Monday, March 1, 2010

Dutch PBL checks IPCC reports

Guest Post
Marcel Severijnen

The Dutch government has fallen on a discussion on the prolongation of the Afghanistan military mission. There was full coverage in all media during this discussion period. Hidden in this noise the Dutch Parliament also discussed a few outcomes of climategate, and with every new item members of the different parties in the parliament got more nervous and claimed more action from the Ministry of Environment.

Mrs Cramer (meanwhile former) Minister of Environment changed her initial absolute belief in the IPCC findings into a more critical
approach: "I'm very disturbed and "very indignant" (the year 2035), and she was going to write IPCC to clear up the procedures. Finally she declared "not to accept any fault any more" (Holland 60% below sea level), and at january 28th she asked Planbureau Leefomgeving (PBL, comparable to part of UBA in Germany) to check some regional results from WG2 IPCC reports.
So, PBL will check any faults coming from climategate, and whatever anyone might find faulty in the IPCC reports, because this week PBL will open a website where any remarks from the public can be dropped.
Seen from sceptical sides PBL is not the most independent authority to conduct this research. They point to important contributions from PBL to IPCC reports and they doubt the institution's neutrality on this matter.
Time will tell.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

So if she is now "very disturbed" and "very indignant" I guess her trust into the given information is shattered. So that means she perceived the famous 2035 and this crucial number was an important benchmark in climate change sciences? So can you tell me which decisions and recommendation the dutch government gave based on this number and in which (at least one) document this information actually plaid a role?
Or might me the dutch are not so interested in the Himalayas but rather in the Dutch mountains. As you know the wrong number of 55% under sea level came into the IPCC via a dutch governmental report. Did the minister actually excuse to the IPCC since the report was under her responsibility.

itisi69 said...

"Seen from sceptical sides PBL is not the most independent authority to conduct this research."

PBL is a mini-me-IPCC. PBL's Bert Metz, in the 90's working together with Bill Hare (Greenpeace) on the SRES scenarios, wrote with the same Hare the first chapter of WG3 in the 2007 IPCC report and is still lead author of WG3.

Indpendent, yeah right...

Hans von Storch said...

itisi69 claims that Bill Hare (Greenpeace) would be lead author (convening lead author in TAR?) in WG3 - is there somebody who can verify this statement - and possibly discuss this (if true)? -- Hans

@ReinerGrundmann said...

The list of TAR WG3 authors is here
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/
Cannot see Hare

@ReinerGrundmann said...

Hare is on the list for AR4 though

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-annex3.pdf

richardtol said...

Bill Hare used to the director of climate change at Greenpeace International. He has been a visitor at PIK since 2002, but is still on the Greenpeace payroll.

He's now with Climate Analytics as well, but I do not know what that is about.

http://sites.google.com/a/climateanalytics.org/test/welcome/team

richardtol said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tobias W said...

So it's sort of like the CRU- enquiry which were supposed not to have anyone close to climatescience in their mist...