The global-warming juggernaut is creating climate refugees in northern settlements, where native residents once forced to abandon their nomadic ways are now faced with deserting villages where ragged wooden houses have to be adjusted regularly to level them on the shifting soil.

“We haven’t sat down as a society and said, ‘How are we going to adapt to this?’ ” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University and lead author of a recent report by a United Nations IPCC panel on the impacts and vulnerability presented by climate change. “Just like we haven’t sat down and said, ‘How are we going to reduce emissions?’ And both have to be done.”

I am working on a comparison of the Working Group three report released to the public today, with a copy of the draft that was submitted by scientists. Should have it up soon.

In the meantime, attached is copy of the summary as submitted by scientists for negotiation and a copy of the final official summary released today in Bangkok.

Sir John Houghton, former director-general of the Meteorological Office and chair of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, entered the fray after two meteorologists were reported as saying “some scientists have been guilty of overplaying available evidence.” The comments were made by Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Houghton said he agrees "we must not exaggerate the evidence, and if anything must underplay it," but the evidence of serious climate change is now "very substantial."

One of the founders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Houghton says it had "deliberately underestimated the problem." The latest projections of the floods and droughts that will result from warming are "frightening," he said, and the 20,000 deaths caused by the 2003 heatwave in Europe justify the view that it is more dangerous than terrorism.

You don't need to be a computer modeler to understand what the IPCC really is, how the peer-review process really works, and what standards inform the work of the international scientific body.

A new resource spells it all out -- in plain language. The website, www.ipccfacts.org, has just been launched by the United Nations Foundation with help from Fenton Communications, to help de-mystify the process. It's clear, simple, easy to navigate and thankfully not dumbed-down!

And it blows away scads of misrepresentations by skeptics who continue to characterize the Panel as a front for liberal, tree-hugging enviros.