Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), recently told reporters that the Group of Eight (G8) nations and others - which met in L'Aquila, Italy, on July 9 - had "clearly ignored" the UN scientific body's findings while making proposals for reduction of greenhouse gases; thereby failing to take any tangible action towards the goal of limiting climate change.

Nonetheless, Pachauri commended the G8 nations for initiating "a big step forward" by coming to a consensus about limiting the average temperature rise of the Earth to 2 degrees Celsius - or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit - above levels recorded 150 years ago.

The slipup that Pachauri actually referred to was that the wealthiest countries of the world had disregarded the findings of the scientific panel of IPCC - which, in 2007, shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore - that is, the emissions will have to reach their pinnacle in 2015, before their subsequent rapid decline.

Elaborating his grouse against the G8 nations, Pachauri said: "If the G8 leaders agreed on this two degree increase as being the limit that could be accepted, then I think they should have also accepted the attendant requirement of global emissions peaking by 2015."

He added: "What I find as a dichotomy in this position is the fact that they clearly ignored what the IPCC came up with."