Study aims to put IPCC under a lens

摘要

Every six years or so, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on everything that is known about global warming. In between, at meetings behind closed doors, hundreds of scientists review studies, discuss the latest model results and assess humanity's options. The eventual result is a series of reports, such as the scientific analysis released last month - the first component in the fifth assessment on climate change, which will also cover adaptation and mitigation. But how, exactly, do these reports get written? This week, at its latest plenary session in the Black Sea city of Batumi, Georgia, the IPCC will consider a request from social scientists who, armed with recorders, want to study the interactions that take place within the panel's many meetings. The proposal, part of a larger "assessment of assessments" funded by the US National Science Foundation, could offer insight into the ways that social dynamics, unconscious biases and seemingly mundane rules affect the final product - and what might be done to improve the process.