justmythoughts wrote:Another blunder by the IPCC contained within it's 2007 report. The report claimed that 55% of Holland is below sea level. The real number is 26%.
Yes, I saw that too. Someone
added the figures for the land area of the Netherlands that has been reclaimed from the sea (26%) to the area of the country that is susceptible to river flooding (29%). An embarrasing (but understandable) mistake to be sure. And it points to some lapses in the editing, which should be cleared up for 2013.
But again, it doesn't change the overall picture.
Suffice to say the Dutch government are less than impressed with this big mistake.
Can't say I blame them.
The only "positive" from these reported errors are that the next report in 2013 should be under proper scrutiny to be as accurate as possible.
Indeed, which is as it should be.
But given the size of the IPCC reports, this handful of mistakes (keep in mind that the Amazon statements are essentially true, just sourced from the wrong place) is embarrasing, but it isn't out of proportion to the level of detail in the reports. .
Now I wonder if the skeptics will apply the same level of increased scrutiny to their own work too?
On a related matter, the Norfolk police have apparently
identified some leads in the "Climategate" email theft. Turns out that one of the scientists at East Anglia has links to various skeptic blogs - the same ones who released these emails to the public. He's been interviewed by the police and they are now in contact with three of the more prominent skeptic blogs.
And there is some context to the CRU's refusal to fulfill FoI requests. An article in yesterday's Times
reports that the research unit received a flood of requests, often for information that is available publicly. At one point they received 40 requests in a matter of days, each one requesting data on five different countries (totalling 200 countries).
UEA policies state that a minimum of 18 hours work is required before an FoI request can be turned down. So with only 13 staff (mostly scientists) this is a virtually impossible task and it would seem that someone(s) was targeting CRU in an effort to slow their work down. Each hour a scientist takes to review an FoI request is an hour that they can't use for other work.
While I still don't agree with CRU staff's refusal to fulfill the requests they received, I do understand how their frustration might drive them to ignore FoI laws. And interestingly enough, given that the majority of the requests were either untraceable or from outside the UK, Jones believes (although without solid proof) that the organizers of the Climate Audit website were behind this.
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." Edmund Burke
by Northender on Sat Feb 06, 2010 12:05 pm 
