Thank you for your answers.

My layman’s understanding of organization communication informs me that “explicit advocacy” means that the actors would say something like “we see our roles as advocates”. Is that your understanding?

A related issue would be what they (the IPCC) would be advocates for. One might say that the IPCC already advocates for understanding the scientific consensus.

Thanks … a few replies

4b- “Do you the think the pending publication of “The Honest Broker” will drive them out in the open?”

Highly unlikely. My book only very briefly gets into the issue of climate change. If it does help a few people see that scientists have choices in how they engage politically, then I’ll be pretty happy with it!

4e- Yes, an optimist;-) We shall see . . .

Thank you for your answers. Continuing to parse out your thinking.

4 (b) “a change in the IPCC and its leaders to an explicit advocacy role”

Wow. That would be (or should be) news.
I read “explicit” in the context of “explicit advocacy role” to mean that the leaders of the IPCC will explicitly state that their role is no longer to be “policy neutral” but to be advocates. Such honesty would be laudable but I would rather expect their advocacy to be role to be implicit.
Do you the think the pending publication of “The Honest Broker” will drive them out in the open?

4 (d) provides much fodder for those wanting to “go slow” on climate policy by presenting an image of climate change far more conservative than found in the media

By implication you are saying that the published work already presents an image of climate change that is is far more conservative than what is found in the media. My thoughts are “boy, are you going to be in trouble now Roger”. But on second thought the idea that media has a bias towards the sensational is a bias that many professors of journalism admit to.

4 (e) “will totally botch the issue of economic losses from extreme events, and especially hurricanes.”

Hum. An optimist I see. Let us hope that making that mistake twice in a row or even more than last time might become a minor piece of news in it’s own right.

I haven’t seen anything definitive on the AR4 “projections” (perhaps, after 15 years, they’ll actually make some predictions?) for methane atmospheric concentrations, CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resultant temperature increases.

1. Actually I mean that nothing will be reported in the IPCC that isn’t already “out there” in the news already. Most major (and many minor) climate science research articles are already covered in the press. As well the IPCC drafts have been available for a while. So my point here is that there will be little new “news” left to report other than the fact that the IPCC is published.

2. Yes, climate convention = FCCC. If “dangerous interference” cannot be avoided then it means that the FCCC needs to come up with a new goal. See:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000915back_to_square_one.html

Let me know if the above is still unclear. Thanks!

I am uncertain about what you mean.

a) Nothing new will be reported.
Are you predictioning that
a-1) nothing new will be reported by the IPCC in 2007 — Meaning this report substantially reports the same story as the last one or
a-2) nothing new will be reported by the news media about the IPCC report?

For c):
The “climate convention” means the UN FCCC?

Your thinking is that if the IPCC reports that “dangerous interference” is inevitable then the IPCC no longer has a reason for continuing, it’s current mandate having been acheived?