The trump card over poverty, disease, and hunger is. . . climate change.

The last year has been a momentous one for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and climate science, and not always for the most welcome reasons. The belated discovery of a mistake in our AR4 report led to considerable controversy, as did the uncovering of somewhat unfortunate email correspondence from some prominent climate scientists at the University of East Anglia.

It was, and is, inevitable that such incidents would lead to criticism and—quite rightly—to both internal and external examination. However, at times in the last six months it has become apparent that many people either do not know, or have forgotten, what the IPCC actually is, what it was formed to do, to whom it reports, and what its current mandate is. Without that starting point—of understanding based in current and historical knowledge—there is a danger that the wrong conclusions can be drawn about the organization’s future.

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