Telegraph column goes after IPCC head on accusations he’s making a fortune off climate worries
The Sunday Telegraph has stirred a storm whose substance may be about the same as the e-mail fracas in the UK. Of course, judgment of that substance may depend on one’s political coloration – it’s a scandal, or not much of anything, or something in between. But the politics of climate change gets no less nasty as time goes by.
The news, if that it be, from columnists Christopher Booker and Richard North, is that Rejendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has a lot of private investments and other close links to business interests that have put “billions of dollars in organizations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.” The two writers often attack global warming as a trumped-up theory (see an earlier column). They also wrote a book on it this year. They seem to have intimate familiarity, as they entertain these charges against the IPCC chief, with conflict of interest.
This story openly takes its cue from allegations by prominent climate skeptics. And it offers no evidence how much if any money Pachauri is making from his role as adviser to several organizations and corporations involved in climate related affairs. Nor does the piece, as far as I can see, offer any reply by Pachauri to the assertions.
The story starts off snarky. It suggests Pachauri is no expert anyway. After first reporting that Pachauri “is often presented as a scientist” and even, by the BBC, as the “world’s top climate scientist,” it says that as a PhD economist he “has no qualifications in climate science at all.”
It’s a long piece. A stout rejoinder – down there in Grist - from Pachauri’s associates calls the thing’s allegations false and unfounded. It also says that IPCC, by its charter, does not even make policy recommendations. It summarizes science and leaves to others what ought to be done.
As for that, Telegraph columnist James Delingpole, perhaps among the least temperate writers in the English language and whose stories all explain at top that he “is right about everything,” has responded in turn with “It’s all lies! lies Pachauri (again)” ; He calls Pachauri “our favourite jetsetting, millionaire, troll-impersonating railway engineer.” Um .. what’s this we hear about British libel laws being so scary tough?
The Telegraph story also reflects assertions already circulating, from blogs by its co-author North, “a right-wing commentator,” reports Amanda Hodge in The Australian.
The story has not gone down well in India:
- Times of India/TNN: Pachauri slams charges about conflict of interest ;
- Indian Express – Amitabh Sinha: Allegations in UK daily are climate sceptics’ lies, says Pachauri ;
- Daily News and Analysis/Press Trust of India: Pachauri rubbishes impropriety allegations as ‘pack of lies.” ;
Grist for the Mill: The energy and Resources Institute (TERI, in India) Statement on Telegraph Story.
- Charlie Petit
