Climate Change Stars Fade, Even If Risks Rise
September 26, 2013
Both Gore, the IPCC and Pachauri, now 73, won a series of international awards for their work in 2007. Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Oscar and standing applause at U.N. negotiating sessions when it was shown. But Gore has also been worn down by criticisms, especially by U.S. Republicans who say his climate campaigns are alarmist and question the science behind them. His later ventures have been less high profile. He sold his struggling cable channel, Current TV, to Al Jazeera in January. Gore’s latest book, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change, has won good reviews.
IPCC leaders including Pachauri have been less outspoken in recent months than before the 2007 report by the IPCC when he said, for instance, that he hoped it would “shock” the world into action.
A 2010 review by scientists in the InterAcademy Council (IAC), partly spurred by an error in the IPCC report that exaggerated a thaw in the Himalayas, said that IPCC leaders should stick to science and not recommend policies. “Straying into advocacy can only hurt IPCC’s credibility,” it said.
