Stop me if someone has done this already (Eli?; OK, Deltoid has something)… I’m still catching up. But US climate report comes under fire caught my eye, as did the link to RP’s take.
My first comment would be, isn’t this report just a teensy bit pointless, we have the IPCC report. I doubt there will be anything useful in it that wasn’t in IPCC. But assuming that US chauvinism means they have to have their own…
The major thing wrong with the exec summary is that its written for idiots, who are apparently unable to understand that its a process unless the boxes are drawn on top of a road, and unable to understand “irreversible” unless there is a no-U-turns sign drawn on. Unless no-U-turns is subtle irony and is supposed to mean “don’t expect any policy changes”.
But descending into the details, RP detects the use of the word “now” both in the editors powerpoint of two years ago, and in the exec summary. also the word “irreversible”; this is taken as evidence of the editor putting in her own POV. But the IPCC report SPM uses both, which is hardly surprising. OK, it doesn’t use “urgency”, ‘cos the IPCC is more measured. Anyway, I don’t find the proposed overlap very convincing: these are just balnd commonplace phrases that should be criticised for that reason instead.
There must be worse in the report than just this.