After Indian PM, European Union backs IPCC

New Delhi, Feb.6 (ANI): A day after Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh expressed solidarity with Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying India maintains full confidence in IPCC, the European Union has also come forward with its support for the UN climate body which is under fire for erroneous prediction on melting of glaciers by 2035.

Addressing mediapersons in New Delhi on Saturday, the European Union Secretary of State for Climate Change, Tersesa Ribera, said that EU has full respect for the IPCC and a small factual slip up will not affect the credibility of the institutions.

"I fully respect what the IPCC has been doing and the sound information it has been providing in the last years. So, it may be that there are some factual data that are wrong and that's something we don't like. But that's not the basis to challenge general content or the general document," Ribera said.

The embattled IPCC, the UN's climate science body, has also admitted last month that it had made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, a date it included in its 2007 assessment of climate impacts.

European Union Secretary of State, Ribera, who is also the President of EU council of Environmental Ministers, believes that the growing size of IPCC in areas of research makes it vulnerable for mistakes and there should be a permanent mechanism for constant checks.

"In such a big work, we always need to have a permanent way to improve and to update the methodological solution to avoid this to happen," she stated.

Ribera has personally written a letter to IPCC chief Suresh Pachauri.

Extending her help, she said I am sure rest of the members of the bureau and rest of the researchers, not the governments that take part in this exercise to help, to update and to improve these type of controls."

IPCC is in the eye of storm over its wrong prediction, as a section of climate scientists believes that other than false assessment on meting glaciers, IPCC report has more errors.

However, such concerns or skepticism has not been able to deter Prime Minister and even European Union to lose faith in the IPCC, which is presently engaged in preparing its next report.

The IPCC assesses the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change. By Naveen Kapoor (ANI)