U.N.'s Global Warming Report Under Fresh Attack for Rainforest Claims

Updated January 28, 2010
By Gene J. Koprowski

- FOXNews.com

A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what critics say is sloppy science -- guiding global warming policy based on a study of forest fires.

A United Nations report on climate change that has been lambasted for its faulty research is under new attack for yet another instance of what its critics say is sloppy science -- adding to a growing scandal that has undermined the credibility of scientists and policymakers who back the U.N.'s findings about global warming.

In the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), issued in 2007 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists wrote that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest in South America was endangered by global warming.

But that assertion was discredited this week when>>>

Climate Flimflam Flaming Out

Posted 01/25/2010 07:02 PM ET

Environment: The United Nations makes a claim that can't be supported by science, and U.S. researchers ignore temperature data from frigid regions. The crack-up of the global warming fraud is picking up speed.

With so much of the science behind climate change coming under attack, especially among scientists, it's been a harsh winter for the global warming crowd:

• In late November, thousands of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia were leaked to the public. The evidence strongly suggests that researchers colluded to prove the global warming scientific "consensus" by rigging, burying and destroying data that ran counter to their political agenda.

• Last week, the public learned that claims made by the U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change were not based on science, but on speculation. Specifically, the IPCC's 2007 report said the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 due to man-made global warming.

The claim, used at the U.N. Copenhagen climate change conference in cold and snowy December to rush through a restrictive greenhouse-gas-emissions treaty, was not based on a scientific study. It was based on a telephone call that a reporter had with a scientist who was speculating.

The IPCC has withdrawn the claim.>>>

United Nations' Climate Chief Must Go

Posted 01/27/2010 07:00 PM ET

Pachauri: Creating a climate of fraud. AP View Enlarged Image

Global Warming: If we're serious about restoring science to its rightful place, the head of the U.N.'s panel on climate change should step down. Evidence shows he quarterbacked a deliberate and premeditated fraud.

The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been forced to back off its now-discredited claim that the Himalayan glaciers would soon disappear. But it's not true, the panel's vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, told the BBC, that it was simply a "human mistake."

The panel's chairman, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, who was forced to admit the claim had no basis in observable scientific fact, said its inclusion was merely a "poor application" of IPCC procedures, acting as if the original source of the claim, Indian scientist Dr. Syed Hasnain, was a total stranger.

In fact, as Christopher Booker of the London Telegraph>>>

A Glacier Meltdown

• JANUARY 23, 2010

Last November, U.N. climate chief Rajendra Pachauri delivered a blistering rebuke to India's environment minister for casting doubt on the notion that global warming was causing the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.

"We have a very clear idea of what is happening," the chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told the Guardian newspaper. "I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement."

Then again, when it comes to unsubstantiated research it's hard to beat the IPCC, whose 2007 report insisted that the glaciers—which feed the rivers that in turn feed much of South Asia—were very likely to nearly disappear by the year 2035. "The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers," it wrote in its supposedly definitive report, "can be attributed primarily to the [sic] global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases."

It turns out that this widely publicized>>>

U.N. Climate Change Expert Cites More Errors in Report

Saturday, January 23, 2010

The head of a panel of United Nations climate scientists said Saturday he would not resign despite a recent admission that a panel report warning Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 was hundreds of years off.

The claim, made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's voluminous, Nobel-winning report, came in a paragraph with several errors. Data indicates the ice could melt by 2350. The assertion went virtually unnoticed until The Sunday Times said the projection seemed to be based on a news report.

The scientists are investigating how the forecast got into the report and apologized Thursday for the mistakes, adding that they were not intentional. But the errors have opened the door for attacks from climate change skeptics.

But Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the panel, said no action would be taken against the authors of the report and he would not resign.

"I have no intention of resigning from my position>>>

As UN Official Is Accused of Hiring Relatives in African Mission, DPA Mute

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 21 -- A complaint of systemic nepotism in a UN mission, in the Central African Republic, has been raised and rebuffed by the UN Department of Political Affairs. The head of DPA's Africa II Division, according to whistleblowers, has placed relatives and friends throughout the United Nations Peace-building Office in the Central African Republic. Inner City Press, which has reported about the Central African Republic for three years, has received detailed reports, summarized below.

Rather than simply write the story, six days ago on December 15 Inner City Press formally asked the director of DPA's Africa II Division Sammy Kum Buo the following questions:

Mr. Buo -- I am writing a story about this morning's Security Council session on BONUCA / Central African Republic. I am also covering management issues in BONUCA and DPA and am writing for you to confirm or deny on deadline each of the following [about BONUCA staffers]

Is Gabriel Buh Kang a relative of yours? A cousin?

Is BONUCA staffer Ekei a relative of yours? Your niece?

What is the status of Brindou Germain Kabran ?

When in CAR, have you stayed with Brindou Germain Kabran?

Did you still collect DSA? Please provide records.

What can you say about the case of Gozo Tshamala?

On deadline, Matthew

Mr. Buo is also accused of hiring>>>

Obama faces new global warming skeptic: Joe Sixpack

By Patrik Jonsson Staff writer / December 19, 2009

Fresh from a global warming deal in Copenhagen, Denmark, President Obama returned to a cold, snowy Washington where the politics of global warming are slowly shifting underfoot.

Mr. Obama’s Copenhagen promise to cut US emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 will rely heavily on the cap-and-trade bill currently winding its way through the Senate. But a bill that was never going to be an easy sell has become even more fraught with potential complications during recent months.

Polls suggest that Americans have soured on Obama's climate strategy, and the "climategate" e-mail scandal has highlighted the public's increasing skepticism of the basic science driving some of the White House’s most aggressive policy prescriptions.

Flagging support

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll shows that two-thirds of Americans still believe the federal government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions from sources like factories and cars.

But the polling also shows that the public is increasingly dissatisfied with the president’s overall handling of the global warming issue. Support has slipped from 61 percent near the president’s 100-day mark to 45 percent this week.

Obama's actions in Copenhagen are a case>>>