WELL, WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES, DON'T WE? – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  The sound you hear is another trendy trend starting to bite the dust.  It seems that an outside panel is questioning the Holy Writ of the climate "scientists."  Haven't seen much about this on the mainstream media.  From Fox:

Acknowledging flaws in its reports and growing public skepticism toward the theory of manmade global warming, the United Nations hired an independent review panel in March to audit its climate-science arm. The group found plenty of problems.

The InterAcademy Council, an independent group of scientists representing agencies from around the world, presented the findings of its five-month investigation Monday morning at the United Nations. The group took issue with the structure, methods and leadership of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the group responsible for a 2007 report that erroneously forecast the imminent melting of Himalayan glaciers, the rate of melt of polar ice caps and dwindling Amazon rainforests.

"The IPCC has raised public awareness of climate change, and driven policymakers," said Harold Shapiro, chair of the IAC Committee to Review IPCC and former president of Princeton University. But the controversies that have erupted, and revelations of errors, have put the group under the microscope. "We recommend some significant reforms," he told the U.N.

"The IPCC has yet to review the IAC's findings, so I am not able to comment on its findings," said longstanding chair Rajendra Pachauri in a press conference following the presentation. But he did note that none of the seven reviews of the IPCC to date had found flaws in the U.N. group.

Yeah, but this one did, pal. 

"The scientific community agrees that climate change is real," Pachauri said.

Right.  Some of it is about warming, some of it about cooling.  But the issue is the degree to which humans contribute to the changes.  The public isn't buying the glib arguments, which often seem more political science than real science. 

I doubt if this report will influence the true believers, for whom climate change is a religion. But I'd be curious to see if journalists change their tune at all.  Remember, it wasn't very long ago that skeptics were equated with Holocaust deniers. 

August 31, 2010