This letter was published in the January 1997 issue, in response to the AMS/UCAR Open Letter to Ben Santer,which was published in the September 1996 issue.
October 21, 1996
To: Editor, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Dear Susan Avery, Paul Try, Richard Anthes, and Richard Hallgren:
We are frankly puzzled by your "open letter of support" of July 25, published in the Sept. 1996 issue; it was addressed to Dr. Benjamin D. Santer (convening lead author, Chapter 8 of the IPCC report "Climate Change 1995") on behalf of the executive committee of the AMS and the trustees of UCAR. We believe that the letter misrepresents the true situation. We therefore present here some facts you may not have had, and then urge you to address a more serious problem (described below)--the misuse of climate science for political purposes.
1.Your letter refers—at least three times—to the discussions surrounding the textual revisions to Chapter 8 of the IPCC report as a "scientific debate." But the debate, so far at least, has not been about science at all; rather, it has been about the legality of the changes and deletions, the purpose of the alterations, and the political uses to which the altered IPCC report has been put.
Your criticism of Dr. Frederick Seitz is misplaced. His Wall Street Journal article brought to wider attention these unannounced changes and deletions, which were made after the report had been approved, and were discovered only after the report appeared in print. It is therefore quite irrelevant whether or when he has published papers in atmospheric science or whether he was himself involved in the IPCC process; a legal expert could equally well decide the procedural issues raised by the revisions to the report.
2. In our view, the alterations to the text were both substantial and substantive. In one stroke they eliminated clauses that had been discussed over many months and agreed to by the four lead authors, 30-odd contributors, and numerous reviewers. Here are three of the clauses that were removed from Chapter 8 ("Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes"):
A leading article in Nature (June 13), while dismissive of IPCC critics, had to admit that "phrases that might have been (mis)interpreted as undermining ... [IPCC] conclusions ... 'disappeared' in the revision process"
3. We note that nowhere does Dr. Seitz attack the scientific integrity of Dr. Santer. Santer has always taken full responsibility for making the actual changes, although he has not been forthcoming in revealing who instructed him to make such revisions and who approved them after they were made. He has, however, told others privately that he was asked [prevailed upon?] to do so by IPCC co-chairman John Houghton. Nature (June 13) states that the changes were made to bring Chapter 8 into conformity with the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, a political document finalized by governmental delegations in Madrid in late November 1995. You may not have seen the November 15 letter from the State Department (quoted in the Aug. 22 issue of Nature), instructing Dr. Houghton to "prevail upon" chapter authors "to modify their texts in an appropriate manner following discussion in Madrid."
4. Turning briefly to climate science, we know of at least three scientific articles that
have been accepted for publication, commenting critically on two recent papers by
Santer et al., which contribute in an important way to the conclusions of Chapter 8.
[These two papers appeared in print (Dec. 1995 and July 1996) well after
the chapter
was sent out for review (May 1995).] Unfortunately, these critical assessments do not
appear in the IPCC report; they will, however, be aired at a special session of the
Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 1996.
The ongoing review of the January 1991 AMS policy statement on the scientific understanding of climate change may provide an additional opportunity to examine critically not only Chapter 8 but also other chapters of the IPCC report—provided there is an opportunity for free and open discussion. 5. Finally, and most important, you should be made aware that the principal conclusion derived from Chapter 8--that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate"—is being misused by politicians. We draw your attention to paragraph 2 of the Ministerial Declaration (issued in Geneva on 18 July 1996), which specifically—and improperly—links this IPCC phrase about “human influence” to a temperature increase of 2 C by 2100.
But the possible existence of a discernible human influence on climate (based on the disputed evidence from Chapter 8 or other evidence) in no way validates the results from IPCC climate models that claim a climate sensitivity of between 1.5 and 4.5 C. To quote Tom Wigley, a lead author of Chapter 8: "[Temperature] pattern studies can’t pin down the climate sensitivity, we never said it did—neither in the original papers, nor in Chapter 8." Quoting from the IPCC report itself (p. 434): "To date, pattern-based studies have not been able to quantify the magnitude of a greenhouse gas or aerosol effect on climate."
The real issue then is the political misuse of the IPCC report and of climate science rather than the ongoing debate about procedure. We urge that this serious matter be energetically addressed by the AMS and by UCAR forthwith.
Sincerely,
S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.
President, The Science & Environmental Policy Project
Fairfax, VA 22030
Tel: 703-934-6940 Fax: 703-352-7535
e-mail: ssinger1@gmu.edu
Co-signers:
Bruce A. Boe, North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board
Fred W. Decker, Corvallis, OR
Neil Frank, former director - National Hurricane Center
Thomas Gold, Cornell University
William Gray, Colorado State University
Henry Linden, Illinois Institute of Technology
Richard Lindzen, MIT
Pat Michaels, University of Virginia
William Nierenberg, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
William Porch, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Robert Stevenson, IAPSO