UN climate chief Yvo de Boer says that recent scandals over climate data had not discredited the scientific evidence that global warming existed and must be countered.
"What's happened, it's unfortunate, it's bad, it's wrong, but I don't think it has damaged the basic science," the head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told The Associated Press.
Global warming sceptics have expressed anger after a UN report warning that Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 turned out to be off by hundreds of years because of a typo - the actual year was 2350 - and over stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's climate science unit.
But de Boer, speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said that didn't change the fact that it was going to happen.
"Concluding that the Himalayan glaciers are going to disappear later is like being happy about the fact that the Titanic is sinking more slowly than we had originally feared, even though it's still going to sink," he said.
De Boer expressed confidence that the business leaders at Davos, who were starting to enjoy an economic recovery after a rough couple of years, would invest anew in renewable energy.
The UN Climate chief admitted he was "depressed" after the climate talks in Copenhagen failed to produce a binding accord and said there should be more meetings to get all countries on board for an accord before the next talks in Mexico.
But he also said he had the sense that people did not feel climate change was off the agenda and that energy sector investments that were put on hold because of the crisis were being made again.
On Sunday, the environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China met in the Indian capital New Delhi to discuss how they would fight global warming.
The four nations, which brokered a political accord with President Barack Obama at last month's climate summit in Copenhagen, will play a key role in shaping a legally binding climate deal that the UN hopes will be completed by the end of 2010 in Mexico.
APTN