NEW DELHI: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has presented a robust defence of its claim that the world had "suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather related events since the 1970s" partly on account of global warming. This was part of the Fourth Assessment Report of 2007.
Media reports suggested that the UN climate panel had wrongly linked global warming to a rise in natural disasters. According to the report in UK’s Sunday Times, IPCC based its claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny.
Further that the UN panel knew in 2008 that the link between extreme weather related events and global warming could not be proved but it did not alert world leaders. The IPCC in a statement said that the section where the controversial paper was used had a "number of qualifiers" and the overall report was a balanced treatment of the issue that came to a number of conclusions about the role of climate change in natural disasters.
The UN panel described the media report as a “baseless attack” on the section of the report on trends in insurance losses from disasters.
“This section of the IPCC report is a balanced treatment of a complicated and important issue. It clearly makes the point that one study detected an increase in insurance claims, corrected for values at risk, but that other studies have not detected such a trend.” Given that following Glaciergate, the IPCC came under attack for not adhering to strict review process for material.
The IPCC was quick to stress that for the section under question the set procedures of review were followed. “In writing, reviewing, and editing this section, IPCC procedures were carefully followed to produce the policy-relevant assessment that is the IPCC mandate,” the statement read.
The charge that the IPCC had chosen to remain silent took on added importance as the linkage has influenced subsequent international debates on climate change. Especially in stressing the urgent need to provide funds to developing countries to deal with the effects of climate change.
While the IPCC appears to have addressed the “controversy”, calls for greater scrutiny are likely to get louder. Leading scientists of the UN climate panel are now suggesting changes in the way data is collected and handled.
IPCC chairman RK Pachauri has already said that the panel will use more rigorous research systems for the fifth assessment report. “In future performance of every lead author will be under scrutiny. We will exercise higher level of surveillance to ensure such human errors do not creep in the fifth report.” While preparing the fifth report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would convene a meeting of the "lead authors" of its chapters "to ensure nothing like this happens again", Mr Pachauri said.
Source: ET
No comments:
Post a Comment