Dutch review supports global warming scientists despite 'minor' report flaws

The examination of part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's key 2007 report was launched by the Dutch government after it emerged the study claimed 55 per cent of the country was below sea level – an inaccurate figure supplied by the Dutch environmental assessment agency.

The review, by the Dutch environmental assessment agency, found the summary conclusions for the regional impacts of global warming contained a minor "inaccuracy" about the number of people in Africa who will be more at risk of a lack of water – a mistake the report's authors dispute.

But it said the error, and a lack of transparency as to where the conclusions had come from, did not undermine the findings that the negative impacts of climate change posed "substantial risks" to most parts of the world.

A series of other minor mistakes were found in the 500-page document which fed into the summary, but most of these were references or typographical errors, with just one "significant" error about the decline in anchovy fisheries in the African west coast which has been corrected.

The report also raised concerns that the report summary highlighted more of the negative effects of climate change than the positive but yesterday the IPCC authors said they focused on the greatest impacts to human well being and the environment when preparing the conclusions for governments.

The mistakes in the IPCC's study emerged as science was reeling from the leak of 13 years of emails from a world-leading climate research centre at the University of East Anglia , which sceptics seized on as evidence scientists were trying to manipulate data to support a theory of man-made global warming.