The chairman of the UN's panel of climate scientists, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has been under an unwelcome spotlight this week. First, he announced a review into the panel's claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Then he had toA good way to avoid giving succor to skeptics is to distinguish advice from advocacy, and to have in place transparent and credible guidelines for managing conflicts of interest. The IPCC does neither.defend himself from reports by the Sunday Telegraph that he's financially profiting from the influence of his UN role – a claim he trenchantly denies. Now, Pachauri has come out fighting, calling himself "unsinkable". . .
"They can't attack the science so they attack the chairman," Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told me. "But they won't sink me. I am the unsinkable Molly Brown. In fact, I will float much higher."
Pachauri chairs another panel, the judges of the 2010 Zayed Future Energy prize, an illustrious jury that includes former BP chairman Lord Browne, architect Norman Foster and the president of Iceland. Yesterday in Abu Dhabi, Pachauri took to the stage at the seven-star Emirates Palace hotel to hand out a large cash prize – to one of the companies he has been advising.
Last year the $1.5m award was given to Dipal Chandra Barua, an entrepreneur whose company, Grameen Shakti, trained women in rural Bangledesh to install solar energy systems. This year, Pachauri and his judges awarded the prize to car-making giant Toyota.
Arguably Toyota neither needs the money nor the recognition for its work on hybrid technologies. It's worth noting that until less than a year ago, Pachauri was also a member of Toyota's International Advisory Board. I asked Pachauri why Toyota had won, when giving the money to a smaller-scale venture could have had more impact. . .
. . . in the science community skilled, engaging communicators like Pachauri – the author of 23 books, including one of English verse – are all too rare. We're looking to them to convey the gravity of climate change and need for action. Not give succour to sceptics.
20 January 2010
The Guardian on Pachauri
The Guardian Environment Blog has this to say about Rajendra Pachauri's conflicts of interests:
13 comments:
Unsinkable...isn't that the description they gave the Titanic before its maiden voyage?
Not sure why the UN is allowing Patchygate to continue his charade?
"The gravity of climate change" has been revealed to be a dog infected with mange, and just won't hunt. The corruption of science for ideological reasons and pecuniary purposes has been exposed. People like me have been conditioned by the "gravity" proponents to distrust their shouts of alarm.
Prove it to me! Prove it to me that the political/societal solutions on the table will bend the climate curve and make our planet more habitable and prosperous.
Arm waving, photo shopping images, dramatically staged videos, and contrived emotion with the obligatory tear just won't cut it anymore.
I've reached my tipping point.
Reminds me that any bureacracy is really like a septic tank - the really big chunks float to the top
It's interesting - they've withdrawn the finding relating to the 2035 date (though they do not appear to have issued a revised version of the Himalayan case study used in WGII) on the basis that:
"In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly."
In this regard, I assume they mean that the WWF report -- which itself relied on a source which has proved erroneous -- should not have been used at all, because the WWF report was not peer reviewed.
Throughout WGII, they've relied on other WWF reports, which suffer from the same defect (i.e., that they are not peer reviewed). Should not the findings based on these materials also be made subject to further review? The glacier report is also used in chapter 8; other WWF reports are used in Chapters 11, 12 and 13 - sometimes as the only source of authority.
The WWF is avowedly an advocacy group. I have no problem with that, but does their non-peer reviewed work meet the IPCC's "well established standards of evidence"?
I also trawled through the reviewer comments on Ch. 10 to WGII's section (where the Himalayan error was made). There was no comment at all on the 2035 date from any of the reviewers (though, to be fair to them, it's hard to tell what exactly they were reviewing and whether the date was there when they conducted the review).
Such a bizarre statement by Pachauri...if he thinks he's Molly Brown, what does he think the real-world counterparts of the other elements in that metaphor are?
Now the Guardian has come back with some real "sheet" to cover the issue: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/climate-change-glaciers-melting
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Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, said there is strong evidence from a variety of sources of significant melting of glaciers - from the area around Kilimanjaro in Africa to the Alps, the Andes, and the icefields of Antarctica because of a warming climate. Ice is also disappearing at a faster rate in recent decades, he said.
"It is not any single glacier," he said. "It is very clear that these glaciers are behaving in a similar fashion."
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I was under the impression that Kilimanjaro ice was melting from an accumulation of soot. Silly me to dispute the consensus.
TYPO alert, 2nd to last line...
"transparent and cerdible..."
Roger, Yes transparency would be good. Unfortunately there are too many bureaucratic rice bowls to be protected in this case. It is clear the UN couldn't even manage a chook raffle, let alone a global emergency. Look at Copenhagen, look at Haiti for recent examples. Credible guidelines just aren't enough - there have to be sanctions where the guidelines are breached, or they mean nothing. Along with such guidelines for governance, they might include a revision policy, specifying the frequency and a communication plan to support revisions. Most government bureaucracies have these, but apparently the rule books are torn up where extra-government empires are concerned.
Molly Brown was a survivor of the sunken Titanic. Is the dreadful Pachauri inferring that the IPCC is sunk and that he rat-like will float to the surface?
As much as I despise the use of the -gate suffix, Christopher Booker certainly does expand on the Pachauri/glacier topic with this article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7062667/Pachauri-the-real-story-behind-the-Glaciergate-scandal.html
Things start to become clear. Booker and Richard North's story is that the apocalyptic glacier-melting claim was made to scare up support in Asia and money from the West. I've got to say, that makes good sense to me.
The loss of the ice cap on Kilimanjaro is caused by sublimation, which turns ice directly into water vapor at below-freezing temperatures. The high altitude of the Kilimanjaro ice cap keeps it always below freezing, so there is no melting associated with warming. Changes in land use on its lower surface has reduced the moisture content of the air carried up slope, thereby lessening the snow fall on its peak. The loss of ice cap was extensive prior to 1900.
@Major Combs-
Your point is easily seen in a frost free freezer where ice cubes are left too long in the tray without using. They shrink away.
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