IPCC climate report errors begin ringing in the halls of Congress

The citing of the IPCC's reports by the Environmental Protection
Agency has come under fire after it was demonstrated that the
review process failed to catch glaring errors. 

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s work has formed the backbone of the argument warning of the dangers of manmade climate change. Revelations that many of the conclusions are based on faulty data have begun to have ramifications in Congress.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cited AR4 as one of its primary sources for determining that carbon dioxide was a harmful gas – what is now called the ‘endangerment finding.’ The agency claimed that the IPCC’s work “undergo a rigorous and exacting standard of peer review.”

Last month the claim in the IPCC’s AR4 report that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was proven to be false. The sources cited were anything but scientific and that has since led to the discovery of dozens of other issues with the seminal report. The self-proclaimed rigorous review process that the IPCC claims their reports undergo has been called into question.

Rather than conduct its own research, the EPA used that of others including the IPCC to come to their determination. Today, members of the House of Representatives are asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to justify those actions.

Representatives Joe Barton , R-Texas, and Greg Walden, R-Ore, wrote, “We believe this error raises questions about whether EPA’s due diligence and review of the IPCC assessments has been sufficiently rigorous.”

The pair goes on to ask if the EPA performed any review of the IPCC’s work of if the agency just took it at face value. Barton and Walden also note that EPA reviewers participated in the IPCC’s process for AR4 and failed to catch any of the errors.

“We believe this error raises questions about whether EPA’s due diligence and review of the IPCC assessments has been sufficiently rigorous,” Barton and Walden said. "Aside from EPA’s own participation in the development and review of the Working Group II report, in its comments on the endangerment finding EPA pointed to published IPCC guidelines and procedures to demonstrate the quality of the process. Yet, we see no evidence that EPA has examined whether and how the IPCC implements and adheres to these procedures.”

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