I have received comments from two scientists, one very high up in the IPCC and strongly worded, complaining about the following short passage I wrote in a book review (PDF) in Nature earlier this year:

“the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has the temerity to claim that it is “policy neutral”, yet its website trumpets its success in advocating the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. As science policy has changed, these actions show signs of schizoid behaviour – the result of efforts to keep science both part of and separate from politics at a time of fundamental change in science policy.”

The scientists both asked for evidence that the IPCC was not “policy neutral” as it claims to be, clearly finding my assertion jarring in some way. The evidence is here on the IPCC www site in two documents. The first is titled “16 Years of Scientific Assessment in Support of the Climate Convention” (PDF)and the second is a retrospective (PDF) by Bert Bolin, former IPCC chair, which describes the close relationship of the IPCC and Climate Convention (or FCCC), and how the IPCC shifted its organization in response to the Convention. It does not seem at all controversial to assert that the IPCC has been closely bound to the Climate Convention, and that this stance is difficult to square with the IPCC’s formal policy of “policy neutrality.”


Indeed, we observed here last December that the Norwegian minister of the environment had raised similar concerns about the politicization of the IPCC because of a too-close relationship with the FCCC. And NASA’s James Hansen also has expressed concerns about the policy implications of the “close binding” between the IPCC and FCCC. Further, even definition of the phrase “climate change” can lead to policy non-neutrality (PDF).

But to make the point inescapable, imagine the reaction if the CIA put up on its web site a document titled, “Three Years of Intelligence Gathering in Support of the Iraq War.” The IPCC has a very important role to play in climate policy. But it seems that it has yet to figure out exactly what that role ought to be. A good place to start would be to clarify what it means by policy neutrality and act accordingly, rather than come after people who point out its inconsistencies.