The case for Ultra Low Carbon cars needs credible scientific underpinning

The future of electric cars requires the immediate reform of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Global warming is caused by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. The most abundant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. One of the main sources of CO2 is the emissions from the internal combustion engines that power the world’s road transport systems.

So goes the argument that says that global warming is man-made. But not everyone subscribes to it. There are those (mainly) vested interests which say that carbon dioxide build up either doesn’t exist or, if it does, it’s quite natural and the Earth has gone through many such concentrations in its history. Left to its own devices, the earth will sort itself out and there’s nothing for us to worry about.

In America, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for protecting the public's health from climate change but its greenhouse gas regulations are seen by some sectors of the community as ‘anti-industrial’. Opponents believe that the EPA’s policies are stifling job creation and economic growth and that ‘all this silly stuff that they’re doing over at the EPA costs money and it disadvantages the poor more than anyone else.’ So says Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, who has put together a laundry list of grievances about the EPA's regulatory agenda.

The debate on climate change has become a battlefield

The world’s leading scientific body for the assessment of global warming is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  The IPCC has concluded in its most recent report in 2007 (the reports are every six years) that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.  One of the principal ways in which fossil fuels are burnt is in internal combustion engines. That objective view carried considerable intellectual weight until this year – 2010.

The debate on climate change has now descended into what Professor Martin Parry, one of the authors of the last IPCC report, has called ‘a battlefield’. It has become mired in politics as those organisations which oppose the measures necessary to tackle man-made global warming have seized upon errors contained in that report and presented them as evidence that climate change is science fiction.

Criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is on a global scale

Criticism of the IPCC has taken place on a global scale. Professor Parry has admitted that huge damage has been done to the IPCC by the error contained in the 2007 report that glaciers in the Himalayas could melt by 2035. He and his fellow authors were apparently dismayed that such an error could have escaped the review process and made its way into publication.

But it is the review process that is one of the fundamental failings in the way that the IPCC is organised. This was a finding of the InterAcademy Council (IAC), an independent team of scientists set up by the UN in 2010 to examine the way that the IPPC works. In its report, it concluded that the IPPC must ‘fundamentally reform’ its organisation and how it operates if it is to regain its credibility.

Reports in good faith from unpaid scientists from around the world have become infinitely more complex and more numerous since the IPCC’s inception in 1988 but the organisation itself has changed little. Similar bodies have become more accountable and more transparent over this period but the IPCC has failed to adapt. There is no recognised procedure, the IAC found, for determining what information should go into its reports, how it is commented upon, edited and how a consensus is achieved.

Worse still, as the ‘climategate’ e-mails from the world-leading Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed, there were attempts to discredit opinions which did not conform to the authors’ own views.

InterAcademy Council says chair’s term should be limited

Another key finding of the AIC was that the chairman of the IPCC should serve for only one of the six-year periods it takes to produce the mammoth assessment reports. Which brings us to the current chair, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, who was appointed in 2002 and, having overseen the 2007 report, is now well into his stint for the next report due in 2013.

Dr Pachauri has stated that he will serve until such time as the representatives of the IPCC’s 193 member governments ask him to step down. This is becoming increasingly possible as the beleaguered Dr Pachauri has become the focal point of the insistent criticism of the organisation he chairs. Greenpeace said in February 2010 that Dr Pachauri's resignation and the installation of a new leader would restore confidence in the IPCC.

A chorus of disapproval

Tim Yeo, chairman of the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, joined calls for his resignation in September 2010: ‘I’m afraid I think Dr Pachauri should resign. Firstly he personally has lost credibility, particularly in relation to his claim about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers in the next 30 years,’ he told the BBC.  ‘It’s vital that this body is led by someone whose academic and intellectual credentials are unquestioned and I’m afraid that can no longer be said of him.’

Dr Pachauri has also been the focus of press speculation regarding a potential conflict of interests arising from his relationships with profit-making energy companies. The IAC review criticised the IPCC for lacking a clear policy on conflict of interest and suggested that new guidelines be implemented. The IAC stated that the IPCC should ‘pay special attention to issues of independence and bias to maintain the integrity of, and public confidence in, its results’.

If this is evidence of a certain naivety on Dr Pachauri’s part it is borne out by the publication of his novel, ‘Return to Almora’. It is in the genre of voluptuous breasts and breathless removal of underwear with artless sex scenes that would be better left on the top shelf.

Dr Pachauri’s future will be decided when representatives of the IPCC’s 193 member governments meet in Busan, South Korea in October 2010.

The automotive industry needs credible scientific support

The trouble with this welter of criticism is that it has fed into the mainstream of public opinion. People who had never heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change until this year, and have little conception of its conclusions, are now bitterly complaining that it’s a waste of money, that Dr Pachauri is nothing more than a railway engineer and that global warming is a myth put about by discredited academics.

Those opponents of the theory of global warming are delighted that they now have the weight of public opinion behind them.

For these reasons, it is vital that the findings of the InterAcademy Council are acted upon. The IPCC’s imminent meeting in Busan should establish an executive committee to oversee the implementation of the reforms and it should remove Dr Pachauri from office. Only then will the IPCC start to win back the credibility that it has so spectacularly lost.

A credible, objective voice on the impact of the burning of fossil fuels is vital to the future of the global automotive industry. We need that backing to ensure that the industry moves into a low carbon future. The industry is poised on the brink of a revolution that will see the introduction of electric cars on a mass market scale. That future should not be jeopardised by doubts about the scientific reasoning underpinning it.