Just based on the url. (After having spent years reading it, I’m not touching Wattsupwiththat anymore)

“Silently slashes”: So silently that the information is easily available everywhere and is published publicly.

“AR5 Final draft”: Yes, it’s shocking that drafts change. It’s almost like the purpose of drafts is for them to be revised multiple times before they are published.

And finally, it’s almost a 100% that the “slashing” happened to get sign offs from political leaders of governments, without which they wouldn’t be able to publish the reports. If anything, this only illustrates exactly why the IPCC reports are far too conservative.

> “Silently slashes”: So silently that the information is easily available everywhere and is published publicly.

On this particular point; organisations do often 'silently' release to the public. For example, Westminster-styled governments are notorious for important things happening on Friday when the press is winding down or legislation never appearing in the talking points.

It is possible to silently do something in the public sphere. Editing draft predictions does sound quite mundane though, they probably weren't trying to slip that under the radar.

"This particular point" is not that it could not be done silently, but that is was not done silently.

> So silently that the information is easily available everywhere and is published publicly.

But "silently" doesn't mean "secretly". It just means that something is done without particular emphasis (maybe because it's not important, or maybe to avoid attracting attention). Note that our perception of the world is shaped more by what we collectively decide to pay attention to, rather than by all the information that is available.

> “AR5 Final draft”: Yes, it’s shocking that drafts change [...] it’s almost a 100% that the “slashing” happened to get sign offs from political leaders of governments.

So you're saying that the IPCC lied in its final draft? But in that case, did we pay attention enough to the fact that the official report was lying? Or we just let it slip silently?

Also, I don't understand how the political leaders could- or would- decide not to sign off a scientific report for predicting further 0.3 degrees of warming per decade. On what grounds?

That says the IPCC revised down their final report from the earlier draft, which accurately described what the models projected. Your article even said they did that revision without consulting the scientists who made the models.

That's entirely consistent with the claim that the IPCC's final reports have been underplaying the actual science, for political reasons.

(Your article is also from five years ago, and still talks about the "missing warming." That was always nonsense, but even hardcore deniers have abandoned that talking point since warming in the last five years has been dramatic.)

IPCC reports are all about getting scientific data acknowledged officially by governments. Of course many of those government officials participating in the process are going to push back against a draft that contains statements that have consequences that inconvenience them on the political field. That's to be expected. So yeah, when reading an IPCC report it's good to keep in mind that it is going to be conservative.

They are slashing the forecast because global warming looks less bad if we call it 1.5 K instead of 2 K, but they actually did change the baseline instead of their predictions.

At least I guess that is what whattsupwiththat tries to scandalize, unlike the IPCC they are very hard to read, because they don't actually write clearly. (For example, they do not label whether plots are observed data or model output.)

Revising down forecasts is conservatism.

But if they do so because previous forecasts proved too high, then they were not always too conservative