The time has really come for a reality check. It is right that the IPCC has acknowledged the need for ever more stringent and transparent quality-control procedures to minimize any such risks in future reports. Related readings: Seychelles president says rich countries must act on climate Organizers desperate for climate change Future of climate talks again challenged - Experts Climate skeptics But let us also put aside the myth that the science of climate change is below the water line and is sinking fast on a sea of falsehoods. Over the course of 22 years, the IPCC has drawn upon the expertise of thousands of the best scientific minds, nominated by their own governments, in order to make sense of the complexity of unfolding environmental events and their potential impacts on economies and societies. Its 2007 report represents the best possible risk assessment available, notwithstanding an error - or, more precisely, a typographical error - in its statement of Himalayan glacial melt rates. One notion promulgated in recent weeks is that the IPCC is sensationalist: This is perhaps the most astonishing, if not risible claim of all. Indeed, the panel has more often been criticized for being far too conservative in its projections of, for example, the likely sea-level rise in the 21 century. Indeed, caution, rather than sensation has been the Panels watchword throughout its existence. In its first assessment, in 1990, the IPCC commented that observed temperature increases were broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability. The second assessment, in 1995, said: Resullts indicate that the observed trend in global mean temperature over the past 100 years is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin. Jordy Nelson Womens JerseyIn 2001, its third assessment reported: There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. By 2007, the consensus had reached very high confidence - at least a 90 percent chance of being correct - in scientists understanding of how human activities are causing the world to become warmer. This does not sound like a partial or proselytizing body, but one that has striven to assemble, order, and make sense of a rapidly evolving scientific puzzle for which new pieces emerge almost daily while others remain to be found. So perhaps the real issue that is being overlooked is this: confronted by the growing realization that humanity has become a significant driver of changes to our planet, the IPCC, since its inception, has been in a race against time. The overwhelming evidence now indicates that greenhouse-gas emissions need to peak within the next decade if we are to have any reasonable chance of keeping the global rise in temperature down to manageable levels. Any delay may generate environmental and economic risks of a magnitude that proves impossible to handle. The fact is that the world would have to make a transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient future even if there were no climate change. With the worlds human population set to rise from six billion to nine billion people in the next half-century, we need to improve management of our atmosphere, air, lands, soils, and oceans. Rather than undermine the IPCCs work, we should renew and re-double our efforts to support its mammoth task in assembling the science and knowledge for its fifth assessment in 2014. What is needed is an urgent international response to the multiple challenges of energy security, air pollution, natural-resource management, and climate change. The IPCC is as fallible as the human beings that comprise it. But it remains without doubt the best and most solid foundation we have for a community of more than 190 nations to make these most critical current and future global choices. The author is executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, which co-hosts the IPCC. Project Syndicate (China Daily 02092010 page9) ' ' '