Auntie ABC published this article today, wholly sourced apparently from Reuters. It says the IPCC says that extreme weather is set to increase because of global warming. It can’t be squared with this article from The Australian which says that extreme weather won’t be affected for decades, again using an IPCC source.

How did these different stories come about?

Well, The Australian’s story is apparently based on a leak of the “draft summary” while it appears that the ABC story is based on the official release. The Australian notes:

This [the fact the IPCC summaries often misrepresent the science which is in the report and they are supposed to be summarising]…may help to explain why details of the draft summary of the global analysis of the influence of climate change on extreme weather events were leaked to media outlets this week.

The official summary was due to be released in Kampala last night after IPCC delegates had spent the week analysing it to decide on an agreed text. If there are significant changes between the two documents a fierce debate about the politicisation of the IPCC process can be expected.

Cursory reading suggests that there are significant differences, and the ABC has some explaining to do as to why it is recycling official media releases already recycled by Reuters when it should have known there was an issue with them.

Interestingly both The Australian and the ABC feature photos of Bangkok’s recent floods. With no caption in the ABC version one assumes it is to support the proposition that the flood is a result of global warming, even though we know from the leak that this could not be true on the basis of the IPCC consensus.

This is spelled out in The Australian where the Thai flood photo has the caption:

A man walks through floodwaters at a closed market in Bangkok earlier this month; a review of the science suggests it is premature to link extreme weather events with climate change.

When are “they” going to own up that AGW has no Weather of Mass Destruction?