Now that Dr. Rajenda Pachauri has blown all his (and the IPCC’s) credibility with denouncing complaints about the flawed glaciers melt date as “voodoo science”, the pundits, both serious and silly, are getting to work. On the serious side we have Geoffry Lean, the father of environmental reporting (40 years) in the UK calling for Pachauri’s resignation.
On the silly side, Pachauri may be selling insurance soon. With Mr Pachauri’s penchant for hyperbole and sensationalism, I could easily see him selling catastrophic health insurance as a natural career path at this point. Good luck sir.
From “I hate the media” Pachauri may be the new mascot for Geico Insurance, screencap below.
For our readers outside the USA, this video video below might help you understand why most American readers are ROTFL about right now. We’ve been saturation bombed in the USA with these commercials over the last several years.
Geico now has a new mascot, with a British (or maybe Australian, I can’t tell) accent no less:
While the science is far more important than the satire, Pachauri is now becoming a serious public relations liability to the IPCC, as the Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean points out.
h/t to Joe
I don’t think drawing attention to Pachauri’s mug is very appealing. That’s how everyone of us would look if we let beards grow. That is how people from India look like. 🙂
The man is articulate, well-dressed, well connected and a Nobel Prize winner.
If Pachauri should be stepping down, it should be because of numerous conflicts of interest dealings, rather than due to Glaciergate.
If the IPCC gets caught with its pants down, who else but Pachauri will take it on the chin? Certainly not climate scientists like Susan ‘Ozone Hole’ Solomon – Lead Author of Technical Summary WG I, who is said to be next in line for the Nobel Prize. Not Michael Mann flush with stimulus funds, another IPCC lead author of yore. All the warmist scientist-activists will retract their claws, put their heads down and keep digging if we scapegoat Pachauri for scientific errors.
I just find it counterproductive to ridicule the man because of his looks, and it triggers my ethics alarm too.
Ridicule the man for what he says or what he does, no problem with that. Ridicule is a legitimate and powerful weapon when used properly, but it can backfire when used inappropriately.
I have no problem with ridicule in general. For example the “I will float much higher” quote was very funny indeed.
“It is time for the embattled Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC)…”
Lean blew that acronym. How?
Jarryd Beck (11:43:49) :
“I can’t distinguish the Canadian and US accents . . .”
I have lived about half my adult life equally in both the US and Canada and I can assure you that there is a distinct Canadian accent, but only French Canadians speak it – in French.
Newfoundlanders have at least two distinct accents – Townie and Back Bay. I would not call Newfoundlanders Canadian though in a strict sense. Most Canadians think of Newfoundlanders as quasi foreigners and most Newfoundlanders think of Canadians in much the same way.
The best way to think of it is that Canadians speak standard North American English without a regional accent. This is why Canadians do so well as news readers in the US.
Geoffrey Lean’s article claiming that Asia was turning to desert and that the great rivers were drying up could only be written by a scientific ignoramus. River flow isn’t due to net glacier melt, and if it were then glacial refreeze would cause the effects he’s in hysteria about, not glacial melt. What a dope.
GEICO – Government Employees Insurance Company.
Stephen Brown (11:08:09) :
Humour is one of the most devastating forms of criticism. Laughter will serve to drive these charlatans from power faster than any reasoned logic.
Once the stand-up comics start on the AGWs then the battle is almost over.
http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/120348/detail/
Check the survey at 17 minutes-in Penn and Teller’s hilarious “Being Green” episode.
India continues to report on Pachauri:
Did ‘Himalayan blunder’ help TERI get lucrative grants?
HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times Delhi, January 24, 2010
Speculating on how the caveman interview might pan out:
Not funny. It’s extremely important to make the skeptical argument, which I believe to be true. Part of that might be pointing out conflicts of interest, etc. but ad hominem, low-brow attacks like this are not only unnecessary, they can easily be used to paint you as irrelevant hicks. Why do this?
REPLY: I carried the Climatgate video right after the CRU emails were made public, it was also satire and had visual “ad homs” if you will. Not a lot of complaints about that one and it depicted Dr. Michael Mann, Al Gore, and Dr. Phil Jones in similar situations. Like I said in an earlier comment, I’ll be happy to pull this entry if Dr. Pachauri will apologize for using the term “deniers”. – A
To me, Canadians sound similar to Minnesotans, eh?
Keep the Lame Duck right where he’s at.
the Incredible Pachauri Climate Choo-choo… pretty hard to top a circus act like that. He’ll be melting around the mountain when he comes.
Really. I can’t think of a better way to repay someone who cries wolf than to make him simmer in his own doings.
Geoffrey Lean is not, as a rule, to be taken seriously, as a couple of previous comments have pointed out, and his calls for Pachauri’s resignation are motivated solely by the damage he is doing to the warmist cause. So no-one should get too excited about his article.
As a Midwesterner, I have difficulty hearing a Canadian accent except as follows:
Car broken down, Alberta, side of road. Flag down RCMP. Mountie says, “What’s this, a boat?” “No, it’s a car and it’s broken.”
Jarryd Beck (11:43:49) :
Haha Australian or British. I thought everyone could tell those apart. I’m Australian and I’m telling you we sound nothing like that. Although I can’t distinguish the Canadian and US accents which sound similar so that’s probably the same thing.
and
Doug in Seattle (12:06:49) :
I have lived about half my adult life equally in both the US and Canada and I can assure you that there is a distinct Canadian accent, but only French Canadians speak it – in French.
Newfoundlanders have at least two distinct accents – Townie and Back Bay. I would not call Newfoundlanders Canadian though in a strict sense. Most Canadians think of Newfoundlanders as quasi foreigners and most Newfoundlanders think of Canadians in much the same way.
The best way to think of it is that Canadians speak standard North American English without a regional accent. This is why Canadians do so well as news readers in the US.
Say what? Both of these comments would be pure hogwash. Canadians don’t think of Newfies as foreigners, although some Newfies do.
Canada does have accents and dialects. Natives (not First Nations) of southern Ontario speak what is called the Midland dialect. THe US, however has a much wider range of accents I suspect than either Canada or Britain. I can readily sort out the regional origins of a great many Americans, even so much as to sort out whether someone is from western New York state or New York City. Its been observed that the explanation for the extensive collection of accents is that Americans didn’t travel much in the first 200 years, leading to a degree of linguistic isolation, pretty much making a resident of Shenandoah almost unintelligible to the rest of the US… LOL!
Canadian Mao Stlong speak mandalin: AGW biggy scam.
…-
“Xie’s comments caused consternation at the end of the post-meeting press conference, with his host, the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, attempting to play down any suggestions of dissent over the science of climate change.
Ramesh refused to accept China had stepped out of line, although he conceded: “We still need more science to understand whether global warming is causing glacial melt or whether it is the natural cycles.”
Responding to a question about the controversy over the melting of Himalayan glaciers and to fresh doubts cast on the link between global warming and extreme weather events, Xie said there were still “disputes” in the scientific community over the causes.
“Now the mainstream view is according to the review reports by the IPCC,” he said. “There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issues is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research, that we need to have as inclusive as possible all kinds of views concerning this aspect, because we want our views to be more scientific and to be more consistent.”
Asked later to clarify his remarks, he said: “It is already a solid fact that the climate is already warming. The scientists have already shown that te global climate is warming.
“Due to the climate change influences, the countries that have been actively impacted most are those developing countries, in particular those small island countries. And the major reason of this climate change issue is the unconstrained emissions produced by developed countries in the process of their industrialisation. That is the mainstream view and we need to make responses concerning these views. There are some uncertain views but our attitude is open, that we need to have more studies. But this shall not impede our efforts in combating the climate change.”
“Climate change: Chinese adviser calls for open mind on causes
China’s most senior negotiator on climate change says more research needed to establish whether warming is man-made”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/24/china-climate-change-adviser
Pachauri should not resign. He is the top manager of the IPCC and he should manage the wind down of the operation. He should be the one to turn off the lights after everyone is gone.
I appreciate those who are attempting to limit the debate to facts, and not name calling. That ship sailed long ago though. Skeptics are consistently labeled as deniers who don’t even have the ability of a caveman to interpret the ‘real’ science. A poke back is fair game.
No chance of them using a lizard. Al Gore needs all available lizards for “Snake Oil Extender”
Sadly Geoffrey Lean himself just doesn’t get it. He and his ilk ought to be out of a job. They’ve puffed this nonsense for years.
Mark (10:16:46) : :”…most brits and aussies cant tell an american accent from a canadian !”
Maybe that’s because Canadians are Americans, eh?
That glottal stop has to be English, London, probably south of the river
In challenging Pachauri on the facts, be prepared for warmists any day now to aggressively counter by slinging accusations of racism.
After all, it’s the liberal way.
Anand Rajan KD (11:51:03) : “…If the IPCC gets caught with its pants down, who else but Pachauri will take it on the chin? Certainly not…Susan ‘Ozone Hole’ Solomon…Michael Mann….All the warmist scientist-activists will retract their claws, put their heads down and keep digging if we scapegoat Pachauri for scientific errors.”
Good comment. I agree, Anand. (Except the first part about Indians looking like Rajendra Pachauri. Most Indians are much better looking, bearded or not.) Namaste!
jorgekafkazar (13:37:41) :
Mark (10:16:46) : :”…most brits and aussies cant tell an american accent from a canadian !”
Maybe that’s because Canadians are Americans, eh?
Well, the way to tell us apart is to say that to a Canadian…
Choo-Choo interviewed: AGW designed/built by a committee of “over 4,000 people”.
Does that make Choo-Choo a camel jockey or a mahout?
Choo-Choo says:
“The skeptics want to continue with their lifestyle and ruin the environment. My conscience does not allow it. As Al Gore says, it is an inconvenient truth.”
“Over 4,000 people are involved in an IPCC report. For the fourth assessment report, there were 450 authors, 800 contributing authors and 2,500 expert reviewers.”
…-
“‘It’s a mistake, but glacier melting is real’
Q&A: R K Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Kalpana Jain / New Delhi January 24, 2010, 0:44 IST
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, R K Pachauri, tells Kalpana Jain that the glacier melting report was a mistake but that does not detract from the fact that glaciers are melting
How big do you consider the goof-up on dates (of glaciers melting) and will it change the ongoing climate change talks?
We realised it was a mistake and stated that very clearly in a statement. I don’t want to minimise the mistake itself. But in no way does it detract from reality — that there is widespread mass loss of glaciers.
We have said this clearly in our synthesis report, which is the last of the four documents we bring out as part of an assessment report. This error was not there in the synthesis report. But we had a very clear statement on climate change.
What is the synthesis report and how widely is it circulated?
The synthesis report is the last of the documents. It is the most widely-read report, meant for policy-makers. We have three working group reports — each of them about 3,000 pages. The synthesis report takes the essence of all these three reports and presents them in a manner that is readable for policy makers.
It is interesting that the synthesis report does not pick up this point, which seems to have emerged as an important point in the fourth assessment report.
I’ll tell you why. That is because mention of disappearance by 2035 is something that IPCC, as a style, never promotes. All our future projections are exactly what they are supposed to be — projections. We provide a range. We provide a scenario. We never say something will happen by so and so date.
The environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, has called the contents of the IPCC report “voodoo science”
I would much rather not comment on it. He has been a friend of mine for over 30 years. He is a friend today. I hope he remains a friend.
The lead author of the Asia section of the report, Prof Murari Lal, said IPCC changed rules for the fourth assessment report to include non-peer-reviewed literature. Is that so?
That’s not true. It wasn’t the first time. It is there in the established procedures of IPCC that we can use non-peer-reviewed literature, what we call grey literature. It is there on our website. Where we use grey literature, we are required to closely check sources and verify the authenticity of our information. That’s where the failure took place. That should never have happened.
What is the process of choosing authors?
Over 4,000 people are involved in an IPCC report. For the fourth assessment report, there were 450 authors, 800 contributing authors and 2,500 expert reviewers.” (more)
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/%5Cit%5Csmistakeglacier-melting-is-real%5C/383467/
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi