Yahoo News 24 Jan 10;
LONDON (AFP) – The UN climate panel is re-examining its claim that global warming is linked to worsening natural disasters after doubts were raised about the evidence, a British newspaper reported on Sunday.
The news brings fresh embarrassment to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which this week admitted errors in a forecast about melting Himalayan glaciers that was included in a landmark 2007 report.
That report -- which won the panel a Nobel Peace Prize and has become a benchmark in climate science -- also contained a claim that rapidly rising costs from events such as floods and hurricanes were linked to climate change.
According to The Sunday Times, however, the claim was based on an unpublished study that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny.
When the study was finally published in 2008, it included a caveat saying: "We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses."
The IPCC included the claim despite doubts raised by at least two scientific reviewers at the time, and also failed to issue a clarification after the study was published, the Sunday Times said.
Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the vice-chairman of the IPCC, told the newspaper that he would be reviewing the evidence.
"We are reassessing the evidence and will publish a report on natural disasters and extreme weather with the latest findings. Despite recent events the IPCC process is still very rigorous and scientific," he said.
The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, was a 938-page opus whose warning that climate change was on the march spurred politicians around the world to vow action.
However, it had to admit last week that a forecast suggesting the glaciers in the Himalayas were likely to disappear by 2035 was "poorly substantiated".
UN panel defends climate change evidence
Yahoo News 26 Jan 10;
GENEVA (AFP) – The UN climate panel has rejected as "baseless and misleading" a newspaper report that raised doubts about the evidence behind a claim that global warming is linked to worsening natural disasters.
This weekend, the Sunday Times of London reported that a passage in one of the panel's reports, which suggested natural disasters including hurricanes and floods had increased in number and intensity, had been challenged.
The IPCC insisted in a statement released late on Monday that the targeted study was quoted alongside others in balanced manner exposing the range of evidence. It said the panel had weighed its conclusions.
"This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue."
"It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in economic losses, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend," the statement added.
"The tone is balanced, and the section contains many important qualifiers."
The panel also underlined that it came to several conclusions about the role of climate change in extreme weather events and disasters in different sections of its reports, based on a "careful" assessment of past changes and projections of future trends.
The panel concluded that the newspaper "ran a misleading and baseless story attacking the way the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC handled an important question concerning recent trends in economic losses from climate-related disasters."
The Sunday Times had reported that the IPCC included the reference to the then unpublished study despite doubts raised by at least two scientific reviewers at the time.
Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a climatologist at the Universite Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and the vice-chairman of the IPCC, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that the panel was reassessing the evidence.
It was the second time in recent weeks that doubt was cast on the scientific validity some of the evidence used in the UN panel's reports.
The IPCC last week admitted errors in a forecast about melting Himalayan glaciers that was included in a landmark 2007 report.
The ongoing series of reports compiled since 1999 are meant to reflect a global scientific consensus to guide official action against climate change.
