Ducking, diving, bobbing and weaving are the general themes of the Summary for Policymakers, just released this morning.
You would imagine that the document would review what was said last time round and how things have changed since that time, but you'd be wrong. This is, after all, the bureaucracy at work: difficulties have to be brushed under carpets and stones left unturned.
It would, for example, have been interesting for AR5 to discuss the increase in hurricane intensity that the AR4 SPM said was "likely" on the basis of the climate models. Instead, we get a veil drawn over the subject, with not a word on the hurricane drought in recent years.
Similarly, the divergence between model and observational estimates of long-term warming (effective climate sensitivity) is alluded to in opaque fashion in a footnote ("lack of agreement on values across lines of evidence") rather than being tackled head on in a way that would make clear the difficulties scientists are having with the climate jigsaw.
The general theme of obscurantism runs across the document. Whereas in previous years the temperature records have been shown unadulterated, now we have presentation of a single figure for each decade; surely an attempt to mislead rather than inform. And the pause is only addressed with handwaving arguments and vague allusions to ocean heat.
From the questions asked by journalists at the press conference, few cared about the science and the contradictions in what they were being told. The press corps are, almost to a man (and woman) environmentalists and only interesting in decarbonisation. The exceptions were David Rose and the guy from the Economist. So it is very uncertain that the problems in the WGI report will make the mainstream of public discourse.