IPCC Teams Up with WorldWatch to Attack Obama

IPCC Teams Up with WorldWatch to Attack Obama, by Roger Pielke, Jr.
Prometheus, January 19th, 2009

The “policy neutral” IPCC is once again making a mockery of its role of an arbiter of scientific information, in favor of all out political advocacy. EurActiv reports the details:

If the world is to tackle the climate threat, the US President-elect must beef up his country’s emissions targets, the head of the leading intergovernmental organisation of climate scientists said last week (15 January).

“President-elect Obama’s goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at a Worldwatch Institute event.

In a new study on the state of the world in 2009, the institute argues that global CO2 emissions must be reduced to negative figures by 2050 to avoid a looming climate catastrophe.

It calls on the US, a major polluter, to assume leadership by passing national climate legislation and engaging with the international community to achieve a new agreement on halting emissions at next December’s talks in Copenhagen.

“The world is desperately looking for US leadership to slow emissions and create a green economy,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute. “With the Copenhagen climate conference rapidly approaching, this will be a crucial early test for President Obama.”

Pachauri warned that there may not be an “adequate global response” unless the US steps up to the plate. “He ran for the presidency of the United States, so he assumed the responsibility,” the Nobel Prize recipient commented as to the weight of Obama’s task.