Yahoo News 10 Mar 10;
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – A respected international scientific body will review the UN's Nobel prize-winning climate panel, under fire for errors in a key report on global warming, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday.
Ban told reporters that the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council (IAC), which groups presidents of 15 leading science academies, will carry out the task "completely independently of the United Nations."
Ban however defended the work of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose chairman Rajendra Pachauri has been criticized for his stewardship of the body.
Last month, the United Nations announced that it would launch an independent review of the IPCC's work.
Ban said Wednesday that the IAC would undertake "a comprehensive, independent review of the IPCC's procedures and processes" and would make recommendations to improve its future reports.
Robbert Dijkgraaf, an IAC co-chair, meanwhile told reporters that his panel aimed to present its report by the end of next August so that governments can consider it ahead of key climate change meetings late this year.
With Pachauri by his side, Ban defended the overall work of the IPCC, despite what he called "a very small number of errors" in its fourth assessment report.
"I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of that report," Ban said.
"In recent months we have seen some criticism. We are receptive and sensitive to that and we are doing something about it," Pachauri told the press.
"It is critically important that the science that we bring into our reports and that we disseminate on a large scale is accepted by communities across the globe," Pachauri added.
He pledged that an upcoming fifth assessment report by the IPCC would be "stronger and better than anything we have produced in the past."
The IPCC is made up of several thousand scientists tasked with vetting scientific knowledge on climate change and its impacts.
But its reputation was damaged by a warning in a major 2007 report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035, a claim that has been widely discredited and fueled skepticism in some quarters about mankind's role in climate change.
International climate negotiators are to meet on April 9 in Bonn to draw up a program for the rest of the year looking toward a ministerial-level meeting opening on November 29 in Cancun, Mexico.
The talks would follow up on December's climate summit in Copenhagen, which reached a controversial last-minute compromise.
Green groups and most scientists say the document adopted in Copenhagen, a limited pact made after China angrily ruled out binding commitments, falls far short of what is necessary to curtail global warming.
The summit set a goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and pledged a total of nearly 30 billion dollars in aid to poor countries by 2012.
But it did not spell out the means for achieving the warming limits, and the emissions pledges were only voluntary.
UN Launches Review Of Criticized Climate Panel
Louis Charbonneau, PlanetArk 11 Mar 10;
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday that a group of national science academies would review U.N. climate science to restore trust after a 2007 global warming report was found to have errors.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged in January its report had exaggerated the pace of Himalayan glaciers melting, and last month said the report also had overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level.
"Let me be clear -- the threat posed by climate change is real," Ban told reporters alongside IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. "Nothing that has been alleged or revealed in the media recently alters the fundamental scientific consensus on climate change."
Ban acknowledged that were "a very small number of errors" in what is known as the Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007, a document of more than 3,000 pages which cited over 10,000 scientific papers. The next such report on climate change will be published in 2013 and 2014.
Despite the errors, Pachauri told reporters he stood by the 2007 report's principle message that global warming is real and is accelerating due to so-called greenhouse gas emissions.
"We believe the conclusions of that report are really beyond any reasonable doubt," he said, adding that they were "solid and credible."
Ban said the InterAcademy Council, a grouping of the world's science academies, would lead the review, which he promised would be "conducted completely independently of the United Nations."
INDEPENDENT OF, BUT FUNDED BY, THE U.N.
The IAC is hosted by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam and includes Britain's Royal Society, and more than a dozen other national science academies.
Council co-chairman Robbert Dijkgraaf, a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Amsterdam, told reporters that the review would be entirely independent of the United Nations but would be funded by it. He added that the review panel would present its report by the end of August.
Ban hinted that some changes in the way the IPCC reports are compiled might be necessary to avoid future mistakes.
"We need to ensure full transparency, accuracy and objectivity, and minimize the potential for any errors going forward," he said.
Pachauri, who has been resisting pressure from critics to resign, said he expected the review "will help us in strengthening the entire process by which we carry out preparation of our reports."
Neither Pachauri nor Ban took questions from reporters.
Surveys suggest public conviction of global warming's risks may have been undermined by the errors and by the disclosure last year of hacked e-mails revealing scientists sniping at sceptics.
The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and produces the main scientific document driving global efforts to agree a new, more ambitious climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, and switch from fossil fuels to cleaner, low-carbon supplies of energy.
But its 2007 report wrongly said Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035, a prediction derived from articles which had not been reviewed by scientists before publication. An original source had spoken of the world's glaciers melting by 2350.
(Editing by Jackie Frank)
Scientists to review climate body
Richard Black, BBC News 10 Mar 10;
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the world's science academies to review work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Work will be co-ordinated by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK's Royal Society.
The IPCC has been under pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007.
Mr Ban said the overall concept of man-made climate change was robust, and action to curb emissions badly needed.
The Inter-Academy Council will convene a panel of experts to conduct the review, and will be run independently of UN agencies.
"Let me be clear - the threat posed by climate change is real," said Mr Ban, speaking at UN headquarters in New York.
"I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of [the IPCC's 2007] report."
Nevertheless, he said, there had been "a few errors" in the 3,000-page report (known as AR4), and there was a need "to ensure full transparency, accuracy and objectivity".
Inside and out
Robbert Dijkgraaf, the council's co-chair, said the review panel will be chosen so that it includes both inside knowledge of the IPCC and outside perspectives.
"The panel will look forward and will definitely not go over all the vast amount of data in climate science," he said.
"It will see what are the [IPCC's] procedures, and how can they be improved, so we can avoid certain types of errors."
But Roger Pielke Jr, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado who has recently criticised the IPCC over its assessment of the costs of climate-related disasters, said the terms of reference appeared to have some significant omissions.
"How will it deal with allegations of breakdowns in procedures in the AR4?", he asked.
"The terms of reference say nothing about looking at the AR4 procedures, but it would be difficult to do a serious evaluation without actually evaluating experience," he told BBC News.
"Should it ignore the AR4 issues, then it will risk being called a whitewash."
Prof Pielke also suggested the panel might look at apparent conflicts of interest within the IPCC's staff.
Lessons learned
The conflict of interest charge has been levelled against the IPCC's chair, Rajendra Pachauri, over his business interests.
But standing alongside Mr Ban, he welcomed the review.
"The IPCC stands firmly behind the rigour and reliability of its Fourth Assessment Report from 2007, but we recognise that we can improve," he said.
"We have listened and learned from our critics, and we intend to take every action we can to ensure that our reports are as robust as possible."
The review was demanded by world governments at last month's meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) Governing Council.
The Inter-Academy Council has been asked to finalise its conclusions by August, in time that its recommendations can be discussed and adopted at October's IPCC meeting.
