Re:Coronavirus and Credibility
by pdonis on Monday April 06, 2020 @07:28PM
(#22798955)
> journalists and politicians are misrepresenting what the IPCC says.
And the IPCC Summary for Policymakers itself misrepresents what the actual science says. All of the caveats, disclaimers, hedges, and so forth in the scientific working group reports (and even more so the caveats, disclaimers, hedges, etc. in the actual peer-reviewed papers on which the working group reports are based) are ignored in the Summary for Policymakers. The policy recommendations are already determined and published before the scientific working group reports are released.
So there are actually three levels of misrepresentation involved: first the IPCC WG reports misrepresent the actual primary sources; then the IPCC SPM misrepresents the WG reports; then journalists and politicians misrepresent the IPCC SPM. At each stage the predictions get more alarmist and the recommendations get more draconian.
And the IPCC Summary for Policymakers itself misrepresents what the actual science says. All of the caveats, disclaimers, hedges, and so forth in the scientific working group reports (and even more so the caveats, disclaimers, hedges, etc. in the actual peer-reviewed papers on which the working group reports are based) are ignored in the Summary for Policymakers. The policy recommendations are already determined and published before the scientific working group reports are released.
So there are actually three levels of misrepresentation involved: first the IPCC WG reports misrepresent the actual primary sources; then the IPCC SPM misrepresents the WG reports; then journalists and politicians misrepresent the IPCC SPM. At each stage the predictions get more alarmist and the recommendations get more draconian.