There is a very thoughtful, must read post by Judy Curry at Climate Etc titled

Testimony followup: Part II

I have extracted below a key set of statements from her post [boldface added]

“The actual shift within the community seems to have occurred in the context of the IPCC process. The entire framing of the IPCC was designed around identifying sufficient evidence so that the human-induced greenhouse warming could be declared unequivocal, and so providing the rationale for developing the political will to implement and enforce carbon stabilization targets in the context of the UNFCCC. National and international science programs were funded to support the IPCC objectives. Scientists involved in the IPCC advanced their careers, obtained personal publicity, and some gained a seat at the big policy tables. This career advancement of IPCC scientists was done with the complicity of the professional societies and the institutions that fund science. Eager for the publicity, high impact journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS frequently publish sensational but dubious papers that support the climate alarm narrative…..Further, the institutions that support science use the publicity to argue for more funding to support climate research and its impacts. And the broader scientific community inadvertently becomes complicit in all this. When the IPCC consensus is attacked by deniers and the forces of “anti-science,” scientists all join in bemoaning these dark forces fighting a war against science, and support the IPCC against its critics. The media also bought into this, by eliminating balance in favor of the IPCC consensus.” “Changing the funding priorities is key. We need to reduce reliance on building ever more complex climate models for being the primary source of reducing uncertainties regarding climate change. Climate researchers need to engage with a broader range of expertise in and build strong links to disciplines experienced in complex nonlinear modeling and statistical inference, among others. We need a much better understanding of natural climatic variability. More research is needed on understanding abrupt climate change and developing a more extensive archive of paleoclimate proxies. And finally, greater resources need to be provided to accelerating the establishment of definitive climate data records.”

I have reported examples of the biases that Judy documented with respect to climate assessments and funding on my weblog; e.g.see

Protecting The IPCC Turf – There Are No Independent Climate Assessments Of The IPCC WG1 Report Funded And Sanctioned By The NSF, NASA Or The NRC – A Repost Of And Comment On A January 13 2009 post

NSF Decision On Our Request For Reconsideration Of A Rejected NSF Proposal On The Role Of Land Use Change In The Climate System

My Comments For The InterAcademy Council Review of the IPCC

Climate Assessment Oligarchy – The IPCC

See also

Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2005: Public Comment on CCSP Report “Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences“. 88 pp including appendices

Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2008: A Broader View of the Role of Humans in the Climate System is Required In the Assessment of Costs and Benefits of Effective Climate Policy. Written Testimony for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing “Climate Change: Costs of Inaction” – Honorable Rick Boucher, Chairman. June 26, 2008, Washington, DC., 52 pp [see the appendix which documents the exclusion in the 2007 IPCC WG1 report of peer-reviewed papers that differ from what the IPCC perspective].

I recommend everyone read Judy’s full post.