Climate study 'pulls punches' to keep polluters on board

'True risks' of warming played down to placate fossil-fuel nationsWarnings about the dangers of global warming are being watered down in the final version of a key climate report for a major international meeting next month, according to reviewers who have studied earlier versions of the report and its summary.They say scientists working on the final draft of the summary are censoring their own warnings and "pulling their punches" to make policy recommendations seem more palatable to countries - such as the US, Saudi Arabia and Australia - that are reluctant to cut fossil-fuel emissions, a key cause of global warming. "Downplaying the worst impacts of climate change has led the scientific authors to omit crucial information from the summary for policymakers," said one reviewer, Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Continue reading...