U.N. answers Global Warming questions

[awakening2lite]

source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/10/28/eco.deboer.answers/index.html

The U.N. answers your climate questions

EXCERPT

Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), hast fielded questions exclusively from CNN.com users on the environmental issues that matter to you. De Boer is the United Nations' top official on climate change.
http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/BUSINESS/10/28/eco.deboer.answers/art.deboer.afp.jpg

Yvo de Boer

CNN reserves the right to edit submitted material for the sake of length, grammar and clarity.

QUESTION NO. 1:

continued at source

[awakening2lite]

Feb 26, 2010
Climate scientists felt compelled to oversimplify findings


What's prompting disarray among climate scientists? Those serving on a leading international panel say they sometimes felt "institutional bias toward oversimplication," The Wall Street Journal reports today.


http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/green-house/2010/02/26/IPCCx-inset-community.jpg (http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/green-house/2010/02/26/IPCCx-large.jpg)At a press conference last month in New Delhi, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change pledged to be more careful after glaring errors were found in its 2007 landmark report. Its chief,


At a press conference last month in New Delhi, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change pledged to be more careful after glaring errors were found in its 2007 landmark report. Its chief, Rajendra Pachauri, left, looks on as does Thirteenth Finance Commission Chairman Vijay Kelkar. By Gurinder Osan, AP



Recent controversy has swirled around the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations' sponsored group. Hacked emails and other disclosures reveal deep divisions among its scientists about global warming, raising questions of its objectivity and accuracy.

"The problem stems from the IPCC's thorny mission: Take sophisticated and sometimes inconclusive science, and boil it down to usable advice for lawmakers," concludes the newspaper, based on its interviews with scientists and review of hundreds of panel documents and emails.

The story gives this example: Richard Alley, a geoscientist who helped write the IPCC's latest report, issued in 2007, says senators urged him that summer to be as specific as possible about the potential rising of the sea level. If the sea rises, he says they told him, "the levee has to be built some height."

The panel shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore in 2007 for its report that year, which declared climate change "unequivocal" and "very likely" caused by greenhouse gas emissions due to human activity.

Last month, the IPCC admitted the report included a false claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. It used data from a World Wildlife Fund report.


http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/02/climate-scientists-felt-compelled-to-oversimplify-findings/1