Saturday
Jan232010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Pachauri says he's staying
Jan 23, 2010 Climate: IPCC Climate: Pachauri Climate: WG2 IBN LIVE: Rajendra Pachauri, president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on Saturday said he would not quit over the IPCC blunder of saying that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.
Reader Comments (55)
Pathetic to even suggest that he should resign over one paragraph in one page in a 3000 page report, and a para that does not even change the conclusions. Anyone suggesting he should is an intellectual slob with a cherry-picker parked outside his or her front door.
The issue in question Wadard, is that the admission of error in the glacier rate of decay shows that the evidence presented in the IPCC report is not solid 'peer reviewed science' as has been claimed time and time again. If you read the Times report yesterday, you'll see that it's not just that paragraph affected either. The more the IPCC report is examined, the less substantial it becomes. Pachauri took all the credits when things were accepted as 'real science', and now that it's becoming hearsay he must take the fall.
The issue is also that scientists have sought funds from their respective paymasters to the tune of millions of dollars - all tax payer generated - for further research into glaciers based on this contention. To say the least.
The actual impact is that this contention has been thrown at the faces of those who question alarmist warming as a fact. By WWF, Oxfam, TERI, Pachauri himself. The glacier melting is one of the many 'robust' lines of evidence that comes to the rescue of the mangled HadCRUT, GHCN, NCDC temperature data - "But temperature is just one line of evidence. We have multiple lines of evidence. See - the glaciers are melting".
This report prompted the Indian Government to study the glaciers independently which arrived at different conclusions. And was called arrogant, and peddling in voodoo science by Pachauri. Who was, no doubt, speaking thus in his official capacity as IPCC chief.
No one is asking for Pachauri's head for 'just one mistake'. It is the ramifications of that one 'mistake' that Pachauri should stand responsible for. A mistake that has been so beneficial to TERI, for example.
Of course an organization that is a con would keep a con-artist as its head.
This guy is ethically conflicted, not a climate scientist, and is a transparent fraud.
I hope he stays and keeps on doing exactly what he has been doing: Showing by example that AGW to be a pile of steaming garbage.
Wadard - slightly behind the curve, I think.
Pachauri has had a sustained level of criticism for quite some time now, both in respect of his chairmanship of the IPCC, his links to companies making money from climate change and his lifestyle.
If he were an MP how long do you think he would last?
The IPCC is simply not going to have any credibility as long as Pachauri stays at the helm.
The best course for the IPCC, I would have thought, would be to let Pachauri survive for the moment until the immediate fuss blows over, then to have him resign quietly during the coming year.
When Mr. de Boer says he backs Paucuri 1000%, you'll know he's done. ( Middle aged Americans will know what I mean.)
Rajendra Pachauri will simply join Al Gore in the belly of the beast -- or is it a polar bear? He has become too much of an embarrassment and those who pull his strings will cut them.
As for IPCC, look for a new agency to form to replace it, quietly of course.
I have no idea who Mr. de Boer is, Sean, or why as an Middle Aged American I should know him. Of course, being an senior Irish American may mean that I am too old. Could you explain? I would like to know.
Why should he resign? After all he was only 300 years off in predicting the melting of the Himilayan Glaciers. Anyone could make that mistake. He should be promoted.
Leave him at his post.
It'll just be that much easier making the IPCC look incompetent and corrupt.
Whether he stays or not, it would be nice (not to say professional and grown-up) if he, as a minimum, made a personal apology to those scientists involved for his comments about "voodoo science" and "arrogance".
What's the deal with Hasnain not stepping up? "It's not my job to point out errors"??? Multiple glaciologists saying they told the IPCC of the error and were ignored. And the guy in charge of the glaciology section isn't a glaciologist???
It almost seems like they were trying to make it appear that the effects of global warming are worse than they really are.
Also they keep saying that despite the error the Himalayan glaciers are rapidly receding but didn't the paper R K Pachauri called "school boy science" claim that some were receding, some were staying the same, and some were growing?
Pachauri seems pretty tone deaf. I think the whole bluster-through-it thing might have worked at some time in the past but he has become an embarrassment to the cause. I suspect he'll be sacked in the fairly near future.
Yves de Boer is the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). I don't really know what the organizational chart looks like for the UN but I think the IPCC comes under him (Pachauri's boss?). The 1000% reference is to George McGovern's first running mate, Senator Tom Eagleton. Sen Eagleton had a nervous breakdown a few years prior to being selected as the VP candidate. When the news came out AFTER he was chosen, McGovern pledged his support for his running mate by saying he was behind him 1000%. He was gone in a week and McGovern went on to lose in a landslide.
Nor should he step down. The earth has a temperature and Dr. Pachauri is one of the people trying hard to cool her off. The deniers are having a grand old time at the moment because of a couple of minor mistakes in the very large community of scientists who know that the planet is in jeopardy because of human activity.
As Jake Sulley said in Avatar... " See the world we come from: there's no green there. They've killed their mother, and they're going to do the same thing here."
Be more like the Na'vi friends!
Rule # 1 Mr. Pachauri. When you are in a hole.... stop digging. This Pachauri quote from the IBN Live link in the Bishops post:
"There is absolutely no information available on the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are melting. It is unfortunate that there is no research on glacier melting in India or the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Corporation) nations. We should make a plan for proper evaluation and calculation of melting of glaciers," he added.
For those who haven't read it yet, see address below. This would be the specific "no information available" and "no research on glacier melting in India" (or should we call it voodoo science) to which Mr. Pachauri is referring
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/MoEF%20Discussion%20Paper%20_him.pdf
Mr. Pachauri is the chief spokesperson for his group. Conflicts of interest and abuse of public funds might come with the territory over at the UN, but surely outright incompetence is grounds for dismissal.
Of course Pachuri's staying: he's gotten his hands so dirty that when the house of cards comes tumbling down nowhere else will have him.
Who cares whether we think Pachauri should go or stay? The Indian government? Ah, that’s a different beast. For those who might have missed the news, it is a big place, has been fully independent for several generations and is a major economic power.
In the run up to the Copenhagen shindig, Pachauri managed, if the Indian press is to be believed, to create widespread alarm that 700 million or so in S E Asia were at risk of chronic water shortage within a generation. Only a fool would ignore that.
Challenged, he insulted a senior government minister and belittled a competent advisor. Given that the government was apparently still undecided as to what line to take at the conference, the fact that Pachauri’s alarm-and-charm offensive relied on junk science probably helped them to firm up their stance.
After all, if the IPCC got it so triumphantly wrong on Himalayan glaciers (in spite of being told), the other 99,999 pages of AR4 are inevitably up for scrutiny. It may only be, as suggested above, a detail but, in the scheme of things, one of the world’s biggest mountain ranges and the future of about a billion folk is a fair old detail.
If the UN doesn’t sack him first, I’d bet the farm that the Indians won’t even talk about re-opening talks until Pachauri goes. And who can blame them?
As the saying goes, he’s a dead man walking. The longer they wait, the worse will be the inevitable intra-bureaucratic cull as he and his supporters get purged and a new layer of eco-crats comes forward to enjoy the sun. Poor chap - how will he pay the rent?
"...one paragraph in one page in a 3000 page report... '
Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
In my life I've been lied to about DDT, nuclear energy, ALAR on apples, mercury in vaccines, etc etc etc.
I'm tired of it.
Wadard - this is hardly just one error. So far over the last several months we've had, amongst other stuff and in no particular order:
1) Yamalgate bringing much of what was left of the paeleo record (i.e. after the Sheep Mountain / Ababneh debacle - Ababnehgate?) into disrepute;
2) Climategate (enough said);
3) Seemingly spurious adjustments to historic temperature records (thermogate?);
4) Glaciergate;
5) and now Patchygate
This almost feels like a Private Eye style list of gates and is probably enough to be going on with.
I'm not suggesting that he's responsible for all, or indeed any, of the things that have come to light recently but surely you would accept that he has to be reponsible for the overall historic reporting of this (including AR4) and what needs to be done next?
Anyway, if he was genuinely unaware of the apparently flimsy nature of the foundations the AGW pyramid appears to be built on and therefore feels as truly let down and misled as the rest of us then he should be leading the fight to get something done about it, starting with sorting out the key individuals responsible for the unprecented decline in confidence of the robustness of the IPCC and it's predictions.
If he chooses to continue to try and pretend that it's just one small, irrelevant detail then he risks causing further damage to the IPCC.
I do not believe, for one minute though, that Pachauri should come tumbling down when Al Gore walks. What justice is there in bringing one doomsayer down when letting THE doomsayer non pareil go scot-free?
Pachauri is a former member of the board at ONGC (Oil) and NTPC (coal). He brings his 'business acumen' to the alarmist green industry. He enriches his own network of patronage. What else would you expect?
He does what he is good at - I think if you find yourself in a position where you blame a man for what he is good at, there is something wrong with you.
Let's start with the the scientific community of climatologists, shall we? The peddlers of alarmist doom who looked the other way and whistled in the wind for two years since this claim was published, who now secretly hope to clear their own reputations jettisoning this former railway engineer for the sins of the IPCC.
More twists in the tale..... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7062667/Pachauri-the-real-story-behind-the-Glaciergate-scandal.html
'What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based company of which Dr Pachauri is director-general. Furthermore, the claim – now disowned by Dr Pachauri as chairman of the IPCC – has helped TERI to win a substantial share of a $500,000 grant from one of America's leading charities, along with a share in a three million euro research study funded by the EU. '
Charles Clover in the Times is saying Pachauri should "walk now"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6999815.ece
Your Grace, have a look at Booker's latest in the Telegraph. Murkier and murkier!
Pathetic to even suggest that he should resign over one paragraph in one page in a 3000 page report....
Possibly so, and thus a rather artful move on both Pachauri's part, and yours, to try to limit the issues to only that.
The rest of us, who have been following this for a while, know that in fact the issue isn't just this issue, but the multiple violations of the IPCC's scientific process that would get a failing grade in a Freshman Comp class, and Pachauri's multiple conflicts of interest that add up to a clear financial interest in either his part, or his employers' parts, on sufficiently strong arguments for a CO2 trading scheme enforced by law.
Sorry, but a wee but off thread:
"BBC under Investigation for Misinforming on Climate, Vaccines..."
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/12025/53/
BrianMcL - what with your determination to suffix everything alarming to you with "gates", you forgot "Bill Gates" - what a laugh.
Climategate is being investigated by the police, right as we speak... appropriately by the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit. How lovely it is to have deniers correctly pinged as extremists?
Asmwho - "Whether he stays or not, it would be nice (not to say professional and grown-up) if he, as a minimum, made a personal apology to those scientists involved for his comments about "voodoo science" and "arrogance"."
It sure is voodoo science, given that extremist deniers do not even have a scientific theory from which to contest AGW. No apology necessary.
Charles Martin:
Are you always given to making ambit, unsubstantiated assertions? Little wonder you seem to be an expert on failing grades.
Its Finito
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/23/breaking-news-scientist-admits-ipcc-used-fake-data-to-pressure-policy-makers/
Wadard - Following Jonathon Leake's latest revelations in this morning's Sunday Times looks like we may have to add Hurricanegate and (sorry but I can't help myself) Floodgate.
Let's hope the no-one's been interfering with the sea temperature record or we might have copyright problems with a well known hard disk manufacturer...
At the current rate that AR4 is falling into disarray it might soon be easier to list the parts that are based on sound, neigh incontrovertible science.
Glad I could cheer you up!
As for being lumped in with extremists, let's just wait and see where that investigation leads and what investigations will come after that.
BrianMcL
Said:-
(sorry but I can't help myself) Floodgate.
Have the floodgates started to open? I hope so!!
Well, his credibility is maelting faster than the alleged melting of the Himalayan glaciers.
And the water around him is rising over his nostrils.
He'd be doing us AGW scoffers a big favour by staying on, actually. Keep him there, and let us have this easy target.
Sandy S
This is in respect of the claims of a link between gobal temperature increase and "catastrophe losses" (i.e. financial losses arising from insurance claims as a result of natural disasters).
Leake is alledging that this claim is based on an insurance risk assessment that was taken wildly out of context rather than any kind of robust peer review process.
Many people will recognise claims from the insurance industry that premiums will increase as a result of more frequent and more powerful storms and whilst one can understand why they would be interested in knowing what sort of risks they might hypothetically face in future there is a world of difference between this sort of hypothesising and any kind of science.
Happily I suspect that we *will* soon be able to add Seagate as there seems to be increasing disagreement even within the pro AGW establishment about the likely timing and extent of sea level rise.
Wadard, you really do expose your ignorance of the subject when you say "extremist deniers do not even have a scientific theory from which to contest AGW. No apology necessary."
Are you unaware of the alternate scientific theories that can also help to explain the real-world climate data (e.g. Lindzen’s ‘iris’ mechanism or Svensmark’s cosmic ray ‘seeding’ mechanism) but which are excluded from all of the models that underpin current AGW theory? Have you not read the low-level IPCC reports, which are quite candid about the large degrees of uncertainty surrounding some of the biggest impactors on climate, like clouds? Do you realise that the AGW theory's predictions** are not testable/falsifiable within any reasonable timeframe, so that the most important step of the 'scientific method' has been completely ignored?
If you're unaware of these things, then I'd suggest you read up on them before responding. If you are aware of them, then please explain why you choose to ignore them.
** AGW theory predicts a 'hot spot' above the equatorial troposphere that current observations fail to show, which is seen by many as evidence that the theory is false.
More IPCC deception:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece?token=null&print=yes&randnum=1264289604732
I note that Pielke Jr's warnings about IPCC claims linking AGW and natural disasters is featured in today's Sunday Times...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7000063.ece
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/welcome-sunday-times-readers.html
And so yet another wheel seems to be falling off the IPCC band-wagon. Just how much longer can this farce continue?
David Salt:
Now you are getting desperate mate - there is no peer-reviewed research in any respected climate science journal that supports these two theories you state as explaining the extent of the observed rise in average global temperatures, that hasn't been debunked. None whatsoever. Yet there are thousands pf studies supporting the GW hypothesis. (Oreskes, Science Magazine, Nov 2005: Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Global Warming)
But go ahead and prove me wrong if you can. If you can...
In the meantime, the IPCC error has been put in nicely into perspective for the intellectually slovenly, extremist deniers and their desperate cheer-squad.
David Salt:
By many extremist deniers, fine - who honestly cares about them? Not by many climate scientists, though.
Wadard, you say "there is no peer-reviewed research in any respected climate science journal that supports these two theories you state as explaining the extent of the observed rise in average global temperatures, that hasn't been debunked", but I beg to differ. Sure, there's much debate over them, but they have by no means been "debunked"... even the folks over at RealClimate are still wrestling with the latest paper from Lindzen and Choi. Moreover, if Svensmark’s cosmic ray ‘seeding’ mechanism is garbage, why is CERN still supporting the CLOUD project?
I note that you completely ignore the level of uncertainty that's admitted to in the low-level IPCC documents and the degree to which clouds contribute to this. I also note that the reference you provide to "debunk" the tropospheric 'hot spot' merely questions the accuracy of the satellite data, which is a long way short of a water-tight scientific argument that falsifies the theory.
Is this really the best you can do to argue that 'the science is settled' and that anyone who questions it is a 'denier'?
All the gates make an "inconvenient revolution"
Wadard, no answer to the so-many replies to your earlier contention? The WG II report peddles in soft-science, grey literature and numerous 'medium confidence' contentions. There is gratuitous switching between weather and climate as the situation demands.
You want to defend all these?
The reason that he doesn't resign is because the IPCC won't let him. If he does resign it will be mainstream news. And that is one thing they don't want to happen.
I read, somewhat belatedly since I live in California at present and am thus 8 times zones after many of you, in the Sunday Times a column written by Chalres Clover. It is MUST reading for our fanboi friend Wadard.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6999815.ece
Sloppy science is seeping into the climate watchdog,
You need a steady nerve if, like me, you think it is a matter of evidence, not belief, that the world is warming as a result of human activity. After Climategate — the emails that appeared to show scientists using tricks to “improve” the evidence for global warming — comes Glaciergate, the disclosure that the Nobel prize-winning panel on the world’s climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published an unsubstantiated assertion that Himalayan glaciers were in danger of melting away by 2035.
When you stop to think about it, the assertion made in 1999 by an Indian scientist, who now disowns the statement, is absurd. Some of the Himalayan glaciers are a third of a mile thick and those on Everest, for instance, start at more than 20,000ft. So even though glaciers the world over are melting, a date for the total disappearance of the ones in the Himalayas is more likely to be nearer 2350, if ever.
Wadard -- when in a very deep hole, one should stop shoveling. And in case you haven't notice there are fewer and fewer fanbois down there with you. Have you heard a word out of Al Gore since the day he announced that he would NOT go to Copenhagen?
What should be addressed, again, is the problem with the messengers in the apocalyptic doom-crying.
That is the entire point. Just suppose that the globe is warming AND that CO2 is one of the main culprits AND that drastically reducing man emitted CO2 will slow down, stop, reverse that.
Those are three different issues, people.
But first, people have to admit that there is no money to be had - other than book royalties- in saying there's not a problem, or we cant do anything other than adapt.
The worrying point for me is the NEW declaration that all the nuke test markers from the forties thru sixties have disappeared from glacier cores.
The suspicious part is:
"For the first time in twenty years of core testing, this is the first time the isotopes havent shown up!"
So fifteen years of snow pack disappeared in one year? And there's no flooding in the foothills?
Something smells.
Wadard is winding you up.
In science you disprove a theory with just one counter-example or failed prediction. You don't need to come up with a better theory.
I'm not even sure what the climate hypothesis is any more. It's something like "bad stuff will happen if you don't do exactly as I say". Hardly scientific.
Wadard is a troll. Best just ignore him.
There's been some useful posts on this thread. Let's not lose them in the noise.
Wadard is a troll. Best just ignore him.
Let us not fall into the same foul habits the AGW fanbois have regarding calling people names and deleting their posts should they disagree.
Wadard is a lost soul in search of TRUTH, whatever that is. But he does have his (or is it hers?) right to his/her opinion. All I ask that he/she does not try to force it down my throat as many in the AGW camp try.
If Pachauri steps down, it's a scandal drawing attention to the IPCC. It would give them a chance to clean house but if they did that, there wouldn't be a lot left.
If he clings on, he's damaged goods still drawing attention to the IPCC, and there may well be other banana skins, not least in his activities outside the IPCC, which force him to stand down.
On balance, I'd like see him try to hang on. My guess is he'll be gone in a week.
On balance, I'd like see him try to hang on. My guess is he'll be gone in a week.
Maybe less. You have it exactly right, my friend.
No-one who has read John Costalla’s masterly, forensic dissection of the leaked CRU documents (http://is.gd/6XDzV) can doubt the pervasive and massive malfeasance by the climatology cabal, reaching up to the IPCC. Don’t forget, also, that Mann’s hockey stick chart, so enthusiastically taken up by IPCC in its TAR, was shot down in flames when subjected to independent scrutiny. The rest will follow in due course, given the official enquiries being instigated on two continents, and the gathering momentum of changing public opinion, due in no small measure to blogs such as this.
No-one who has read John Costalla’s masterly, forensic dissection of the leaked CRU documents (http://is.gd/6XDzV) can doubt the pervasive and massive malfeasance by the climatology cabal, reaching up to the IPCC.
Well, perhaps Wadard -- and A. Gore, who is not the right thing as I have it from the Washington DC zoo that a polar bear did in fact eat him. But beyond that, probably right,