Now the association of climate change with intensified weather disasters is based on weak evidence that the authors themselves have long since withdrawn.
The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.Yay for the Times for real reporting...although, ahem, a bit slow on the uptake. (Why are we unpacking the IPCC report three years after the fact?)
When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."
Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.
The claim will now be re-examined and could be withdrawn
As for the UN Panel on Climate Change, fear not, a vice-chair says:
Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific.Except when it absolutely isn't.
Update: Tim Blair has much, much more, including typical UN $$ scandals associated with the false melting Himalayan stories, and the news that NASA is quietly deleting any references to the IPCC from its climate change evidence website. As Blair says,
it’s almost as though the IPCC is … melting.
