UNDP gives $US12m for biodiversity

UNDP gives $US12m for biodiversity
Islands Business
PORT MORESBY, PNG --- THE United Nations Development Program-Global Environment Fund (UNDP-GEF) will aid Papua New Guinea (PNG) with U$D12 million to protect its biodiversity. Minister for Environment and Conservation John Pundari revealed ...

Yannick Glemarec, the master mind behind the UNDP Carbon Certificates and the mechanism to maximise income for the organization

UNDP keeps secret the number of Carbon Certificates it holds or it has endorsed thru its projects around the world

Click here to view this video here @ UBRAINTV: http://www.ubraintv.com/watch.php?id=547

Interviews

Yannick Glemarec, Director of Climate Finance, UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), UNDP-GEF Executive Coordinator

Yannick Glemarec

Director of Climate Finance, UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)
UNDP-GEF Executive Coordinator

www.undp.org

Click here to view this video here: http://www.ubraintv.com/watch.php?id=547

Greenpeace: California's forest conservation-based carbon offsets are false and could lead to social conflict

Read this in full at MONGABAY.COM: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0925-greenpeace-gcf-redd.html

California's forest conservation-based carbon offsets in its climate change legislation may not lead to net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and could exacerbate social conflict in places like southern Mexico, argues a report released Monday by Greenpeace. But the activist group faced sharp criticism from backers of California's initiative.

The report, titled Outsourcing Hot Air, looks at a project in Mexico's Chiapas state which could potentially generate carbon credits under California's climate law by protecting forests against future clearing. The credits could be used to "offset" some greenhouse gas emissions from activities in California, such as emissions from Chevron's oil refinery in Richmond. By buying such carbon credits, a company could effectively reduce the amount of emissions they would be legally obliged to cut.

The Greenpeace report takes exception to both the concept of carbon offsetting, as well as the process California and states and provinces in Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Peru, and Nigeria are using to establish criteria for the forest projects that would qualify as sources for carbon credits. California’s process is driven by the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force (GCF), a body that was established in 2008 by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and involves policymakers, experts, and a panel of top forest scientists. 

Read more at http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0925-greenpeace-gcf-redd.html#DYdvrHoelToU6Pzs.99

United Nations bets it all on Australia's Carbon Tax (millions of $$$ spent from UNEP and GEF to sponsor Tax in Australia)

Carbon tax is Prime Minister Julia Gillard's 'foreign plan', Tony Abbott says

Click here for story on dailytelegraph.com.au

Necessary tax ... Gillard said the next decade will be difficult without a carbon tax. Source: The Daily Telegraph

THE carbon tax is Julia Gillard's "foreign content plan", according to Tony Abbott, who said today the Coalition would continue fighting the tax even though it is destined to pass parliament.

The Gillard Government’s clean energy draft laws are expected to sail through the lower house on Wednesday, before heading to the Senate where they will be voted on some time next month.

The Opposition Leader this morning continued his attack on the Prime Minister, ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

“We’re going to give it a very good fight and you know this carbon tax is Julia Gillard’s foreign content plan because it will put Australia’s manufacturing at a permanent competitive disadvantage,” he told Channel Nine.

“So, she was talking about supporting local manufacturing last week, this week she wants to pass through the parliament a carbon tax that will permanently damage it and, as I said, it’s her foreign content plan for the goods we buy.”

A new manufacturing industry group – which has brought together a number of large companies including BlueScope Steel, Boral and Amcor – has also criticised the carbon tax, saying it should be deferred.

Manufacturing Australia’s executive chairman, former Reserve Bank board member Dick Warburton, said it seemed “quite wrong” to introduce the carbon tax “until we have a clear picture of what is going on in the rest of the world”.

“In fact countries are actually pulling out of carbon taxes and (emissions trading schemes) and therefore for us to go ahead with very little protection of the emissions at a distinct disadvantage to our economy just doesn’t seem right,” he told ABC Radio.

However a new report, released by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet today, shows climate change is putting at risk alpine water that is worth $9.6 billion a year to the Australian economy.

The Australian Conservation Foundation said the report underlined the urgent need to cut greenhouse pollution.

``The snow-capped peaks of the Australian Alps are a rare and beautiful thing in our mostly dry continent, but they could be gone by the middle of this century if we let climate change continue unabated,'' ACF chief executive Don Henry said.

``This report shows again how vital it is that our federal parliamentarians get on with the job of putting a price on carbon pollution - the primary driver of climate change.''

Meanwhile the government is furiously trying to avoid embarrassment on the issue of asylum seekers.

The government is just on vote away from having the numbers to change its migration laws and resurrect its controversial Malaysia people-swap deal.

Only WA Nationals MP Tony Crook – who sits on the crossbenches – is undecided on the issue. If he sides with the government it will hardly matter, since the Coalition and the Greens will vote down the legislation in the Senate.

But if Mr Crook sides with Mr Abbott in the lower house, it would be the first time in 80 years that a government loses a vote on legislation in the House of Representatives.

You ain't seen nothing yet: United Nations news tax on "Climate Change" to hit americans soon

U.N. Seeks to Raise 'Level of Ambition' in World Climate Regulations

click here for this story on FoxNews

By George Russell

Published September 30, 2011 | FoxNews.com

The 2009 Copenhagen climate summit may have failed, but its objectives, and theUnited Nations’ determination to realize them, are very much alive.

Global airline carbon taxes, taxes on shipping, sweeping changes in land use, and an even bigger squeeze on world-wide greenhouse emissions—including tougher U.S. emissions limits and enforcement —have been under intense discussion at a series of discreet international “workshop” meetings fostered by the U.N. in the past six months.

The gatherings aim at raising the stakes in the “climate change” agenda, while keeping new actions as much as possible under the cloak of purely domestic activities for each nation involved.

Documents summarizing the workshop proceedings will be presented to yet another U.N. gathering in Panama starting October 1, under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The summary documents make clear that the governments of many Western developed countries—including the U.S.— are still hoping to increase the “level of ambition” of commitments they made in the wake of the failed Copenhagen climate summit to undertake drastic reductions in their carbon dioxide emissions to combat “climate change,” even without a global treaty to carve them in stone.

The main discussions, outlined in the customary dense and oblique language of U.N. climate debates, are apparently about how to get there.

Those attending the most recent workshop, held on June 9 in Bonn, included representatives of the U.S., Canada, Australia, the European Union and smaller nations such as Denmark andIreland.

A smattering of tiny developing nations were also present. Notably absent were representatives of developing superpowers like China (the world’s No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases) and India, or other important nations such as Brazil or Russia.

An earlier meeting, held in April, 2011 in Bangkok, ostensibly focused on the issues involved for developing countries. U.S. and European Union representatives attended, along with a number of medium-sized developing countries, but once again, China, India, Brazil and Russia were absent.

The main impetus behind the Bonn meeting was to deal with an apparent “ambition gap” in meeting the draconian greenhouse targets endorsed by the UNFCCC as necessary to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5-2 degrees Centigrade by 2050.

Among other things, the meeting discussed an “emissions gap report” prepared by the United Nations Environmental Program, which warned that a “lenient” approach to enforcing the “lowest-ambition” CO2 reduction pledges made by developed countries in the wake of Copenhagen, would only reduce CO2 levels by about 25 percent of the amount required to meet the 2-degree warming limit.

In the case of the U.S., that approach nonetheless calls for a commitment to reduce national CO2 emissions of at least 17 percent from their 2005 levels by 2020—a commitment described in a workshop technical paper as “economy-wide.”

The 17 percent figure is one of the early targets contained in the drastic 2009 Waxman-Markey bill on U.S. cap-and-trade policy, formally known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which died in the U.S. Senate after passing the House of Representatives in 2009.

In the U.N. technical paper, that bill is described as “pending legislation,” and references are made to even steeper greenhouse gas targets in the remainder of the stalled law-- 30 percent by 2025, a 42 percent reduction by 2030, and a final reduction target of 83 percent by 2050—provided other nations also increase their ambitions.

Click here to read comments from the U.N. Climate workshop.

Any increase in the “level of ambition” of greenhouse targets would likely be achieved by “ implementing a wide range of policies and measures across all economic sectors,” rather than a single, overall target, the document says.

Moreover, they would be enacted not through international treaties, but through lower-profile “domestic legislation” which would have the same effect, but without the furor and attention brought on by coordinated international treaty efforts.

clear that even though a full consensus on how to proceed has not been achieved, a lot of definite suggestions were coming into focus, though most were still swaddled in bland bureaucratic language. Among them:

--the “enhanced use” of global carbon trading markets and the development of “new instruments” for use in those markets, i.e., new kinds of carbon reduction certificates;

--more “market-based mechanisms” to achieve the reductions;

--“addressing emissions from international aviation and maritime transport,” which the documents make clear would also be “a possible source of climate financing,” i.e. taxes. (Only one unnamed participant nation, the document notes, “expressed its concern over the possible impacts of such measures on tourism.”)

--“enhanced” pledges of greenhouse gas reductions by developed countries, and tougher enforcement to make them stick.

--sweeping changes in land use, and the extensive use of forestry projects to cut emissions, known in UN-speak as LULUCF, for “land use, land-use change and forestry. (The accompanying technical paper that sets out national commitments says that the U.S. will “undertake a comprehensive, land-based approach that takes advantage of the broadest array” of actions.)

Without going into specific details, the workshop records declare that participants “also engaged in a discussion about the way forward for the workshop process and linkages to the formal [climate] negotiations,” which are deemed to be ongoing.

Click here to read the U.N. workshop document.

Where does the quiet workshop process go from here?

According to the documents obtained by Fox News, some participants “suggested organizing more workshops which would focus on issues such as enhancing the level of global ambition” or the issue of how to account for greenhouse reduction claims. Others wanted more information on how to finance the sweeping changes.

The drum-beat for new taxes on international shipping and aviation has already begun. In the wake of an international agreement to increase emission standards for international merchant shipping, announced last July, both the World Wildlife Fund and Oxfam have begun calling for a new, global carbon tax of $25 per ton for maritime shipping to drive emissions down further.

The influential charities have called for the tax proposal to be considered at the next major meeting of the UNFCCC, slated for November in Durban, South Africa.

And much of the international aviation world is already in an uproar over a unilateral declaration by the European Union that it will force all airlines flying into the region to buy carbon permits if they exceed local emission standards, regardless of whether most of the emissions take place in European territory or not. The permits are intended to bring the industry into Europe’s carbon-trading system.

European officials have declared that they also intend to push for global regulation of aviation under climate change discussions at Durban..

The European action is fiercely opposed by airlines in the rest of the world, including the U.S., at least so far.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News and can be found on Twitter @GeorgeRussell.

Al Gore, ghost of climate change past

• 
• • Dan Kennedy
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 March 2010 17.07 GMT
  • Article history

Al Gore, the ghost of climate change past, showed up to haunt the New York Times's opinion pages this past Sunday. Eloquent and impassioned as ever, the former vice-president reminded us that the current controversy over scientific malfeasance won't change the fact that the polar ice caps are melting and the earth continues to heat up.

"I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion," he wrote. "But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Yet even though I admire Gore, on some level I couldn't help but cringe. His 2006 film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, helped bring the issue to prominence for millions of people. I'm afraid, though, that he has not only spent his political capital, but is running a deficit. Mocked by the right every time he pops up, he is no longer in a position to convince anyone who isn't already convinced – especially when he writes for our most liberal daily newspaper.

It started, of course, with the vicious lies told about Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign, the most notorious of which was that he claimed to have "invented the internet". Bob Somerby, Eric Alterman and others have documented the smear campaign that almost certainly cost Gore the presidency – a campaign driven at least as much by the so-called liberal media as by Gore's Republican opponents.

The hate stirred up by that effort has long since congealed into conventional wisdom. Now, whenever Gore speaks out on climate change, he is subjected to withering, fact-free scorn. It has its effect on those trying to figure out the truth. Go ahead. Feel the hate:

"Do you think of your breathing passages as spewing shit?" sneered Ann Althouse, referring to Gore's use of an "open sewer" metaphor.

Another rightwing blogger, Van Helsing, wrote that Gore had emerged "to demand totalitarian restrictions on economic activity in the name of a crisis that clearly does not exist".

And Andrew Breitbart's notorious Big Journalism site ran a commentary by Kyle-Anne Shiver, who said of Gore, "His life as a jet-setting, Nobel Peace Prize-sharing, Oscar-brandishing celebrity is on the line. Without the people's diehard faith in his religion of global warming, Al will be forced to trade his lifestyle of the mega-rich-and-famous for an ignominious and expensive defense of never-ending lawsuits brought by enraged sucker governments and private investors."

But if Gore's effectiveness as a climate-change activist has expired, there is nevertheless reason to hope. Because there, in the same edition of the Sunday Times, just a few inches away, was columnist Tom Friedman's interview with the ghost of climate change present, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham – living proof that it is possible for a conservative Republican not only to be sane, but to work toward real solutions to actual problems.

Graham, despite an 82% ranking by the American Conservative Union and a 100% ranking by the Christian Coalition, is working with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to shut down Guantánamo. He also voted to confirm supreme court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a moderate, pro-prosecution jurist who was portrayed by many of Graham's fellowRepublicans as a leftwing extremist more concerned with Latino identity politics than with the law.

On climate change, Graham is trying to work out compromise legislation with Massachusetts senator John Kerry, a Democrat, and Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, an independent. The price of Graham's support is that the US government must embrace "clean coal". Now, that may be an oxymoron. But in the Senate, where it now takes 60 votes to accomplish anything, giving clean coal a go may be a price worth paying.

"I have come to conclude that greenhouse gases and carbon pollution is not a good thing," Graham said recently, according to South Carolina's largest newspaper, the State. "All the cars and trucks and plants that have been in existence since the Industrial Revolution, spewing out carbon day-in and day-out, will never convince me that's a good thing for your children and the future of the planet."

And don't kid yourself into thinking this is easy for Graham. His sensible conservatism places him well to the left of his fellow South Carolina senator, Jim DeMint, who recently posted to his Twitter feed, "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle'."

It also places Graham well to the left of many South Carolina Republicans. After the Charleston County Republican Party voted to censure Graham for being too liberal (one of several local groups to take such action), Will Moredock, political analyst for the Charleston City Paper, wrote that the party was travelling on the "road to extinction". Trouble is, Graham might find himself extinct first.

I'm not here to fetishise bipartisanship or to characterise the current standoff over healthcare and other issues as anything other than what it is: a concerted effort by the Republican party to bring down the Obama presidency, the public good be damned.

But, fairly or not, Gore has become a symbol of the harsh partisanship that is ripping Washington apart. Graham, by contrast, harks back to a better time, when Democrats and Republicans could occasionally work together for the common good. Let's hope there's a little of that in our future as well.

Major Change Is Needed If the IPCC Hopes to Survive

Well before the recent controversies, the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was marred by an unwillingness to listen to dissenting points of view, an inadequate system for dealing with errors, conflicts of interest, and political advocacy. The latest allegations of inaccuracies should be an impetus for sweeping reform.

by roger a. pielke, jr.

It has been a rough couple of months for the climate science community. Last November someone stole or released over 1,000 e-mails from the University of East Anglia. The e-mails revealed that some scientists were so

THE IPCC UNDER FIRE:
A CONTRASTING VIEW

Robert T. Watson, the former IPCC chairman, says the organization he once headed needs to acknowledge its errors and improve its work, but notes that the evidence of climate change is irrefutable.
READ MORE

entrenched in battle with their scientific and political opponents that they lost their perspective, going so far as to suggest improperly influencing the scientific process of peer review and evading legal requirements to disclose their data upon request. Climate science took another hit soon thereafter when it became apparent that the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a number of embarrassing errors and an unacceptable amount of sloppy work, such as its erroneous prediction that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, rather than in several centuries or more.

The IPCC’s handling of the allegations of errors have compounded its problems. Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, responded to the first public questions about the Himalayan glacier error by dismissing the allegations as “voodoo science” and the work of climate skeptics. Later, when the sheer weight of the evidence forced the IPCC to correct the erroneous claim in public, it was further revealed that IPCC authors had been aware of the error but were unable to get it changed prior to the report’s publication and had remained strangely silent about it in the years since.

As if this was not bad enough, Pachauri has faced a range of criticism for directing more than a quarter of a million dollars in consulting and appearance fees over the past several years to the non-profit organization that he directs in India. These payments came from companies and investors with a direct stake in the outcome of climate policy negotiations, including Deutsche Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Pegasus investment fund. Pachauri has not helped the image of the IPCC by responding forcefully but unpersuasively, explaining that his many business connections — such as enhanced oil recovery and carbon trading operations — are in the common interest, rendering any sort of conflict of interest policies unnecessary.

Photo by Saeed Khan/Getty Images

Rajendra Pachauri, left, chairman of the IPCC, along with Orgunlade Davidson, center, and Bert Metz, the co-chairmen of the IPCC Working Group III, at a 2007 press conference in Bangkok.

With all of these troubles facing climate science and the IPCC, some have called for the organization to be reformed or terminated, or at least for its chairman to resign. I have been a strong critic of the IPCC, not least because of its improper treatment of work that I have contributed to on weather-related disasters and climate change. However, I think the IPCC is worth sustaining, but only if it addresses the institutional factors that have led to its recent troubles and a corresponding loss of public trust in the climate science community.

There are some advocates and climate scientists who ask that we ignore the recent failings of the IPCC, because admitting that there is a problem might give succor to skeptics opposed to action. I have a different view. Standing up for climate science means addressing problems, not ignoring them or politicizing them.

I have first-hand experience with the panel’s errors and wrongheaded behavior. In its 2007 report, the IPCC included a graph that showed a smoothed line representing increasing global temperatures since 1970 on top of a smoothed line showing the increasing costs of weather-related disasters. The implication of the graph is not difficult to discern — the increasing costs of catastrophes are related to rising temperatures.

Unfortunately, not only is this implication contrary to all peer-reviewed science on this subject, but the IPCC created this misleading graph from whole cloth, intentionally mis-cited it, and when questioned by an expert reviewer of a draft of the report, falsified information in its much-touted peer review process. When challenged in recent weeks, the IPCC quickly issued a press release calling the claims “baseless” but completely ignoring the substantive issues. In recent days, a leading German scientist went so far as to suggest that the IPCC’s actions on disasters and climate change were tantamount to “fraud.”

As with the glacier issue, IPCC stonewalling has proven not to be a sustainable response. In recent weeks, the IPCC author who created the disaster cost graph has explained that it was merely “informal” and that it

The IPCC desperately needs a mechanism for resolving allegations of error in its work.

should not have been included because of its potential to mislead. And mislead it has. Just last week Australia’s climate change minister, Penny Wong, fell prey to the IPCC’s misdirection when she invoked the IPCC press release to explain in error that “the science on the link between these catastrophes and climate change has not been credibly challenged.”

There is however no such link. The book chapter that included the data that served as the basis for the misleading IPCC graph reached a starkly different conclusion than that suggested by Minster Wong: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and normalized catastrophe losses.”

A peer reviewer of the IPCC questioned the unsupported allegations in the report, and asked what I, as someone whose work was being questioned, thought about the report’s claim. The IPCC responded to the reviewer that I had changed my mind about my own research conclusions, a bald lie. I have complained to the IPCC about these various issues, only to receive a polite but substance-free response followed by extended silence.

My frustrating experience with the IPCC suggests that it desperately needs a mechanism for resolving allegations of error in its work. Its current ad hoc manner of response encourages the panel to politick by press release rather than undertake a careful evaluation of claims. Imagine how different things might be if the IPCC recognized in a positive manner anyone who found a legitimate mistake in its report, with errata and corrigenda continuously updated. Such acceptance of fallibility would show that the panel is open to close scrutiny and values the accuracy of its reports above all else. This would be a welcome improvement to the defensive and sometimes arrogant attitude demonstrated in recent months.

The IPCC is also in desperate need of putting into place conflict-of-interest policies. It staggers belief to learn that the panel operates with absolutely no mechanism for handling actual or perceived conflicts of interest. Because the IPCC has no requirement for disclosure of potential conflicts, it is likely that the organization itself is unaware of what other potential conflicts may exist beyond those of its chairman, which were raised by several of his critics in the British media.

To protect institutional integrity, the establishment of such procedures is deemed essential in virtually all expert advisory bodies. For instance, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) explains that “no individual can be appointed to serve (or continue to serve) on a committee of the

The IPCC has fallen well short of performing as a credible, trusted, and legitimate advisory body.

institution used in the development of reports if the individual has a conflict of interest that is relevant to the functions to be performed.” The NAS makes clear that issues of conflict of interest are not about the morality of individuals or the worth of causes that they serve, but are about maintaining trust and legitimacy in the integrity of advice. The parent bodies of the IPCC — the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization — do have conflict of interest policies, but remarkably they do not apply to the IPCC.

The calls for Pachauri to resign miss the larger institutional context. Were he to resign and the institution simply continue as it has, in the absence of implementing rigorous and transparent conflict of interest policies, absolutely nothing would be gained. The IPCC needs to put into place conflict of interest guidelines and then let the chips fall where they may. To suggest that climate science should be free of such guidelines sends a message of hubris that can only serve to undermine trust in its work. If institutional mechanisms to manage conflicts of interest make sense for doctors, journalists, lawyers, and scientific advisors outside the field of climate, then they surely make sense for the IPCC as it informs high-stakes decisions around the world on climate policy.

The IPCC also needs improved mechanisms of accountability to its own admirable objectives. For instance, while the IPCC has a mandate to be “policy neutral,” its reports and its leadership frequently engage in implicit and explicit policy advocacy. For instance, IPCC leaders often take public

Efforts to minimize the IPCC’s troubles are likely to further erode public opinion of climate science.

stands in support of, or opposition to, certain policies on climate change, such as when its chairman weighs in on U.S. domestic legislation. The IPCC reports, particularly Working Group III, reflect a particular policy orientation, which is decidedly not “policy neutral.” To cite one example, the IPCC has concluded that the world has all the technology that it needs to achieve low stabilization levels. However, this conclusion ignores a significant body of academic work (such as by New York University professor emeritus Martin Hoffert and colleagues) suggesting that the world does not in fact have all the technology that it needs.

The IPCC also emphasized emissions trading over other policy options, largely endorsing the approach of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. With the Climate Convention in tatters after the Copenhagen meeting last December, we are now experiencing the consequences of the IPCC’s policy myopia and deviation from neutrality, as there are essentially no alternative approaches to climate policy suggested by the IPCC report. It had placed all of its eggs in one basket.

The IPCC is an important institution, but it has fallen well short of performing as a credible, trusted, and legitimate advisory body. Rebuilding what it has lost will take considerable effort and a marked change of course. Some defenders of the IPCC explain that the problems found in the report are only a few of many conclusions, or not particularly important as compared to the headline conclusions. Such efforts to minimize the IPCC’s troubles are likely to backfire and further erode public opinion of climate science, which recent polls suggest has taken a serious hit.

MORE FROM YALE E360

Climategate: Anatomy of
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The way that climate scientists have handled the fallout from the leaking of hacked e-mails is a case study in how not to respond to a crisis, Fred Pearce writes. But it also points to the need for climate researchers to operate with greater transparency and to provide more open access to data.

Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing
the Public on Climate Change
Even as the climate science becomes more definitive, polls show that public concern in the United States about global warming has been declining. What will it take to rally Americans behind the need to take strong action on cutting carbon emissions?

Similarly, efforts of some to demonize those who criticize the IPCC as “skeptics” or opponents to action on climate change only serve to intensify the politicization of climate science. Dealing with climate change is indeed important, but so, too, are issues associated with the integrity of scientific advisory bodies. We should be fully capable of addressing the challenge of climate change while at the same time focusing on sustaining the integrity of climate science.

Standing up for climate science means openly supporting reform of the IPCC while underscoring its institutional importance. The climate science community has failed to meet its own high standards. If the IPCC continues to pretend that things will soon get back to normal or that it need only castigate its critics as deniers and skeptics, it will find that its credibility will continue to sink to new lows. It is time to reform the IPCC.

Click here to read a contrasting view from former IPCC Chairman Robert T. Watson.