Failure at Copenhagen will be major setback: RK Pachauri

RK Pachauri, head of the Nobel-winning UN panel on climate change, today said a failure to come out with an agreement to combat global warming at Copenhagen will be a "major setback" to the world.

Pachauri, who is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had won the Nobel Prize for highlighting that climate change was happening more quickly than believed, also asserted that all evidence pointed to its acceleration, refuting notions accompanying Climategate.

The world will have to pay less if it acts swiftly to combat climate change, Pachauri said at a news conference at the climate change conference here.

"If we are able to get a good agreement it would create an enormous amount of confidence in the ability of human society to be able to act on a multilateral basis," he said.

"If we fail, I don't think everything is lost, but it certainly would be a major setback," he added.

Pachauri stressed that the poor around the world would be the most hit by climate change, and highlighted the devastating impact that even a 2-degree rise in temperature posed for small island states.

"If we take action, the cost of mitigation are really much much lower than what anyone had anticipated," he said.

In light of Climategate, the scientist and his colleagues once again reiterated that the scientific reporting and analysis of the IPCC was above board and all the evidence pointed towards accelerating climate change.