Last August, I described the terrible bind which was about to face the IPCC Stockholm meeting. Everybody knew the draft SPM was an embarrassment – the climate sensitivity range was far too high, the models were plainly wrong and the temperature ‘hiatus’ was left unexplained.

The IPCC had only three options – (i) re-run the models and re-draft the whole report, (ii) issue a string of caveats, or (iii) simply bluster on.