IPCC Report: "Stay alert!"

I blogged yesterday on the IPCC's report, out in Paris today (their time) -- and I pointed out that what is out tomorrow is not in fact the IPCC's report, but just the executive summary thereof, what's known as the 'Summary for Policymakers.' The science behind that summary isn't being released until May, giving warmists a three-month head start before their figures can be checked. Steve McIntyre points out that

the purpose of the three-month delay between the publication of the Summary for Policy-Makers and the release of the actual WG1 is to enable them to make any “necessary” adjustments to the technical report to match the policy summary.

Unbelievable. Can you imagine what securities commissions would say if business promoters issued a big promotion and then the promoters made the “necessary” adjustments to the qualifying reports and financial statements so that they matched the promotion. Words fail me.

David Schnare has a good hard look at this at his blog The Hard Look, and here's some of what he sees:

R.K. Pachauri, the IPCC Chairman admits up front that he is openly seeking alarmism with this report, stating to Reuters “I hope this report will shock people!” Surely politicians around the world will use the report to push for immediate action on global warming, just as Pachauri seeks. All this would seem the actions of a reasonable scientist, except for one thing. The IPCC refuses to release the actual science behind the report and won’t until May at the earliest. Result? Honest scientists will be unable to validate or challenge the openly political overstatements known to be in the summary because they won’t be able to read the scientific basis for the intended alarmism...

Here’s why the late release of the full report is a problem. As we learned from Galileo, it only takes one solid fact to upend a theory. Because global warming alarm builds from complex prognostications that stand on the shoulders of incredibly uncertain observations, even one contradictory observation could throw the whole model into the dustbin. That, by the way, is one of the reasons the full report is not coming out until later. The scientists who did the ocean level research found out that the IPCC was misusing their work and demanded changes in both the final report and the executive summary. The IPCC doesn’t want that to happen again, so it is slowing review and publication of its final report to avoid any more “scientist unrest”. Naturally, the IPCC will also benefit because late release of the full report will ensure the debate about the actual science will have little impact on global climate politics.

Is he right? Keep watching. And stay alert. The planet needs more lerts.

LINKS: IPCC Schedule: WG1 Report available only to insiders until May 2007 - Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit
Global spin alert - The Hard Look

RELATED: Global Warming, Science, Politics-World