NY Times Editorial: With Stakes This High

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/opinion/17wed2.html

With Stakes This High

Published: February 17, 2010

Disclosures of isolated errors and exaggerations in the 2007 report from the United Nations panel on climate change do not undermine its main finding: that the planet has been warming gradually for more than a century and that human activity is largely responsible. But the misstatements have handed climate skeptics a public relations boost.

That’s not good news at a time when world leaders need to make tough decisions to control greenhouse gas emissions and when public confidence in the science is essential. Given the stakes, the panel cannot allow more missteps and, at the very least, must tighten procedures and make its deliberations more transparent.

The panel’s chairman, Rajendra K. Pachauri, an Indian engineer, also is under fire for taking consulting fees from business interests. Mr. Pachauri says he does not profit personally and channels the fees to a nonprofit research center he runs in New Delhi. Yet as the person most responsible for the panel’s integrity, he cannot afford even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

All this follows last November’s uproar over leaked e-mail messages that, while they had nothing to do with the panel’s reports, portrayed climate scientists as thin-skinned and fully capable of stifling competing views.

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