Friday, February 2, 2007

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The IPCC has released its Summary For Policymakers http://http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf of the Fourth Assessment Report Working Group I "The Physical Basis of Climate Change"
According to the IPCC WG I website http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/ the actual report will be available online in May.
If I am reading "Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work" http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf correctly, the reason for the delay in releasing the actual Report of WG I is to allow "Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter" at page 4 para. 3. Is the IPCC saying they need three months to make changes to the scientific report, to make it fit the conclusions in the summary? Seems backwards.