Geneva, 18 July 1996

Dear Ben,

I write to you because of the many allegations claiming that you have violated the IPCC
rules of procedure.

As Chairman of the IPCC, I attended the session of the IPCC Working Group I in
Madrid, 27?29 November 1995. I wish to state very clearly that the allegations are completely
unjustified.

Country delegates to the Working Group session had madema number of written
comments to the chapters of the report that had been submitted for consideration, as well as
to the draft Summary for Policymakers, and there was an extensive discussion at the session.
Governments approved unanimously a revised Summary for Policymakers, the revisions
having also been agreed to by the lead authors. The underlying chapters were accepted by the
Working Group on the condition that they would be modi?ed in order to secure full internal
consistency with the approved Summary for Policymakers.

You undertook the task of modifying Chapter 8. Both the co-chairmen of the Working
Group and myself are completely satis?ed with the revisions made as re?ecting the comments
made in writing and orally at the session. There are many ways such a revision can be made,
but your way of pursuing this task has retained the overall balance of the chapter that is so
important in assessments of the kind that IPCC is pursuing.

It is not the task for outside bodies to make ?nal judgements of whether the IPCC tasks
have been pursued properly or not; the responsibility rests with country delegates to the
plenary sessions of the IPCC. It should be stressed that the procedure described brie?y above
has been followed on a number of occasions in preceding years and have, without exception,
never been challenged by any Government, nor have I had any criticism from country
delegates on the work of the Working Group in November last year.

Finally, I wish to note that Mr J. Shlaes of the Global Climate Coalition and Mr D.
Pearlman of the Climate Council, who have initiated these attacks on the IPCC write: we
have not raised questions about the scienti?c or personal integrity of those involved in this
affair. We assume that Dr Santer and others believed, albeit mistakenly, that they had the
au?iority to make the changes and that the changes ultimately re?ected Dr Santer?s judgement
about the state of the science Thus, there is no blame whatsoever attaching to you in the
way you completed revisions to Chapter 8.

WA

Bert Bolin
Chairman of the IPCC

 

IPCC Secretariat, WMO, 41, Av. Giuse e-Motta, C.P. 2300 1211 (3
Phone: +41 22 7303 208/254/gg4 Fax: +41 22 7331 270 Tel'ex: 414199 33/13/213 SWITZERLAND