Rajendra Pachauri: Scientific knowledge of climate change is ‘something we distort and trivialise at our peril’. Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images

The head of the UN’s climate change panel has accused politicians and prominent climate sceptics of “a new form of persecution” against scientists who work on global warming.

In a strongly worded article published on the Guardian website, Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hit out at those in “positions of power and responsibility” who try to portray “dedicated scientists as climate criminals”.

Arctic sea ice as seen from Nasa satellites. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region’s swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals.

Ice blown out of the region by Arctic winds can explain around one-third of the steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979, the scientists say.

The financial crisis which originated in the global financial centres in New York and London is primarily a crisis of the Anglo-Saxon turbo capitalism that went out of control and widely exposed its ruthlessness in threatening the welfare of all. It led the world into a global economic downturn that is a serious handicap to setting out speedily into a new era of sustainable economic growth. This is even more regrettable as a quick and efficient change would be perfectly feasible from a technological point of view, as is demonstrated by the European renewable energy sector.

Canada‘s climate researchers are being muzzled, their funding slashed, research stations closed, findings ignored and advice on the critical issue of the century unsought by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, according to a 40-page report by a coalition of 60 non-governmental organisations.

“This government says they take climate change seriously but they do nothing and try to hide the truth about climate change,” said Graham Saul, representing Climate Action Network Canada (CAN), which produced the report “Troubling Evidence”.

“We want Canadians to understand what’s going on with this government,” Saul told IPS.

Climate change is not an abstract concept. It already results in the deaths of 300,000 people a year, virtually all in the world’s poorest countries. Some 325 million people are being seriously affected, with economic losses averaging 125 billion dollars a year, according to “The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis”, the first detailed look at climate change and the human impacts.