In The Times in London, Ben Webster today reports on an official inquiry in the Netherlands on how well climate science has been reported by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The hed: UN’s climate report “one sided.” In his telling, the reports are a pile of hash. His lede: they “failed to make clear it often presented a worst-case scenario” (corrected from earlier “world-case” typo) and underplayed the ways in which a warmer world might be better.There follows a litany of the mistakes, exaggerations, and sloppy thinking to be found in the huge reports and that helped fuel ‘climategate.” (Link goes to The Australian, which picked it up from the Times – where it is behind a subscription-only barrier).

That’s one way to see the new report from the Dutch.

For another, there is at Time Magazine, by Eben Harrell in a blog post, “Dutch agency affirms IPCC findings.” This has the Dutch panel sifting out more, occasional misfires but on the whole declaring none of them undermines the reports primary conclusion that climate change is underway, serious, and our own doing.

The contrast should be no surprise. Other stories tend toward the Time Magazine view.

• Economic Times: Dutch review supports key warnings of IPCC report ;
• Financial Times – Fiona Harvey, Clive Cookson: Dutch study supports IPCC climate report ;
• The Economist: Accentuate the Negative ; Pretty fair analysis of the Dutch analysis. It explains why they undertook the study. It seems to agree, somewhat reluctantly, that for all the systematic bias and one-way mistakes the Dutch agree are in in the IPCC reports, that  the underlying reality of climate change as genuine and serious would not change were they removed.
• AP – Arthur Max: (via USA Today) Dutch agency admits mistake in U.N. climate report ; But they were small, IPPC should be more careful, …
• Nature News – Quirin Schiermeier: Few fishy facts found i climate report ; Played high – a finding that overall the IPCCC “delivered a formidable summary of the current state of knowledge…not flawless but it is the best we have…”
• BBC (blog) Richard Black: Dutch courage for climate mainstream ; Good one – as he says, “It’s beginning to look like a pattern…”
• Telegraph – James Delingpole: How come we now have to go to the Chinese for the truth about global warming? ; Well, he’s a columnist and blogger, so has latitude in stretching things to fit his sentiment. And boy, can he stretch things. He’s the Brit equivalent to a talking points memo from the the Heartland Institute in the US.
• NYTimes – Andrew C. Revkin (Dot Earth blog): Dutch Agency Seeks Clarity From Climate Panel ;

- Charlie Petit

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