Yeo wants Patchy to go

Tim Yeo, the deep-green chairman of the UK House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee has called for Rajendra Pachauri to resign.

"I’m afraid I think Dr Pachauri should resign. Firstly he personally has lost credibility, particularly in relation to his claim about the melting of the Himalayan glaciers in the next 30 years," he told the BBC.

He added: "It’s vital that this body is led by someone whose academic and intellectual credentials are unquestioned and I’m afraid that can no longer be said of him."

Apparently Sir Brian Hoskins has also called for Pachauri to step down.

Monbiot and TERI's accounts

I've been enjoying the comments thread below Julian and Shub's Monbiot piece. George is clearly quite upset at the suggestion that he was responsible for deleting comments and he has defended himself at his own site, stating that he has never asked the CiF moderators to delete anything.

Some commenters, notably Barry Woods, have argued that we should take George at his word, and I must say I think this is right. Having seen a BBC blogger (Richard Black, IIRC) getting one of his comments snipped on his own thread, George's story that he had nothing to do with the deletions is at least credible.

Click to read more ...

Thoughts on the IAC report

I haven't got time to go through this in detail, but I'll jot down a few thoughts.

The overall impression is that they are recommending a lot of steps that will make little difference. They don't seem to have 'fessed up to what went wrong.

• The idea of having executive committee members from outside the climate science community is in principle sound, but only if they get people who are fundamentally critical of the AGW hypothesis. A sceptic-free IPCC is a credibility-free IPCC.
• The sections on the review process do not acknowledge the gatekeeping that has gone on. THis is "shut-eyed denial".
• Concentration on key issues is probably sensible, but you can't help but feel that this will be used as a route to sideline sceptic comments.
• The comments on uncertainty look completely damning to me:

[A]uthors reported high confidence in some statements for which there is little evidence. Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements. The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.

• In any credible organisation, heads would be rolling.
• The comments on communication are quite funny. The answer (as ever) appears to be better PR.
• The transparency bit is limp. This particular bird has flown the coop. There is no point in asking for transparency over the appointments process when the authors for AR5 have already been appointed. No credible assessment report possible until AR6.
• This also applies to the section on dissenting views. Asking for author teams with diverse viewpoints is a bit late, isn't it? There is also no point saying that review editors should ensure dissenting views are reported. They are already supposed to do that, but choose not to do so. 

IAC report news conference

...is imminent. 3pm UK time as far as I can see.

See it here.

Update on Aug 30, 2010 by Bishop Hill

I don't seem to be able to get anything from the UN site. Have I got the time wrong or is this an IT problem?

Update on Aug 30, 2010 by Bishop Hill

I found I was able to get the feed working by opening directly into RealPlayer rather than via the webpage.

Graun still deleting comments

Not a comprehensive survey, but of the first 50 comments on Pachauri's article in the Guardian, 18 were deleted.

Criticism is forbidden.

Only one error in IPCC reports

A video of Rajendra Pachauri with some startling statements about the recent IPCC scandals. Apparently the Himalayan glacier melting thing is the only error in the IPCC reports. The other issues aren't errors at all. Oh yes, and it's OK to use non-peer reviewed literature in IPCC reports.

Greenpeace wants Patchy out

The head of Greenpeace UK wants Raj Pachuari fired, the saga of his conflicts of interest and mishandling of errors in the IPCC reports having endured for so long as to make his continued tenure impossible.

The IPCC needs to regain credibility. Is that going to happen with Pachauri [as chairman]? I don’t think so. We need someone held in high regard who has extremely good judgment and is seen by the global public as someone on their side.

“If we get a new person in with an open mind, prepared to fundamentally review how the IPCC works, we would regain confidence in the organisation.”

Even Bob Ward looks a bit shaky, calling for the IPCC to examine Pachauri's handling of the glacier issue at its next plenary session.

Coming along nicely.

Red tops move in on the act

They always say that when the Sun shifts its support to a new political party then political destiny is irrevocably changed. When the Conservatives lost its support at the end of the nineties their fate was sealed and they were duly swept away in the Blair landslide of 1997.

The UK's premier tabloid has a phenomenal power to change the political landscape and it is widely seen as a barometer for the way public opinion is moving. It's therefore interesting to see not only the "currant bun" but also its close, left-wing rival the Mirror moving in for the kill. The Mirror picks up on Raj Pachauri's travel arrangements, describing him variously as "authoritarian" and "hypocritical". The Sun, in the meantime says that global warming is a con.

It's not looking good.

Will he stay or will he go?

Someone has started a prediction market on poor old RK Pachauri. The contract pays $1 if he resigns or is removed as head of the IPCC before 1 May this year.

It's currently trading at 43 cents, which seems about right to me.

...and another...

Even big time warmists like Andrew Weaver are jumping ship now:

Andrew Weaver, probably Canada’s leading climate scientist, is calling for replacement of IPCC leadership and institutional reform. If Andrew Weaver is heading for the exits, it’s a pretty sure sign that the United Nations agency is under monumental stress. Mr. Weaver, after all, has been a major IPCC science insider for years.

Weaver is of course the scientist who said that it is "dangerous" to give both sides equal weight in the AGW debate and when speaking of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report said, it "isn’t a smoking gun; climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles"

Pachauri says he's staying

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.

Patchygate update

The momentum over Patchygate seems to be building and has now merged with the parallel furore over the IPCC's glacier story, with Richard North noting that the source of the original story about melting glaciers was a scientist who now works for Pachauri's TERI organisation.

Anthony Watts notes that Pachauri doesn't seem to separate his TERI and his IPCC roles in terms of his email communications either. Roger Pielke Jnr says the whole thing stinks. In the comments to Pielke Jnr's article, the economist Richard Tol makes the first of what is likely to be many calls for Pachauri to resign or be fired.

The furore has garnered huge attention in Pachauri's native India, with environment minister Ramesh claiming vindication of his argument that the IPCC was being alarmist. It's interesting too to read the author's observation that dodgy environmental claims about India seem to have been something of a theme of the past few years, with western governments and environmentalists using faulty evidence to try to push India around.

And Pachauri himself? He has just found another new role for himself, this time as romantic author (!), launching a novel entitled Return to Almora at what sounds like a suitably glittering occasion. I'm not joking by the way.

Intriguing new details on the glacier story

The Hindustan Times has picked up on the glacier story that is proving so embarrassing for Rajendra Pachauri and the IPCC. But as well as repeating the details from the New Scientist and Sunday Times stories, there are a couple of new details.

Firstly, Syed Hasnain, the scientist who made the original claims about the Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035, has gone to ground:

Attempts by Hindustan Times to reach Hasnain failed. His family said he was away and there was no telephone number at which he could be contacted.

I suppose it is a little embarrassing, but hiding from the press does seem like a bit of an overreaction. And surely he has a mobile phone?

The other interesting news is that the IPCC are going to make a statement on glaciers in the coming week:

Pachauri said IPCC would issue a statement on the glaciers “by the middle of this week”.

We will watch with interest.

Patchygate

Richard North's revelations about Rajendra Pachauri, now  apparently going under the monicker of "Patchygate", have been delayed due to bad weather - really!

That said, they should be worth waiting for:

We have some stunning revelations to make – we have clearly landed some blows and there are white flags flying in certain quarters, with "Patchy", as he likes to call himself, squealing with indignation about a "vendetta."

How to live life, by RK Pachauri

Interviewed on the BBC, lifestyle guru RK Pachauri had this to say:

I think my vision of a good life is one where you spend enough time on friendship, on time with family, on exercising a certain level of restraint, by which you don't consume for the sake of consuming. Before the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, I was interviewed by Kevin Spacey and he asked me a whole lot of questions about whether I had done my holiday shopping and I said, well, I have no plans because I only buy what I need. But that's exactly what I do - I never buy something unless I feel I need it.

Like the house in India's millionaires row for example.

(Audio here - segment on lifestyles starts at 19:45)