This hypothetical asserts facts that are not, to my knowledge, supported.
1) Did IPCC ever "demand" a particular policy? Where? In listing policies, did it fail to mention reducing societal vulnerability? Where?
2) Did IPCC ever fail to consider alternative scenarios? In what sense? Which working group failed to do so at what juncture?
3) Did IPCC fail to "include natural variability in the mix"?
While I am not an unalloyed enthusiast of IPCC, I find these claims unsupported at best. It would be interesting to see evidence for and against these claims, particularly within the assessment reports.
Update: Judith responds at her blog thus:
Michael, you misinterpret what I said. Read the history of the UNFCCC, for which the IPCC is charged to provide information for. I did not say the IPCC demanded specific policies, but rather individual scientists did claim that the science demanded emissions reductions, which gave birth to the UNFCCC and the precautionary principle on dangerous climate change. The IPCC has given inadequate attention to solar variability and its uncertainties and it has WAY discounted the impact of the major multi-decadal and longer ocean oscillations on interpreting the 20th century temperature record.I am not sure what to do with this. It still seems like unsupported assertions to me.
actually climate research was a pretty quiet field until the late 1980′s. At this point, the alarm was sounded and some influential scientists brought this issue to the international policy table, and we ended up with the UNFCCC and the IPCC. By stating that the science demanded a certain policy (stabilization of greenhouse gases to prevent dangerous climate change), postnormal climate science was born. Consider an alternative universe where the scientists provided a range of scenarios to consider and included natural climate variability in the mix, and recommended that suite of policy options be developed to help reduce societal vulnerability to future climate change, both of the natural and anthropogenic variety. In this alternative world, I don’t think things would have become so polarized and one can even envision the IPCC assessment topics and strategy as being different.