Pachauri attacks climategate as the issue rocks the Summit

Betwa Sharma

Copenhagen, Dec 7 (PTI) A landmark and largest ever UN
climate summit opened here Monday, with the head of the UN's
Nobel winning panel of environmental scientists accusing
vested quarters of not being ready to face the reality of
threats of wide-ranging nature of changes in climate.

Attacking the so-called 'climategate' affair as a bid
to undermine the capability of his organisation, Rajendra
Pachauri said at the opening ceremony that those who had
hacked into the emails of top climate scientists were out to
discredit the scientific assessment made of threats to the
climate.
But the climategate affair rocked the conference with
some countries calling for an internationa l probe into the
affair, especially accusations that scientists had distorted
data to dramatise the threat of global warming.
The Saudi Arabian negotiator Mohammed al-Sabban said
that climate science had been "shaken" by the leaked emails.
"The level of trust is definitely shaken, now that we are
about to conclude an agreement that...is going to mean
sacrifices for our economies."
However, Pachauri stoutly defended his organisation,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying, "Giving
the wide-ranging nature of change of that is likely to be
taken in hand, some naturally find it inconvenient to accept
its inevitability."

"The recent incident of stealing the emails of
scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some
would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in
the attempt to discredit the IPCC," the scientist said.
He said that the stealing of emails exchanged between
scientists from a UK university indicated the extreme measures
some people would adopt to deny the existence of Climate
Change.
Pachauri defended the scientific integrity of the
body as well as its contributors including the scientists
caught up in the email controversy.
Hackers gained access to the data of the climate
research center of the UK-based University and leaked
confidential data including thousands of emails and documents
between UK and US scientists over the past ten years that have
led to accusations that scientists amplified the nature and
scope of the manmade climate crisis.
Some of the excerpts of the emails posted read,
"I’ve just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real
temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981
onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.
Another email reads- "The fact is that we can’t
account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t."
Skeptics of Climate Change have used these emails to
back their case that the dangers of Climate Change have been
wildly exaggerated on several websites and blogs.

Top UN climate change official Yvo de Boer speaking
before the conference said that several parties attending the
summit have expressed concern about the leaked emails.
Pachauri stressed here that years of dedicated work
by the scientific community showed that "the evidence is now
overwhelming that the world would benefit greatly from early
action and that delay would only lead to costs in economic and
human terms that would become progressively high.
"The Panel has a record of transparent and objective
assessment stretching over 21 years performs by tens of
thousands of dedicated scientists from all corners of the
globe," he said.
Referring to the scientists who had been named in
the emails, Pachauri noted that their work in the IPCC had
been substantiated through multiple lines of evidence.
"The internal consistency from multiple lines of
evidence strongly supports the work of the scientific
community including those individuals singled out in these
email exchanges many of whom have dedicated their time and
effort to develop these findings in teams of lead authors in
the series of IPCC assessment reports during the past 21
years," he said. PTI BS