There's an interesting story making its way around the science blogosphere, involving the fallout from a whopping error in a recent NGO report that was (before the error became publicly known) widely picked up by the press. Charlie Petit at Science Journalism Tracker gets to the nub of it here:
The news is that this week an NGO based in Argentina, the Universal Ecological Fund, released a report on the peril for world food production as global temperatures rise. Serious topic. The authoring org. appears to be earnest (if not diligent). It got wide pickup. However, the grave report, aside from its crop and food price worries, also declared that at current rates of emissions, CO2 in the atmosphere will reach about 490 parts per million by the year 2020 (it's now just shy of 400). That's pretty much wrong. What's totally wrong is its deduction that this translates to ...
