US climate envoy supports India's decision for its own panel

"I think it's a good thing for countries to have an active scientific effort. I don’t know what the details are. I don’t know what Minister (Jairam) Ramesh or others in India have in mind," Special US Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern said.

"But I think, obviously, the US has all sorts of scientific work that we do through our various agencies of the US Government," Stern said at a news conference.
The Special US Envoy on Climate Change, Todd Stern also said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an important international body, but noted the errors appearing in its lengthy report are regrettable.

"I think the IPCC as an institution has made a very large contribution and I think it’s an important body that will continue and that is very representative of countries all over the world," Stern said in response to a question.

Observing that the IPCC has made a very important contribution, he said: "To the extent that any errors appear in their lengthy report, I think that’s regrettable."
The IPCC as an institution has been quite important and will continue to be important, he added.

"I think that the scientific underpinning for action on climate change, the fundamental science of climate change and the observed data, is quite overwhelming."
"I think that to the extent – and again, I make no comment one way or another about whether they’re mistakes – I just don’t know.

But to the extent that there were any mistakes in the IPCC report, reports, assessments, or anywhere else, that’s regrettable.

You don’t want there to be mistakes," Stern said.

"But what should not happen is that any individual mistakes, typos, whatever they might be, be taken to undermine the very fundamental record that exists from scientists all over the world and from observed data from all over the world that this is a quite serious and growing problem.

So I think that that’s really the kind of underlying important point," he said.
"And nor should – and I think what you do see sometimes is that people who have an agenda that is directed toward undermining action on climate change grab whatever tidbit they can find and say, look, there's no climate change, it snowed last week in Washington, there’s no climate change.

That kind of stuff is nonsense.
And the exploiting of this or that mistake that might have occurred in some part of long reports that pull together a lot of scientific data, again, I think it needs to be seen for what it is, which is a deliberate attempt to undermine. The fundamentals haven’t changed," Stern argued.