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UN's Climate Chief Unaware of WMO's "World
Is Cooler" Statement, BBC Controversy
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
April 10 -- The UN's
point man on climate change, Yvo de Boer, on Thursday told the Press he
was
unaware of comments to the BBC by the secretary-general of the UN World
Meteorological
Organization Michel Jarraud that the world has not gotten hotter since
1998.
"I have not read the articles," he said when Inner City Press asked
him. "If I get then and I were to read them, I'd be happy to
respond." Video here,
from Minute 48:57.
After
the press conference, Inner City Press e-mailed him the articles, but
nothing.
From another UN source, WMO's back-tracking response arrived, in which
"in
response to media inquiries," Jarraud is quoted that "For detecting
climate change you should not look at any particular year, but instead
examine
the trends over a sufficiently long period of time." De Boer in the
press
conference affirmed that the IPCCC has "pointed to, no, has shown"
that temperatures have risen "since the Industrial Revolution."
The
more troubling part of the controversy, from an independent media
perspective,
is that BBC while initially standing behind its quoting of Jarraud
ended up not
only changing its story, but not leaving any mark that it had done so.
The
piece's author Roger Harrabin is quoted in this UK
environmentalists' account, and it does not look good. Following threats, he says, "we have
changed the headline and more."
While
leaving the UN briefing room, de Boer opined that he has in the past
asked for
headlines to be fixed. But what about the "and more"? We'll await his
or the UN's response.
Yvo de Boer at UN: headlines are changed,
ships are re-flagged
On
straight environmental, and independent media, issues Inner City Press
asked de
Boer about the calls in Bangkok for the UN's International Maritime
Organization and ICAO do to more on climate change. De Boer said both
of these
agencies -- and the WMO, see above -- are expert, but that some
countries don't
feel they've gone far enough. He pointed out that ships can use fuel or
water
as ballast, and can fuel-up anywhere, making enforcement difficult.
Video here,
from Minute 39:10.
That and the
exclusive jurisdiction of
the flagging nation... To be continued.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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