Africa-Gate? U.N. Fears of Food Shortages Questioned

The U.N.'s controversial climate report is coming under fire -- again -- this time by one of its own scientists, who admits he can't find any evidence to support a warning about a climate-caused North African food shortage.

The statement comes from a key 2007 report to the U.N., and asserts that by 2020 yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50% in some African countries thanks to climate change.

But this weekend, a key author of the team behind that report told The Sunday Times that he could find no evidence to support his own group's claim. The revelation follows the retraction by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035, dubbed 'Glaciergate' by commentators.

The newest controversial claim could become a very important error in the IPCC's reporting, because it comes not only from the IPCC's report on climate change impacts -- called Assessment Report 4, or AR4 -- but is also repeated in its "Synthesis Report." That report is the IPCC's most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers.

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It was to weak to stand already once the information actually got out.