September 27, 2013

Spot the Differences in New IPCC Report

Changes have been made. No, I’m not talking about the difference between the 2007 climate change report from the Intergovernmental on Climate Change versus this latest iteration.

By David Biello

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Changes have been made. No, I'm not talking about the difference between the 2007 climate change report from the Intergovernmental on Climate Change versus this latest iteration. I'm talking about the summary for policymakers released today versus the leaked drafts.

Climate scientist Thomas Stocker of the Universty of Bern, co-chair of the working group responsible for the summary, described the changes as mostly an attempt to more clearly express the science, rather than relying on the technical jargon more commonly used by scientists. At the press conference to release the report he noted that the key messages and charts of the draft all made it through. "The essence of this was not changed," he says, but I'd like you to be the judge.

Here's the text and graphs that the IPCC group stayed up all night approving:

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WGIAR5 SPM Approved27Sep2013 (PDF)

WGIAR5 SPM Approved27Sep2013 (Text)

And here's the "leaked" draft:

SPM AR5 IPCC 1st Draft 10 5 12 (PDF)

SPM AR5 IPCC 1st Draft 10 5 12 (Text)

Please enumerate all the differences in the comments if so inclined.

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