Glacier claims won grants for TERI

25 January, 2010 by

TERI

The Sunday Times reports, via The Australian, that the dodgy glacier claims were used in an application by Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) to win funding worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It just keeps getting worse:

Rajendra Pachauri’s Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to $US500,000 ($555,000) by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion’s share of a $US4 million EU grant funded by European taxpayers.

The revelation comes just a week after London newspaper The Sunday Times highlighted serious scientific flaws in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on the likely impacts of global warming.

The IPCC had warned that climate change was likely to melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 — an idea considered ludicrous by most glaciologists. Last week, a humbled IPCC retracted that claim and corrected its report.

However, the same bogus claim has been cited in grant applications for TERI. One of them, announced earlier this month, resulted in the $US500,000 grant from Carnegie. An extract from the grant application published on Carnegie’s website said: “The Himalaya glaciers, vital to more than a dozen major rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, are melting and receding at a dangerous rate.

“One authoritative study reported that most of the glaciers in the region ‘will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming, resulting in widespread water shortages’.”

The Carnegie money was specifically given to aid research into “the potential security and humanitarian impact on the region” as the glaciers began to disappear. Dr Pachauri has since acknowledged that this threat, if it exists, will take centuries to have any serious effect.

The money was initially given to the Global Centre, an Icelandic foundation that then channelled it to TERI.

The cash was acknowledged by TERI in a news release, issued on January 15, just before the glacier scandal became public, in which Dr Pachauri repeated the claims of imminent glacial melt. It said: “According to predictions of scientific merit they may indeed melt away in several decades.”

The same release also quoted Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist who, in 1999, made the now discredited claim that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.

Professor Hasnain now heads Dr Pachauri’s glaciology unit at TERI, which sought the grants and which is carrying out the glacial research.

What a tangled web. Who would possibly have thought, just a few months ago, that the credibility of the IPCC and Pachauri himself could have disintegrated so thoroughly in such a short time.

Read it here.

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IPCC "wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters"

24 January, 2010 by

Times Online

What shall we call this one? Hurricanegate? Not content with basing claims in an IPCC report on factoids about glaciers found on the back of matchboxes, it now appears that the IPCC has also wrongly linked global warming to increasing frequency and severity of disasters such as hurricanes and floods. The only thing that is increasing are the floods of misinformation and spin being discovered in supposedly “settled science”:

It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report’s own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.

The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate. It was central to discussions at last month’s Copenhagen climate summit, including a demand by developing countries for compensation of $100 billion (£62 billion) from the rich nations blamed for creating the most emissions.

…

The new controversy also goes back to the IPCC’s 2007 report in which a separate section warned that the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s”.

It suggested a part of this increase was due to global warming and cited the unpublished report, saying: “One study has found that while the dominant signal remains that of the significant increases in the values of exposure at risk, once losses are normalised for exposure, there still remains an underlying rising trend.”

The Sunday Times has since found that the scientific paper on which the IPCC based its claim had not been peer reviewed, nor published, at the time the climate body issued its report.

When the paper was eventually published, in 2008, it had a new caveat. It said: “We find insufficient evidence to claim a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses.”

Despite this change the IPCC did not issue a clarification ahead of the Copenhagen climate summit last month. It has also emerged that at least two scientific reviewers who checked drafts of the IPCC report urged greater caution in proposing a link between climate change and disaster impacts — but were ignored.

Typical. Just like buses, you wait ages for an IPCC scandal, and then two come along at once. In fact, I will wager that there is a whole fleet about to exit the bus station, as thousands of independent scientists and bloggers tear AR4 apart.

Read it here.

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IPCC: Glacier data included "to pressure policymakers"

24 January, 2010 by

As Anthony Watts puts it, the IPCC is damaged goods and Pachauri is toast. From the UK Daily Mail:

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Read it here.

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UN admits glacier data dodgy

21 January, 2010 by

Still there?

But then claims the rest of the report is robust – of course it is. How could we possibly doubt it, after Climategate and Glaciergate and Hockeystick-gate? The next “gates” in this saga will be floodgates, as independent scientists poring over the IPCC’s claims will find many similar instances of shoddy science used to advance a pre-conceived agenda. From the ABC:

The UN’s climate science panel has acknowledged that a grim prediction on the fate of Himalayan glaciers in a benchmark report on global warming had been “poorly substantiated” and was a lapse in standards.

Charges that the reference was highly inaccurate or overblown have stoked pressure on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already assailed in a separate affair involving hacked email exchanges.

The new row focuses on a paragraph in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, a 938-page opus whose warning in 2007 that climate change was on the march spurred politicians around the world to vow action.

The paragraph notably declared that the probability of glaciers in the Himalayas “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

The IPCC said in a statement that the paragraph “refers to poorly substantiated rates of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.”

“In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” the panel admitted.

“The Chair, Vice Chair and Co Chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.

“This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of ‘the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source in an IPCC report’.”

And the most shocking aspect to all this is that it appears the IPCC were warned of the dodgy data before it was even published, but they ploughed on regardless. What does that say about the mindset of those writing the reports?

Read it here.

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Wong the apologist defends IPCC

18 January, 2010 by

Will still be there for a very long time

An update on this story. Despite the fact that the IPCC has been caught out again, Penny Wong’s knee-jerk reaction is to defend them, because she knows, as well as anyone, that if the IPCC is peddling a crock of s#!t, then the government’s climate policy (on which it is 100% based) is not worth the paper it’s written on. So Penny’s doing her best (which isn’t saying much, let’s face it) to shore it up:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says a mistake made by a United Nations body on the predicted rate of glacial melting does not mean all its findings are wrong.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed in a report that the glaciers in the Himalayas could vanish in 30 years.

However that claim was based on a conversation between a journalist and a single Indian scientist a decade ago, according to British newspaper the Sunday Times.

The Federal Opposition says this shows the organisation’s scientific findings lack credibility.

Opposition energy spokesman Nick Minchin says the mistake made by the IPCC calls into question the Government’s proposed emissions trading scheme.

“For Australia to act ahead of the rest of the world based on [Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd’s reliance on this UN committee, which we now find is presenting reports based on mere speculation, [would be a mistake],” he said.

But Ms Wong says the main claims of climate change science remain unchallenged.

“This is a report that has been peer reviewed extensively [Ah yes, peer-review, the be all and end all of climate science, so corrupt itself that few papers challenging the consensus ever get published, because the alarmists threaten and intimidate publications which consider doing so. See Climategate – Ed]; very few errors have been found in it and none that challenge the central findings,” she said.

“Climate change is real and human beings are contributing to it, and people like Senator Minchin, who have never believed in climate change, will jump on anything in order to justify their position.”

Yawn, yawn, yawn. Sorry Penny, but we’re all bored senseless by your repetitive, robotic pronouncements.

Read it here.

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IPCC glacier claim was "speculation", not based on formal research

18 January, 2010 by

More dodgy science

The house of cards continues to topple as yet more “settled science” is revealed as being nothing of the sort:

THE peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports – that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming – was based on a “speculative” claim by an obscure Indian scientist.

The 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming, appears to have simply adopted the untested opinions of the Indian glaciologist from a magazine article published in 1999.

The IPCC report claimed that the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish inside 30 years.

But the scientists behind the warning have now admitted it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Mr Hasnain, who was then the chairman of the International Commission on Snow and Ice’s working group on Himalayan glaciology, has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research.

The revelation represents another embarrassing blow to the credibility of the IPCC, less than two months after the emergence of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which raised questions about the legitimacy of data published by the IPCC about global warming.

Read it here.

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UK: Taxpayers' millions "paid to Pachauri's institute"

17 January, 2010 by

Pachauri - conflicts?

More on IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri’s conflicts of interest, as reported previously in The Telegraph (see here and here). Despite Pachauri’s protestations of innocence, this story just won’t go away, and the Telegraph is starting to get its teeth into it:

Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being paid to an organisation in India run by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the controversial chairman of the UN climate change panel, despite growing concern over its accounts.

A research institute headed by Dr Pachauri will receive up to £10 million funding over the next five years from the Department for International Development (DfID).

The grant comes amid question marks over the finances of The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) London operation. Last week its UK head called in independent accountants after admitting ‘anomalies’ – described as ‘unintentional’ – in its accounts that have prompted demands for the Charity Commission to investigate.

The decision to resubmit accounts follows a Sunday Telegraph investigation into the finances of TERI Europe, which has benefited from funding from other branches of the British Government including the Foreign Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Dr Pachauri, TERI’s director-general, has built up a worldwide network of business interests since his appointment as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2002. The post, argue critics, has given him huge prestige and influence as the world’s most powerful climate official.

The decision by DfID to fund Dr Pachauri’s institute, based in Delhi, will add to growing concern over allegations of conflict of interest with critics accusing Dr Pachauri and TERI of gaining financially from policies which are formulated as a result of the work he carries out as IPCC chairman – a suggestion he strongly denies.

But Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor who now chairs the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank which challenges the prevailing scientific view on climate change, said: “It is now a wholly legitimate concern to ask questions about possible conflicts of interests. The IPCC is a very influential body and he is obviously very involved in its leadership.”

The plot thickens.

Read it here.

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Questions Pachauri still has to answer…

27 December, 2009 by

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.

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UK Telegraph: Pachauri mired in conflict

21 December, 2009 by

Money from climate scare?

The UK Telegraph  runs an eye-opening piece about IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s business dealings, which conflict hugely with his UN role:

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations. (source)

Pachauri has already responded, but typically in the ad hominem style we have come to expect:

“Nothing much of substance has been found in the hacking controversy. So this is another attempt by the climate sceptics to discredit the IPCC. They now want to go after me and hope that it would serve their purpose,” Pachauri told The Indian Express on Sunday evening.

“Frankly, I would not even like to respond to them. Every single payment that I receive goes to my organization (TERI) which is non-profit organization. The extra money that my organization generates goes into the ‘Lighting a Billion Lights’ campaign that TERI has launched. These allegations are nothing but lies,” he said. (source – h/t Tom Nelson)

“Nothing of substance”? So I guess destroying data, refusing FOI requests, manipulating temperature records are all OK with the IPCC, are they? Sure.

We’ll see – there will be more to this story, that’s for certain.

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Copenhagen: Open letter to R Pachauri from Viscount Monckton and Steve Fielding

17 December, 2009 by

Lots of porkies

Economical with it

Rajendra Pachauri, the Nobel prize-winning climate expert, er, economist, er, railway engineer who heads up the politically motivated and corrupt IPCC, was spouting his usual brand of “truth” at Copenhagen, but Christopher Monckton and our own Steve Fielding weren’t going to let him get away with it, and take his spin to pieces in this 14 page open letter, and they don’t pull any punches!

We should be grateful for your response within 48 hours, failing which we shall be entitled to presume that you, the IPCC and the EPA – to whose administrator we are copying this letter – intend to conspire, and are conspiring, to obtain a pecuniary advantage by deceiving the public as to the nature, degree, and significance of the global surface temperature trend. In that event, conspiracy to defraud taxpayers would be evident, and we should be compelled to place this letter in the hands of the relevant investigating and prosecuting authorities.

In any event, errors and exaggerations such as that which is evidenced in the IPCC’s defective graph do not inspire confidence in the reliability of the IPCC’s scientific case. Given this and other mistakes that an international body of this nature ought not to have made, and given your numerous and direct conflicts of interest that have, in our opinion, been insufficiently disclosed, we are also copying this letter to the delegations of the states parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with a request that you be stripped of office forthwith.

Download it here (PDF – 1 MB)

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