Recognizing
the problem of potential global climate change, the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) established the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in 1988
The IPCC's remit is to analyse and evaluate the existing peer-reviewed
literature, pertinent to the many scientific, technical and socioeconomic
aspects of human-induced climate change. This huge interdisciplinary
task depends on the work of thousands of collaborating natural and
social scientists – a significant proportion of the academic
community engaged in climate change-related research. To put the
sensitivity of the IPCC's role into sharper focus (Edwards and Schneider,
2001):
As a hybrid science-policy body, the IPCC must maintain credibility
and trust vis-à-vis two rather different communities: the
scientists who make up its primary membership, and the global climate
policy community to which it provides input […] The IPCC's
rules of procedure spell out a variety of methods designed to ensure
its reports include the best available scientific knowledge and
that they represent this knowledge fairly and accurately. Chief
among these is the principle of peer review, traditionally one of
the most important safeguards against bias and error in science.
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