Weather the error

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds itself embarrassed and undermined,as its landmark 2007 report,which claimed that the chances of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high,was revealed as a transparent fib that had wriggled its way in there via an old and speculative news report. This is not a minor error the 2007 document is the foundation underpinning climate change negotiations that will determine how countries act,allocate their resources and map out their futures. The IPCC would have been expected to only include peer-reviewed information that has already been thoroughly vetted by scientific journals so these revelations puncture the climate scientists central conceit,that they have rigour on their side. So far,the IPCC has been thought to take a highly considered,even conservative view of events in the way it under-reported rise in sea-levels in the same report,for instance. The review communitys failure is manifest,and it must be urgently fixed. This comes close on the heels of another scandal,when leaked e-mails from the East Anglias climate research unit revealed the slapdash methods and arrogance of a section of climate scientists.

However,this episode should not effectively tar all climate science with the same brush,but remind us to refocus on the integrity of the science. The coordination between regional chapters and the entire spectrum of scientific specialities must be perfected,and the peer-review process itself should be faultless. However,that the glacial melt is proceeding at a more glacial pace than we were led to believe (in fact,is off by a few hundred years from IPCCs stopwatch) should not end up feeding the climate change sceptics,because that would be all-round destructive. If this incident has highlighted the chance of human error,it should only be to galvanise effort towards minimising mistakes.

And,in that sense,maybe its a good thing that the worlds attention has been drawn to the science behind our most pressing policy issue. In coming decades,climate change action will make enormous demands of us. Inevitably,lobbies and pressure groups of every kind and scale will try and tinker with data,and telling the science and skulduggery apart will be the challenge of our times. We need the IPCC,as the only body of its kind,to live up to these great expectations and make its claims unassailable.