New Delhi, Feb 5 (Inditop.com) World leaders Friday rallied to the defence of beleaguered UN climate change panel co-chair R.K. Pachauri and asserted that the disclosures about the mistakes in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report had not altered fundamental facts about global warming.
The prime ministers of Norway, Greece, Finland and Bhutan at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) that began here defended the IPCC report and its findings about the impact of global warming on glaciers and rising sea levels.
“Some of the recommendations have been subject to criticism. In principle I welcome criticism. I congratulate R.K. Pachauri for taking steps to correct mistakes,” said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
“But the main point of climate panel’s report remains unchanged. Polar ice is melting. Sea levels are rising and the globe is warming,” the Norwegian prime minister said. He also warned against using criticism for gaining political edge.
In a similar vein, Finish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said that regardless of the panel’s report the world must move together to combat global warming and efforts should be made to reach a legally binding agreement on cutting green house gas emissions.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh his address also backed the IPCC and its leadership, which has been under fire since revelations last month that its landmark Fourth Assessment Report mistakenly predicted that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 as a result of global warming.
A day earlier, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh too had come out in support of Pachauri, who is under sustained attack in the British media in particular.
