That’s what Clive Crook thinks we may be looking at, as he explains in a post on FT.com:
A turning point has been reached when in the space of a few days the chief scientist at the UK environment ministry complains about the IPCC’s ever-lengthening list of blunders; the head of Greenpeace UK calls for the IPCC’s head to step down; and, following a series of commendably forthright Guardian pieces on the scandal, The Observer, no less, attacks the Climategate cover-up.
He continues:
…the main damage to the credibility of climate science was done not by the Climategate emails, nor by the principals’ efforts to justify themselves. The main damage was done by the many climate scientists who affected to see nothing troublesome in what was disclosed, and the far larger number who decided it was best to say nothing. That was the really shocking thing. If climate scientists had united in criticising the methods and practices revealed by Climategate, the scandal might very well have fizzled. In saying they saw nothing wrong, they impugned their own work and that of all their colleagues, and brought the whole enterprise under suspicion.
So what happens now? In Hitting Reboot (pdf), the paper we did for Brookings analysing the Copenhagen outcome, David and I argue that nothing less than a full review will suffice at this stage (a call subsequently echoed in an FT leader article):
Leaders should … commission an independent review of the IPCC’s integrity, auditing the executions of its mandate to provide a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent assessment of the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced climate change.
This review should not be of the state of climate science – where the IPCC has, and should retain, primacy – but rather the quality of the IPCC’s procedures and the integrity of the research methods on which its findings rely, especially where these have been called into question … The review should audit the quality of the Fourth Assessment Report, while making recommendations, if necessary, for the conduct of the Fifth Assessment Report, on which work is now underway and which will be published in 2013-2014. It should also be accompanied by an indication that rapid action will be taken to investigate any future challenge that brings into question the IPCC’s objectivity, independence and transparency.
