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Pachauri must resign at once as head of official climate science
panel
Geoffrey Lean
London
Telegraph
Monday, January 25th, 2010
It is time for the embattled Rajendra Pachauri to resign as
Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC).
He is steadfastly refusing to go, but his position is becoming
more and more untenable by the day, and the official climate
science body will continue to leach credibility while he remains
in charge.
When on Friday I wrote for my Daily Telegraph column (published
yesterday) that he was “at best one more blunder away
from having to resign”, I did not expect other errors
to come to light quite so fast. But, as I blogged yesterday,
four more have now been reported from the part of the latest
IPCC report on Himalayan glaciers that contained the notorious
– and now withdrawn - claim that they would disappear
by 2035. And there are now reports that it erred in relying
on an unpublished report in linking natural disasters like flood
and hurricanes to global warming. All appear much less serious
than the original Himalayan howler, but they add to the impression
of sloppiness at the IPCC.
Pachauri’s reaction to the original revelation was widely
reported to be that he claimed to have “absolutely no
responsibility” for the mistake. But – leaving aside
the obvious fact that, as Chairman, he is ultimately responsible
for the content and standards of the report – he is himself
rapidly emerging as much more of an issue than even a few errors
in the 3000 word document. Much of his trouble, rightly, stems
from his outrageous reaction to an Indian paper late last year
which suggested that the glaciers were not vanishing quickly
– dismissing it as “voodoo science” and adding,
hubristically: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening
in the Himalayas.”
He has reacted equally robustly to calls for his resignation,
saying he has “no intention” of quitting and adding:
“I know a lot of climate sceptics are after my blood,
but I’m in no mood to oblige them”. But it is not
just the sceptics who are unhappy, and he has long been a controversial
figure. Environmentalists were outraged when he became chairman
of the IPCC in 2002, ousting the enormously respected Dr Robert
Watson (now Defra’s chief scientist), after lobbying by
the George W.Bush administration: Exxon had sent the White House
a memo asking for Watson to be “replaced at the request
of the US” as being “too aggressive” on climate
change. Al Gore called him the “let’s drag out feet
candidate”.
Full
article here
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