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Manmohan backs IPCC on climate work
India Blooms News Service
New Delhi, Feb 5 (IBNS) A day after India’s outspoken environment minister Jairam Ramesh slammed the UN climate change body IPCC for issuing warnings without scientific basis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country has full confidence in the IPCC process.
Addressing a summit on sustainable development here on Friday, Manmohan Singh said: "Let me reassert that India has full confidence in the IPCC process and its leadership and will support it in every way."
He said though some works of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change) were put to question, the core projections of the body remains unchallenged.
"…this debate does not challenge the core projections of the IPCC upon the impact of greenhouse gas accumulations on temperature, rainfall and sea level rise," he said.
On Thursday, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said climate science and climate evangelism are not same and hence India would have its own body to assess the impact of climate change on Himalayan glaciers after the goof-up by IPCC.
Taking a dig at the wrong projections by the IPCC headed by India’s R K Pachauri on the Himalayan glaciers, Ramesh said the IPCC undoubtedly created scare and panic by not basing its warnings on science.
“There is a difference between climate science and climate evangelism,” he said, dubbing the IPCC predictions of Himalayan glacier meltdown by 2035 as misleading.
“Health of glaciers are cause for concern. They are melting, retreating, threatening our water security and we have to be cautious. But we are now setting up a National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology in Dehra Dun for monitoring, modelling and research,” he told Times Now.
“A country like India cannot depend on only IPCC,” he said adding that the IPCC took published literature as basis of warnings and so made goof-ups on predictions about Himalayan glacier, Amazon and snow peaks.
He said he nevertheless has respect for IPCC, a body of 2000 scientists, but India is setting up something like Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA).
R K Pachauri, who heads IPCC, is under fire from British media, Indian government and environmentalists for wrong predictions on the Himalayan glacier meltdown and after it was found that many of the other IPCC warnings were based on magazine articles.
British media alleged that Pachauri also benefits financially from the various positions he holds in various bodies. |
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