SOME of the world's leading experts on climate change yesterday defended their conclusion that global warming is now a "discernible" reality caused by human activity on the planet.
Members of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were defending themselves against "rogue scientists" supported by industrial interests, who claim that their central thesis is flawed.
They turned the tables on their critics at a press briefing held in conjunction with the second Conference of the Parties to the UN Climate Change Convention.
Lobbyists from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which represents oil, coal and motor manufacturing interests, attempted to gain entry to the briefing but were barred by UN security guards because they were not accredited journalists.
The GCC, which has been lobbying hard against any international agreement to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, had to content themselves with distributing handouts calling on UN member states to "dump the climate treaty".
Inside the old League of Nations headquarters, scene of Eamon de Valera's finest hour on the international stage, leading members of the IPCC, which is made up of 1,000 scientists throughout the world, stood by their most recent assessment.
Prof Bert Bolin, the Swedish scientist who chairs the panel, said they "reject completely" allegations that they did not follow proper scientific procedures in reaching the conclusion that climate change is being induced by human activity.
Waving a copy of the summary, Prof Bolin said it was based on the work of hundreds of scientists and he was prepared to stake his "reputation and honour" on its central conclusion that global warming was human induced.
He was responding to claims by 100 scientists, mainly from the US and Europe, whose work has been funded by industrial interests. Their recent "Leipzig Declaration" suggested that global warming was not really happening and, if anything, the Earth was likely to become cooler.
Prof Bolin's criticism of them was supported by Sir John Houghton, former head of the British Meteorological Office, who said it was easy for the "rogue scientists" to rubbish climate change when they did not have to operate under the constraint of having their work subjected to review by fellow scientists.
The WHO, in a statement last week on climate change, likened the opponents of progress on dealing with the issue to those in the tobacco industry 30 years ago who had discounted the now demonstrable link between smoking and lung cancer.
Prof Martin Parry, one of the main authors of the IPCC's assessment, told yesterday's briefing that some of today's children would experience the effects of climate change in the next century if, as he expected, average global temperatures rise by 2 Celsius. He estimated the cost of dealing with global warming would amount to 1.5-2. per cent of GNP worldwide.
All the scientists who spoke stressed they were using scientific terminology such as "critical" rather than "dangerous".
