Bishop Hill George Monbiot: scrubbing the record clean
Sep 18, 2010 This is a guest post by Julian Williams and Shub Niggurath
Background
Last November things began to go seriously wrong for the IPCC version of science. Things started after a leading Indian glaciologist called VK Raina publicly pointed out that he disagreed with the IPCC conclusion that the Himalayan glaciers would melt away within 30 years. Raina said studies showed that at the present rate of melting, the glaciers would take hundreds of years to do so. The Indian public had previously been told that the waters from the Himalayas would dry up within their lifetimes, so this good news was published on the front pages of the Indian newspapers.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, using his title as the chairman of IPCC, reacted strongly against the good news and told the press there were no errors in the conclusions of the IPCC AR4 report. He told the press that VK Raina's conclusions were based on “voodoo science”, and that his opinions were not worth listening to. Questions were raised by observers, who couldn’t help noticing the strong reactions from the IPCC chairman, at the cost of addressing the errors themselves.
Pachauri’s crude attempts did not work and within days VK Raina found himself being interviewed by the Indian media alongside a very political Englishman who was not a glaciologist. Whether Raina appreciated Dr Richard North’s intervention I do not know, but certainly North had a different style about how to confront the smearing of Raina’s reputation by the chairman of the IPCC.
By that time, the error had been tracked back to a glaciologist called Syed Hasnain. Through a simple error, a rumour had developed that the glaciers would be gone within 40 years and the IPCC had published this story as part of its conclusions. Hasnain admitted to the press that there was an error in the IPCC report.
Eventually Pachauri had to acknowledge the IPCC’s error but the record in the assessment report (AR4) was never corrected, and remains incorrect to date.
One under-reported aspect of this scandal was the fact that Pachauri had a charity called TERI, which was poised to benefit from millions of euros and hundreds of thousands of dollars set aside to study the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. It turned out that TERI had used the IPCC’s very prediction of glacier doom in asking for funds. It also turned out that Hasnain was at work at TERI studying Himalayan glacier melt. It also turned out that Hasnain already knew about about the exaggerations in the IPCC report. The Sunday Telegraph became the venue where Richard North, who had uncovered major portions of this story, published these stories. Perhaps, as a result of this exposure, the Carnegie Corporation of New York decided to release no further funds to TERI.
On his blog, North asked obvious questions about the conflict of interest of one person being responsible for overseeing the writing of IPCC reports without error and running a charity which received money to study the conclusions of the IPCC reports. Was he tardy in responding because TERI’s glaciology team studied the same problem of catastrophic melt and therefore he assumed the problem to be genuine? North also raised questions about the accounts of TERI-Europe which is a charity run by Dr Pachauri from a suburban house in South London.
For the IPCC, there was more to come. Another claim that failed the test was that peer-reviewed scientific research had concluded that a small change in rainfall would decimate the Amazon tropical rainforests. North revealed this claim was gleaned from unsubstantiated gray literature put out by green advocacy groups. The scandal, which was published in the Sunday Times, became known as Amazongate.
By then of course, the public trust in climate science had taken a further severe knock after the leaking of the CRU Climategate emails. These emails showed how an inner circle of climate scientists had tampered with the proxy temperature records to “hide the decline”, hidden their raw data from other scientists and statisticians and perverted the conventions of peer review.
The Monbiot counter-attack
Following Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate and North’s articles about Pachauri, Monbiot was finding it harder to sell his messianic scare stories and views to a sceptical public. The two crutches on which he had always relied to convince his fans — the conclusions of IPCC reports and peer-reviewed papers written by climate scientists — no longer worked like they had in the past.
Certainly, someone had to be blamed.
Monbiot saw an opportunity to strike at North after the Sunday Times withdrew the Amazongate story. He saw the retraction as a green light, writing two successive pieces at the Guardian, accusing North of “peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood” in the first. North only showed that things were worse — the IPCC statement had been harvested from a defunct Brazilian website. North considered Monbiot’s accusations to be libelous and lawyers were called in to sort out the mess. Monbiot had to admit he had unfairly attacked North and give him space on his column for a reply. (Dr North’s complaints about Monbiot are still awaiting adjudication by the Press Commission).
The next opportunity arose for Monbiot when the Sunday Telegraph retracted its article and apologised for suggesting that Pachauri was corrupt. The retraction occurred after Pachauri undertook libel action against the paper. In the piece, Booker and North questioned the IPCC boss who donned several hats, working on the boards of several corporations that benefitted from business action against climate change.
Monbiot repeated the same strategy writing two more articles attacking North for “smearing” the reputation of Dr Pachauri. Perhaps he had not paused to notice, as with Amazongate, that the retracted Telegraph article neither referred to Pachauri’s conflicts of interest nor questions raised about TERI-Europe’s accounts.
Nevertheless for Monbiot, just as a newspaper retraction vindicated the IPCC earlier, another newspaper retraction, under threat of libel action seemed to absolve the IPCC chairman of all lapses. The caveat-laced, ‘limited review’ of Pachauri’s personal accounts in India, by a private corporation KPMG, which relied on information provided by him, seemed enough for Monbiot.
The second of the two articles defending Pachauri was titled: “Press continue to hound Rajendra Pachauri despite his innocence”. Members of the public were quick to use the comments forum on Monbiot’s blog to challenge his portrayal of Pachauri as a man who had been smeared by Dr North. Addressing one commenter, Monbiot wrote in his own comments section:
More than just smears
I responded with an open letter to George Monbiot asking him to explain his position more clearly. I wanted to know why Pachauri thought VK Raina’s report was “voodoo science”. Was he simply ignorant that the 2035 date in the AR4 report was incorrect and none of his team of experts in glaciology had alerted him to the error? Was not TERI using public funding from the EU, to study the same claim? Wasn’t Monbiot bothered by this? Why did he persist in giving Pachauri the benefit of the doubt? The letter was removed soon after I posted it.
Further comments were being deleted as well; but I was not willing to give up. I repeatedly asked for Monbiot to comment on why Pachauri made his “voodoo science” smear. I asked whether it was unreasonable to inquire if it had anything to do with TERI being funded to study the very "2035" glacier melting claim.
Monbiot never responded. As before however, there was more to come.
The UK Charity Commission made available TERI-Europe’s published and revised accounts. I presented them to Monbiot.
|
Year |
Income as submitted before inquiries |
Corrected figures submitted after inquiries |
|
2006 |
7,000 |
16,610 |
|
2007 |
9,000 |
49,878 |
|
2008 |
8,000 |
103,980 |
|
TOTAL |
24,000 |
170,468 |
Ritu Kumar, TERI’s director at London was compelled to revise their accounts, following the Telegraph’s inquiries into its dealings. The differences were astounding. What the new accounts showed was that, for three years running (the period shown above), TERI-Europe had grossly under-declared the income of the charity. It did not have any known subsidiaries. This was the same period TERI-Europe obtained DEFRA public funds, just for the IPCC synthesis report alone, an amount almost twice what it declared on the books.
In the period shown, only 15% of their income had been put through the charity’s accounts and 85% of TERI-Europe’s income had simply not been included in their declared income. Their complete accounts have not been submitted to date.
TERI-Europe Income reported to the Charity Commission UK
Monbiot asked visitors to his Guardian thread to come up with evidence of Dr Pachauri’s unreliable bookkeeping. He must have thought this impossible. The one account unable to be veiled from public scrutiny was Pachauri’s TERI-Europe’s and that had 85% of income missing from the books until prodded. I provided Monbiot with what he asked for.
Monbiot declared Pachauri's personal accounts and financial practices were shown by KPMG as being clean. In the light of the above however, Monbiot's unquestioning confidence in such conclusions were puzzling.
About midday the inconvenient evidence that I provided at the Guardian forum, along with discussions of that evidence with aghast Monbiot fans were removed from the thread. The thread was closed down.
Every single comment about the accounts was removed.
The new Monbiot
It was always faintly funny that the Monbiot should accuse Richard North of ‘smearing Pachauri’. We saw that Monbiot’s harmless IPCC-inspired pushing of the party line had shallow foundations that would one day be swept away by the growing awareness of the public. But we should revise that opinion. It is one thing to put forward one own points of view and cite half-truths as evidence; it is quite another to tamper with and remove facts from the public record to support an argument that does not stand up. To call for evidence and then hide is both hypocritical and paradoxical. Monbiot should be asking questions and releasing evidence, not covering it up to protect public figures like Pachauri. One wonders how long this charade will last.
Reader Comments (130)
Very good account, Shub, of a quite long story of which I have read and followed several pieces, but not with the dots connected like you do here ...
Monbiot is indeed cornered in a tight spot between a rock and a hard place ...
How on earth can KPMG have overlooked/ignored/hidden this?
Excellent review. Takes me back to the rather unpleasant 'don't **** with North' comment a few weeks back. Let's see what the next year or so brings.
Excellent post, thanks for your work on this
Messenger
How on earth can KPMG have overlooked/ignored/hidden this?
I refer you to Enron and Arthur Andersen. The line was Enron robbed the bank and Arthur Andersen drove the get away car.
TERI-Europe
Notes to the financial statements
for the year ended 30 June 2009
Related party transactions
Dr Pachauri is also Managing Director of TERI-India, with which the charity co-operates in setting
strategy and delivering the outcomes specified in the grants it received. Consultancy payments to
TERI.-India during the year amounted to £49,080 (2008: £79,620).
It seems Dr Pachauri consulted with himself over 2 years to the tune of about £130,000
Comment is Free..........
unless your name is Shub Niggurath.
KPMG clearly stated 'limited review'. It is impossible to prove a negative: "I have no money" Anyway, a red herring. Monbiot receives payment (presumably) from The Guardian and is hosted there. I cannot find a statement disassociating them with the views of Monbiot. Therefore it was The Guardian that removed the comments whether or not Monbiot was part of the mechanism that caused the removal. The questions have to be answered by the newspaper first and it is in their interests to do so. Their answer may or may not implicate Monbiot in the removal. Push for a response directly from The Guardian would be my chosen route. It is ultimately their problem.
Excellent article Shub, thank you.
At one point someone asked about Pachauri's 'Return to Almora' (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7018533.ece) on RealClimate. It was amusing watching the faithful defend this example of creative literature (an activity which is their calling). Sadly, the post was eventually eliminated by the uber-moderator.
How on earth can KPMG have overlooked/ignored/hidden this?
KPMG did not do an audit in any recognised form, they only looked at information provided by Pachauri and TERI. Like Oxbaugh they only asked the accused and if the accused said I am innocent they said 'They are innocent'
See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil.
To read the report go here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/aug/26/kpmg-review-pachauri-accounts
Note the word review not audit.
Thanks Shub, be interesting to see if there is a reaction.
PS can't get the "hypocritical and paradoxical." link to work
There is much pleasure in seing a moonbat, hoisted by his own peterd.
Well done but we wont more.
That should be PETARD of coursr
the moderators are entirley possibly doing it wothout this knowledege. out of kindness, less his world falls in..
You couls always email him directly..
Green Sand, the "hypocritical and paradoxical" link is good but the poor server is having a bad hair day.
Google has cached the page at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6EZvnWS6p5gJ:www.newleftreview.org/%3Fview%3D2672
Nicely summed up.
Global warmers really need a chat with the Pope about turning a blind eye to what you know is going on within your own ranks. They might think they're protecting the integrity of the whole by pretending nothing's wrong but it's just the opposite.
Thanks Jim
I heard of a phrase used in the former Soviet Union, notorious for editing the past and specifying the future, and it went something like this: here, under communism, only the past is uncertain while the future is known. Neatly captures the arrogance of the politburo with regard to both the future and the past. Both there to be manipulated to suit the cause. The simple deletion of 'unsatisfactory' records would have been the least of it.
Surgical, Shub. But I think there is more to incise.
Pesadia, what a good idea for a cartoon!
Evil BIg DEFRAoco.
Moonbeam seems to believe he has a much larger capital fund of credibility to squander than he actually does.
A good piece of work, confirming Pachauri, along with Ward, Oxburgh and Acton as the right people to be leading the AGW charge down into the bottomless pit of oblivion.
Josh, there is a great You Tube clip of a woman trying to catapult a water melon, which smashes back into her own face. After your cartoon of Monbiot in the boxing ring......
Josh
Someone got there first
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/His-Own-Petard.htm
Some of my comments are removed at the Guardian by moderators. I have never used foul language in any comment that I have ever posted at a blog nor have I ever posted anything of a threatening nature, so why does this happen? I think the word is "censorship", disguised under the reference of "inappropriate", and of course, with no recourse for an appeal. Just the other day, an AGW-believer used a very offensive and derogatory word in a comment that was a personal attack against me, and the comment still appears after 4 days under an article that is still posted on the front page of the Environmental Section.
Actually, it is more than just censorship; it is a form of discrimination.
Let's not be too hard on George on this. He's in love with the idea of saving the planet from the sins of man.
His defence of bedfellows who support his idealism is not unexpected. To do otherwise is to face up to unwelcome realities that maybe the earth didn't move for them as it did for him.
Once he realises that Comment Is Fickle and he's been cuckolded I believe that he'll turn.
Let us not underestimate the spite-born thirst for revenge of a scorned and duped warmist when faced with the evidence if their betrayal!
Pharos, not sure that is an actual petard.
Golf, yes I saw that one, ouch.
The Victoria, B.C., Times Colonist newspaper, where I used to work as an editorial writer, has an explicit if unwritten policy against publishing opinion articles by skeptics such as myself. I know this because my former boss at the paper told me, and because four of my articles--well-researched, I thought--were rejected over a period of months (I did manage to get one letter in). I don't know whether this is discrimination, strictly speaking, but it is censorship and it is a disgrace.
As an ex-journalist (I now teach writing at the University of Victoria), I was taught that "fairness" meant presenting both sides of an issue. It appears that the Guardian has joined the Times Colonist in backing one side over another. And, of course, Bishop Hill readers will recall that the BBC, as well, had an explicit policy against presenting the skeptical side on climate. I gather that policy has relaxed somewhat following Climategate.
Firstly, a clarification...
The post is the work of author/commenter Julian Williams. He was the one who confronted George Monbiot. Julian's polite comments were deleted and the thread quickly closed down, after he raised the questions. My contribution and involvement came as I followed the thread and realized that Monbiot was knocking out seriously inconvenient stuff from public view - after explicitly asking for it. The research, editing, and revisions are mine.
Thanks to the Bishop, of course, for putting this out. I've requested that he make this small, but important change to the story credit.
The "hypocritical and paradoxical" thing is, Monbiot admitting that he takes transatlantic and other flights - which "some of us" may view as hypocritical or paradoxical.
Barry, you are right about moderators being responsible for the comments being removed, and Monbiot not knowing it. But at an important place such as the Guardian, on a thread where Monbiot makes his appearance and asks for "evidence", and was indeed provided with the same evidence, indirect thought it may be - it is hard to believe, or accept that he is not aware of what happened in his own thread. He shoulders responsibility.
...The dictionary maker John Florio defined them like this in 1598:
"Petardo - a squib or petard of gun powder vsed to burst vp gates or doores with."
The French have the word 'péter' - to fart, which it's hard to imagine is unrelated...
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hoist%20by%20your%20own%20petard.html
Shub, excellent post, thanks a lot.
I am very grateful to Shub for helping me to get this story out and providing all the links, and to Monbiot for helping me get the TERI Europe story out. The TERI Europe figures needed to be got out before Pachauri goes which looks like anytime soon, because if he goes before this story gets media attention his departure will look honourable. But everyone be very careful never to jump to conclusions that Pachauri is corrupt because his lawyers are looking for opportunities to fight on his behalf.
About Monbiot, he has crossed a line. He needs to read Dante's Divine Comedy which starts with the lines
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
It may be translated as:
Just halfway through this journey of our life
I reawoke to find myself inside
a dark wood, way off course, the right road lost
Moonbat is like Dr. Johnson's dog walking on its hind legs: "The wonder is not that it is not done well; the wonder is, that it it is done at all."
Shub, I can't see the original accounts before the adjustments in the Charity Commission report, am I missing something?
You know, I was one of the first to sign up for Monbiot's Climate Change Sceptic Blog Alerts<./b> and have been amused to see that they never alert the faithful to His Grace or Air Vent or WUWT... he keeps sending them to Dellingpole and North, whether the articles have anything to do with climate or not. It's almost as if he were attempting to desensitive the faithful....
There is a link between KPMG and global warming advocacy which might well explain their controversial vindication of Mr Pechauri. I have written about it extensively on the Biased BBC website, for example here http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/02/snouts-in-trough.html and here http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2010/01/good-lord.html. In a nutshell, KPMG's head of corporate social responsibility, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, is a warmist fanatic who attends all the major warmist jamborees where Mr Pachauri is also present. And it's very clear that KPMG advises its clients - with seminars and conferences - how to benefit from warmist scams such as CO2 trrading.
Well done it's nice to laugh at moonbot for a change as most of the time I come into contact with his idle witterings i just boil with anger !
Josh
The free dictionary gives a pretty good distinction between a petard, a small bell-shaped bomb for breaching doors/walls and the history of the phrase, which states:
Word History: The French used pétard, "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. "To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart." (sourced from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language).
DrCrinum
There is indeed censorship by warmist moderators on Comment Is Free. I had so many posts on COP15 and Climategate either pulled or simply not appear that I complained to the moderators, who ignored me. I then complained to Matt Seaton, who simply referred me back to the moderators. I then wrote (snail mail) to Alan Rusbridger, complaining about both the censorship on CiF and the way in which complaints about it are ignored. I wrote twice: he too ignored me.
So I wrote directly to Dame Liz Forgan, Chair of the Scott Trust. This produced both an acknowledgement from Forgan's office, and a dismissive letter from a man called Elliott at the Guardian telling me my posts were off topic which, depending on one's point of view, is either an opinion hard to reconcile with the evidence, or a lie.
I lost interest at this point (as, indeed, I have in CiF generally) as I have rather more important things going on in my life at the moment, but in my view CiF operates in direct contravention of the values the Scott Trust claims are so important.
http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/Responsibility/tabid/132/Default.aspx
Should anyone wish to complain about censorship at CiF, I suggest taking it straight to the top, Forgan, and adding to any specific matter the wider complaint that CiF fails to abide by the Scott Trust's values.
@howsoonisnow
I think that the grauniad is best just ignored. Very few people bother to shell out for the paper edition...it is dying on its feet. CiF is inhabited by a rapidly dwindling population of self-congratulatory alamowarmists...all other voices having been moderated to extinction.
Even their very own Climategate debate couldn't muster an on the day majority of warmists. And in just about the geographical centre of graunland..Bloomsbury.
Moonbat is a busted flush and figure of mockery...Fred Pearce seems to be re-learning to be a journalist not an advocate, so he must be into CV writing......the whole institution has little credibility left. Let it rest, undisturbed, in peace
Wow.
The difference between a Catholic defending bad priests and what Monbiot is doing is zero.....except I am not aware of any Catholics pretending that pedophile priests are not a real problem. But AGW promoters and believers never admit anything is ever wrong with the belief in catastrophic AGW.
Very odd.
There is another-
http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/orgs/profile/521697207?popup=1
with their form 990's from 2002-2008. Governance section of the '08 one has few suprises in it. No COI policy, no whistleblower policy, and given the mission statement, not sure why they're not lobbying
Shub have you tried sending it to George directly ( he must have an email address somewhere...)
The moderators 'possibly' operate without George even being aware, you migth be surprised, they probably think it is all in a good cause. Depends on the mod each day.. somethings go through that suprise me sometimes.
Imagine mods that work at the Guardain, by natural self selection, are pretty pro the Guardian's editorial policy..
I
Monbiot was slanting the facts in his defense of Dr Pachauri from the start, he mentioned Dr Pachauri's salary without putting it into the perspective of the average income of an Indian citizen. It is hard to believe this was an oversight. His journalistic instincts appear to switch off around the IPCC.
geronimo
The income submitted to the Charity Commission were as shown in the table. For example, it is mentioned in this article by Booker and North.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7005963/Taxpayers-millions-paid-to-Indian-institute-run-by-UN-climate-chief.html
The corresponding page for the charity has changed as TERI-Europe have submitted revised income figures.
There is another way you can work this out. Look at the annual cash surplus/income statements they submitted at Companies House (you have to fork out cash though for that :)). Compare that with the figures in the article and this table above. Discrepancies pop up again. It appears they seriously botched up their accounting. One can only make guesses as to why it happened.
atomic,
Thanks for the website link. Pachauri is listed as "President" for TERI-NA.
Isn't there any form of sanction for submitting inaccurate figures? Surely it's not enough just to submit another lot...?
Shub. nps. 2002 has a potentially interesting outpayment described as SIAC Himalayan research. Not sure if that may be related to glaciergate or not. Found a SIAC related paper around that time regarding land use changes though. US accounts do show the name change from TATA to 'The' though, and don't show some things I'd expected to see, like some reported donations to TERI. They may have been remitted directly to the parent, or TERI-NA may have similar issues to Europe. Based on previous years filings, next lot of accounts should be online soon and no doubt late again for the same reasons as given on previous filings :)
Barry;
I forsee a brilliant scientific career ahead of you; you have a talent for formulating hilariously unlikely hypotheses AND falsification tests for them! The Moonbeam innocently unaware of the excess vigilance of his moderators in protecting him from dissent? The bind moggles.
@Latimer Alder;
"Moonbat is a busted flush and figure of mockery...Fred Pearce seems to be re-learning to be a journalist not an advocate, so he must be into CV writing......the whole institution has little credibility left. Let it rest, undisturbed, in peace"
This is all perfectly sound advice, though I do continue to post at the Grauniad myself. My reasons for doing so have mutated somewhat: if truth does indeed pass through three stages then climate non-truth must also pass through same, only in reverse:
1) 2008 - "The science is settled - we won!"
2) 2009 - Climategate (that'll be the spark that lit the 'violent opposition' phase)
3) 2010 - Ridicule
I use my time on CiF these days largely to enjoy stage three. It was a long time coming and I fully intend to continue poking the fatally wounded beast.
@HowSoonIsNow:
Your posts on CiF were some of the most enjoyable reading on offer there. Pithy, amusing and - naturally - bound for the memory hole in short measure. You are indeed missed.
@frankv
Enjoy your fun while it lasts. The moderators at CiF have very short fuses..and one witty riposte too far will have you cast forever into the eternal darkness of banishment - as many here have found.