Earth Equity News

Pachauri Says He Will Not Step Down from IPCC. BBC, January 25, 2010. "The chairman of the UN's climate science body said he would not resign in the wake of a row about a mistake on glaciers that appeared in a key report. Rajendra Pachauri told BBC News: 'I am not going to stand down, I am going to stand up.' The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that it had made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Critics say the mistake has damaged the scientific credibility of the IPCC. IPCC vice-chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele has admitted that the inclusion of the 2035 date in a key report was a mistake. The date appeared in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (4AR), which read: 'Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world... the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.' A number of scientists had recently disputed the date, after a row erupted in India late last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit... Dr Pachauri said the inclusion of the 2035 date in the 4AR, which was published in 2007, was 'a case of human error,' adding that it was unfortunate that it had happened. 'However, let me emphasize that this does not in any way detract from the fact that the glaciers are melting, and this is a problem that we need to be deeply concerned about.'"