UN climate change panel to be subjected to external review

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on Wednesday that the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to be reviewed by a council made up of some of the world's leading scientists.

Earlier this month, following what UPI says was "a series of embarrassing errors", Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, confirmed that the panel was seeking to bring in outside experts to review its work. The most embarrassing of the errors made by the IPCC - formed in 1989 by two UN agencies, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with a brief to provide "broad and balanced information about climate change - was the subsequently disproved claim that glaciers in the Himalayas could melt by 2035. Coming a relatively short time after the "Climategate" affair the IPCC errors emboldened those who dispute the existence of Anthropogenic (man-made) global warming (AGW). And now, while insisting that the case for AGW is still strong, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed at UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday that a body known as the InterAcademy Council (IAC) will review the work of the IPCC. According to the BBC, acknowledging that errors had been made by the IPCC when compiling the 3,000-page report it released in 2007 that made the claim regarding Himalayan glaciers, and the need for "full transparency, accuracy and objectivity", Mr Ban asserted:

Let me be clear - the threat posed by climate change is real.

I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of report

The review by the IAC will not involve any in-depth analysis of the report produced by the IPCC, or of any "vast amounts of data". That fact has led IPCC critic Roger Pielke Jr, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado, to raise concerns about the independent review being a "whitewash". The IAC, which has the "presidents of 15 academies of science and equivalent organizations" sitting on its board, has been asked to present its findings on the "processes and procedures" of the IPCC by August 31, in readiness for the panel's annual meeting in October. Noting that Rajendra Pachauri, who has refused to step down as IPCC chairman despite calls for him to do so, stood beside Mr Ban as the IAC review was announced the Guardian quotes Peter Frumhoff, a major contributor to the controversial 2007 report and Science Director at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, as saying:

If this independent review is carried out with rigor and transparency, it will help strengthen the IPCC's commitment to robust scientific assessments and restore public confidence that has been shaken by an aggressive campaign to sow confusion about climate science

Before the review was officially announced the Associated Press had indicated that it was imminent and that another scientist who had contributed to the IPCC report, Stanford University Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change, Stephen Schneider, had said too that external scrutiny of the IPCC would be beneficial. He observed:

Everybody knows there's a tiny error rate. Any error rate that can be fixed should be fixed

A summary of the main criticisms leveled at the IPCC in recent months is available on the website of Science, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).