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Inside Climate News argues that the credibility of the IPCC and negotiations in Paris will not suffer. On the other hand, the Telegraph writes: “He may now finally have gone, but the damage he did to the IPCC’s credibility as a serious scientific body is irreparable.”

Donna LaFramboise highlights what I regard as the most serious issue for the IPCC’s reputation.From Pachauri’s resignation letter: “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

With the Paris summit looming in December, the credibility of the IPCC would seem to be important, although the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)seems to be about raw politics and I’m not sure how relevant the IPCC is any more.

In 2013 I wrote: “Diagnosis: paradigm paralysis, caused by motivated reasoning, oversimplification, and consensus seeking; worsened and made permanent by a vicious positive feedback effect at the climate science-policy interface.”

Perhaps the Pachauri scandal will jolt the IPCC out of its paralysis. Hopefully a new Chair can provide the impetus for torqueing the IPCC in a better direction. I am not optimistic, but there is a window of opportunity here.

The IPCC needs to regain its scientific objectivity. [IPCC Working Group 1] needs to begin addressing natural variability in a more serious and comprehensive manner. If the model projections and observations of surface temperature continue to diverge [see graph], continued high confidence in attribution and future projections will become ludicrous. The IPCC should abandon its consensus seeking approach and do a more serious job of assessing uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance.

The issue of conflict of interest is a critical one – not just financial and political conflicts, but conflicts associated with lead authors assessing their own research. A serious effort at identifying conflicts and managing them would go a long way towards rebuilding the credibility.