VIEW WITH CAUTION – AT 7:41 P.M. ET:  There may be some movement in the campaign to reform the fatally damaged science of "climate change" or "global warming," or whatever today's favored phrase is.  Even the UN, where corruption is an honored craft, is getting into the reform act, as Fox reports:

In an apparent slap at the embattled chief of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has ordered a newly formed outside scientific panel to review its "procedures and practices" -- and more significantly, its management.

The hastily assembled panel will be headed by Prof. Robbert H. Dijkgraaf, head of the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-chairman of the InterAcademy Council. The investigation will be carried out by the Council and will be composed of unpaid volunteer scientists. The panel's formation, it was acknowledged at a press conference Wednesday, was a direct reaction to criticism of the way the IPCC put together its last report on climate change.

The Council is composed of the heads of national science academies in 15 countries, according to Dijkgraaf, a theoretical physicist.

The IPCC is a U.N.-funded organization that gathers and publishes authoritative reports on the state of climate research. Governments and policy makers rely on its findings to battle climate change, because it is expected to present the best analysis and assessment of data available.

COMMENT:  Not necessarily good news.  Who are the people involved?  What are their interests?  Their biases?  Their histories?  A review can easily turn into a whitewash.  Will dissenters be permitted a voice?

Remember that the UN has a vested interest in promoting "climate change" hysteria because the "solutions" often involve transfers of wealth from advanced countries to "developing" countries that never seem to develop.  There are a lot of the latter, and the palms are outstretched.

So we'll have to wait and see on this one.  I would have preferred a much more open discussion before this panel was named.

March 10, 2010