Dr. Harold T. Shapiro
Chairman
InterAcademy Council to Review the IPCC
359 Wallace Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Dear Dr. Shapiro:
Thank you for the time and effort put forth by you and others on the InterAcademy Council in reviewing the policies and procedures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and for the recommendations for change the Council has made. I hope those suggestions will be implemented and that the IPCC will become more open in its processes and in the compilation of its assessment reports. It is to this end that I wish to further address you.
Enclosed is a copy of Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, which I coauthored with S. Fred Singer in 2009. To date, this 800-plus page tome is the only comprehensive critique of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. It is the product of several years of research involving more than 35 contributing scientists. I am certain that your report and recommendations would have been significantly enhanced had your committee taken the time to review our work and talk to those of us who have been critical of the IPCC.
As you peruse Climate Change Reconsidered, I hope you will come to understand that there indeed exists a vast body of peer-reviewed scientific literature that has been ignored by the IPCC because it does not support the narrative chosen by the organization’s leaders and Lead Authors. Your report states, as diplomatically as possible, that the IPCC has conveniently overlooked, if not suppressed, such scientific findings in order to reach what appears to be a pre-determined conclusion with respect to future climate and its impacts on the biosphere. I fear you have no idea just how much research had to be overlooked and suppressed by the IPCC for them to come to that conclusion.
If the IPCC is to reform itself, it must reach out to the so-called skeptical scientific community and tap the very deep expertise of its members. I hope you and your colleagues will consider this letter as an olive leaf from one such skeptic hoping to be invited to help improve the process.
With kind regards,
Dr. Craig D. Idso
Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
Dr. Idso is the founder, former president, and currently chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
