UN science chief defends work, welcomes review

Arthur Max (Associated Press) Google News 14 May 10;

AMSTERDAM — The head of the U.N. scientific body on climate change defended Friday the work of the thousands of scientists who contribute to its reports, even as he welcomed a review of procedures that produced errors undermining the panel's public credibility.

The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, cautioned an independent scientific committee reviewing the IPCC's work not to undermine scientists' motivation for contributing to reports on global warming.

The voluminous reports of the scientific panel are credited with raising the alarm that human emissions of greenhouse gases already have led to a gradual warming of the globe, and if unchecked could lead to catastrophic changes in weather patterns, rising sea levels and the extinction of about one-third of the species on Earth. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace prize with former Vice President Al Gore.

But its reports have been dismissed by climate skeptics who attribute global warming to natural cycles. The skeptics were bolstered by a series of errors in the IPCC's 2007 report.

Pachauri told the committee's first review meeting that the panel's conclusions are valid, even in areas where mistakes were discovered.

Pointing to the most glaring error, a claim that the world's glaciers will melt by 2035, Pachauri said glaciers are indeed melting, though not that fast. Nonetheless, glacial melt accounts for 28 percent of sea level rise, and the panel's assessment on glaciers contains "a lot of facts which we can ignore at our peril."

Pachauri said the panel is comprised of volunteer scientists contributing several years of their own time and who disband after issuing their report. The panel has no mechanism for responding to criticism once the reports are issued, other than the small secretariat.

"We need to develop an ability and a capacity to communicate better with the outside world," he told the 15 top scientists from around the world summoned to sit on the review committee..

Pachauri acknowledged the response to the errors was inadequate, but said the attack on the panel was unprecedented.

He said the panel's procedures already are robust, but he welcomed any suggestion that would improve accuracy.

The review is expected to take several weeks before it issues recommendations on how to tighten the IPCC procedures.

IPCC's Pachauri says climate body must 'listen and learn'
Richard Black, BBC News 14 May 10;

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said the organisation needs to learn from recent criticisms and modernise its workings.

But despite making an error over Himalayan glacier melt in its landmark 2007 report, the panel's basic conclusions remain sound, he said.

Rajendra Pachauri was speaking at the opening session of a UN-commissioned review into the IPCC's workings.

The review is due to hear from some of the IPCC's critics in coming months.

Dr Pachauri admitted his organisation had been ill-prepared and ill-resourced to deal with the recent criticism it has received.

"We have to listen and learn all the time and evolve in a manner that meets the needs of society across the world," Dr Pachauri told the review panel.

While the IPCC admits to including an erroneous date by which Himalayan glaciers might disappear in its 2007 Fourth Assessment report, Dr Pachauri said: "We have not been effective at telling the public, 'yes, we made a mistake but that does not change the fact that the glaciers are melting'."

And he rebutted accusations made in some newspapers and websites that the IPCC's intentions have been other than honest.

"I'm afraid these allegations of corruption and malfeasance are completely misplaced and distorted," he told BBC News.

"But we have to make sure we do our best and live up to the expectations of the public and of governments, which are basically our masters."
Friends and foes

Back in February, the IPCC suggested setting up an independent review, feeling that its 20-year-old rules and working practices perhaps needed an overhaul, and also feeling it was perhaps ill-equipped to counter the heat of unprecedented political attention in the wake of "Himalayagate" and the release of emails stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.

Governments endorsed the idea; and in March, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commissioned the review from the InterAcademy Council, an international umbrella body for science academies such as the UK's Royal Society.

The council established a 12-strong review panel, chaired by US economist Professor Harold Shapiro, a former advisor to both Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton.

"We're neither friend nor foe," he told BBC News.

"We're a neutral body; most of us have never participated in the IPCC, but all of us have been part of organisations where quality control is an issue; and we have experience in dealing with that, and we hope that experience can help the IPCC."

After Dr Pachauri's presentation, the panel heard from senior UN figures including Janos Pasztor, director of Mr Ban's climate change support team.

"Nothing that has been alleged in recent press reports or from hacked emails has altered the consensus on climate change," he said.

"However, as the IPCC embarks on its fifth assessment report, it's important that… the potential for future errors is minimised."

One of the areas in which the IPCC has come in for criticism concerns its use of data from non-peer-reviewed sources such as the WWF report in which originated the erroneous Himalayan melting date of 2035.

But Dr Pachauri said the organisation had to use such sources - sometimes they were all that was available. It was just that on this occasion, its strict procedures had not been followed.

"The media and several other people have completely misunderstood the need for using non peer-reviewed literature," he said.

"The loose term that's used is 'grey literature' as though this is grey muddied water flowing down the drains.

"But I'd like to highlight what non-peer-reviewed literature constitutes: reports from the International Energy Agency, the OECD, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank... and some NGOs - there are some highly prestigious NGOS that are doing detailed academic work, and you cannot ignore this."
Thought sought

Professor Shapiro said that in due course, the review panel would hear more critical testimony.

"We will not have time to hear from every critic of the IPCC," he said.

"But we will try to put together some public sessions of those who are I would say 'thoughtful critics' - very very respectable and highly thought of scientists with criticisms of the organisation - we definitely want to hear that."

In addition, the panel's website invites comments from anyone.

The panel, which comprises eminent scientists and economists from both the developed and developing worlds including Nobel prize-winning ozone chemist Mario Molina, has until the end of August to prepare its report.

Its conclusions will be peer-reviewed before being presented at the IPCC's October meeting, the point at which Dr Pachauri and his team are due to finalise plans for the fifth assessment report, due in 2013.

UN climate panel chief defends research at review
Yahoo News 14 May 10;

THE HAGUE (AFP) – The head of the United Nations' climate change panel defended the body Friday before an academic council charged with reviewing its research methods after a string of challenges to its findings.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted an error was made in warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, but said there was nevertheless some value in the finding.

"Alright, there was this error, but there is a whole lot of valid information and assessment related to the glaciers which we can only ignore at our own peril and the peril of generations yet to come," he told a public meeting in Amsterdam of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), webcast live.

"Even if the Himalayan glaciers do not melt (by 2035), this is what is happening to the glaciers around the world."

Melting glaciers, said Pachauri, have "already contributed around 28 percent of sea level rise since 1993.... This is something that should cause concern."

The IPCC, made up of several thousand scientists tasked with vetting scientific knowledge on climate change, has come under fire from several quarters over its 2007 report.

Its reputation was damaged by its warning over melting Himalayan glaciers, a claim that has been widely discredited and fuelled scepticism about climate change.

More recently, it has been criticised for a finding that a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

Critics said this ignored the role of at least one billion tonnes of sediment carried by rivers into Bangladesh every year in countering sea level rises.

But Pachauri ascribed the silt argument to "non-peer reviewed research".

"You really can't take one single study like that into account," he told the review panel.

"There are several questions that have to be answered: will that level of siltation we see today continue in the future? Is that silt strong enough to withstand the threat of sea level rise?"

The IAC, which groups presidents of 15 leading science academies, has been tasked with an independent probe of the IPCC's procedures and processes.

"Ever since this problem cropped up with the Himalayan glacier, my colleagues and I in the IPCC have gone to great lengths to see how at every state of the fifth (next) assessment report writing process we bring in these checks and balances," said Pachauri, welcoming the IAC review.

"We are going to do everything humanly possible but we would be grateful for any suggestions that come out for implementation by which we try and make this as foolproof as is humanly possible."