Pachauri fails to get UK support over 'unsubstantiated' climate report claims

Damian Carrington
London Guardian
Monday, February 1st, 2010

Rajendra Pachauri, who has faced criticism as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change following allegations of inaccurate statements in panel reports, suffered a fresh blow last night when he failed to get the backing of the British government.

A senior government official reiterated Pachauri's position but stopped short of expressing confidence in him. "The position is that he is the chair and he has indicated that mistakes were made," the climate change official said. "There is no vacancy at this stage, so there is no issue at this stage."

The IPCC is required by governments to assess the science and imapct of climate change and its thousands of scientists produce major reports and summaries for policymakers. Its last report in 2007 concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities were 90% certain to be causing observed global warming and was accepted by all governments.

"It is clearly unfortunate that individual problems with individual papers have been found," said the official. "But the scientific basis for climate change does not rest on a very small number of papers in which the [IPCC] review process has not been rigorous enough. It relies on thousands and thousands of papers that have been peer reviewed through scientific journals."

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