Must we trust the International Panel for Climate Change IPCC?

A good friend of mine, Ivan, is very much disappointed with the mistakes of the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and, as a matter of fact, he does not trust them at all, up to the point to think all this climate change issue is pure rubbish. The Facebook message he addressed me on this issue lets it very clear:

“One more manipulation: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-glaciers-mistake  the list is getting quite long..”.

However I think otherwise and I decided to post here my answer. Here it is:

“Ivan, this is exactly the kind of thing that leads me to trust the IPCC more than any other reporter: The IPCC is a large community and has defined standards and procedures and, as a consequence, when an affirmation or report is not true, it will come to the surface sooner or later and it can and will be revised. Not only this, but the standards and procedures may be revised and changed as well. The case you report is exactly the case. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same about any other reporter, so far. In other words, this particular issue and some other issues that appeared before about wrong analyses of IPCC, paradoxically prove that it is the IPCC the only source of analysis and evaluation (not data, they do not take data) we can trust on the long run.”

“It’s like if we take one or several wrong judicial decisions as an excuse to completely distrust the judicial system in one of our countries and, then, we substitute it by ad hoc individuals or groups who we trust more than the judicial system and put them to judge cases here and there. “

“Incidentally, in this case, the affirmation which was made in the general report –not in the summary, which is what I’m twitting here- was one on a prediction on the date the Himalayan glaciers will disappear. After the revision, the IPCC says they cannot support the date because it was not concluded following the IPCC standards –this is the detected mistake-. However, the main conclusion about glaciers is maintained (and it has a very large probability of being true because the Indian Government only claims the prediction of Himalayan glaciers disappearing is not sufficiently supported, but not that the main assertion is wrong): “Glaciers have melted significantly and this will accelerate and affect the supply of water from major mountain ranges where more than one-sixth of the world population currently lives". It’s up to us to rank the issues.”