My point still stands… people, including policy makers, don’t read (and if they did, I doubt they’d really understand it) the actual report. The policy makers then also parrot what they’ve read in the summary report (and reinforced by the media). And then the media report that the policy makers say and the idea gets reinforcing…much like what happens when you’re in the bath tub and start making waves…if you do it just right you can keep amplifying the wave until most of the tub has spilled out on the floor making a huge mess to be cleaned up.

Of course you are correct. On the other hand if people (the general not scientifically educated/interested majority) really believe what the BBC and the like put out about climate change, then they don’t seem to be doing much about it. Perhaps after reading the BBC web site they go away and read ‘Climate of Fear’.

Btw, what’s the bet, what would ‘misleading’ be (whatever they say I rekon) and what would ‘alarmist’ be (I’d guess predicting any warmer than now, perhaps even a prediction of temps not falling)? Since you’d also, as you allways do, simply dismiss out of hand any climate prediction what so ever I can see why you’d offer a such ‘gamble’…

What odds would you offer that the high end of the predicted range or warming will be lower in the next report?

Actually what you didn’t pick up on was the straw man argument constructed. No-one I know of would blame all of the warming of the 20th Century on man-made influences…at least, not yet.

We’ll have to wait and see. But I’m willing to bet good money that the Summary for Policy Makers will be even more misleading and alarmist than previous ones.

Thanks, Indeed, that 117 should have been 120.

Your quotes are not from the IPCC but from the BBC, a well known flag waver for AGW. Lets see what the next IPCC assesment actually says rather than what the BBC is speculating it says.

The problem is, and it’s a real significant problem, that most people don’t read the IPCC reports, they read the media’s reporting of the reports. The IPCC has a significant number of caveats, warnings, etc. but that doesn’t stop everyone from pointing to the hockeystick. In many ways, it’s a brilliant marketing plan. The actual report doesn’t say what everyone thinks it says, but says it in a way, with help from others, to cause everyone think it says what they want them to think it says.

The net result is that people go around talking about the extreme possiblities, the things that might happen, assuming the worst, because it makes good news and promotes particular agenda.