Schoolboy Error in IPCC Climate Report - 2,500 Leading Climate Experts Can't Add Up!

Solly · February 5, 2007, 13:57

And these are the people who want us to spend $10s of billions of dollars on their little Gaia whim.

The SPM contains an embarrassing typographical error in connection with an issue identified as a hot-button issue: the contribution of Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise. It also failed to report WG1 model results on Antarctic contributions to lowering sea levels in the 21st century.The actual WG1 Report stated that all studies projected a negative contribution of the Antarctic to sea level in a warming 21st century due to increased precipitation:

all studies for the 21st century find that Antarctic SMB (surface mass balance) changes contribute negatively to sea level, owing to increasing accumulation [10.6]

stead of reporting this, the SPM included a table showing a substantial contribution from Antarctic ice sheets from 1961-2003, saying:

[Models] include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow, because a basis in published literature is lacking. The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future. For example, if this contribution were to grow linearly with global average temperature change, the upper ranges of sea level rise for SRES scenarios shown in Table SPM-2 would increase by 0.1 m to 0.2 m. Larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise. {10.6}

Now you may wonder why the figures don’t up in this table. If you compare this table to its source, Table 5.5.2, you will see that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets were both over-stated by a factor of 10 relative to the other factors.

It’s a pretty embarrassing typo in a study that has been parsed over by hundreds of people. It’s particularly unfortunate because it could have affected how some of the delegates interpreted the contribution of Antarctica to sea level change and because the drafters of the SPM had failed to report that all the models projected accumulation over Antarctica and a negative contribution to sea level change.

Oh dear, oh dear!

What a bunch of amateurs and crooks.