James Delingpole
London Telegraph
Tuesday, Dec 15th, 2009
After the Climategate scandal erupted, few were quicker to dismiss the significance of the leaked emails than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In no way, he insisted, just two days after the story broke, had the integrity of the IPCC been compromised:
“The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report,” he said.
“Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening.”
And if any investigation into the affair were necessary, argued Dr Pachauri, it ought purely to be a criminal one into how the emails came to light.
Pachauri said he doubted that trust in the IPCC would be damaged by the affair. “People who are aware of how the IPCC functions and are appreciative of the credibility that the IPCC has attained will probably not be swayed by an incident of this kind,” he said.
Quite so. And I’m quite sure that no one will in any wise have their faith in the integrity of the IPCC shaken by these revelations courtesy of the mighty Richard North.
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