Changes urged for troubled U.N. climate panel

The United Nations‘ influential climate change panel needs to make “fundamental changes” to avoid errors and charges of bias, according to a review released Monday.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been under fire since admitting in January that its 2007 report on global warming exaggerated the scope of melting Himalayan glaciers.

The panel has done a good job overall, but “new demands are being made for increased transparency and accountability,” according to a review released Monday by the InterAcademy Council, a collection of the world’s science academies.

In the wake of the controversy and continued criticism from skeptics of manmade climate change, the scientists were asked to assess the IPCC’s work in March by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Among other changes, the review calls for shorter terms for IPCC leaders, more outside oversight and stronger enforcement of the IPCC’s own research standards.

Associated Press Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the U.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been urged to resign by global warming skeptics.

The United Nations has acknowledged errors in the 2007 document, called the Fourth Assessment Report, but has insisted that the overall conclusions of the study were correct.

The IPCC’s next major climate change study is due in 2013.

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