The InterAcademy Council’s review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) processes was released on August 31.

Green groups have attempted to spin the review to beef up their own cases for drastic climate policies.

Greenpeace described the work of those who found errors in the IPCC report as ‘crude’ and ‘muckraking’.

The question that needs to be thrown back at Greenpeace is why any attempt to make a scientific case more rigorous is crude?

Greenpeace’s response would no doubt be to state that the claims of the IPCC should probably be taken at face value.

The IAC review of the Glaciergate showed precisely why these high-profile policy reports shouldn’t be taken at face value. It showed that the authors and reviewers failed to respond to serious doubts on the accuracy of a passage in the report that stated the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

The statement was based on WWF data. The Review also pointed out that this pointed to “insufficient evaluation of non-peer-reviewed literature by the Lead Authors”.

Greenpeace reports make their way into the IPCC reference list seven times. Why does this matter for current state of the forestry debate?

In its latest missive against the Indonesian forestry and agriculture industries, Greenpeace claims on the very first page that Indonesia is the world’s largest greenhouse emitter because of forestry.

But a look at the World Resources Institute’s climate analysis tools has them in fifth spot.

A few months back, Greenpeace also released a report on palm oil and forestry in Indonesia. Its first page claimed Indonesia has the world’s highest rates of deforestation. But a look at the source they used – the FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment -- shows that there are no less than 13 countries that have higher deforestation rates based on percentage. And on total forest area, Brazil’s deforestation outstrips Indonesia’s by more than 70 per cent.

The lesson from the IPCC for those that want to contribute meaningfully to the debate on forestry is that standards need to be raised by organisations – such as Greenpeace. Why? Because their actions can directly or indirectly impact the lives of millions of foresters and farmers in developing countries.

To simply throw around claims that are not based on ‘hard evidence’ – is reprehensible at best, misanthropic at worst.

When Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo was appointed last year, he made a statement on science in the climate change debate. The first was that science “is often presented in ways that make it harder for people who aren’t specialists to engage with” – and that it had to be made “more accessible”.

Is Greenpeace’s presentation of FAO data what Naidoo was talking about?