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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It is an environmental organization led by government scientists, but also involving several hundred academic scientists and researchers from many nations. The IPCC monitors the available information about climate change and has published four major reports reviewing the latest climate science.

The IPCC was one of the forces behind the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and in 1996 produced a report called Climate Change 1995 which environmentalists consider conclusive proof for anthopogenic global warming. Many scientists disagree, including roughly half of those contributing to the report.

Political Consensus and Scientific Reporting

The IPCC maintains that it represents a "scientific consensus" which supports the views in the Policymaker's Summary its biennial reports include. This contention has been disputed in the form of the Leipzig Declaration, which environmentalists have dismissed as a public relations stunt.

A Dec. 20, 1995, Reuters report quoted British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC's lead authors, discussing the IPCC Policymakers’ Summary: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report."

Leadership

Robert Watson headed the IPCC until being voted out in May 2002.

See: IPCC Policymakers' Summary

Links:

• The IPCC web site