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Monday, January 30, 2012

IPCC Gag Order on Reviewers

Timothy Birdnow

Steve McIntyre reports a gag order from the IPCC on material destined for it's reports.

From a letter to McIntyre, posted at Climate Audit:

http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/26/another-ipcc-demand-for-secrecy/

"In a recent thread on the blog that you host, Climate Audit, you quote text and a figure directly from the WGI AR5 First Order Draft. We would remind you that each page of this document is clearly marked “Do not cite, quote or distribute”. Therefore, we kindly request you to remove this text and figure from your blog and refrain from such actions, which do not respect the terms of the IPCC review process.

[...]

As mentioned in our email to you of 16 December 2011, in order to have access to the Chapters and to submit review comments for consideration by the authors, all prospective expert reviewers of the WGI AR5 FOD are required to agree to the terms of the review, which specify that all materials provided for the review, including the chapter drafts, are considered confidential and shall not be cited, quoted or distributed. This is the standard IPCC practice in the preparation of its reports."

End excerpts.

What are they so afraid of? Isn't science about getting as many minds working on an issue as possible? Why should this be restricted to the chosen few?

Readers of THIS website know the anser; this isn't about science and never has been. It is a way to manage science, to get it to say what the statists and internationalists at the United Nations want it to say. The process MUST be closed, because if it is open too many people will be likely to spot the tricks employed to manipulate the science. The IPCC is about public policy, and to get the public to go along with it's policy recommendations the "science" must be presented as irrefutable, unchallenged, and must be withheld from those who are likely do find faults. It must be presented as a fait-accompli. Come out loudly as "science says" and make it impossible for critics to refute, because the critics haven't seen what was done. Then the public will believe that "the science is settled" and public policy can be made, policy that redistributes wealth, that manages the decline of the industrial civilization, that gathers more power into governments and international organizations.

The whole IPCC research process is a sham; it was never intended to get to the truth, but rather to message the truth, to lie in a convincing manner. Many scientists who thought they were actually there to get to the bottom of things found their portions edited out of the IPCC reports, while environmental activists and grad students wrote large swaths of the reports. The secrecy of the IPCC should be the tip-off; science kept secret - at least science done about something with far-reaching public policy influence - is not science at all. The only reason to keep it secret is to make it say what you wish.

Go to Climate Audit and read the entire letter to McIntyre - and his excellent reply.

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