CONSENUS of scientists say IPCC should be scrapped

NTERNATIONAL scientists have called for the world's peak climate change body to be revamped or scrapped after damaging controversies that have dogged the expert panel in recent months.

The scientists suggest a range of options, from tightening the selection of lead authors and contributors to the International Panel on Climate Change, to dumping it in favour of a small permanent body, or even turning the whole climate science assessment process into a moderated "living" Wikipedia-IPCC.

Writing today in the journal Nature, five US, British, German and Swiss climate scientists - all contributing or lead IPCC report authors - agreed a mechanism for assessing the facts and impacts of climate change was critical.

But they acknowledged that calls for reform had intensified after what Nature called "recent furores". Last month, for instance, it was revealed that flawed communication between teams of scientists led to the IPCC's inaccurate claim that most Himalayan glaciers would melt almost 300 years earlier than forecast. In November, the release of hacked email messages between climate scientists triggered widespread media reports of scientific wrongdoing.