"There are always ups and downs, and one just has to learn from them and live with them," the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said on the sidelines of global climate talks. "I think this is only a kind of temporary blip."

Pachauri agreed that climate change had nearly fallen off the political map after the near-bustup at last year's Copenhagen summit -- and, he admitted, by flaws within his own organization.

The IPCCC found itself under fire for several mistakes that belatedly surfaced in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the landmark document that fueled the drive to Copenhagen.

Vetted by outside experts, the report's conclusions -- in essence, that climate change is on the march and the unbridled burning of fossil fuels is to blame -- stand proudly unchanged.

But, less than three years after it co-won the Nobel Peace Prize, the IPCC was also humiliatingly told to overhaul its procedures and better communicate with the public.

Today, as the unambitious goals set in the Cancun talks can illustrate, political will to tackle the threat spelled out by the IPCC seems to have evaporated.

"There are number of factors which are responsible for that, and I think that we ourselves should have done a few things much better. But we've learnt from them," Pachauri insisted.

Scientists recruited for the 5th Assessment Report due in 2014 will be instructed to avoid the risk of "Climategate," in which hacked emails written by a British scientist were held up by skeptics as proof that data was being skewed.

An independent probe found no evidence of any wrongdoing. The emails had been poorly phrased by a scientist irked by relentless demands to see his data under freedom of information laws.

"We are going to have be very thorough in how we are going to carry out our work, because let's accept it, we are under intense public scrutiny," Pachauri said. "We have to make sure we don't in any way default on what we are expected to do as scientists."

Over the course of this year, many climate scientists -- used to working quietly with their peers, away from the public glare -- were shocked at the anger and clout of climate skeptics.

Pachauri indicated he had been bombarded with hatemail.

Last month, Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia professor embroiled in the Climategate scandal, said his family had received threats and that he had even contemplated suicide at the height of the storm.

If the IPCC has been tarnished in 2010, the neutrality and objectiveness of the panel's work will restore luster, Pachauri argued.

As for climate change, interest would also be revived by public awareness, especially among the youth, of the carbon threat.

"I am not terribly dismayed about the current state of affairs," Pachauri said.

"I believe the trend is clearly toward much greater understanding and awareness on climate change than was the case three or four years ago. I personally feel very optimistic about the youth all over the world, including the US, who feel very sensitive about some of these issues.

"There's a lot of disinformation, which is driving current attitudes, and these things don't last," he added.

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