Real Climate lurches from a mistake to a lie

If you want to understand why so many people have lost trust in the climate science community, due to the acts of a few, just take a look at what Real Climate has done to spin the disaster issue regarding the IPCC. They write in a post that (emphasis added):

WG2 did include a debatable graph provided by Robert Muir-Wood (although not in the main report but only as Supplementary Material). It cited a paper by Muir-Wood as its source although that paper doesn’t include the graph, only the analysis that it is based on.

As readers here well know, the analysis of the Muir-Wood mystery graph does not appear in the cited source (or any other). Real Climate's claim is easily shown to be wrong. Perhaps they made an honest mistake. I pointed this fact out to them and asked that they correct the error:

This statement in your post is in error:

“It cited a paper by Muir-Wood as its source although that paper doesn’t include the graph, only the analysis that it is based on.”

The cited paper does not include the analysis that the graph is based on. In fact, it includes no discussion of temperature trends and disasters. You can confirm this for yourself:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/sparc/research/projects/extreme_events/munich_workshop/muirwood.pdf

You should correct the error in this post.

Real Climate has decided to leave the error uncorrected. When does an honest error become something different?

Instead of just correcting the factual record Real Climate responds to my request with the following:

You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"?

Lies on top of lies. Not good. If they want to understand why their community has lost so much credibility, they need only look to their own actions.

From Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Posted via email from Garth's posterous