Questions Pachauri still has to answer…

Way more questions than answers…

You will recall that Christopher Booker in the UK Telegraph wrote about IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s financial interests in the global warming scare (see here). Pachauri responded almost immediately, but now Booker has written a follow up, which is well worth a read:

A first point to emerge from these responses is how much of what we wrote they do not contradict. Dr Pachauri does not deny that he holds all the positions referred to in our article, such as giving advice on climate change to bodies ranging from major banks such as Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank to the Chicago Climate Change, the worlds’s largest dealer in buying and selling the right to emit CO2.

He and Teri insist, however, that all the money he receives for his services, such as 100,000 euros from Deutsche Bank and $80,000 from Toyota Motors are paid not to him personally but to his institute (and that he receives no fee from the Chicago Climate Exchange). Teri denies that it does not publish its accounts simply by stating that its accounts are supplied to the relevant tax authorities.

Dr Pachauri repeatedly denied that Teri still has any links with the Tata Group, India’s largest privately-owned business empire, with interests ranging from coal and steel to renewable energy, and which set up Teri as the Tata Energy Research Institute in 1974. He now claims that Teri has had no “direct links” with Tata since 1999 (or, in another interview, 2001). But it was not until 2003 that the name changed to The Energy and Resources Institute, and then a Teri spokesman explained that “we have not severed our links with the Tatas” and that the change of name was “only for convenience”.

Indeed one of the Tata group of companies is still listed among Teri’s corporate sponsors, several directors of Tata serve on Teri’s Business Council for Sustainable Development, and one senior director serves on Teri’s Advisory Board. Other links include the fact that Dr Pachauri and Ratan Tata, the head of the group, both serve on the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, advising on all aspects of national climate policy.

In short, these initial responses to our article leave many questions unanswered. At the least it seems that Dr Pachauri’s position as the world’s “top climate official” has been earning a very substantial income for the institute of which he is director-general; and the only way to avoid further questioning must now be for both Dr Pachauri and Teri to come out into the open over all those issues that remain obscure.

Read it here.