Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC Process is Started and Finished by Political Officials Who Steer the Information

See February 11, 2010 Best of the Web Today by James Taranto
"Hot Enough for You? Global warmists used to love talking about the weather" at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703382904575059270348147154.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

"To be sure, the global warmists are right to distinguish between weather and climate. A short-term condition sometimes can run counter to a long-term trend".

"The problem is that for years, global warmists have claimed that the weather proved their claims about the climate. This is a New York Times story from June 24, 1988:

"The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency scientist reported today.
Until now, scientists have been cautious about attributing rising global temperatures of recent years to the predicted global warming caused by pollutants in the atmosphere, known as the "greenhouse effect." But today Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration told a Congressional committee that it was 99 percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere.
Dr. Hansen, a leading expert on climate change, said in an interview that there was no "magic number" that showed when the greenhouse effect was actually starting to cause changes in climate and weather. But he added, 'It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here'."

"the classic of the genre is a piece from the Boston Globe, dated Aug. 30, 2005, which begins: 'The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming'."
The author, Ross Gelbspan, writes "For years, the fossil fuel industry has lobbied the media to accord the same weight to a handful of global warming skeptics that it accords the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reporting to the United Nations."

London's Guardian, a left-wing paper that has long been squarely in the global-warmist camp, carried a damning report titled "How to Reform the IPCC" see Fenruary 10, 2010 article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/10/ipcc-reform :
"The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says its reports are policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive. Perhaps unknown to many people, the process is started and finished not by scientists but by political officials, who steer the way the information is presented in so-called summary for policymakers [SPM] chapters. Is that right, the Guardian asked?

'The Nobel prize was for peace not science . . . government employees will use it to negotiate changes and a redistribution of resources. It is not a scientific analysis of climate change,' said Anton Imeson, a former IPCC lead author from the Netherlands. 'For the media, the IPCC assessments have become an icon for something they are not. To make sure that it does not happen again, the IPCC should change its name and become part of something else. The IPCC should have never allowed itself to be branded as a scientific organisation. It provides a review of published scientific papers but none of this is much controlled by independent scientists'."