Dr Rajendra Pachauri and the Ipcc – No Fossil Fool
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DR RAJENDRA PACHAURI AND THE IPCC – NO FOSSIL FOOL by Dennis Ambler SPPI ORIGINAL PAPER ♦ April 24, 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS SUMMARY FOR POLICY MAKERS ...................................................................................... 3 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 4 THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, (IPCC) ........................................ 5 EARLY PRONOUNCEMENTS AND POLICY STATEMENTS BY DR PACHAURI ................................ 7 CONTRACTION AND CONVERGENCE – THE GLOBAL COMMONS .................................................... 8 UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE ............................................. 9 TERI AND TATA HAVE NO CONNECTIONS ....................................................................... 10 DR RAJENDRA K PACHAURI AND THE IPCC ..................................................................... 11 DR PACHAURI “THE SCIENTIST" ................................................................................... 11 CLEAN DEVELOPMENT MECHANISM, (CDM) ................................................................... 15 TERI SUPPORT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UK TYNDALL CENTRE .............................. 19 CONTROVERSY OVER THE APPOINTMENT OF DR PACHAURI AS IPCC CHAIRMAN ................... 20 ENRON - INDIAN ODYSSEY 2001..................................................................................... 21 PROSPECTING FOR INVISIBLE GOLD ................................................................................. 22 INDIAN DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................................. 24 CDM FRAUD ............................................................................................................... 26 MORE COAL ......................................................................................................... 26 INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL LINKS – RESPONSES BY DR PACHAURI ......................................... 27 DR PACHAURI AND US CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY ............................................................. 28 TERI-NA .................................................................................................................... 28 ULTIMATE IPCC LIES PEDDLED BY DR PACHAURI ............................................................. 31 PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE CLAIM ........................................................................ 32 CONFLICT OF INTEREST? ................................................................................................ 32 HAS HE ENCOURAGED KPMG TO BREAK INDIAN ACCOUNTING LAWS? ........................................ 33 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 34 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 35 2 DR RAJENDRA PACHAURI AND THE IPCC – NO FOSSIL FOOL by Dennis Ambler | April 24, 2010 “Think Locally, Act Globally”1 SUMMARY FOR POLICY MAKERS For the last eight years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been under the chairmanship of Indian businessman and economist, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. He is frequently referred to as a climate scientist. He most emphatically is not, as is shown by his website biography. The IPCC is supposed to be advisory, not policy prescriptive. That principle has been scattered to the four winds under Dr Pachauri’s leadership. He has misrepresented himself as a scientist and allowed others to also misrepresent his qualifications without correction. He is not afraid to tell lies about the work of the Panel and the credibility of its processes, as he has demonstrated recently over claims in AR4 of accelerating disasters and shown to be dependent on questionable sources. He is still denying any flaws in the IPCC. He is not afraid to tell lies about his own business interests, including absolute denial that he has any business interests. He denies close relationships with the Tata group, a major global energy player, when he and some of his staff share a variety of committee and board-room places with them and work on projects together. He has a phenomenal portfolio of interests, both academic and financial, but denies any conflict of interest with his role at the IPCC and claims to receive no direct remuneration. He has links with activist groups such as WWF, WRI, NRDC and others and he has strong links with several long standing UN proponents of global governance such as Maurice Strong and Sir Crispin Tickle. He is a board member of carbon trading exchanges and as chairman of the IPCC he advocates carbon trading to “save the environment”. Some Teri staff members are also members of other organisations that benefit from the policies he advocates. At least one member is involved in carbon trading. Conflict of interest has been taken to new levels. 3 He and his staff make up a significant number of the Indian premier’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change and have major input into the National Plan. He and his colleague Nitin Desai are both involved with carbon trading companies. This is pure conflict of interest. Carbon policies in Europe are already damaging fragile economies and placing unfair energy cost burdens on the poor. Fraud is widespread. Dr Pachauri has persistently advocated energy control policies for the US and told Canada she should not harvest her oil shales, whilst at the same time insisting that India will not give up coal-fired power generation. He has had extended discussions over time with US policy makers, advocating cap and trade policies for the US. The whole thrust of climate talks has always been about wealth transfer from the developed world to the developing world. Yet it has long been accepted that if Kyoto had been adopted in full, it would have made an insignificant difference to global temperatures. The Indian government has an extensive arms program, including nuclear, running into tens of billions of dollars per year, whilst seeking wealth transfer from the West for its poor. This seems basically immoral. INTRODUCTION Much has been written over recent months about the enigmatic Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC), Dr Rajendra K Pachauri. He has been labeled a crook and a fraudster by some, because of his extensive interests in companies that stand to benefit from carbon trading, but those searching for direct and actionable evidence of wrong-doing will be disappointed. What they will find is someone who has used his position as IPCC Chairman to attract major funding to his own organization, The Energy and Resources Institute2 (TERI), known previously (and concurrently by some), as the Tata Energy Research Institute. His own country has benefited enormously from the mantra of sustainable development, and major funding from the UN Clean Development Mechanism. Since his appointment to the top IPCC job, TERI has expanded exponentially although he denies that his own wealth has done likewise. But make no mistake, TERI is Pachauri and Pachauri is TERI. 4 He insists he receives no direct payments for anything he does outside of TERI and claims, ironically, that he is being maligned by “vested interests”, a term to which he has given new meaning. His many links and associations, past and present, can be found on his website and translate to over ten pages of print. He is also recorded in several pages of Business Week and yet he denies he has business links. The nature of these links3 came to the fore at the end of 2009 and demonstrated the scale of the conflict of interest with his public position as head of IPCC. It would seem his message would be “Ask not what you can do for climate change, ask what climate change can do for you”. THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, (IPCC) The origins of the IPCC go back to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), organised by global governance The origins of promoter Maurice Strong and held in Stockholm in 1972. The conference led to the establishment the IPCC go back to the of the United Nations Environment Program, United Nations Conference (UNEP), which along with the World Meteorological Organisation, (WMO), produced on the Human Environment the IPCC in 1988. The First Assessment Report (FAR) was in 1990, followed in 1992 by the Earth (UNCHE), organised by Summit in Rio. The second assessment report, (SAR) was in 1995, the third assessment report, global governance promoter (TAR), in 2001, and the fourth assessment, (AR4), Maurice Strong and held in in 2007. AR5 is on the stocks and expected in 2013/14. Dr Pachauri has said it is “his mission” to Stockholm in 1972. deliver this further report and refuses to step down in the face of much public controversy about his role at IPCC. It seems that he already knows what the next IPCC report, AR5, will contain, as he revealed in this talk to a meeting at the New York offices of the Bahai International Community in September 2009. As expected the situation will be even worse than before, but the numbers of scientists seems to have taken a tumble: “When the IPCC’s fifth assessment comes out in 2013 or 2014, there will be a major revival of interest in action that has to be taken,” said Dr. Pachauri, speaking of the periodic assessments rendered by the group of more than 400 scientists around the world that he leads. “People are going to say, ‘My God, we are going to