UPDATE 7 Jan. 2013: Morgan’s online bio has changed since this blog post was written. It no longer contains the key clause: “acting as chief spokesperson for the organization on climate change.” The old version of her bio has been backed up here. A screencap may be seen here.

My upcoming book has a section titled Why We Can’t Trust AR5. The last major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was published in 2007. It’s known as the Fourth Assessment Report – or AR4 for short.

The latest edition, AR5, is expected to completed in 2013. Its personnel were announced by the IPCC last June. By then that organization had already been wounded by the Himalayan glacier scandal, which involved faulty information published in a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) document. A few critics had also, by that time, shone light on the IPCC’s not infrequent use of literature produced by organizations such as the WWF and Greenpeace.

But the IPCC, it has been observed, is a slow learner. If this were not the case there’s no way it would have appointed Jennifer Morgan as an AR5 review editor.

According to its marketing department, the IPCC is a scientific body that writes scientific reports. If that were strictly true, it’s unclear why AR5 is going to devote an entire chapter to International Cooperation: Agreements and Instruments.

for source document, click image & see p. 26 of the 27-page PDF

According to IPCC mythology, those involved in this historic report-writing exercise are the world’s top scientists and best experts. Morgan is a perfect example of how this is utter nonsense. For several years she was the WWF’s chief spokesperson on climate change. She led its Global Climate Change Program and headed its delegation to the Kyoto Protocol negotiations.

Prior to that, Morgan worked for the Climate Action Network (according to her online bio, it’s a collection “of over 200 environmental groups worldwide with eight regional offices”). Currently she’s employed by the World Resources Institute (Al Gore is on its board). In other words, Morgan is not one of the world finest scientific minds. She is a professional activist.

As recently as 10 months ago the IPCC recruited her to help prepare a report that is supposed to be objective, rigorous, and balanced. If previous media coverage is anything to judge by, once it’s released we’ll all be told this report should be considered Holy Writ since “this is what the world’s scientific community thinks”.

Honestly, these people have no shame.

.