‘Sherlock Holland‘ to tackle IPCC report

 

March 10, 2010
 

The United Nations have initiated an independent investigation of the errors that have recently come to light in the IPCC 2007 Climate report, and the Netherlands will be in the centre of this operation. 
 

 The international investigation will be carried out by the Amsterdam based InterAcademy Council (IAC), a world wide body in which 18 national academies of science cooperate. At the same time the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), the Dutch’ own official strategic environmental planning bureau, is also stageing an investigation. PBL has been asked to do so by the Secretary of the Environmental and Parliament. Among other things the IPCC report contains some faulty figures on the percentage of Dutch land surface below sea level.
 

In a unique ‘crowd sourcing’ move, PBL has launched a special website www.pbl.nl/meldpunt, on which anyone can report possible further errors. The PBL's evaluation will be supervised by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), that also serves as the IAC head quarters.

 

The IPCC report errors cropped up in the so called Second Working Group section (on environmental effects of climate change) that must rely partly on less-than-scientific documents, due to lack of peer reviewed scientific ones. Even so the errors cost IPCC considerable public loss of face. Related stories...

 

Photo: © Michel Robles