"Eric Gisin" wrote in message
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/sc...h/04clima.html

August 9, 2009, 23:00:34 | jtaylor
The August 4 issue of the New York Times features a rather illuminating
article by Andrew Revkin -
the Times' climate reporter - on sentiment within the ranks of the IPCC as
that organization begins
work on its upcoming 2014 report. Revkin reports that the IPCC's
scientists are frustrated that
the world's governments - even those that are led by politicians who
habitually give end-is-near
speeches about global warming - are not taking the sorts of policy actions
the organization thinks
are necessary to head-off global catastrophe. Hence, a growing number of
scientists want the IPCC
to be more explicit and prescriptive with regards to public policy, less
inhibited when discussing
scientific issues where a great deal of uncertainty exists, more concerned
with best practices
pertaining to public risk management, and more politically sensitive about
the issues that are
examined at-length in the upcoming report.

In other words, Revkin reports that the IPCC wants to spend less time on
science in their next
report than they have in past reports and more time on issues for which it
has no relevant
expertise or comparative advantage. Of course, Revkin doesn't put it
quite that way, but that's
the unmistakable implication of what he reports.

Whether that's good or bad depends, of course, on your point of view.

The IPCC is an arm of the UNITED NATIONS. Asking the IPCC for a science
assessment of climate is like asking Al Capone for an assessment of crime in
Chicago.