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Dutch Agency Admits Mistakes In UN Climate Report

Posted by Soulskill on from the would-you-sign-my-hockey-stick dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The AP reports that the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has taken the blame for one of the glaring errors that undermined the credibility of a seminal, 3,000-page UN report last year on climate change, and disclosed that it had discovered more small mistakes. However, the review by the agency also claims that none of the errors affected the fundamental conclusion by a UN panel of scientists: that global warming caused by humans already is happening and is threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people. The Dutch agency reported in 2005 that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level, when only 26 percent is. The second previously reported error claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, which the Dutch agency partly traced to a report on the likely shrinking of glaciers by the year 2350. The original report also said global warming will put 75 million to 250 million Africans at risk of severe water shortages in the next 10 years, but a recalculation showed that range should be 90 million to 220 million. The analysis said future IPCC reports should have a more robust review process, and should look more closely at where information comes from."

2 of 447 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... by TruthSauce · · Score: 5, Informative

    Again, the paper in question was not investigating the scientific basis of the climate change, that paper has never been found to have significant errors.

    This is a DIFFERENT section of the report, which is designed to use "non-scientific" input in order to ascertain a POLITICAL impact of potential changes that were concluded in the scientific paper, separately.

    Try to keep them separate, because they are.

  2. Re:Before People Scream Conspiracy... by speederaser · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since we're on the topic, I'll tell you what the biggest weakness is of the IPCC report WGI (which is more reliable): it doesn't establish anywhere that computer models are accurate. This is understandable, because really they aren't. Unfortunately so much of the case for global warming comes from computer models. If you take away their predictions, then most of the serious problems of global warming go away.

    Sorry, that myth has been comprehensively debunked. Here is one of many debunkings written by climate scientists:

    climate-myths-we-cant-trust-computer-models

    The climate models I am running on climateprediction.net begin in 1820. They do that to correlate the various models with the climate record since 1820. Only models that show a good correlation are used to predict the future. There are plenty of links on the site showing this correlation, take a peek.