Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has told BBC Radio 4’s – The Report program that the claims arising out of the leaked e-mails were serious and IPCC will investigate them as its top priority. However, he is also denying any possibility of a few scientists biasing the advice given to governments by the UN’s top global warming body.
“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,” Dr Pachauri said.
He added that “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.”
The allegations were made against the UK scientists to have manipulated the global warming data to promote the argument that it is man-made after more than 1,000 e-mails written by members of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were posted on the internet.
While government’s chief scientific advisor, Robert Watson, has demanded publishing of all raw data available on the matter, Norfolk police are investigating whether the computers were actually hacked or not.