Lowered Global Warming Forecasts? Not So Fast

When science news reporters take their cues from other news reporters rather than from the scientific literature itself, problems often result. Those problems are only compounded by the brevity of most wire reports.

It's not that the IPCC's climate scientists have lowered their forecasts for the worst case scenarios. As the researchers at RealClimate explain, the new report is tightening the estimates for climate sensitivity to a doubling of preindustrial CO2 levels; a forecast would be somewhat different.