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: 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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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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UN sweeps Climategate under the carpet

10 December, 2009 by

La la la - I can't hear you!

La la la - I can't hear you!

After initial reports that the UN would investigate the Climategate emails, it appears they have now backed down, and believe the only issue worth looking at is who was responsible for the leak/hack:

Speaking to an overflowing audience of scientists and media at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri said the main issue was to find out who was behind the theft. ”One can only surmise that those who carried this out have obviously done it with very clear intention to influence the process in Copenhagen,’‘ he said.

Dr Pachauri, flanked by the senior members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, defended the integrity of the scientific findings on climate change, backed the scientists under attack at East Anglia and warned the IPCC’s next report was likely to show grimmer news. [Oh please, tell me something I don’t know – Ed]

Last week he told the BBC the UN’s science body would ”look into” the matter of the stolen emails.

But he told reporters in Copenhagen he had meant the IPCC would examine the affair to see whether the organisation needed to learn any lessons from it.

He insisted the only formal investigations into the emails were being done by the university and the British police. (source)

The IPCC and Pachauri don’t even want to hear. Fingers in ears. Move along. Nothing to see here. But aren’t we just about to spend trillions of dollars based on their recommendations? Ludicrous.

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Copenhagen – Day 1

8 December, 2009 by

Day 1

Day 1

We’re up and running at Copenhagen, and already, Australia has taken centre stage – for the wrong reason (or the right reason, depending on how you view it):

THE head of the world’s top climate research body has compared Tony Abbott to former US president and climate sceptic George W. Bush and conceded the failure of Australia’s cap and trade carbon bill has given momentum to climate naysayers worldwide. [“Naysayers”? Oh, please – Ed]

In an exclusive interview with The Australian just hours before he was to deliver the keynote address on the opening day of the Copenhagen global climate summit, Rajendra Pachauri denied the defeat of the legislation would provide enough impetus to derail negotiators at Copenhagen from delivering an agreement.

…

“It seems to me the Australian public is fully committed to taking action because Australia is probably one country that has suffered from the impacts of climate change more than any other,” Dr Pachauri said from Denmark. [Nonsense, of course, but we all know Pachauri can say anything and never be challenged – Ed]

“(Climate sceptics) will get momentum from time to time but they are certainly a minority so I don’t see in a democracy how they would succeed. [Those by-election results weren’t too bad – Ed]

“I think as long as Kevin Rudd is the Prime Minister of the government in power and he wants to move in a particular direction the country will rally around the PM.” [Don’t you bet on it – Ed] (source)

And whatever happens at Copenhagen, it won’t be enough to satisfy the global socialists:

The head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, told The Australian the $US10 billion package expected to be discussed during the 12-day summit was a “positive move and would create some degree of satisfaction among developing countries”.

“But it’s not going far enough,” he added, saying “serious work” was still required to deliver adequate assistance to the most vulnerable developing nations.

The European Commission has estimated that wealthy nations will need to provide as much as $US50bn a year to help poor nations develop cleaner technologies and mitigate the worst effects of global warming. (source)

Believe me, that will only be the start. We’ve already had demands from Central America for way more than that – it will be a blank cheque. Terry McCrann has the antidote to all this:

COPENHAGEN is going to be two weeks of insane hysteria. Just like the Olympics, but with lots of snow, courtesy of Al Gore and his ‘Gore Effect.’

There’ll be another major difference. This will be like the Olympics with only one country represented. All 40,000-plus attendees will be batting for the same side, so to speak.

We are going to be deluged with wall-to-wall coverage of hysterical end-of-the-world claims unless we hand over billions of dollars a year, every year, and close down our economy.

This really is the ultimate gift that keeps on taking. Give us the money to fight climate change; and as the climate changes every year, the funding has to be permanent.

Gets hotter? Climate change. Gets colder? Climate change. Stays pretty much the same? Now, that’s the really insidious climate change!

Read it all!

UPDATE: Looks like things may already be turning pear-shaped, after just one day:

Climate talks in Copenhagen have opened with a declaration that the 12 days of negotiations represent an historic opportunity for the world, but deep divisions between delegates have already emerged.

The representative of the developing world says the amount of money set aside to help poor nations adapt to climate change is an insult, and Saudi Arabia’s chief negotiator has raised issues about the validity of the scientific research used to justify claims that global warming is man-made. (source)

It looks like a roller-coaster ride ahead.

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