A new summary report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was issued earlier this week and has generated a lot of activity on public blogs and in the media.  You can read the original report here.  It’s a lot to wade through, though, so you might prefer to start with some articles on the report.  Vox.com provides a seven-point summary of the report here.  The Washington Post has an article which argues that IPCC does not go far enough in pointing out the issues with risks associated with changing climate (here).  You will not be surprised to hear that there have also been many reports in the media complaining that IPCC has gone too far in their analysis and that its conclusions are inconclusive or even incorrect.

As a climatologist, I have friends on both sides of the issue, and try to listen carefully to discussions by all of them.  One person I do not listen to, however, is John Coleman, the former founder of the Weather Channel.  He has been an ardent opponent to the IPCC and has voiced his supposed reasons in many public forums lately.  However, although he was an excellent broadcaster, he has no degrees in either meteorology or climatology and many of his arguments are based on 30-year-old debunked “science”.  An excellent blog posting by the Capital Weather Gang on this topic can be found here.  The blog points out that by trying to debunk science using incorrect arguments he is also discrediting conservative climatologists who are trying to do effective research to study this topic.