This has engulfed the IPCC in controversy yet again, after a preview of the report made headlines by claiming that, within 40 years, nearly 80 per cent of the world's energy needs could be met from renewable sources, most notably through a massive expansion of wind and solar power.
What only came to light when the full report was published last week was the peculiar source of this extraordinarily ambitious claim. It was based solely on a paper co-authored last year by an employee of Greenpeace International and something called the European Renewable Energy Council. This Brussels-based body, heavily funded by the EU, lobbies the European Commission on behalf of all the main renewable industries, such as wind and solar. The chief author of the Greenpeace paper, Sven Teske, was also a lead author on Chapter 10 of the IPCC report, which means that the report's headline message came from a full-time environmental activist, supported by a lobby group representing those industries that stand most to benefit financially from its findings.
Not surprisingly, expert critics of the IPCC have been quick to point out how this seems to reinforce the revelations 18 months ago, which did more to discredit the UN body's authority than anything in its history. At the centre of those scandals was the discovery that the more alarming predictions made by the IPCC's major 2007 report - such as a claim that most of the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 - were not based on proper science at all. They were simply scare stories originating from environmentalist lobby groups, used in a way that broke all the IPCC's own rules, which insist that its reports should be based only on properly accredited scientific studies.
Adding to this was the unfavourable publicity also directed at that time at the IPCC's chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Yet in the preface to this new report, he is given special thanks for all he did to bring it about. Not only that - he also wrote an introduction to the controversial Greenpeace paper on which its headline claim was based. Read the full report here.
Source: by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, UK.
