Pearce writes:
…
If governments won’t fire him when the IPCC meets at the Korean seaside resort of Busan next week, he should fall on his sword. For the good of the battered reputation of climate-change science. For the good of the planet.
Patchy is an amiable, bearded, vegetarian railway engineer and cricket fanatic, born under the British Raj in India. He has been showered with prizes, including Indian of the Year in 2007, and held jobs all over the world. He got the IPCC chair in 2002, after the Americans fell out with the then chairman, a Brit called Bob Watson, who is now our Government’s chief environmental scientist.
But Patchy is not a climate scientist. And he is 70 years old now. There have been too many mistakes during his eight years at the top of the IPCC. And he has made too many of them worse. Patchy is no longer part of the solution to telling the world about climate science. He is part of the problem.
Actually I think it was Booker and North that lit the fuse, but either way, your work has been important and your call for resignation correct. – Anthony
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I think the Nobel Peace Prize is positively cursed…
Yes it was Booker North and the reason he must go is there is too much conflict of interest between being head of TERI and IPCC chairman at the same time. His Voodoo science remark was awful and smeared a reputable scientist and his bookeeping ( see his TERI Europe accounts) is also awful http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/before-and-after.html.
More on TERI Europe and thePatchy North history
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/kpmg-review-pachauri/
I’m impressed with the irony of Fred being in early on the GlacierGate mess. I think it works on him a little, too. See how humbled he is by it?
==========
Er……., you reported from the Daily Mail. Kiss of death mate. The newspaper is re-known in the UK for barking mad headlines and an economic approach to facts. Stick to the broadsheets. Quoting from the Daily Mail is like using graphs from the National Enquirer.
Now, now Fred let’s not be too hasty. Patchy did help to win the Nobel Peace Prize for the IPCC, didn’t he? That has to count for a lot.
The mistakes in the reports? Gavin over at RC has already explained all that. In such a massive undertaking a few minor errors are bound to happen. We’re all human.
The chairman of the IPCC doesn’t need to be a scientist, just an administrator, which Patchy is.
Let’s face it, Fred. The IPCC just wouldn’t be the IPCC without good ole Patchy, now would it?
I think you should reconsider, Fred.
heh
Chris. Booker has a good article in today’s Sunday Telegraph. Booker and R. North have been tireless investigators of ‘Patchy’. I certainly wouldn’t want those two terriers investigating me.
Gareth Phillips says:
October 3, 2010 at 10:52 am
[…]The newspaper is re-known in the UK for […]
It’s “renowned”.
@brego: “a few minor errors”?
Sorry?
[REPLY – He was waxing ironic. ~ Evan]
Gareth Phillips says:
October 3, 2010 at 10:52 am
Save the Pachauri!
Gareth Phillips says:
October 3, 2010 at 10:52 am
Actually, they’re quoting from Fred Pearce, who happens to have written his opinion column in the Mail. The fact that it’s in the Mail doesn’t alter the fact that this is still the same Fred Pearce who writes for New Scientist (which, despite being the Hello Magazine of science reporting, is still a highly visible media outlet for science news and forms part of the vanguard of the more extreme Environmentalist movement).
The Mail is irrelevant to this. He could have written his column in the Daily Star or, yes, the national enquirer. Dismissing the message because you don’t like the way the messenger behaves in his free time is a little obtuse, don’t you think?
The Daily Mail is Main Stream Media, and read by the masses. That makes it indicative of what’s now getting through in the MSM.
Reaction to the feedback on the article is quite interesting too.
As far as it went, I think Fred Pearce did an excellent article.
Congrats, Fred, you are halfway there. Upholding proper procedure.
But you’ve still got the other half to cross. The science. Which means understanding enough of the evidence direct to be convinced.
* The inflation of warming due to a whole basketful of factors corrupting the data and insufficiently or improperly accounted-for.
* The artificial depression of past temperature records due to the very nature of the calibration of proxies, that cannot help but mine for hockey sticks.
*The artificial depression of past CO2 levels due to a whole basketful of factors causing its partial escape from ice cores before measurement.
* The city-dwellers’ failure to comprehend the vast mass of the oceans, compared with the tiny mass of the atmosphere, and their capacity, following Henry’s Law, to outgas CO2 far in excess of all our emissions, at the tiniest global temperature increase.
* The reluctance to look at what is staring everyone in the face: the Sun: because its measured effects, still very inadequately understood, do not seem to match up to the measured temperature changes.
* The pandemic of fear among top scientists, of losing face, which would never have happened had debate not been suppressed.
But nobody wants to get rid of real scientists. We need good science. And real apologies, and plans for reform, with checkable openness and welcome to good citizens’ science, are warmly acceptable. Fred, I believe the best thing you can do now is to encourage open, public, high-level science debates. Skeptics would be more than willing and able to participate, if the conditions are fair.
Brego wrote “The mistakes in the reports? Gavin over at RC has already explained all that. In such a massive undertaking a few minor errors are bound to happen. We’re all human.
The chairman of the IPCC doesn’t need to be a scientist, just an administrator, which Patchy is.” I take it your remarks are heavy with sarcasm, or perhaps you have only read the official Patchy/IPCC version of the mistakes in the IPCC documents.
JUST AN ADMINISRTRATOR?
Only today in the Sunday Telegraph we have these figures for TERI Europe which show that for three years running Patchy’s TERI Europe were underdeclaring their income to the British Charity comision by about 85%. IE only 15% of the money going into the charity was being declared.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/before-and-after.html
and here we have more prolems with his declared expense accounts http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/kpmg-review-pachauri/
Patchy is not corrupt, just an incompetant administrator of accounts and he smears the reputations of good scientists who shine a light on mistakes of the IPCC
The daily Mail is certainly not the American Enquirer of the UK, or even any thing like it as some people try to make out. It’s main stream media and Anthony is correct with the title ‘ New Scientist’s Fred Pearce calls for Pachauri to resign’. The article is what is says on the box….
Lucy Skywalker
At Eleven Thirty-eight
AM says it all.
=======
No keep him. He is a disaster zone, we need people like that to further weaken the trust in climate “science”m
On a separate subject, nice to see the 30 percent arctic ice up in line with 2005.
I would actually prefer him to stay – he’s doing a stirling job !!!
If the IPCC appointed someone who actually functioned in the role and didn’t create mayhem with conflicts, bad press, bodging results then our mission of accountability would be so much harder.
Long may he
reignrain – he’s bringing down the house of cards quite ablyAndy
I think that Anthony – or any high-profile good sceptic, for that matter – should start a campaign to keep Patchy exactly where he is. If ever there’s a petition to keep him on, my name will be top. I think most of us can agree that this man is the embodiment of the IPCC.
In case you folks with a “nose in the air” need a good “whooping”…
I worked in nuclear power for 20 years. In 1981 the National Enquirer published a Headline Story: “Three Mile Island Was A Hoax”. When you read the content, it pretty much told the story CORRECTLY. Indicating that there was never a significant hazard to the public, and that despite the Walter Cronkite “Frankenstein in Pennsylvania” comments of the MSM, the situation was always very much “under control”. I found the article to be the most accurate and factual thing I’d read in the “media” to date. But then, what do I know…I’ve only spent hours working at, and in and about nuclear power plants….
Before slandering the “tabloids” for being trite and “off the mark”, perhaps a good idea to do some investigation and find that THEY OFTEN GET IT RIGHT, and they OFTEN GET THE SCOOPS well before the MSM outlets!
Fred’s attempt to appear as a man of science and an environmentalist of principle is quite ironic – he has a long history of using carefully selected data to support whatever his cause du jour happens to be, usually a hatchet job on some organisation, industry or country for their huuuuuuge carbon footprint. Fred is an unreconstructed Green publicist and his grasp of scientific method and principles appears exceeding thin; the Himalayan glaciers fiasco largely stems from Fred’s own intial unquestioning and sensationalist journalism, which he, to give him credit in this instance, has held his hand up for, but one ‘Swallow does not a Summer make’.
“And he is 70 years old now.”
Outrageous, ageist comment.
Lucy Skywalker wrote:
“Congrats, Fred, you are halfway there. Upholding proper procedure.”
Lucy, if you think Fred Pearce is ditching Patchy in order to return truth and objectivity to climate science, you are seriously mistaken.
The only reason that the propagandists like Pearce have turned on their spokesman is because he’s failed to get the message over. He tried too hard and bent the rules. Yet all the time when he was lying about Himalayan glaciers and the Amazon rainforest, Pearce and his ilke were cheering him on. They cheered him when they thought he could get away with it. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for the rest of us, the public have seen through the charade. The only thought on Fred’s mind is ‘we need to replace him with someone who won’t get caught in future.’
What hypocrites!
Long live Pachy.
Tabloids need to be and are quite scrupulous with the facts because of their flirtation with the limits of libel laws.
David Waring says:
October 3, 2010 at 11:14 am
Gareth Phillips says:
October 3, 2010 at 10:52 am
[…]The newspaper is re-known in the UK for […]
It’s “renowned”.
——————————————————–
Thanks David, it is indeed, it is indeed. The issue of Fred’s piece being in the Daily Mail does not invalidate his opinion any more than if it had been published in the National Enquirer. It’s just that once something is published in that notorious rag, it is automatically subject to doubt regardless of scientific accuracy. Does anyone ever believe anything written in that illustrious journal? Next weeksDaily Mail headline will probably be something like “Patchy, does he give your pension cancer and cause house prices to fall?”