By Roger A. Pielke Sr University of Colorado,

I have submitted two comments to the draft CCSP Report Unified Synthesis Product Global Climate Change in the United States. This is comment #2 on the Entire Report

Comment #1 is just one example of the exclusion of peer reviewed studies in the draft CCSP report.

The Report is co-chaired by scientists (Tom Karl, Jerry Melillo, and Tom Peterson) who have a conflict of interest in the assessment as they are evaluating significant portions of their own research. This real conflict of interest was documented in the public comment for the first CCSP report

Pielke Sr., Roger A., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report ”Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences”. 88 pp including appendices, where it is summarized for that report that:

“The process for completing the CCSP Report excluded valid scientific perspectives under the charge of the Committee. The Editor of the Report [Tom Karl] systematically excluded a range of views on the issue of understanding and reconciling lower atmospheric temperature trends. The Executive Summary of the CCSP Report ignores critical scientific issues and makes unbalanced conclusions concerning our current understanding of temperature trends.”

“Future assessment Committees need to appoint members with a diversity of views and who do not have a significant conflict of interest with respect to their own work. Such Committees should be chaired by individuals committed to the presentation of a diversity of perspectives and unwilling to engage in strong-arm tactics to enforce a narrow perspective. Any such committee should be charged with summarizing all relevant literature, even if inconvenient, or which presents a view not held by certain members of the Committee.”

The current draft CCSP report ignored this recommendation. As a result we do not have a unified synthesis product but a document that promotes a particular narrow perspective on climate science based on the prejudices of the Editors.

The recommendation in this Comment is that the Draft CCSP Synthesis Report be rejected.

A new independent assessment Committee should be appointed in order to present policymakers with an accurate assessment of the diversity of scientifically supported conclusions regarding the role of humans within the climate system. This includes the evaluation of the vulnerabilities to important environmental and societal resources from natural and human-caused climate variability and change.

See full comments here.

Icecap Note: I am busy sending in comments on this, the worst climate change summary document I have ever seen. Roger posted one of my comments here today. I will post a story with a link to each of my comments this week.