The Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government (Professor John Beddington) makes a useful point about the much trumpeted 'erroneous claims' in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/27/climate-change-uk-top-scientist-urges-caution). He feels that part of the difficulty of this (and other areas of science) relates to communicating uncertainty in a complex and changing problem. He suggests that the IPCC should often follow statements about particular phenomena (such as the melting of the Himalayan glaciers) with words such as 'there's a level of uncertainty about that'. Beddington maintains that this might reduce the power of sceptics to convince the general public that they are being misled by the 'climate change lobby'. He also feels that, on balance, nothing that has been presented thus far provides a real case for inaction.
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