European Union wants to help ‘tainted’ IPCC

Even as the European Union (EU) was slightly critical of the mistakes made by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), it has offered assistance to the UN-led group to maintain high standards of quality control and assessment.

“We fully support the IPCC’s work. It has grown so much. The level of science and research and the level of participation of so many different partners of the world have improved so much that we need to update the counter-assessment, the quality control of its work. It is a summary of many different data and research. I personally wrote a letter to the IPCC to help update and improve these kinds of controls,” Teresa Ribera, president of EU council of environment ministers, said.

“Of course we don’t like mistakes but the report is still robust and we have to acknowledge that the process was transparent,” Ribera said. The fact that scientists were able to know where the mistake happened shows that the entire process continues to be transparent, she said.

Though scientists across the globe have been extremely critical of the IPCC’s horrifying prediction that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, prime minister Manmohan Singh and other world leaders have strongly backed its chief, RK Pachauri.

The EU has also said that it was looking forward to partnering with India to develop clean technologies.