The credibility of anything having to do with global warming or climate change is starting to avalanche down at an increasing rate. This is due to a quick succession of three scandals, which leaves the IPCC and its head, noted climatologist railway engineer Rajenddra K. Pachauri devoid of any believability.
First, there was Climategate, which broke in the end of November last year (see the highly enjoyable timelines of how the story broke here and here).
It concerned the leaking of a zip-file containing email correspondence, program code and data pertaining to the climate research done by the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the East Anglia University (EAU). The correspondence told a story of unethical and decidedly unscientific actions by various climate scientists to corrupt the process of 'peer review' used to vet scientific papers for publication. The computer code is evidence of some highly unscientific, arbitrary and possibly fraudulent manipulation of input data, working towards an outcome that the scientists in question wanted. Then there was a log by a person working to integrate the various data sets into one single data base. The comments he left in his log indicates that the data is so hopelessly corrupted that there really is no telling what goes into the models.
Over the last week we saw the emergence of Glaciergate. Last week it emerged that the rather spectacular claim that the Himalayan glaciers were likely to completely disappear by 2035 was based on nothing of any value.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research.
Moreover, the scientist responsible for this gross dereliction of scientific duty has admitted he knew the claim was bogus, but had included it anyway to
put political pressure on world leaders.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’
This is embarrassing enough and a further (considerable) dent in the IPCC's credibility. But the real scandal is the way this fraudulent claims was subsequently used by Dr. Hasnain, our dear railway engineer and TERI (for which they both work) to exact a considerable amount of
grant money from the EUnion.
Rajendra Pachauri's Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), based in New Delhi, was awarded up to £310,000 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the lion's share of a £2.5m EU grant funded by European taxpayers.
It means that EU taxpayers are funding research into a scientific claim about glaciers that any ice researcher should immediately recognise as bogus.
Which begs the question: Why is EUnion money (the money we all pay in taxes!) given away to an Indian institute, employing Indian nationals, to do research in India?
Festering beneath the radar of most MSM outlets is yet another scandal:
Pachaurigate, or Pachygate for short, relating to who is and who isn't paying Mr. Pachauri for his 'services'. The multiple conflicts of interest of Mr. Pachauri were covered on this blog
here (and do follow the links). Dr. North of EURef is
stubbornly slogging away, revealing ever more embarrassing and quite possibly career-ending details about the man.
But that particular story saw an unexpected twist in the revelation that our railway engineer also has some
considerable commercial interests in the Houston oil technology firm GloriOil and the proposed India Climate Exchange (ICX).
With GloriOil, the irony is that the head of an outfit devoted to climate change is promoting the enhanced recovery of a fossil fuel the use of which has, according to IPCC, led to global warming. Equally remarkable, he adds, is the fact that the chair of IPCC, which is advocating emissions trading along with other mitigation strategies, is himself involved in a commercial trading exchange involving carbon credits.
As the numerous, principally conflicting interests our railway engineer uses to
finance his lavish lifestyle ($1,000 dollar suits and all) cast a deep shadow of doubt on the man, his behaviour in the Glaciergate affair has been beneath contempt.
Remember, this is the man who was perfectly happy to accept the Nobel peace prize on behalf of the entire IPCC group of scientists who produced the IPCC reports. But now that Glaciergate is upon him, he suddenly claims he has
"absolutely no responsibility" for the errors in a report whos production he presided over:
“It’s the work of independent authors... they’re responsible.”
And when the truth finally became undeniable, he
relegated the humiliating task of admitting the mistake to his second-in-command, the IPCC's vice chairman Dr Jean-Pascal van Ypersele.
No honour, indeed.
Even though, in the West at least, the Pachauri scandal has not received the attention it deserves, this happy state of affairs (for dear Rajendra, anyway) is not likely to last very long.Quite possibly Glaciergate, with Pachygate as a strong supporting undercurrent, will become the mans undoing over the next few days or weeks.
And with him, the entire IPCC circus will come apart. It is already happening, with WUWT summarizing reports that the UN has
abandoned its deadline for countries to sign up to the Copenhagen treaty and declare their global warming strategies. As it stands only 20 out of 192 countries have so far done so. And now te UN is back-pedalling away from a humiliating defeat:
Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month’s fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a “soft” deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. “I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].
Thus it seems that the quick succession of the three scandals relating to the IPCC and its president are proving to have been one or to scandals too many. One 'gate' too far, if you will. The first jacks and aces are falling in a process that is inevitably going to bring down the entire house of cards we've come to know as Anthropogenic Global Warming.
[UPDATE001] As if to hammer its own pointlessness home: The IPCC is now forced to admit that they
wrongly linked global warming to an increase in natural disasters, solely based on the conclusions (since revised) of one paper, which had not been peer reviewed, nor published at the time the IPCC's report was written.
[UPDATE002] And on and on... The latest chapter in the IPCC's long slide into embarrassed oblivion:
Amazongate. At this rate the IPCC's AR4 report will be completely and utterly discredited/destroyed by the end of the week. And with it the entire 'green' movement that latched on to it.
