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Officials defend climate science Embattled climate chief supported
(about 1 hour later)
Senior officials running UN-led talks in India have insisted climate change science remains very persuasive despite the emergence of recent serious errors. India has firmly backed climate change chief Rajendra Pachauri - who has been under attack over recent scientific errors - at UN-led talks in Delhi.
Scientists, politicians and business leaders are meeting in Delhi for the first big conference on climate change since the Copenhagen summit last year. PM Manmohan Singh said India had "full confidence" in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its chairman, Dr Pachauri.
The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said a huge volume of evidence validated the science. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh, previously critical of the IPCC, said the government backed him to the hilt.
Rajendra Pachauri said there had been only one major error in an IPCC study. The Delhi talks are the first major climate change forum since Copenhagen.
The error - about the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers - had been publicly corrected, Dr Pachauri said. The convention comes amid a row over climate change science which has seen sceptics seize on scientific errors to support their case.
The IPCC 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.
The issue, which BBC News first reported on 5 December, has reverberated around climate websites since.
Himalayas glacier deadline 'wrong'Himalayas glacier deadline 'wrong'
Mr Singh sought to play down the row as he gave his support to Dr Pachauri.
"Some aspects of the science that is reflected in the work of IPCC have faced criticism, but this debate does not challenge the core projections of the IPCC about the impact of [greenhouse gases] on temperature, sea-level rise and rainfall," he said.
"India has full confidence in the IPCC process and its leadership and will support it in every way that we can."
He said the summit was an important step in moving forward from the Copenhagen climate summit in December, at which no new global agreement was reached.
Speaking in Delhi on Thursday, UN climate change envoy Yvo de Boer also said errors in the IPCC report on Himalayan glaciers should not detract from the overall conclusions drawn in the study.
He acknowledged some mistakes had been made, but said the science behind global warming was robust and that the report itself was underpinning political decision-making in a serious way.
Dr Pachauri told the BBC there was a huge volume of evidence to validate the science of global warming.
There had been only one major error in an IPCC study, he said, which had been publicly corrected.
He spoke of lies being published in British newspapers about him personally and about the work of the IPCC.He spoke of lies being published in British newspapers about him personally and about the work of the IPCC.
UN climate change envoy Yvo de Boer has also defended the IPCC, calling its work robust. 'Wildly inaccurate'
It is, he said, underpinning political decision making in a very, very serious way. Mr Ramesh's current support for Dr Pachauri follows stern words from the environment minister last month.
But after the failure of the Copenhagen summit to reach a comprehensive agreement on tackling climate change, this has been a bad start to the new year for the UN negotiating process. Mr Ramesh said there was no "conclusive scientific evidence" linking global warming to the melting of glaciers and that the IPCC had "a lot of answering to do" on how it had reached its 2035 date.
Academics had previously questioned the IPCC's 2035 figure, saying it was "wildly inaccurate".
The BBC's Chris Morris in Delhi says that after the failure of the Copenhagen summit to reach a comprehensive agreement on tackling climate change, this has been a bad start to the new year for the UN negotiating process.
The hope is that an agreement can finally be reached at the next major climate summit in Mexico City later this year.The hope is that an agreement can finally be reached at the next major climate summit in Mexico City later this year.
But for the moment, controversy has taken centre stage, and it has added fuel to the arguments of sceptics who believe global warming theories are alarmist. But for the moment, controversy has taken centre stage, and it has added fuel to the arguments of sceptics who believe global warming theories are alarmist, our correspondent says.