Why Doesn’t Anyone Care When IPCC UNDER-Estimates Climate Impacts

Imagine the following scenario:

1.  The IPCC announces a surprising figure for sea level rise by 2100.

2.  But it used a model that was off by a factor of two as applied to recent changes in sea level.

3.  It also made a 5-year change in the time period that reinforced the first problem.

4.  The most recent studies oppose IPCC.

As a recent post on RealClimate points out, if these mistakes had caused an overestimate of sea level rise, “SeaLevelgate” would be all over the blogosphere, not to mention Fox and talk radio. This would be yet more proof that the IPCC is politicized and unsound.

But in fact, the mistakes were all in the opposite direction, resulting in an underestimate of sea level change.  For some reason, that’s not newsworthy!  The reality is the IPCC is mostly too cautious rather than too bold in its predictions, according to many climate scientists.

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