Copenhagen, December 07: The world is entering talks on a new climate pact with unprecedented unity and leaders must seize the moment to create a turning point in the battle against global warming, the UN’s top climate official said Sunday.
At a news conference, Yvo de Boer called on the 192 nations represented at the UN climate summit starting Monday “to deliver a strong and long-term response to the challenge of climate change.” Even so, he worried that e-mails pilfered from a British university would fuel skepticism among those who believe that scientists exaggerate global warming.
“I think a lot of people are skeptical about this issue in any case,” de Boer told The Associated Press earlier Sunday. “And then when they have the feeling … that scientists are manipulating information in a certain direction then of course it causes concern in a number of people to say ‘you see I told you so, this is not a real issue.’”
E-mails stolen from the climate unit at the University of East Anglia appeared to show some of world’s leading scientists discussing ways to shield data from public scrutiny and suppress others’ work.
Those who deny the influence of man-made climate change have seized on the correspondence to argue that scientists have been conspiring to hide evidence about global warming.
“This correspondence looks very bad,” de Boer said, but noted that the matter was being investigated by the university, police and the head of the UN’s expert panel on climate change. He also defended the research — reviewed by some 2,500 scientists — that shows man has fueled global warming by burning fossil fuels.
“I think this is about the most credible piece of science that there is out there,” he said.
US climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing called the science on global warming “very robust, very substantial.” He told AP that the controversy surrounding the leaked e-mails came at an “unfortunate” time, just before the long-awaited UN talks, “but has no fundamental bearing on the outcome.”
The US ambassador to Britain told the BBC in an interview Sunday that the row over the leaked e-mails had had no effect on Washington’s position on global warming. Louis Susman said: “There’s no pick-up in our country. Our position is solid in what we believe is the need to change, that this is caused by human behavior. I don’t see it having any effect in the United States.”
Climate skeptics meeting in downtown Copenhagen for a panel discussion organized by a Danish nationalist party said the leaked e-mails highlighted the limitations of global warming research.
“There has been a lot of this kind of activity going on, there has been suppression of view points,” said Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado.
Negotiators in Copenhagen are trying to set targets for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases, including by the leading contributors, China and the United States.
They will also seek agreement on how much rich countries should pay to help poor nations to deal with climate change.
——Agencies