Hundreds of climate scientists and government officials from around the world have worked all week behind closed doors and frequently darkened windows in a United Nations building here to summarize the factors behind global warming in a report to be released Friday.
But the doors and drapes may as well be wide open.
The senior authors of the report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN body convened every five years or so, have been inundated with e-mails and calls from some of the 650 other authors and outside experts eager to see findings tweaked in one direction or another.
With the clock ticking down and translators juggling six official languages, and government representatives trying to insure that findings do not clash with national interests, tussles have intensified between climate experts and political appointees from participating governments.
Scientists involved in the discussions said Thursday that the U.S. delegation, led by political appointees, was pressing to play down language pointing to a link between intensification of hurricanes and warming caused by human activity.
"They have tended to highlight uncertainties on certain issues," a scientist involved in the negotiations said in an e- mail to a reporter Thursday. The scientist sent the message on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations were continuing.
On Wednesday night, the same scientist, frustrated with efforts by China and the United States to avoid language that might box them in on policy options, e-mailed that "this is becoming an impossible process."
By Thursday afternoon, the panel had concluded that recent global warming was "very likely" caused by human activity, meaning at least a 90 percent probability, according to one observer attending the talks. The observer spoke on condition of anonymity because participants have been asked not to talk to the media.
A previous report from the panel issued in 2001 took a less definitive view, finding that warming was "likely" to be due to greenhouse gases.
The panel also is expected to conclude that within decades, world temperatures are likely to surpass the warmest natural hot spells for thousands of years, triggering disruptive shifts in weather patterns and causing a largely irreversible rise in sea levels.
While there is little doubt about these broad outlines, consequential details, in particular projections of how high oceans will rise in this century in response to the erosion of ice sheets in Greenland and parts of Antarctica, are more open to dispute.
Susan Solomon, one of the two leaders of the main science section being unveiled Friday and a senior scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, criticized last- minute lobbying by experts outside the process.
In an interview several days ago, she said there had been two opportunities over the past year for anyone to review drafts of the report, and thousands of comments had been received.
"There are a range of views out there, and I think we are guaranteed an extremely rigorous process that is very carefully listening to all the expert opinion," she said. "I just don't know what further could have been done."
Several scientists, including some involved in the current wrangling, say it may be time to review whether the panel's mission and procedures need to be revised, both to account for fast evolving science and to limit potential criticisms relating to the invisible fights over its most-watched summary statements.
Some scientists are suggesting that the very search for consensus may now be distracting from the need for action.
Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton scientist who has been an author and reviewer of IPCC reports for many years, said: "I am not proposing that the search for consensus be abandoned. It will always be valuable."
But, added Oppenheimer, who previously worked for the private group Environmental Defense, "the world moves on, so we need to learn from the great work of previous assessments and figure out how to do it better in the future."
There are also questions about whether the body is sufficiently open, responsive and free from political and industry pressure.
"Transparency should be increased and aspects of previous assessments should be dissected to examine how the assessing scientists weighed and balanced the evidence, and arrived at their judgments," Oppenheimer said.
"That way, we can learn about the process of learning and, hopefully, reduce misjudgment and misunderstanding."
Paul Dickinson, the coordinator of the Carbon Disclosure Project, a London-based group that assesses companies' readiness to handle climate change, was blunt about what he saw as a shortcoming of the IPCC, which is constrained by its charter from reaching judgments on how much warming is too much.
IHT
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