Global warming: Self-serving profit machine - IPCC struggling with credibility - step down Mr. Pachauri

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

The 'anomalies’ of Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s charity accounts
Christopher Booker
2 Oct 2010

Why did the Charities Commission let the European wing of Rajendra Pachauri's empire get away with such poor accounting, asks Christopher Booker.

Rajendra Pachauri

Next weekend, as delegates from 194 countries gather in South Korea for a crucial meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, their big talking point will be whether the IPCC’s chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri should resign – as a recent report from the world’s leading scientific academies seemed strongly to hint he should. The delegates face a dilemma. If they sack him, it would be a serious blow to the reputation of the panel, which has been central to the global warming scare since its founding in 1988. If he stays, it could severely damage the authority of its next major report, due in four years’ time.

Last winter, Dr Pachauri’s reputation took a hammering. On the one hand, there was the exposure of all those glaring and alarmist scientific errors in the IPCC’s last major report, produced under his guidance in 2007. On the other was the revelation in this newspaper of how his prestige as the “world’s top climate official” had coincided with a massive expansion in the fortunes of Teri, his Delhi-based research institute. Not only had Pachauri been appointed as an adviser to some of the richest banks and investment funds in the world, but Teri’s empire had mushroomed to include branches in Europe, North America, Dubai, Japan and South-East Asia.

When Dr Richard North and I came to examine this empire, our interest was drawn to Teri Europe, based in a suburban house in south London, which is registered under British law as a charity and is obliged to publish its accounts on the Charity Commission website. When we looked at these, however, they seemed rather odd. The figures showed the charity’s income and expenditure rising steadily in its early years – but from 2006 onwards they suddenly plunged to below £10,000 a year.

This was significant because £10,000 is the threshold below which a charity does not have to publish full accounts. Yet we knew that in these years Teri Europe was rapidly expanding, receiving sums way above that threshold. These included several payments from the UK government, such as £30,000 for the services of an employee of Dr Pachauri’s Delhi office to act as his co-editor on the IPCC’s 2007 Synthesis Report.


Source: telegraph.co.uk

IPCC told to stop lobbying and restrict role to explaining climate science
By Stephen Adams and Robert Winnett
30 Aug 2010

An independent investigation into the UN’s climate change body has warned it to stop lobbying and to restrict its role to explaining the science behind any changes in global temperature.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Photo: STEFAN WERMUTH/REUTERS

Senior officials at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have also been ordered to disclose their outside financial interests to avert any allegations that they may have profited from policies to tackle global warming.

New controls should also be introduced to ensure that the scientific claims made in influential international reports are robust in future.

The independent inquiry which delivered the rebuke was ordered after the IPCC admitted it had exaggerated the pace at which Himalayan glaciers were melting. Several other errors in its recent report were also uncovered.

The admission threatened to undermine the scientific basis used by Governments around the world to justify spending billions of pounds tackling climate change.

The report published yesterday found that although the IPCC’s findings were generally sound, parts of its conduct had “dented the credibility of the process”.

It warned that “straying into advocacy can only hurt IPCC’s credibility”.

However, it did not call into question the main findings behind the 2007 report, and said that overall its assessment process of the rate of, and risks from, climate chance had "been a success and served society well".

The review, by a prestigious group of international scientific academies, will put pressure on Rajenda Pachauri, the Indian head of the IPCC.

He said last night that he would step down if the Governments in the IPCC backed calls for him to be replaced.