Via the Sydney Morning Herald:
The Australian government has begun its review of the latest draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, pledging ‘‘an open and comprehensive approach’’ as it taps selected input.
The review will draw on comments from experts, state and territory governments, industry groups and research organisation, the government said in a statement. “IPCC Assessment Reports are a vital reference and evidence base for policy considerations on climate change by governments around the world,” Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Greg Combet said.
The review will run to the end of November and involves a ‘‘second-order draft’’ of one of the three working group reports, examining the physical aspects of the climate system and the changes under way.
These include observations of changes in air, land and ocean temperatures, rainfall, glaciers and ice sheets, and sea level, as well as evaluations of climate models and projections of future conditions.
The first working group’s report is due for public release in September 2013. Draft IPCC reports are typically not made public, with the review process intended to test the data and analysis, and identify any errors.
So what can we expect from the sceptic movement?
Time for some predictions!
Coming soon to a climate sceptic blog: conspiracy theories and cherry picked facts*
As we get closer to the release of the next Assessment Report (AR5) we can look forward to renewed attacks on:
- the integrity of the IPCC
- those associated with the IPCC
- the integrity of individual scientists and scientific institutions
- the idea of a scientific consensus on climate change.
We will no doubt see the deployment of the following tactics:
- dragging out all the old complaints about AR4
- sceptics hunting for anomalies and small errors in the report
- mutterings about global conspiracies and scientists fabricating data
- counter-conferences and publications that present a “counter-consensus”
- climate sceptic bloggers working themselves up into frequent episodes of rage.
Since the publication of the last IPCC synthesis report (AR4) the science has become even more settled. Thus in that context it will be interesting to see how the sceptic movement responds to both the report and media coverage.
Will the media allow the sceptics to frame the debate again?
How much the mainstream media will pander to the sceptics and repeat their accusations remains to be seen.
Increasingly we are seeing their views getting less and less airtime in the mainstream press.
It now seems parts of the maintream media are a) bored with the messages of the sceptic movement and b) has twigged to the fact the sceptics are in the business of manufacturing faux scandals and outrage.
“Another typo in the IPCC report? Gosh, how clever of you Mr Climate Sceptic (yawn).”
2013 sceptic response: expect the spectrum of outright denial to luke-warmism
So what to expect?
Parts of the News Corporation will pick up sceptic talking points and quote all the usual climate sceptic suspects on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and other parts of Murdoch’s empire.
More respectable outlets such as the WSJ may change their tone from outright denial to a form of luke-warmism: “Sure the climate is changing, but it will be fine – or we will adapt – so no need to change!”
The Australian will strive for its usual balanced approach (i.e. war on science) of trotting out professors that have gone emeritus and surrender occasional column space to cranks like David Evans and Joanne Nova.
Lets hope those two start talking about the Rothschild’s and the climate scam on the pages of The Oz.
Andrew Bolt will speak approvingly of cranks on both his show The Bolt Report and on his blog.
Fox News will continue to offer fair and balanced commentary by getting the science wrong and promoting outright falsehoods.
Climate sceptic blogs will run amok with the usual dross – getting especially shrill both prior to and after the release of AR5.
I anticipate Anthony Watts will release another special pre-peer reviewed analysis of temperature data in the later half of 2013 to counter the work of the IPCC (lulz).
Reader predictions welcome
So readers, what are your predictions for the sceptic response?
As we get closer to the release of the first draft I’ll start pointing tactics and sceptic responses.
But to be frank, I think we can condidently predict the sceptic response.
* In other words, nothing will change.
Watching the Deniers 