From the Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2008
PERSON OF INTEREST RAJENDRA PACHAURI
By Michael Hawthorne
Story link: Blunt answers about risks of global warming
Note: Photo changed to this one at 4:40PM PST 8/3/08 due to previous one inviting negative comments about Pachauri’s personal appearance. – Anthony
Rajendra Pachauri isn’t nearly as famous as Al Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with an international panel on climate change that Pachauri, an Indian scientist and economist, has led since 2002. But as chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri has an urgent message for world leaders about the perils of global warming. He talked to the Tribune recently while he was in town to meet with Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago civic leaders. An edited transcript follows.
Excerpts:
Q: What do you think about the small but vocal group of doubters still out there
Pachauri Answer: There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every year to say the Earth is flat. The science about climate change is very clear. There really is no room for doubt at this point.
Q: What have you done personally to shrink your carbon footprint?
A: I’ve become a vegetarian. I try to minimize the use of cars. Where I’ve failed is my impact with regard to air travel. I tell people I was born a Hindu who believes in reincarnation. It will take me the next six lives to neutralize my carbon footprint. There’s no way I can do it in one lifetime
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Im sorry but he looks like the Geico Caveman!
They are all still flat out wrong!
As one of ‘a small but vocal group’ I say ‘ostrich’ !
Pachauri
How about some facts to support your position. The AGW story was hard to support ten years ago, but now impossible to defend. To call to your support ‘Flat Earthers’ as a rebuttal to facts seems quite a reach.
shaking head, that’s about all I can say…..nothing
I love the part about it’s all the USA’s fault. I seem to recall that we followed Europe in the Industrial Revolution.
Glad to see it’ll be at least least six generations before the world comes to an end.
Check out the sea ice at the north pole May 6th 1986
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nuclear_Submarines_surfaced_at_the_North_Pole.jpg#filelinks
Now UN officials are resorting to name-calling. But they still run from any debate.
Well, he is the Bush Administration’s pick for the post (may be under the advice of some with oil interests), to replace Robert Watson, whom the administration did not like. Imagine how it would be if Watson is still there.
“There’s no way I can do it in one lifetime!”
Yet, he expects everyone else to abstain from carbon. These arrogant bureaucrats think reducing carbon emissions is for little unimportant people only. High priests like Gore and Pachauri, through their holiness and righteousness, are exempt
“It will take me the next six lives to neutralize my carbon footprint.”
No disrespect intended, but wouldn’t he have to come back as a plant to neutralize his carbon footprint?
It seems more and more evident that the UN and other international agencies are under someone’s thumb and cannot be trusted; I don’t believe in giving up one iota of sovereignty to these corrupt organizations led by morons!
and this is the person who is head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
How can he make this statement with a straight face
Q: Some scientists think your panel’s conclusions are too conservative and underestimate the risks we face. Is it too late to act?
A: The fact that the impacts of climate change are turning out to be more serious than we expected shows how important it is to act soon. If we do nothing, things are going to get so much worse. We should do something about climate change with a sense of urgency.
What we’ve all been waiting for, a realistic cost-effective solution to the AGW problem.
… It will take me the next six lives to neutralize my carbon footprint. There’s no way I can do it in one lifetime! …
So much for the “wisdom of India”.
My understanding of karma and reincarnation is that it’s all pretty tit-for-tat. Eat a cow, get reincarnated as a cow that gets eaten. I wonder what you need to be born as to work out all those carbon offsets. A tree? Phytoplankton? Al Gore?
That photo alone makes me squeamish. Having a post about Gore or Hansen is bad enough, but a third rate non-entity? It’s almost as though The Astronomical Journal were to devote an issue to discussing the values that astrology could impart to the science of astronomy. Just thinking such thoughts makes me feel unclean.
IMHO, Flat Earth and Reincarnation belong to the same category.
A.S.A. Another Salaried Activist.
The wiki has him down as “an economist and environmental scientist ” possibly hoping that further scrutiny will be avoided. He has zero “environmental” qualifications (MS in Industrial Engineering in 1972, a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Economics). So he is just like our Al. Well, maybe not.
I do not partake of, or condone, ridicule of a person’s chosen religion (I have a Hindu daughter amongst my diverse offspring) but must point out the parallels between believing in reincarnation or CO2=warming or, indeed, a flat Earth.
Activists, especially, do not thoroughly investigate claims or think innovatively (in general) and in so doing become prey for those who …ahem, twist the facts around the agenda rather than vice versa. A lot of quackery gets through to the public awareness in just this way.
In the seventies, I lived in the US. At that time, Richard Daley was Mayor of Chicago. It was the time when Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. Wasn’t he last seen somewhere near Chicago? I remember that Daley organized a big wedding for his son, with a lot of (old) Daley’s friends participating.
When Kennedy was elected, Daley also had been Mayor of Chicago. Kennedy took Illinois, a decisive vote. Chicago results which came in after the (Republican) rest of the state, made the difference. There is a conspiracy theory that Kennedy disappointed Daley’s friends and had to pay a final price for it.
Now we know why Pachauri visited present day Daley. He probably asked present day Daley to ask his friends to do him a favor. GOING AFTER THE FLAT EARTHERS!!!
“What do you think about the small but vocal group of doubters still out there ?”
Mr. Michael Hawthorne is actually not aware, that the group of doubters is huge and growing.
Sadly for Mr. Pachauri, it seems more likely that the alarmist positions will be regarded like the Piltdown man.
An elaborate hoax, that many choose to go along with because it serves their agenda.
Robert
He must be offsetting some of that carbon footprint by avoiding barbers.
Luckily, I was born in America and believe in neither the perils of global warming nor reincarnation.
Dogmatic orthodoxy exhibiting a closed mind. Contrary evidence no longer makes any impression.
Well, there you have it. Some guy who believes in reincarnation thinks we are all kooks.
Wow, great guy.
What a great idea. I am now a Hindu and will expiate my climate sins in my subsequent lives.