Climate Audit

Steve McIntyre, posted on Jan 25, 2010 at 5:01 PM

EXCERPT:

One of the more interesting knock-ons of the opportunistic IPCC reliance on WWF and similar “authorities” is that it may compromise the ability of the U.S. EPA to argue that IPCC peer review meets the statutory standards required of EPA peer review.

In this respect, I refer to the Climate Audit submission to EPA last June, which considered this specific issue in considerable detail. See submission here, covering post here and first post on the topic here.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction to my submission:

“2. The EPA elected to rely “heavily” on “existing” scientific assessments carried out by external parties. EPA guidelines and policies establish procedures which EPA is required to comply with, prior to utilizing scientific assessments carried out by external parties, including international bodies. These procedures include the submission of the scientific assessment by the external party to EPA together with its peer review record and the evaluation of the submission by EPA officials to evaluate the scientific content and the external party’s peer review process. The TSD failed to state that EPA complied with these procedures and there is considerable evidence that EPA did not do so.

3. Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a peer review process, their peer review process does not comply with the OMB and EPA policies for highly influential scientific assessments in many important respects, including, without limitation, non-compliance in the provision of data to reviewers and transparency. Had the EPA actually carried out the examination of IPCC peer review policy that is required prior to EPA use, it would undoubtedly have identified these and other shortcomings.”

LINK

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