U.N. tries to shore up support for climate initiatives in the wake of failures

Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, right, talks to
director of the U.N. Environment Program Achim Stiener, left,
during an opening ceremony of the 11th special session of the
Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum in
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia on Wednesday, Feb 24. 2010.
(AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

At a meeting in Bali, Indonesia held by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), representatives from more than 100 nations sought to take steps to stem growing doubts about manmade climate change. The representatives rejected any effort to cast doubt on their ‘consensus’ and said that they would continue to push their theory forward.

From scandalous emails to errors in ‘gold standard’ reports and faulty climate data, the past year has not been an easy one for those supporting the theory that man is the primary driver of the earth’s climate.

The Climategate email scandal last year saw some of the world’s top climate scientists embarrassed by their own doubts about the theory. That was followed by failures to reach a comprehensive climate agreement at the U.N. Climate Change Conference and revelations of errors in the agency’s primary document that outlines its case for action.

In a message to the delegates U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addressed the controversies. “I urge you to reject the last-ditch attempts by climate sceptics to derail your negotiations by exaggerating shortcomings in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Tell the world that you unanimously agree that climate change is a clear and present danger, that you are working to implement agreements already made and that you are continuing negotiations under the UNFCCC to address climate change according to the demands of current scientific information,” Ban said.

• Related: 2009 climate change story of the year - Climategate
• Also see: 2009: The year climate change and global warming activists would like to forget

Many found it ironic that the U.N. chose to cite ‘current scientific information’ following the errors discovered in the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change’s (IPCC) seminal AR4. That report has been found to use extensive non-scientific resources to make its case and many errors and exaggerations have been discovered.

To address allegations that the data underlying global temperatures is faulty, Britain’s Met Office proposed creating a new dataset that would be more current and open than what is currently available.

Unlike current data which is provided monthly, the Met Office said the new system should be provided daily or potentially more frequently. “This effort will ensure that the datasets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent” it said.

Under whose supervision the new dataset would fall is unclear. Nor is it known how it would address issues with current datasets including a lack of monitoring stations across large swaths of the globe and hundreds of stations that fail to meet basic standards.

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