Who Could Have Predicted?
Surprisingly, after months of listening to hilarious wingnut claims that
”IPCC LIED!!!, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency reviewed the 2007 IPCC at the request of the Dutch Government, and found that, quote:
“Overall the (IPCC) summary conclusions are considered well founded and none were found to contain any significant errors.”
The Dutch assessment also reported three errors in the regional chapters that were based on erroneous interpretation of the literature references. However, the Dutch Panel concluded that
“these shortcomings do not affect the investigated 32 summary conclusions or other parts of the IPCC summaries.” Three errors in a three thousand page report isn’t unusual, especially if the errors don’t undermine the summary conclusions. I routinely write large technical documents, and I’m sure under close scrutiny and review, inconsequential errors could be found.
As for improving the IPCC process, the Dutch have some constructive suggestions. Science and policy-making aren’t easy, otherwise knuckleheads and climate gate clowns could do it. The recommendations are that IPCC should be more transparent, and IPCC should provide more holistic summary findings.
” While acknowledging the essential role of expert judgment in scientific assessments, the PBL recommends to improve the transparency of these judgments in future IPCC reports. The Dutch found that IPCC focused heavily on the negative impacts of climate change; but they also noted that this is what IPCC
was required to do by the world’s governments whom commissioned the IPCC. The original premise of IPCC is that policy-makers needed to be presented with a risk-based analysis of what could go wrong under unmitigated climate change. Crap that could go wrong is generally what policy makers need to hear. Otherwise you might as well just have George Bush in charge; a dude who assumed and treated the Iraq War as an easy cake walk, ignoring the advice of experts who tried to tell him the crap that could, and probably would, go wrong.
http://www.pbl.nl/images/500216002_tcm61-48119.pdf
Bottom line: amazingly, in spite of all the key board pounding, in spite of all the wingnut war cries of how IPCC was rubbish and full of lies, IPCC is overwhelmingly vindicated (with some constructive caveats on how to improve the process).
Who could have predicted this would blow up in science denier’s faces?
