Climate guide gone astray

The International Panel on Climate Change needs a major shake-up. Its last major report contained many inaccuracies, included information from questionable sources, and it was tilted in an alarmist direction. It shouldn't happen again.

It was for the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report on global warming that the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. But the aftermath for the organization and its now-embattled director, Rajendra Pachauri, has been anything but peaceful.

Dr. Pachauri, a professor of engineering and an academic administrator (with no background in climate science), has been head of the IPCC since 2002. India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has announced that India "cannot rely" any longer on the IPCC because of "goof-ups" contributing to "climate evangelism."

The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the United Nations to assess "the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change." It is supposed to be a neutral arbiter of scientific fact.

But recent reporting by the Sunday Times of Britain exposed as erroneous the Fourth Assessment's claim that Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035. The claim came from a journalist's publication of an off-the-cuff remark by an Indian glaciologist. This man was later hired to work for an organization headed by Pachauri that had received large grants to study the impacts of rapidly receding glaciers, leaving a distinct appearance of a conflict of interest. According to Indian government studies -- dismissed by Pachauri as "voodoo science, but validated by other glaciologists -- the glaciers are not melting rapidly and the IPCC claim "didn't have any scientific basis," according to Environment Minister Ramesh.

British newspapers also found that an alarmist report on deforestation in the Amazon, cited in the Fourth Assessment as a consequence of climate change, was drafted by the non-expert staff of an environmental lobby group writing about man-made fires, not environmental damage.

In the latest rebuke, the Dutch government has asked the IPCC to explain its erroneous report that 55 percent of the Netherlands is below sea level.

Dr. Pachauri dismisses his critics. But the work he oversaw undermines the credibility of IPCC estimates of climate trends.

So does the separate question whether some senior British and American climate scientists may have deliberately suppressed evidence contrary to their finding that the recent past has been the hottest in recorded history. The "climategate" issues are being studied by legal and scientific authorities.

The IPCC, however, already stands convicted of sloppy work. It will not regain full credibility until Dr. Pachauri melts away into the job market and a new rigor is introduced into its reports on climate studies.