cc: John Ashton , chris.anastasi@british-energy.com, Peter Stott , m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, "'Jenkins, Geoff'" , michael.grubb@imperial.ac.uk, V.McGregor@uea.ac.uk, "'Cox, Peter'" , N.W.Arnell@soton.ac.uk, King MPST date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 10:29:59 +0100 from: Sir John Houghton subject: Re: Yuri Izrael to: Nick.Grout@dti.gsi.gov.uk NOT TO BE COPIED ON PLEASE Just a note re Yuri Izrael whom I have known well for 25 years or so both in the WMO and the IPCC. He is a chairman's nightmare in that he is extremely persistent, wants to dominate and even in very large meetings succeeds in talking for up to one third of the time (I have calculated the proportion more than once when sitting in meetings!). He is not generally well informed but he likes to press extremely hard for a few points (he has a very high personal ego) - sometimes they are relevant sometimes not. If he fails to get his way he is extremely persistent and repetitive. A common tactic in meetings is to speak so often and so long that time and opportunity for others is severely reduced. I gather he has cancelled going to an important IPCC meeting in Geneva (he is still a Vice Chair of the IPCC) in order to be present at our meeting in Moscow. For him to cancel a meeting in Geneva implies that he has some clear reason and a strong personal agenda for the Moscow meeting. For the IPCC 1990 Report he was the Chair of Working Group 2 on Impacts. So he reckons to know about Impacts and we have gathered so far he intends to lead on Impacts in Moscow. I suspect much of what he knows about Impacts now may well be based on the 1990 Report! - he has never kept up with the science and doesn't do a lot of homework. For instance in the 'Izrael' document he says rather little about impacts except to emphasise their great uncertainty (a substantial 1990 emphasis) and to mention CO2 and bioproductivity (also in 1990 report) and other positive impacts especially for Russia. I suspect he will home in on these points about great uncertainty and positive impacts in his presentation to us. May I suggest that Mike and Nigel might look at the 1990 Impacts report to see where Izrael might be coming from and include mention of the large advances in Impacts work over the last decade and how uncertainties have been reduced for instance in our understanding of CO2 fertilization and its limitations. Best wishes John