REPORT LEAK: An early draft of the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, due out late in 2013, has been leaked online.
Image: Flickr/joroach
Early drafts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's next report were leaked online yesterday.
The report is due to come out in four parts, beginning in September 2013. But draft chapters from the IPCC's Working Group I, which analyzes the science of climate change, were posted last night at StopGreenSuicide.com, a website created by climate skeptic Alec Rawls.
Rawls, who says he dropped out of Stanford University's doctoral program in economics to pursue interests in "moral theory and constitutional law," is one of several hundred "expert reviewers" who volunteered to vet the Working Group I draft, part of the U.N. climate panel's extensive editing process.
"I believe the leaking of this draft is entirely legal, that the taxpayer funded report is properly in the public domain under the Freedom of Information Act, and that making it available to the public is in any case protected by established legal and ethical standards," Rawls wrote on the website yesterday.
In a statement released this morning, the IPCC said it was investigating the matter.
"Material appearing to be the draft of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report has been published on several websites," the statement said. "The IPCC is looking into this and will issue a more detailed statement later."
The leaked drafts, part of the IPCC's fifth major assessment of climate change, say the evidence that underpinned the group's 2007 report "has further strengthened."
The Nobel Prize-winning panel's 2007 report "concluded that warming of the climate system is unequivocal," a leaked summary of its latest analysis says. "New observations, longer data sets, and more paleoclimate information give further support for this conclusion. Confidence is stronger that many changes, that are observed consistently across components of the climate system, are significant, unusual or unprecedented on time scales of decades to many hundreds of thousands of years."
The report says there is a more than 95 percent chance that human activities have caused "more than half" of the increase in global surface temperature since the 1950s, and there is "high confidence that this has caused large-scale changes" in the ocean, snow and ice, and sea level since the second half of the 20th century.
Skeptics pounce
Still, skeptics were quick to argue that the new report undercuts the IPCC's earlier work, pinning their analysis on a few sentences in the draft report's discussion of the sun's influence on climate change.
"IPCC AR5 draft leaked, contains game-changing admission of enhanced solar forcing," read the headline on a popular skeptic blog, "Watts Up With That?"
But several climate scientists said skeptics were misinterpreting the leaked drafts' conclusions.
"Mountains from molehill," Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick wrote on Twitter. "Out of context, old rejected wording. But oooh, secrets!"
NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, also writing on Twitter, cautioned that "ppl shouldn't think that a line from SOD" -- second-order draft -- "is new consensus."
Many revisions still to come
Researchers were also quick to note that the leaked analysis was still preliminary and very likely to change before it is officially released next fall.
The analysis is due to undergo several additional rounds of editing over the next several months.
More than 250 scientists, working as coordinating lead authors, authors and review editors, put together the Working Group I draft.
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13 Comments
Add CommentEvidence of human caused global warming will continue to mount. The debate is starting to shift from the acceptance by most of global warming, to possible solutions: the question of what we should do about it. We need a greater focus on solutions; whether they are free market in nature, government in nature, or something of a mix. There are many possibilities to consider. There are perhaps even opportunities that can arise with this daunting challenge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUtter BS politically motivated SCIAM article. In the report the IPCC itself has admitted that the Sun plays the determining role in cloud formation and forcing. CO2 is irrelevant. Only Solar-Deniers now continue to flog the dead horse of AGW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood luck with that one Solar-Deniers. The gravy train is over. Time to get real jobs.
Shoshin, Please provide references that support your argument, as it flies in the face of the generally accepted understanding supported by the majority of the scientific community.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGo cruise WUWT. You will find it laid out in chapter and verse. The scam is over when the scammers can't even keep a straight face.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with Shoshin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't need no science telling me what to think.
My gut feeling tells me this is a scam.
You can claim I am in denial all you want but now that Mitt Romney is in the White House we will find out the truth!!!
La la la.
Just one thing I don't understand, if the IPCC report is all a scam then how come they let outsiders review it? - Duh.
Not that oil is the culprit, it is a big one, burning trash the wrong way, millions of cattle, sheep, pigs and whatever dumping poo by the billions of tons, 6 billion peasant toots per day and over population are the main causes. There are too many people for this eco system to maintain itself. All we need is a few more St. Helen's and we are history.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn informed public needs facts. The leaked IPCC report again shows we have been fed fiction for years in a fact wrapper. Those of us who have tried to point out the fiction in fact disguise have been demonised.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWatch the scramble to 'explain' the leaked report. The explanations will be as convoluted as the explanations for the email scandal. Do I think the AG diehards will finally accept that their faith is built o falsehoods? No. Religions, no matter how preposterous their claims can take millennia to fade.
The only religion being expressed here is the religion of denialism expressed by you and your ilk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, most of the IPCC reports are drafted, reviewed and selected for inclusion by eco-friendly political hacks, many of whom are barely in grad school. This idiocy was exposed in great detail by Donna Laframboise in her book "The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the world's Top Climate Expert".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDeceitful behavior by the IPCC, but not as bad as the WWF's forcible eviction of Tanzanians and other natives so that they can take their lands and turn them into palm oil plantations.
The Eco-Movement has morphed into a money grubbing anti-people movement. It has lived up to the old Hippy Curse "May you become in age that which you despised in youth."
And it has done it so very well.
Virtually every scientific organization, worldwide, supported the 2007 IPCC Report, and I anticipate that will be the same in 2013. They have been warning us for decades. Unfortunately, scientific organizations do not have the lobbying power that the fossil fuel industries have in D.C.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReality, the truth, no matter how well proven, is irrelevant to some. Their perception regardless of the facts, is all that matters to them. They will rationalize, quote false or outdated studies, make stuff up and lie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis has more to do with the psychology, ego defense, and delusional ideation than it has to do with global warming.
As with so many issues where fact and reality are so blatantly disregarded, when it comes to climate science, the inmates are attempting to run the asylum. It is pointless to argue with them.
The North Pole is precessing about a circle that takes about 25000 years to complete. The last ice age was 12500 years ago. The earth is wobbling on its South pole axis which accounts for the changing of the north pole star.The tilt is about 23.5 degrees. Thus the North Pole of earth will get hotter and colder as the north pole tilts toward the sun as it is doing now. Thus we have climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShoshin: You need not fear, I'm sure you will protect yourself, your family, and your class from the effects of Global warming because you will be able to afford to. The rest of the world will suffer, possibly rebel and conflict will ensue over more and more scarce water resources, less and less arable land.
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