Others?

In short there are many, many questions that might be asked about the IPCC, but aren’t mostly because everyone who cares has either a vested interested in preserving the status quo or attacking it. The answers to the questions above implicate a whole spectrum of different approaches to the time from/peer review issue.

As far as you last point, the Science/Nature embargo is relevant to the IPCC because scientists use it as an excuse not to engage in scientific debate that might result in perspectives other than their being aired, and thus not represented in the peer reviewed liertature and not available on the time schedule of the IPCC. But you are ight that it is a much broader issue than IPCC or climate science.

While I agree that these issues are interesting ones, the real question is, how could it be done better? Given that an assessment report on this scale is desired, the authors need a timetable to work to, and some parameters to work with.

I have commented previously on how disproportionate I think the influence of the IPCC is on the science that is performed, especially since they don’t actually fund it. But on the plus side, the timetable and pull for contributions has surely pushed forward the rate of scientific research beyond that which would have otherwise existed.

And it’s simply not fair of you to bring up the Science/Nature embargo in the same article – this is an entirely separate business.