One of the 70 authors of a draft U.N. report on climate change said he had pulled out of the writing team because it was "alarmist" about the threat. Richard Tol told Reuters he disagreed with some findings of the summary to be issued in Japan on March 31. "The drafts became too alarmist," the Dutch professor of economics at Sussex University in England said by telephone from Yokohama, Japan, where governments and scientists are meeting to edit and approve the report. --Alister Doyle,
Reuters, 27 March 2014
Unfortunately, those expecting the IPCC's Working Group II's report to effect a new note of realism in global economic policy on climate change may be disappointed. That's because the Summary for Policymakers (the only part of the IPCC's reports that policymakers tend to read) will - as usual - strike a much more alarmist tone than the contents of the more detailed report actually justify. "Basically, it has been Pachaurisised," says Benny Peiser of the independent think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation. --James Delingpole,
Breitbart London, 26 March 2014
The draft of the all-important Summary for Policymakers finalized last October by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [is] far from official. That’s because the IPCC isn’t a place in which scientists have the last word. Everyone involved understands that the summary of the Working Group 2 section of its new report is going to be re-written. This will happen during four days of a meeting now getting underway in Yokohama, Japan. Journalists are barred from attending this four-day meeting. Since the IPCC insists it is a transparent organization, this is outrageous. If nothing improper will be going on, why will the doors be locked? If the science is so cut-and-dried, so clear and unequivocal, why all the secrecy? In turns out that last October’s Final Draft won’t actually get discussed in Yokohama. Instead, it has already been extensively manipulated. --Donna Laframboise,
No Frakking Consensus, 25 March 2014
Britain and other governments have been severely critical of a finding from Richard Tol, a Dutch economics professor at Sussex University, according to documents made available to the Guardian. The summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the impact of global warming cites research by Tol on global economic losses due to climate change, which he put at between 0.2% and 2% of income. That is far lower than estimates of the costs of climate change by the economist Nicholas Stern. Britain and other governments rejected the finding as an underestimate when the draft was first circulated to officials last December. --Suzanne Goldenberg,
The Guardian, 28 March 2014
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists’ accounts of storms, droughts and diseases to come. But the actual report, known as AR5-WGII, is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago. --Matt Ridley,
The Wall Street Journal[Registration Required], 28 March 2014
IPCC Working Group 2, “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” is currently meeting to finalise its Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which will be published in a few days time. The draft SPM was leaked last November. Now there is a new leaked version, which is the November version plus some edits marked in blue. The edits are interesting, showing a ramping up of alarm and a down-playing of adaptation in favour of mitigation. --Paul Matthews,
The IPCC Report, 25 March 2014
Professor Tol said he was unconcerned about the criticism. “The UK government is just worried about embarrassment,” he said. “They perhaps feel now a little embarrassed that the official estimate of the UK government conflicts with the official estimate that may come out of the United Nations.” However, he acknowledged that his finding may not make it through the review process. --Suzanne Goldenberg,
The Guardian, 28 March 2014
Almost every global environmental scare of the past half century proved exaggerated including the population “bomb,” pesticides, acid rain, the ozone hole, falling sperm counts, genetically engineered crops and killer bees. In every case, institutional scientists gained a lot of funding from the scare and then quietly converged on the view that the problem was much more moderate than the extreme voices had argued. Global warming is no different. --Matt Ridley,
The Wall Street Journal,[Registration Required] 28 March 2014
