Pachauri admits damage to UN climate change panel
The embattled chief of the UN climate change panel has admitted that a mistake in a landmark 2007 report has damaged the body's credibility
The Times, AFP in the Australian | February 04, 2010
But Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, refused to apologise for the erroneous claim that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035.
The admission came as former British chief scientist David King backed away from his sensational claim that a foreign intelligence agency or wealthy US lobbyists were behind the hacking and release of controversial emails between climate scientists.
Sir David admitted he possessed no inside information about the leaks of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, and had merely been speculating on material already in the public domain. His remarks to a journalist had been a "side-issue", he said.
The Nobel-winning IPCC has faced fierce criticism over the mistaken claim - which has been discredited by glaciologists and is being withdrawn - and the controversy has given fresh ammunition to climate sceptics.
"This mistake has certainly cost us dear, there's no question about it," Dr Pachauri told The Guardian. "Everybody thought that what the IPCC brought out was the gold standard and nothing could go wrong."
But when pressed to give a personal apology over the error the climate scientist refused.
"You can't expect me to be personally responsible for every word of a 3000-page report," he said, dismissing an apology as a "populist" move.
The revelation of the fake glacier claim was a heavy blow to the panel, as the report it came from was regarded as the scientific touchstone for faltering global climate talks.
The IPCC's fourth assessment report in 2007 said the probability of glaciers in the Himalayas "disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high".
But the claim was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but come from the green group WWF.
Dr Pachauri called for people to "look at the larger picture, don't get blinded by this one mistake".
The panel came under attack ahead of the failed Copenhagen summit over the hacked UAE email exchanges, which climate sceptics say reflected attempts to skew the evidence for global warming. Phil Jones, the scientist at the centre of the row, has admitted he and his colleagues need to be more open with their data.
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