Reuters:
NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) โ An independent board of scientists will be appointed to review the workings of the worldโs top climate science panel, which has faced recriminations over inaccuracies in a 2007 report, a United Nations environmental spokesman said Friday.
The boardโs work will be part of a broader review of the body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who spoke on the sidelines of an international meeting of environment ministers here.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been under fire since it was pointed out that the 2007 report included a prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, although there is no scientific consensus to that effect.
That brief citation โ drawn from a magazine interview with a glaciologist who says he was misquoted โ and sporadic criticism of the panelโs leader have fueled skepticism in some quarters about the science underlying climate change. The climate panelโs assessments are a crucial source of guidance for policy makers addressing global warming.
But mainstream scientists and the United Nations have said repeatedly that the evidence that human activity is a major factor in global warming remains unshaken.
Mr. Nuttall said the review body would be made up of โsenior scientific figuresโ who could perhaps produce a report by late summer for consideration at a meeting of the climate panel in October in South Korea.
He said that several countries had made clear at the meeting here in Bali that they would prefer that the review panel be appointed by an independent group of scientists rather than the climate panel. He said that plans for assembling the panel would be announced next week.
โI think we are bringing some level of closure to this issue,โ Mr. Nuttall said.
One area to be examined is whether the panel should incorporate so-called gray literature, a term to describe nonpeer-reviewed science, in its reports.
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