Fred Pearce at the New Scientist apprently thinks that if you are critical of the IPCC, then you must be one of those nasty “sceptics.” He writes in a news story:

Some insiders suggest that the IPCC may be more cautious in its upcoming report than it has been in the past, but this is unlikely to placate climate-change sceptics. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, Boulder, accuses the IPCC leadership of “seeing their role as political advocates rather than honest brokers”.

Of course, as readers here know well, Mr. Pearce is just wrong (I’ve emailed the New Scientist as well). I accept the results of IPCC Working Group I and have for many years advocated policy action on both adaptation and mitigation. Mr. Pearce’s lumping me in with the sceptics is particularly ironic because his entire article is a preemptive defense of IPCC scientists who are “targets of concerted attacks apparently designed to bring down their reputations and careers.” If Mr. Pearce wanted to know my views he might have just called, rather than assuming that anyone who puts forth a criticism of the IPCC must be a climate sceptic.

It must be nice to see the world in terms of only good guys and bad guys, with not a shade of grey in sight.