R.K. PACHAURI
How this man is destroying the credibility of science
A TSI exclusive by Sutanu Guru
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate."
Paul Ehrlich, world renowned scientist (alarmist), in his book, Population Bomb, in 1968.
This 'great scientist, economist and futurologist''- who actually had a degree in ecology - has won numerous awards despite the brazenly false claims that he has made. Oh yes, Ehrlich predicted in the late 1960s that hundreds of millions of Indians will die of starvation by 1980.
An economist called Julian Simon was so outraged by Ehrlich's alarmist predictions that he provoked the 'great scientist' to make a bet in 1980. Simon gambled that the real prices of five commodities (primarily metals) would fall by 1990 - commodities which Ehrlich was saying will probably disappear from the Earth by then. By 1990, Ehrlich had lost the bet. And after that came the series of honours and awards for Ehrlich; and none for Simon. Most 'establishment' figures dismissed Simon as a nut case. Can you explain this travesty of truth, science, fair play and alleged dedication to 'facts'?
"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."
R.K Pachauri, as the leader of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the official report released on global warming.
This great 'scientist' - who is actually a mechanical engineer - accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of IPCC despite persistent allegations by real scientists that the IPCC under Pachauri was 'manufacturing facts' to fan climate change fundamentalism.
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (see column in this issue) has been repeatedly raising objections to the manner in which Pachauri and his team have been playing around with facts to bolster their climate change and global warming case. Most of the establishment has dismissed the Viscount as a nut case while Pachauri and his team won the Nobel Prize! Can you please explain this travesty?
I can't, and I bet you can't too, if you pause for a while and think about this whole brouhaha. I mean, here is a man who led a team of alleged scientists mandated by the United Nations to find 'facts' on global warming. Instead of facts, the man selectively picks 'speculation' and gobbledygook as science and tries his best to frighten the world. And you and I swallow it just as the 'faithful' swallow evangelist fire and brimstone that Apocalypse is Imminent and We Have to Pay for Our Sins.
There is no doubt any more that a lot of the IPCC report is a gigantic fraud - Nobel Prize or not. But that is not the problem. What you and I need to worry is how the 'Malthusian' alarmists succeed in convincing otherwise reasonable people like us into believing the worst about the future of humanity and the planet. Back in the late 18th century, Thomas Malthus - who happened to be a Reverend - predicted that the world will run out of food very soon. Almost 200 years later, Ehrlich became immortal by 'repackaging' the Malthusian scare in modern jargon. Back in the late 18th century, there was genuine concern that the forests of the world would disappear as the demand for firewood was growing exponentially. In the later half of the 20th century, you and I have been subjected to repeated warnings that fossil fuels will disappear and plunge the world into catastrophe. And now of course, you have this global warming warning that people like Pachauri claim will lead to melting of glaciers, more natural disasters like tsunamis, the death of the Amazon and what not.
Common sense should persuade you and me to dismiss these alarmist theories since they have such a disgraceful track record of patently wrong forecasts. Yet we listen to people like Pachauri. I think the reasons go back to our craving for religion. We are insecure human beings and we all fear the unknown. Back in ancient times, fire, storms, forests, lightning, water and what not became embodiment of Gods - to be blindly believed and worshipped. Today, we seem to be determined to elevate the likes of Pachauri to the same status.
Of course alarmists like Pachauri are brilliant marketing professionals above all else. They understand fear and uncertainty and know how to package them into Nostradamus-like prophecies that will both frighten the hell out of us and also tickle the voyeur in us. Unfortunately for people like Pachauri, people like you and me do have common sense and do manage to sniff out charlatans sooner or later. Half truths have virtually destroyed the credibility of genuine concerns about the dangers of pollution and carbon emissions. More than half truths, that is the bigger crime committed by Pachauri and gang of alarmists.
With due apologies "Dr" Pachauri, someone who claims to be a scientist told me recently that Neanderthals originated from a particular area in Uttarakhand in the Himalayan foothills of India. So can I call you a Neanderthal from Nainital please?
R.K. PACHAURI
How this man is destroying the credibility of science
A TSI exclusive
A climate for fudging
As IPCC'S alarmist chief digs a hole for himself and his tribe and puts up a weak defence for his blunders, it is time for the world to put him in his place and salvage the credibility of the cause, writes Vikas Kumar
Rajendra K. Pachauri's "Himalayan blunder" is showing no signs of melting away. If anything, it is snowballing into a major global fracas that threatens to put the credibility of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that he heads under a cloud.
The 69-year-old chairman of the UN-mandated IPCC finds himself in the eye of a blizzard of controversies not only over the panel's claim that Himalayan glaciers will be gone forever by the year 2035, but also due to his alleged conflicts of interest that stem from his direct and indirect association with many firms and institutions that have a stake in the burgeoning carbon credit market.
Since the glacier controversy erupted and the director-general of TERI admitted to "one mistake in a 1000-page report", many more glaring errors of fact and deduction have tumbled out of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (4th AR), which had, in 2007, fetched Pachauri and his team of researchers a joint Nobel Prize alongside former US vice-president and one of the world's best-known climate change warriors, Al Gore.
The roots of the current controversy can be traced back to last November, when Pachauri aggressively debunked a study by Dr V.K. Raina, one of India's leading glaciologists. In a discussion paper, Dr Raina had questioned the IPCC's alarmist conclusion on the rate of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers due to climate change.
The study authored by Dr Raina, 'Himalayan Glaciers: A State-of-the-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change', took the position that "it might be premature to make a statement that the glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating abnormally because of climate change." Dr Raina, a retired deputy director-general of the Geological Survey of India, asserted that there was no "scientific evidence" to link the retreating Himalayan glaciers to the phenomenon of climate change. Pachauri dismissed the report as "voodoo science".
In his broadside against Dr Raina's study, the IPCC chief said the glaciologist was out to "trivialise" science. Not only did Pachauri raise questions about the academic worth of the study, he also accused the Union minister of state for environment, Jairam Ramesh, who had supported Dr Raina's conclusions, of being arrogant. "It can't be on the basis of what two persons, the minister and one more person, think. It is going against the findings of the IPCC. It creates a sense of complacency that climate change is not for real," Pachauri had scoffed.
The tables have turned dramatically since then and Pachauri stands exposed. Critics point out that he is only an economist and industrial engineer. They allege that he is not a climate scientist as he would have the world believe. They wonder why he was in the first place made the IPCC chairman in 2002 and entrusted with the job of creating consensus on one of the most critical issues facing the planet, global warming.
One of the most scathing attacks on Pachauri has come from Lord Christopher Monckton, policy adviser to the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Even if global warming has assumed unprecedented proportions, he says in his column published in TSI, "the hawkers and peddlers of the extremist notion that "global warming" is or may become a global crisis mention melting ice-caps, roaring hurricanes, rising sea levels, searing droughts and other extreme weather events as though such things had never occurred before and must, therefore, be blamed on humankind."
The doomsday prediction dates back to 1999, when a JNU-based glaciologist, Syed Husnain, published a report on the melting of Himalayan glaciers. A New Scientist magazine author Murarilal interviewed him and wrote that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. This claim was later incorporated in IPCC's report.
Dr Husnain denies that the date emanated from his report. He explains, "I hadn't mentioned a fixed date like 2035… It was entirely Murarilal's assumption. I had just said if the present rate of the melting of glaciers continues, they might melt completely in the next 39-40 years."
Asked why, during his stint as Senior Fellow in TERI, he did not bring this fact to the attention of Dr Pachauri, he says, "Pachauri was a very busy man and we had very few personal interactions."
This is not the first time that IPCC has fudged figures. Anil Kumar Singh, eminent energy scientist, says, "IPCC exaggerated the figures of biomass pollution. It is certainly a concern, but the rate of increase in pollution estimated by IPCC was not true."
The over-reaching IPCC researchers have done great disservice to the cause of environmental conservation. Owing to the multiple goof-ups in the IPCC's 4th AR, climate change sceptics have found a handy stick to beat the climate change warriors with. Many can now be persuaded to believe that the situation isn't really as bad as it is being made out to be.
The second argument is that climate models based on software devices are simply too unreliable, as are temperature records. Leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia appeared to show manipulation of temperature data by the IPCC, raising serious questions about the validity of the UN panel's claims.
A cornered Pachauri has been brushing aside all allegations but without much conviction. "I have made my stand very clear. TERI is a not-for-profit organisation working for the welfare of society and its revenues cover costs and provide no private benefit to any party," he told doubts persist.
What is most shocking is the astonishing network of interests that Dr Pachauri has built around the world (see info-graphic). He is on the boards of various companies, NGOs, institutions and banks. As a chairman of IPCC, this certainly creates conflicts of interest. He had been member of the Board of Directors of IOC, ONGC and power company NTPC, which are India's largest public sector companies. They contribute to the increasing carbon footprint of the country. Pachauri-led TERI also floated OTBL (an ONGC-TERI joint venture company). Pachauri said, "I have made my position very clear already. The decision was taken at the behest of ONGC itself. I wasn't even present in the board meeting in which this decision was taken."
Pachauri has interests in several companies and organisations that either benefit from the global scramble to counter climate change or are actively involved in businesses that have giant carbon footprints. He established an oil company in the US, GloriOil, which is in the business of exploiting fossil fuels for profit.
Moreover, Pachauri never divulges anything about the Tata group's role in TERI. In fact, TERI says through a press release that Tata group has no relationship with it. This disregards the fact that TERI was known as Tata Energy Research Institute till sometime back. And of course, TERI was founded by Tata chemicals – this is a fact TERI now accepts.
Former minister for petroleum and natural gas Santosh Gangwar had complained in writing about TERI getting into a joint venture with ONGC even when Pachauri was on the board of the public sector company.
TERI was the preferred bidder for Kuwaiti contracts to clean up the mess left behind by Saddam Hussein in the country's oilfields. The $3 billion contracts were awarded by the UN. Pachauri has also been appointed the head of Yale University's Climate and Energy Institute, which receives millions of dollars in US state and corporate funding. Interestingly, none of these organisations publish data related to remunerations paid to Pachauri.
In November 2008, TERI got a huge grant from the Carnegie Corporation to study the impact of the melting of Himalayan glaciers on the lives of people. Dr Raina, who has dismissed Pachauri's alarmist prediction, demands an apology from the latter for misleading people around the world. "Now he says that we have studied only 30-40 glaciers. But at least we have gone there unlike Pachauri and his scientists. He should at least say sorry to people around the world," says the veteran glaciologist.
The rapidly growing worldwide carbon credit market is today estimated to be to the tune of $126 billion. Large firms and institutions where Pachauri holds advisory positions are likely to benefit from the global panic that is bound to be caused by inflated climate change projections.
It now seems that Pachauri's IPCC manipulated data and information at will to hyper-ventilate the world's climate change worries. The latest expose by London's Daily Telegraph refers to the panel's claim that 40 percent of the Amazon rain forests would disappear for good due to the ill-effects of global warming.
The newspaper alleges that this finding did not come from IPCC's own research but was a "cut and paste" job – it was lifted from a report prepared by an advocacy group for World Wildlife Fund. Amazingly, the report was authored not by an Amazon expert nor by a climate specialist, but by a policy analyst and a freelance journalist.
From "Glaciergate" to "Amazongate", Pachauri is stirring up quite a storm. The Himalayan glaciers or the Amazon rain forests may or may not be in danger of disappearing altogether, but India's self-styled climate change expert is in dire need of a vanishing act before he digs a bigger hole for himself.
JUST ONE MISTAKE
IPCC Chairman R. K. Pachauri's credibility is under attack for glaring mistakes in the fourth assessment report of IPCC and for charges of financial irregularities in TERI. Vikas Kumar caught up with the man in the muddle.
Don't you feel that the recent revelations have severely eroded your credibility and you should resign from the post?
First of all, I would like to make it aptly clear that I have no intention of resigning from my post. I was selected by the United Nations and I have a task of carrying out the fifth assessment report of IPCC. I have to complete it and we are trying to come up with a more robust report this time. Unfortunately, there were some mistakes in the fourth assessment report on Himalayan glaciers but that, in no way, can demean or discredit the value of the report. As far as credibility of the report is concerned, I am sure that 'rational people' all over the world will not be distracted by this one error as they see the larger picture.
Global Warming is a phenomenon not only confined to Himalayan glaciers. It affects the entire world. I do not think this one mistake will make people look away from the actual reality.
What about the allegations of financial irregularities in TERI?
I am again and again saying these allegations are false and TERI has not benefited at all in any way.
This is a big mistake. How can you escape responsibility after making such a Himalayan blunder?
First of all, you have not worked your fundamentals right. TERI was not at all involved in IPCC assessment report.
But was not Syed Husnain a senior fellow at TERI?
You should check your facts. At the time his report on Himalayan glaciers came out, he was working with Jawaharlal Nehru University and not with the The Energy Research Institute. He was working with us for the last two years only. Whatever statement he made about the glaciers was made much earlier than his association with TERI.
There are other mistakes too in the section….?
(Cuts in)…Yes, there is a whole paragraph and we have put it on the IPCC website. We are trying to adopt more robust practices while carrying out fifth assessment report. However, there is no question of taking action against any of the authors as they are not employees of the IPCC.
It is amply clear from the mistakes in the fourth assessment report that processes are not perfect. Now, the work for the preparation of fifth assessment report is going on. How will you ensure such mistakes are not repeated this time?
You cannot generalise on the basis of one mistake. Our procedures are very robust and all we need to do is to adhere to implement these procedures. We have clear-cut guidelines. That's how we include information from other publications. Unfortunately, this is a failure on the part of IPCC in the fourth assessment report and all we can do is to reassure people that such mistakes will not be repeated in future.
When the western media broke the story of email leak of the data, did you try to brush things under the carpet?
I am not at all trying to brush anything under the carpet. And as far these allegations are concerned, I have already made my position very clear.
How is it possible that in the last two years, neither you nor IPCC did even bother to test the veracity and credibility of the report presented by Husnain?
Because it did not come to our attention. To be honest, few weeks ago when it came to our notice, we accepted our mistake. At the same time, it is not possible for me to go through each and every word of the fourth assessment report which is 3,000 pages long.
It is very difficult to carry out research project on glaciers. So, what will be the next deadline for complete melting of some another glacier?
You are right. It is unfortunate that in our country there is a dearth of experts on glaciology and we need to enhance our capability in this regard. Understanding glacial dynamics is very important for people.
You talked about 'rational people'. But undoubtedly you have given an opportunity to climate sceptics to raise questions against global warming. What is your stand?
I do agree with you. But climate sceptics are looking at anything and everything by which they can demolish the facts of the climate change. Whenever new knowledge emerges, there is always a body of people which stands to fight it tooth and nail. Sceptics are very powerful and they have support all over the world. All I can say is that the world would ultimately realise the truth about climate change.
PACHAURI'S NETWORK
· From 1999 to 2003 Served as a member of the board of directors of Indian Oil, the country's largest commercial enterprise
· Till this year was as the director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, largest electricity producer, Director of Pegasus Capital Advisors, Japan president of Asian Energy Institute Was on the Board of GAIL, Member of Climate Change Advisory Board, Deutsche Bank
· TERI-NA- Associated with lobbying firm, mobilised the support of the Indian Diaspora for developmental investments/grants in India by providing them with a reliable channel for funneling/managing such finances towards identified activities.
· Continue to sensitise, through policy analysis and targeted outreach, the decision makers and global influencers in North America.
· Member of the Board of Siderian Ventures Member of Chicago Climate Exchange Inc.
· Member of Rockefeller Foundation
· Member of Credit Suisse Group
· Board member of Nordie Glitnir Bank
· Advisor to Toyota Motors
· Advisor to a France-based railway company
· Member of China Council
· Working as an advisor to Glori Oil which specialises in extracting fossil fuels for profit
REACTIONS TO IPCC'S RETRACTION ON THE 2035 STATUS OF THE HIMALAYAN GLACIERS
Dr R.K. Pachauri
Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The very fact that we're not trying to brush the error done by IPCC under the carpet and have instead come out and apologised, proves that we're clean. This issue might give a handle to the climate skeptics, but I'd say that they are just on the lookout for anything that can demolish the history of scientific concept. In the last few years we have created enormous amount of awareness on climate change, which is disturbing them. In Washington D.C alone, there are 1200 lobbyists being funded by about 770 companies to stop this awareness that is being generated. And this is the figure only for United States…
Dr MS Swaminathan
Eminent scientist and father of the Indian Green Revolution
The retraction is acceptance of the factual position. Skepticism will not help, particularly developing countries, since they will suffer most from increase in temperature; even by 2°C, drought, floods and sea level will rise.
The lesson from the recent retraction is that the scientific body, which was at one time led by world leaders in climate science like Bert Bolin, should again regain its scientific credibility.
Tim Flannery
Leading author, explorer and conservationist
Every scientific academy in the world – from Russia to China to America, India and Britain's Royal Society – all support the science of climate change. How is it possible that so many highly respected people with such a broad diversity of interests could be a part of a fraud? Climate scientists have better things to do (than to profit from carbon trading etc.)
It is entirely untrue that (global warming) is part of any 'natural' cycle. Indeed there is a great deal of misinformation circulating – much of it traceable to the fossil fuel industries, and lobbyists who seek to protect those interests.
Dr John Christy
Director of the Earth System Science centre and Alabama state climatologist
The average person will now view the recent IPCC report as something written by self-serving scientists and not a report about the true state of climate knowledge.
IPCC was never supposed to have "a cause", it was supposed to be an Honest Broker, revealing scientific information fairly and openly. The IPCC has become an advocacy organisation for "a cause" of promoting disastrous climate change. To do this, they needed to squelch dissent, magnify obscure statements of alarm so that no other message could be heard. Our ignorance about the climate system is enormous, and it is that fact that policy makers need to know.
Indira Parthasarathy & Spriha Srivastava
Source: The Sunday India, weekly magazine
with regards
Parveen Gulia
M.Tech (Infrastructure Planning)
Cont. No.- 09256015406
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