Climategate: IPCC conflicts of interest

2009-12-18

Richard Moore

Climategate: with business interests like these are we really sure Dr Rajendra Pachauri is fit to head the IPCC?


By James Delingpole  Last updated: December 14th, 2009

After the Climategate scandal erupted, few were quicker to dismiss the significance of the leaked emails than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In no way, he insisted, just two days after the story broke, had the integrity of the IPCC  been compromised:
“The processes in the IPCC are so robust, so inclusive, that even if an author or two has a particular bias it is completely unlikely that bias will find its way into the IPCC report,” he said.
“Every single comment that an expert reviewer provides has to be answered either by acceptance of the comment, or if it is not accepted, the reasons have to be clearly specified. So I think it is a very transparent, a very comprehensive process which insures that even if someone wants to leave out a piece of peer reviewed literature there is virtually no possibility of that happening.”
And if any investigation into the affair were necessary, argued Dr Pachauri, it ought purely to be a criminal one into how the emails came to light.
Pachauri said he doubted that trust in the IPCC would be damaged by the affair. “People who are aware of how the IPCC functions and are appreciative of the credibility that the IPCC has attained will probably not be swayed by an incident of this kind,” he said.
Quite so. And I’m quite sure that no one will in any wise have their faith in the integrity of the IPCC shaken by these revelations courtesy of the mighty Richard North.
North’s tribute to Dr Pachauri’s multifarious talents is so startling I think I shall have to quote it in full:
As reported by Reuters – with a slight correction: The head of the Asian Development Bank (ADP), Haruhiko Kuroda, warned governments that a failure to reach a climate deal in Copenhagen could lead to a collapse of the carbon market, which would hit efforts to deal with climate change make carbon traders very rich.
It helps of course to know that Mr Kuroda is best known in greenie circles for setting up the ADB Advisory Group on Climate Change – chaired by millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri, part-time chairman of the IPCC.
An interesting member of that Group is Dr Klaus Toepfer, Founding Director, Institute for Advanced Studies Climate, Earth System and Sustainability Sciences and former executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). And it was UNEP, of course, which set up the IPCC – which now has as its part-time chairman millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri.
One other member is professor Hironori Hamanaka, Chair, Board of Directors, Institute of Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). The IGES claims to be “a research institute that conducts pragmatic and innovative strategic policy research to support sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region.” It will come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that the organisation works very closely with TERI, whose Director-General is millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri.
Yet another is Ms Huguette Labelle, also a Board Member of the UN Global Compact organisation, the very same UN to which millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri belongs. Hilariously, Ms Labelle is Chair ofTransparency International, the global civil society organisation “leading the fight against corruption.” TI’s mission “is to create change towards a world free of corruption.”
The Board also includes professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University. This is the same Earth Institute which set up the Climate-Risk Center, inviting millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri to become its first Board Chairman.
One other interesting character is Dr. Emil Salim, an adviser to Indonesia’s President on environment and sustainable development issues. But he is also a member of APFED – the Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development. One of its major activities is sponsoring the “Partnership Initiatives for Knowledge Network and Capacity Building” – in conjunction with TERI as a major partner, the Director General of which is millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri.
And last but not least is Professor Dadi Zhou, Director General (Emeritus) of the Energy Research Institute, which of course is otherwise known as TERI, the Director General of which is millionaire businessman Rajendra K. Pachauri.
No longer, it seems, does Rome hold a pre-eminent position. In this brave new world of climate change and sustainable development, all roads lead to Rajendra K. Pachauri.
Particularly interesting is Dr Pachauri’s connection with the “not-for-profit organisation” TERI. As we learn from its website, this used to stand for Tata Energy Research Institute, but was renamed in The Energy And Resources Institute in 2003. Nothing sinister, I’m sure, in its decision to play down the Tata connection; nor in the fact that Dr Pachauri makes no mention of the fact that he is funded by Tata on his website. And obviously, it is quite normal that TERI makes no disclosure on its website – or in its downloadable annual report (all you get is a pie chart with no figures on it) – about its financial arrangements: the pay scales of its 800 staff members and its esteemed director general are quite rightly hidden from the world’s prying eyes.
Nevertheless, as Christopher Booker has noted elsewhere, one of the global business interests which will make – and indeed already has made – large sums of money thanks to the climate doom scenarios of the IPCC, is the Indian giant Tata. By fingering CO2 as the primary driver of AGW, the IPCC has been primarily responsible for creating the market in carbon trading. Dr Pachauri was, of course, the lead author on the IPCC’s second report which paved the way to Kyoto – which in turn ushered in the world’s first carbon trading schemes.
As Booker reported, what has been great for Tata’s bottom line has not been so good for useful for the 1700 workers who recently lost their jobs in Redcar, North Yorkshire, when the owner of the Corus steelworks – Tata – decided to close its plant.
The real gain to Corus from stopping production at Redcar, however, is the saving it will make on its carbon allowances, allocated by the EU under its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). By ceasing to emit a potential six million tonnes of CO2 a year, Corus will benefit from carbon allowances which could soon, according to European Commission projections, be worth up to £600 million over the three years before current allocations expire.
Will this make any difference at all to the quantities of plant food – sorry, deadly, planet-destroying CO2 – pumped into the atmosphere? Not at all, as Booker goes on to explain:
But this is only half the story. In India, Corus’s owner, Tata, plans to increase steel production from 53 million tonnes to 124 million over the same period. By replacing inefficient old plants with new ones which emit only “European levels” of CO2, Tata could claim a further £600 million under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, which is operated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the organisers of the Copenhagen conference. Under this scheme, organisations in developed countries such as Britain – ranging from electricity supply companies to the NHS – can buy the right to exceed their CO2 allocations from those in developing countries, such as India. The huge but hidden cost of these “carbon permits” will be passed on to all of us, notably through our electricity bills.
Thus, at the end of the day, Redcar will lose its biggest employer and one of the largest manufacturing plants left in Britain. Tata, having gained up to £1.2 billion from “carbon credits”, will get its new steel plants – while the net amount of CO2 emitted worldwide will not have been reduced a jot.
This is the real reason why so many big businessmen, bankers, politicians, scientists – led, of course, by Al Gore – are backing stiffer, pan-global governmental legislation on carbon emissions. Because there are such stupendous quantities of money to be made.
Last year, on official figures, buying and selling the right to emit CO2 was worth $126 billion across the world. This market, now enriching many of our leading financial institutions (not to mention Al Gore), is growing so fast that within a few years it is predicted to be worth trillions, making carbon the most valuable traded commodity in the world. Forget Big Oil: the new world power is Big Carbon.Truly it has been a miracle of our time that they have managed to transform carbon dioxide, a gas upon which all life on earth depends, into a “pollutant”, worth more than diamonds, let alone oil. And many of those now gathered in Copenhagen are making a great deal of money out of it.
One thing is for certain in all this business: Dr Pachauri’s behaviour has been beyond reproach. We know this because Dr Pachauri is a fervent advocate of what he calls“sustainable consumption”. A committed vegetarian, he believes that we should all learn to fly less, be made responsible for energy use in our hotel bedrooms (”I don’t see why you couldn’t have a meter in the room to register your energy consumption from air-conditioning or heating and you should be charged for that”), eat less meat, and do without ice in our water in restaurants (”It is just an enormous amount of waste that we don’t even think about”). It would be quite outrageous to suggest that a man of such extreme ascetism could in any way be benefiting financially by the worldwide promotion of AGW theory.
Nevertheless, with the best will in the world, does the good Dr Pachauri not feel there might be certain potential conflict-of-interest issues between his role as head of the IPCC and his sundry business interests?
Oh, and while he’s mulling over that question, here are a few more of Dr Pachauri’s business interests listed below, as disclosed by Business Week.
Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri is a Strategic Advisor at Pegasus Capital Advisors, L.P. He has been a Director-General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) since April 2001. Dr. Pachauri has been Head of Tata Energy Research Institute, New Delhi (now known as The Energy and Resources Institute) since April 2001.He has been the President of the Asian Energy Institute since 1992. Dr. Pachauri has been the President of the International Association for Energy Economics … since 1988. He has been Chairman and Member of the Advisory Group at Asian Development Bank since May 2009. Dr. Pachauri has been an Independent Director of Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd., since June 26, 2006. He serves as Vice-Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Pachauri serves as Director of GloriOil Limited. He serves as Director of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan. Dr. Pachauri serves as a Member of External Advisory Board of Chicago Climate Exchange, Inc. He serves as Member of the Advisory Board on Energy. Dr. Pachauri serves as a Member of the International Advisory Board of Toyota Motors. He serves as a Member of Climate Change Advisory Board of Deutsche Bank AG. Dr. Pachauri served as Chairman of the International Association for Energy Economics from 1989 to 1990. He served as an Independent Director of NTPC Ltd. (National Thermal Power Corp.), from January 30, 2006 to January 2009. Dr. Pachauri served as a Director of the Indian Oil Corporation Limited until August 28, 2003. He served as non-official Part-time Director of NTPC Ltd., from August 2002 to August 2005. Dr. Pachauri served as a Director of Gail India Ltd. from August 18, 2003 to October 26, 2004. He served as Director of Tata Energy Research Institute., since 1981. Dr. Pachauri serves as Member of National Environmental Council, Government of India under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister of India. He serves as a Member of the International Solar Energy Society, World Resources Institute, World Energy Council. Dr. Pachauri has been Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India since July 2001. He serves as Member of the Oil Industry Restructuring Group, for the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. Dr. Pachauri serves as a Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. He served as an Advisor to the Government of India. Dr. Pachauri also served as Director of Consulting and Applied Research Division at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad. He served as Visiting Professor, Resource Economics at the College of Mineral and Energy Resources, West Virginia University. Dr. Pachauri served as a Member of the faculty of several prominent academic and research institutions and has published 22 books and several papers and articles. He received the Padma Bhushan award. Dr. Pachauri was a Senior Visiting Fellow of Resource Systems Institute, East — West Center, USA. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at The World Bank, Washington, DC and McCluskey Fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University. Dr. Pachauri received a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. and a Masters of Science in Industrial Engineering in 1972.