The IPCC 1.5 degree report summary authors

The IPCC released a report which included a "Summary for Policy Makers" titled "Global warming of 1.5 C". This report was prepared to justify the Paris Meeting "aspiration" to limit the world's average temperature increase to 1.5degrees C. This aspiration seems to have been pulled out of the hat during the meeting, but now it seems to be the politically correct target. A target that's impossible to achieve. 

I should point out I consider the IPCC approach, to consolidate the content of numerous papers into one report, without doing much original work to support their conclusions and prescriptions, to be seriously flawed. The IPCC and the politicians behind it intend its content to be used to justify policies which would cost $ trillions (10^12), are impractical, have no sound engineering, project feasibility or schedule, or economics analysis to back them. 

In other words, they intend to use a nearly religious worship of "wise scientists" who have absolutely no idea of what it costs to get things done, nor know how to choose the best alternatives, to drive the developed world (excluding China and Russia who aren't about to participate in these lemmings jump over the cliff policies) into adopting what's evidently mad hatter policies. 

I was curious to see who was responsible for the Summary for Policy Makers, so I took a few hours to research their backgrounds. Summarizing, they are all climate scientists, some with a lot of experience, with a staff of very young recent graduates. The most powerful positions are held by Europeans, men from China, India, and Africa, and a South African (Debra Roberts) whose career has been hard to descipher, listed as "local government practitioner-scientist". 

The only one exposed to economics modeling is the Indian fellow, who has experience in dynamic models which ought to include economics modules. 

The summary of the "Summary for Policy Makers" most relevant participants follows: 

Valerie Masson-Delmotte is a French climate scientists and Research Director at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Her doctoral thesis was "Climate simulation of the Holocene means using general circulation models of the atmosphere; Impacts of parameterization”

After her PhD, Masson-Delmotte began working as a researcher at the the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences. She became head of a paleoclimate group in 2010, head of a research group in 1998, and completed her habilitation in 2004. Since 2008, she has been the Research Director/Senior Scientist at CEA. Her research includes water vapour monitoring and combines past climate variability (ice cores, tree rings) with simulations, to address current climate models.

Panmao Zhai has in B. S. degree in Climatology, Nanjing University, and M. S. degree in Physical climatology, Nanjing University. He is a Research professor in the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, the largest multi-disciplinary and comprehensive research institution on atmospheric sciences in China. 

He has more than 30-years working experience in climate change and variability studies. He has published more than 100 papers in Chinese and English. Leads a group of meteorologists, studying the formation mechanism and prediction method for persistent extreme events in China.

Hans-Otto Pörtner is a German ecologist and climate researcher.  He heads the Department of Integrative Ecophysiology at the Alfred Wegener Institute. He received his doctorate in 1983 at the Westphalian Wilhelms University and the Heinrich Heine University in Zoology. Since 2005, Pörtner has been a professor at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen.

His work includes the effects of climate change, ocean acidification, and hypoxia on marine animals and ecosystems, with a focus on the links between ecological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms that limit tolerance and shape biogeography and ecosystem functions. 

Debra Roberts. PhD in Urban Biogeography at the (then) University of Natal, South Africa, Debra Roberts initially pursued a career as a researcher. Currently Head of the Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives Unit in eThekwini Municipality in South Africa. She is described as "A local government practitioner-scientist with over 30 years experience in addressing and documenting urban climate change adaptation and biodiversity planning and management in Durban, South Africa."

James Skea is a Scottish academic, PhD in Physics at Cavendish Laboratory in 1979. Professor of Sustainable Energy at Imperial College London's Centre for Environmental Policy, and a member of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British government's Committee on Climate Change.

Priyadarshi Shukla, Distinguished Professor, Amrut Mody School of Management and Chair, Global Centre for Environment and Energy.

PhD (Stanford University). Area of study: Management Science and Engineering. Areas of interest: Energy Efficiency, Energy-Environment Modelling, Renewable Technologies, Decentralized Planning, Integrated Assessment Modelling and Climate Change Policy Analysis.

Anna Pirani  ICPO Executive Deputy Director (?) at Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). Coordinates development of ocean computer models. 

Wilfran Moufouma-Okia PhD in Mechanics of geophysical

environments, Polytechnic national institute (INP), Grenoble, France. He worked a decade for the UK Met Office Hadley Centre as “Senior regional climate modelling scientist” – leading the development, configuration, evaluation and dissemination worldwide of spatially detailed weather and climate prediction systems. 

Sarah Connors PhD Atmospheric Chemistry University of Cambridge, Centre for Atmospheric Science. Graduated in 2015. Thesis title: "Development of a method for estimating methane emissions at high resolution". 

Sarah has been a Science Officer at the WGI TSU since January 2017, working on both the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and the Special Report on Climate Change and Land, as well as the main WGI report. Her main activities include coordination of the Frequently Asked Questions (link to SR1.5°C FAQs?) and the Chapter Scientists for SR1.5°C and the forthcoming IPCC AR6 report.

Tom Maycock holds a Bachelor’s Degree with a double major in Physics and English Literature from Northwestern University. He earned a Master of Liberal Arts and Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in December 2018.