Bidisha Banerjee and George Collins have written the definitive account of the error in the WG2 report about Himalayan glaciers:
Dozens of articles and analyses of this situation, whether dashed-off blog posts or New York Times coverage, exhibit a curious consistency. Not a single article or analysis appears to include all relevant issues without introducing at least one substantial error. It's as though the original documents contained a curse which has spread to infect every commentator and reporter. The curse seems to stem from not reading sources carefully (or at all), which, ironically, was the IPCC Working Group II's central failing, and also a major issue in the documents that were the basis of the defective paragraph.
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Because it seems like when you get down to it, the UN/IPCC is a political org, so they play games with things so as to appease the right people politically, and make back-room deals etc. which is not a good thing to do when you are trying to present science. The UN seems to screw up everything, so maybe it's time for national groups/funding/research orgs to present the science without the UN trying to wrap it all up and do the usual political games.
Carl,
Try here:
well, yeah, but the point being the UN declares itself the final word on global warming, and they've done at best a real cock-up of a job (presumably because they have to appease politicians, scientists, and politician/scientists).
Carl,
You mean like the Bush Administration insisting on the appointment of a railroad engineer as chief administrator with the expectation he would be favorably biased to the fossil fuel industry? Quite the cock-up that turned out to be.