U.N. Climate Chief Resigns amid Sex Scandal
Climate Change Weekly #161
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations’ influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has resigned in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. I say good riddance to a bad apple!
During Pachauri’s 13-year tenure as chair of IPCC, the organization won a Nobel Peace Prize and was marred by many controversies, including the Climategate scandal and exposure of its reliance on non-peer-reviewed reports from environmental lobbying groups. Under Pachauri, no claim from environmentalists was too far-fetched to be included in IPCC’s supposedly authoritative scientific reports.
Marc Morano, executive editor of website ClimateDepot, says Pachauri had become a polarizing figure and has done IPCC a favor by resigning. “The IPCC is quietly popping champagne corks today,” Morano said. “Pachauri gone can only be good news for the U.N. IPCC.”
Morano says Pachauri should have resigned sooner. “If Pachauri had any decency, he would have resigned in the wake of the Climategate scandal, which broke in 2009,” said Morano. “Climategate implicated the upper echelon of IPCC scientists [when they attempted] to collude and craft a narrative on global warming while allowing no dissent. Or Pachauri could have resigned when he wished skeptics would rub asbestos on their faces or conceded that the IPCC was at the ‘beck and call’ of governments.
“There were so many opportunities to do the right thing and fade away,” said Morano. “But it took the proceedings of the Indian court system over the allegations of sexual harassment to finally bring Pachauri down. Things can only be looking up for the IPCC now [that it] has ridded itself of this political and ethical cancer.”
With Pachauri at the helm, each new IPCC report contained increasingly alarming claims concerning alleged dangers related to human-caused climate change, regardless of what scientific data actually revealed.
In his resignation letter, Pachauri stated, “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”
This, as much as anything else, may have been the problem with Pachauri’s term as head of IPCC. For Pachauri, battling human influence on the environment in general and global warming in particular was a religious mission he approached with the fervor of a zealot. He was not a climate scientist. Contrary evidence was to be attacked, not examined, and scientists or others who disagreed with IPCC in whole or in part were to be treated like heretics or apostates – having their careers and reputations burned at the stake.
On her blog, Nofrakkingconsensus.com, journalist Donna LaFramboise said, “Yes, the IPCC, which we’re told to take seriously because it is a scientific body producing scientific reports, has in fact been led by an environmentalist on a mission. By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling.”
As the search to find Pachauri’s replacement begins, in the words of my colleague Ron Arnold, “After more than twelve years of suffering under his ideological and economic harassment, the world should have only one regret about the resignation of Rajendra Pachauri as IPCC chairman, which is there will be a replacement.”
I couldn’t agree more.
– H. Sterling Burnett
SOURCES: Heartlander and BBC News and ClimateDepot.com
IN THIS ISSUE …
Unjust attack on climate expert Soon … Converts to climate skepticism … Skeptics know more about climate science than alarmists … Climate skeptic ‘witch hunt’ … E.U. reduces climate targets … Twenty reasons to believe polar bears are safe
UNJUST ATTACK ON CLIMATE EXPERT SOON
The New York Times did a hit piece on Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Willie Soon, wrongly, perhaps libelously, calling into question his ethics concerning research donations he brought into Smithsonian to support his work and whether it tainted his research. Unable to refute Soon’s research, the Times used research provided by Greenpeace to attack Soon’s credibility by implying some of his funding sources tainted his research. Soon raised more than $1.2 million from fossil-fuel companies over 11 years, 40 percent of which went directly to the Smithsonian, while the rest, amounting to less than $71,000 per year, covered Soon’s salary and expenses.
A look at one of the key grants, as pointed out by former NASA space architect Larry Bell, reveals important information about this alleged conflict of interest. “If the accusers had bothered to notice, those agreements only granted Southern a non-exclusive, irrevocable no-cost license to utilize the unclassified advance research data and results for its internal purposes,” said Bell. “The terms specifically noted that the Smithsonian Institution’s charter requires that all such grant results ‘must be unclassified, in order not to abridge the institution’s right to publish, without restriction, findings that result from this research project.'”
Noted scientists have come to Soon’s defense, including eminent physicist Freeman Dyson, who said, “The whole point of science it to question accepted dogmas. For that reason, I respect Willie Soon as a good scientist and a courageous citizen.” One wonders when or if the Times will get around to exposing alarmist scientists for their ties to and funding from liberal foundations and well-funded environmental lobbying groups.
SOURCES: The New York Times and Newsmax
CONVERTS TO CLIMATE SKEPTICISM
An article on the IPCC Report website highlights a number of prominent scientists who once believed humans were causing potentially catastrophic climate change but became climate skeptics after detailed research and seeing how IPCC and its political masters manipulated data and exaggerated findings of disaster. Among those who switched from believers to skeptics are Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace; prominent biologist Daniel Botkin; French hydrologist Jean-Louis Pinault; and German meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls. In an interview concerning his early support for the views of IPCC, Puls said, “I’m ashamed about it today. Pinault wrote a book, From the Melody of the Oceans to Climate Change: A Fight Against Ostracism, which reveals following retirement, Pinault felt able to pursue his research without concern for funding, and he concluded, ‘This long journey led me to admit that global warming has a natural cause.'”
SOURCE: IPCC Report
SKEPTICS KNOW MORE ABOUT CLIMATE SCIENCE THAN ALARMISTS
One of the constant refrains from climate-change mongers is climate realists just don’t understand the science and thus are not qualified to speak concerning the causes and consequences of global warming. A new study by Yale professor Dan Kahan indicates just the opposite is true. In general, climate skeptics understand climate science at least a little better than those who are true-believers of the human-caused climate change theory. In Kahan’s forthcoming Advances in Political Psychology paper, skeptics score slightly better on climate science questions than believers in manmade warming. The study asked 2,000 respondents nine questions about where scientists stand on climate science and skeptics got about 4.5 questions correct, whereas manmade warming believers got approximately 4 questions right.
SOURCE: Fox News
CLIMATE SKEPTIC ‘WITCH HUNT’
Scholars who dare question the Obama administration’s belief in human-caused climate catastrophe have a target on their backs. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), ranking member of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, is on a witch hunt. Grijalya sent letters to seven university presidents demanding information on funding sources, financial disclosure guidelines, and all draft testimony or exchanges relating to the testimony of select researchers who have testified before Congress on climate change issues.
The researchers under attack are: climatologist David Legates, University of Delaware; atmospheric scientist John Christy, University of Alabama; climatologist Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology; atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; geographer Robert C. Balling, Jr., Arizona State University; political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado; and historian Steven Hayward, Pepperdine University.
On a blog she maintains, Curry came out swinging, asking, “Are we not to be concerned by funding from green advocacy groups and scientists serving on the Boards of green advocacy groups?”
Because Pielke has repeatedly testified under oath before Congress, Grijalava knows he has never received any funding from fossil fuel companies and has no conflict of interest. Pielke wrote, “I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.”
What crimes have Pielke and the others committed meriting a congressional investigation? They disagreed with President Barack Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, and IPCC. Pielke wrote, “Congressman Grijalva doesn’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing on my part, either ethical or legal, because there is none. He simply disagrees with the substance of my testimony – which is based on peer-reviewed research funded by the US taxpayer, and which also happens to be the consensus of the IPCC (despite Holdren’s incorrect views).”
Pielke appears to have had enough, writing, “The incessant attacks and smears are effective, no doubt, I have already shifted all of my academic work away from climate issues. I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject. I can’t imagine the message being sent to younger scientists.”
Climate science has lost at least one true champion, and the battle for truth has lost a warrior.
SOURCES: The Climate Fix; The Weekly Standard; and Climate Etc.
E.U. REDUCES CLIMATE TARGETS
The European Union has decided when it comes to carbon cuts, there can be too much of a “good thing,” after all. A leaked document revealed an E.U. commission proposed counting landscape changes, including the carbon sinks created by forest regrowth, against its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. This will reduce the required emission reductions by 5 percent or more. The result would be less pressure on other sectors such as buildings, agriculture energy, and transportation to reduce their carbon emissions. Finland, Germany, and Poland are also believed to support a change. Eva Filzmoser from Carbon Market Watch said, “It would … set the EU off on a bad start towards agreeing on an ambitious international climate treaty in Paris in December 2015.”
SOURCE: Responding to Climate Change
TWENTY REASONS TO BELIEVE POLAR BEARS ARE SAFE
Zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan J. Crockford, Ph.D., of Canada’s University of Victoria, has assembled 20 indicators that show polar bears are not endangered by climate change. Crockford reports polar bears are a conservation success story, with the population today at more than 25,000 bears. There are more polar bears now, despite recent warming, than there were 40 years ago. Environment Canada’s most recent polar bear assessment lists only two populations as “likely in decline,” down from four in 2013 and seven in 2010. The most recent genetic studies published demonstrate polar bears have survived several previous warm periods, including one when there was virtually no summer sea ice. In addition, polar bear populations are well-distributed throughout their available habitat, a characteristic of a healthy species.
SOURCE: Polarbearscience.com
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H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
