Has the IPCC been wrong before?

Answer 1

Unfortunately the IPCC's record is far from good when it comes to getting things right.

The most notable case was the so-called Himalaya-Gate affair, when the organisation released an alarmist report in 2007, claiming that the Himalyan glacier will have melted by 2035. As it transpired the report was without any scientific basis and was based on a report an IPCC employee ("expert reviewer" Murari Lal) had read in the New Scientist magazine. The New Scientist article itself was drawn up from a short telephone call with an obscure Indian scientist called Syed Hasnain, who it transpired had absolutely no scientific evidence to support his claim.

The report (printed in 1999) had gone unnoticed until 2005, when without the necessary scrutiny, it was used by the WWF as a campigning tool to prove that glaciers were melting. It was then picked up without any scrutiny or peer review by Lal and the IPCC as they prepared their 2007 report.

Another faux-pas of the IPCC was Amazon-Gate when the IPCC claimed that up to 40% of the rain forests in the Amazon were at risk from global warming and would likely be replaced by "tropical savannas" if temperatures continued to rise.

The scientific-looking report, on which this claim was based, was a non-peer reviewed article for the WWF, by an Australian policy analyst and a freelance journalist for the Guardian newspaper (not even experts let alone scientists!).

The IPCC was forced to withdraw it's 2007 prediction that sea levels would rise by 18-59 cm over the course of this century due to "two technical errors" in it's calculations.

Answer 2

The IPCC has made some errors in the past, such as overestimating the rate of glacier melt in the Himalayas in a 2007 report. However, these mistakes do not undermine the overall credibility of the organization, as the IPCC's reports are based on rigorous scientific research and are subject to thorough review processes to ensure accuracy.