UN Puts Climate Change Panel in Hot Seat

(March 11) -- The United Nations is putting its own Nobel Prize-winning climate change panel under the microscope.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced Wednesday that the U.N. had launched an independent review of its International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following last year's discovery of errors in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, which led to the retraction of the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would be entirely melted by 2035.

Although there were "a very small number of errors" in the 3,000-page report, "I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions" of the publication, Ban told reporters today, according to a U.N. press release.

The U.N. also acknowledged that public trust in the climate change panel had eroded since the discovery and widespread publication of the errors late last year. However, officials still maintain the overall soundness and integrity of the report and its 450-strong team of authors.

"We've been through a very critical period," IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri was quoted as saying by The New York Times. "We've learned, we've listened and we've decided to do something about it. It is important for the public and scientific community to know that we're sensitive to what happened."

The U.N. announcement did not specifically address "Climategate" -- the name given to the earlier global-warming public-relations disaster that ensued in November when computer hackers obtained controversial e-mails from the Climate Research Unit, a separate scientific outpost in England that has contributed data to the IPCC. Many believe the e-mails reveal scientists deliberately manipulated data to exaggerate the effects of global warming.

Additionally, The Washington Post reports that the forthcoming review, to be conducted by the InterAcademy Council of Amsterdam, "will not recheck [the 2007] report's conclusions but will instead focus on improving procedures for the future."

Indeed, the goal of the review seems to be preventing errors in forthcoming reports such as the Fifth Assessment, which the U.N. says will not be ready until 2014 (the organization's Web site has an ad seeking "experts who can act as authors" of the next report).

Robbert Dijkgraaf, a leading scientist on the review commission, was quoted in Scientific American as follows: "What [the review] will do is see what are the procedures and how can they be improved. How can we avoid perhaps that certain types of errors are not made?"

The IPCC was founded in 1989 with the goal of gathering and studying all available research on the effects of human influence on the climate. It does not conduct research or "monitor climate data permitters," but rather accepts voluntary submissions of work from climatologists and other scientists around the globe, which it then assesses in lengthy reports.

The First Assessment was completed in 1990, and its Second Assessment served as a basis for the adoption of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ratified by 184 countries but famously not the United States.

The IPCC won its first and only Nobel Prize in 2007 for its Fourth Assessment report, an honor shared with former Vice President Al Gore, who won for his environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Ban said in the U.N. statement that the findings of the review won't be published until the "board is satisfied," which will likely be August, reports Reuters.