John Christy: Wiki-IPCC | Nature
In a selection of opinions on IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reform gathered in Nature (sub), the call for more-frequently published reports received greatest attention.
One suggestion was for a Wiki-IPCC, with climate topics continuously updated by a rotating group of scientists. The idea was advocated by John Christy, lead author on the 2001 IPCC report and critic of both the IPCC and governmental efforts to limit human interference in the climate system.
The criticism goes both ways, as we know from last year's purloined emails. "John Christy is not accessible to rational scientific debate," apparently wrote Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in email #1249652050.
In any event, Christy in Nature:
An idea we pitched a few years ago that is now worth reviving was to establish a living, 'Wikipedia-IPCC'. Groups of four to eight lead authors, chosen by learned societies, would serve in rotating, overlapping three-year terms to manage sections organized by science and policy questions (similar to the Fourth Assessment Report). The authors would strike a balance between the free-for-all of true science and the need for summary statements.
Controversies would be refereed by the lead authors, but with input from all sides in the text, with links to original documents and data. The result would be more useful than occasional big books and would be a more honest representation of what our fledgling science can offer. Defining and following rules for this idea would be agonizing, but would provide greater openness.
Neville Nicholls of Monash University mentioned a similar idea in a report last year by Andy Revkin.
[Update: See also "Expertise in the Age of Amateurs."]
