British newspaper apologises to green panel
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COMMENTS 
In what Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman RK Pachauri’s office calls a victory of sorts, a major British newspaper has tendered an apology for rubbishing a report used by the IPCC to highlight the risk to the Amazonian rainforest
The British newspaper that accused a United Nations environmental panel of bad science over its report on the effects of climate change on the Amazon rainforests has apologised for casting aspersions on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), chaired by Indian environmentalist Rajendra Pachauri.
In January this year, The Sunday Times ran an article describing the IPCC’s claim that the Amazon rainforests are sensitive to future changes in rainfall as ‘unsubstantiated’. The newspaper said that the IPCC referenced the report from the World Wide Fund for Nature written by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as ‘green campaigners’ with ‘little scientific expertise’.
While the IPCC, in one of its most sensational claims, said that up to 40% of the Amazonian rainforest (one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world) could be at risk from climate change, The Sunday Times published a news item saying the Amazonian claim was not based on scientific evidence. It quoted Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds, and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology, that the report was a “mess”. Lewis later filed a complaint with the British Press Complaints Commission for using his quotes out of context.
The apology was published by The Sunday Times in its edition dated June 21, 2010, in which it admits: ‘In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence.’ The newspaper also apologised for casting aspersions on Rowell and Moore. It accepted that ‘Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature.’
Pachauri’s office is now publicising a retraction by The Sunday Times which says: ‘The IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute. Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change. A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.’
The IPCC has been facing a barrage of criticism after its claim that a large part of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by the 2030s was found to be unsubstantiated.
Source: The Indian Express, June 23, 2010
http://sify.com, June 2010