UN climate panel urged to reform, stick to science

UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) – The U.N. climate panel should make predictions only when it has solid evidence and  should avoid policy advocacy, scientists said in a report yesterday that called for thorough reform of the body.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)  was widely criticized after admitting its 2007 global warming  report wrongly said Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035 and  that it overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea  level.

Such firm forecasts should be made “only when there is  sufficient evidence,” said a review group supported by the  academies of science from the United States, Netherlands,  Britain and around 100 other countries.

Critics of the idea of mandatory limits on so-called  greenhouse gas emissions have said the IPCC errors show the  science behind global warming is questionable.

The United Nations has been concerned that focusing only on  errors by the panel, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize  with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for work on global  warming, could undermine the broader U.N. message that climate  change is a real phenomenon requiring urgent action.

The report said the IPCC’s mandate calls for it to be  “policy relevant” without advocating specific policies. But  some senior IPCC officials have been criticized for remarks  that appeared to support specific policy approaches.

“Straying into advocacy can only hurt IPCC’s credibility,”  the report said.

The review said the limit of two six-year terms for the  chair of the IPCC, currently Rajendra Pachauri of India, was  too long and should be shortened to one term, as should the  terms of other senior officials on the U.N. climate panel.

The report did not call for replacing Pachauri, the IPCC  chairman since 2002. Asked if he would resign if requested to  by the IPCC’s 194 member states in October when they discuss  the scientists’ recommendations, Pachauri told reporters he  would abide by any decision the U.N. climate panel made.

The report also called for an overhaul of the panel’s  management, including the creation of an executive committee  that would include people from outside the IPCC.

The review touched on concerns about Pachauri’s work as an  adviser and board member for energy firms, as well as IPCC  scientists reviewing their own work. The report noted the IPCC  lacks a conflict of interest policy and recommended it adopt a  “rigorous” one to avoid biases.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has acknowledged there  were mistakes in what is known as the Fourth Assessment Report  published in 2007, a document of more than 3,000 pages that  cited more than 10,000 scientific papers. But he has insisted  its fundamental conclusions were correct.

Ban’s office issued a statement welcoming the review of the  IPCC and reiterating he “firmly maintains that the fundamental  science on climate change remains sound.”

Harold Shapiro, a Princeton University professor and chair  of the committee that reviewed the IPCC’s work, told reporters  one IPCC report “contains many statements that were assigned  high confidence but for which there is little evidence.”

Shapiro said the IPCC’s response to errors when they were  subsequently revealed was “slow and inadequate.” The errors, he  said, “did dent the credibility of the process.”

Asked about the Himalayan glaciers error, Shapiro said: “In  our judgment, it came from just not paying close enough  attention to what (peer) reviewers said about that example.”

Pachauri said the IPCC “will be strengthened by the  (scientists’) review and others of its kind this year.”

But Shapiro made clear the review did not assess the  validity of the science behind the IPCC reports, leaving open  the possibility the panel could face a new wave of attacks from  its critics.

The next IPCC report on climate change will be published in  2013 and 2014.