For Science!

Due to the highly political nature of the subject of its research, the IPCC is constantly under attack from critics and those opposed to climate change action, who hope to use anything that can be regarded as a mistake on behalf of the panel to turn public opinion against taking action on climate change. The most recent “scandal” concerns the panel's assessment of economic losses from catastrophe and their relation to observed global temperature increase.

The story, published by the Times Online on January 24, accused the IPCC of cherry-picking data from a then-unpublished study on the increasing costs of hazard loss since 1950. The study, which has since been published, compared the costs incurred by natural disasters to growth in population and infrastructure and found no increase in the impact of disasters, after accounting for growth, between 1950 and 2005, and a slight 2% increase in the impact of disasters between 1970 and 2005, when strong rises in global average temperature began.

However, the published study also included caveats on technical factors, such as strong hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005 and currency exchange rates, that could produce bias in the result, and so the author added a caution that there was “insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses”.

While revelations such as this reflect poorly on the IPCC (as they are designed to do), more scrutiny should also be given to the sources of these “scandals”, as it would appear that the Times Online is itself cherry-picking information to discredit the panel. The IPCC assessments are based on the entire body of climate change research, and one study that stands out would be insufficient to sway the conclusions reached by the entire panel.

The reality of the situation is exactly that. Although AR4 references the study that found the 2% increase in catastrophe losses since 1970, it also mentions that no other study has been able to detect a similar trend. The report offers a balanced view not only on this particular issue but on all of the research available at the time it was written. In fact, many have called the reports and processes of the IPCC conservative in that they require the agreement of hundreds of scientists before anything can be published.

In contrast, the Science and Environment Editor for the Times Online needs the approval of only a handful of managing editors (if that) for a story to be published, and while we hope that all journalists are proud enough of their profession to maintain their integrity, the truth is that the profit motive plays a much bigger role in the decision-making process of the editorial board for one newspaper than it does for a diverse group of hundreds of scientists – the amount of advertising on each group's respective website speaks clearly to this fact.