PARIS, Aug 30, 2010 (AFP) - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose workings were probed in a report published in New York on Monday, is the top scientific authority on global warming. Set up in 1988 by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and Environment Programme (UNEP), the IPCC comprises around 3,000 atmospheric scientists, oceanographers, ice specialists, economists, public-health specialists and other experts. Their task is to give policymakers a neutral and balanced update, known as an assessment report, of the latest knowledge about climate change and its impacts.
The IPCC proudly describes it as the biggest and most frequently-updated peer-review process in the world, although it has also been criticised for being cumbersome and outmoded in its working methods. The 938-page Fourth Assessment Report, which appeared in 2007, gave the most emphatic warning yet about the threat from greenhouse gases. The shock unleashed political momentum that culminated in the December 2009 Copenhagen Summit, attended by more than 120 leaders in the search for a post-2012 pact on greenhouse gases. The conference was the biggest summit in UN history, although it veered close to fiasco. The IPCC, meanwhile, shot to fame. It won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with former US vice president Al Gore, and its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, supped with heads of state and shook the hands of rock stars and Hollywood actors. But the panel's rise, and Pachauri's management style, also earned it closer scrutiny, especially from climate skeptics and fossil-fuel lobbyists.
First came "Climategate," or the assertion, derived from intercepted emails from among key British scientists, that evidence had been skewed in favour of alarm. The scientists were cleared by a parliamentary inquiry and an independent review, but they were also criticised for lacking openness towards public requests for information.
Then came potentially far more damaging criticism on the grounds of accuracy and working methods. Working Group 2's section in the Fourth Assessment Report was found to have erroneously predicted Himalayan glaciers, which provide water to a billion people, could be lost by 2035. The reference was found to have come from a press article, not from a scientific journal, a mistake the IPCC has admitted. Other challenges have been mounted to a passage estimating the threat to Bangladesh from rising oceans and to a figure about how much of the Netherlands lies below sea level. The IPCC, while admitting the mistake on Himalayan glacier melt, says its core conclusions about climate change are sound, an opinion shared across the mainstream scientific community. But this has not shielded it from demands for change, including from climate experts themselves.
Some said that the Working Group 2 error was symptomatic of a silo mentality, whereby groups of specialists work in seclusion and fail to coordinate properly. Others said the IPCC review process is too tribal and needs to be opened out to public transparency, perhaps through a "wiki"-style arena for swapping data and opinions. Many of these criticisms were reflected in the report issued in New York on Monday for the UN by the InterAcademy Council, a forum of the world's science academies, which said the IPCC's management structure needed "fundamental reform."
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