An international review panel yesterday called on the UN global climate change body to carry out fundamental reforms after embarrassing errors in a landmark report dented its credibility.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was caught in an international storm after it admitted that its landmark 2007 report had exaggerated the speed at which Himalayas glaciers were melting.
The review panel said the IPCC has been “successful overall” but called for leadership changes, stricter guidelines on source material and a check on conflicts of interest.
The five-month probe ordered by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the IPCC should have a stronger scientific basis for making its predictions and re-commended an overhaul of the position of Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman.
The InterAcademy Council, which groups 15 leading science academies, was brought in to carry out the study after an uproar over the IPCC’s landmark 2007 study that critics called the “Climategate” scandal.
The 2007 study highlighted evidence that climate change was already hurting the planet, building momentum for global action to limit carbon emissions that mostly come from burning coal, gas and oil.
But in the run-up to a climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, the IPCC was rocked by a scandal involving leaked e-mails which critics say showed that they had skewed data.
The mistake over the Himalayas glaciers – a claim which was found to be sourced to a magazine article – and an earlier error over how much of The Netherlands is below sea level also tainted the IPCC image.
“I think the errors made did dent the credibility of the process – there’s no question about it,” said Harold Shapiro, a former president of Princeton University who led the review.
“Trust is something you have to earn every year,” he told reporters. “We think that what we recommended will help.”
The IPCC has admitted its mistakes but insisted that its core conclusions about climate change are sound.
The review said the glacier reference showed that the IPCC did not pay close enough attention to dissenting viewpoints.
“There were a number of reviewers who pointed out that this didn’t seem quite right to them and that just was not followed through,” Mr Shapiro said.
The UN review said that guidelines on source material for the IPCC were “too vague” and called for specific language, and enforcement, on what types of literature are unacceptable.
The review called for a new chief executive to run the IPCC and for the chairmanship to become a part-time post with a new holder for each landmark study carried out.