Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
There is a core of uber-consulting professionals, jetting around the world advising companies, governments and NGO’s. They are well-educated, have impeccable resumes and travel more than George Clooney did in ‘Up in the Air.’ They work for companies like McKinsey, Price Waterhouse Coopers, and a handful of others.
Rajendra Pachauri is one such, coming from the Tata school of consultancy. He is charismatic, projecting leadership qualities and obviously considers himself a polymath, able to lead a secretariat of the UN, continue his professional duties and write a popular bodice ripper of a novel.
Sadly, like so many other uber-consultants, Pachauri’s leadership qualities have been more apparent than real. While others are using the current troubles at the IPCC as a reason to argue for his resignation, they are really more of a symptom of the real problems.
Because the IPCC is very small and its primary mission is to produce a report once every five or six years, it is vulnerable to the type of leadership Pachauri apparently provides–detached, aloof, hands-off. That Pachauri had time to write a book during the firestorm of Climategate and COP-15 is evidence that, whatever his capabilities, his performance at the IPCC was not sufficiently engaged. His shabby treatment of IPCC scientists regarding the error on Himalayan glaciers is more of an exclamation point than anything else.
Roger Pielke Jr. and others are saying Pachauri should resign because of conflicts of interest. Pachauri is director of TERI and advises third parties on energy policy and investment decisions. Pielke is right in saying that Pachauri would not meet the standards for avoiding conflicts of interest in many other organisations, including other UN bodies. But those standards are not in place at the IPCC, although they are recommended in yesterday’s report from the InterAcademy Council.
I also think Pachauri should resign. But not because of conflicts of interest. His continued involvement with TERI, his taking time to write a book, his hectic social schedule all point to another, more serious problem. His detached style of leadership has coincided with a period of continuous problems at the organisation he leads. And I’m not referring to the occasional error that inevitably slips into their huge assessment reports. The IPCC has not moved with the times during Pachauri’s tenure. They have not adapted to an age of the Internet in facilitating communications.
They have not recognised the political pressure that environmental organisations are trying to put on national and international governments and institutions. This has led to a careless over use of ‘grey’ literature, which is not peer reviewed and often has a clear point to push. The IPCC has not instituted a clear and effective way of dealing with mistakes, despite it getting ever easier to do this. Perhaps most damaging, the IPCC has adopted a view on communications that is from another century, focused on getting their message out, as opposed to listening and responding.
These are classic failures of leadership. Nobody but Rajendra Pachauri is responsible for these problems. Good leadership would have corrected them years ago. Detached leadership smiles and writes a book. Pachauri played socialite while his organisation stagnated. He received awards–not just the Nobel Prize, which he shared with Al Gore, but also the French Legion of Honour, Order of the White Rose from Finland, and the Padma Bhushan from his native India. He is apparently his organisation’s chief press officer, and its ambassador as well, flying all over the world to meetings and conferences. And yes, he does have other interests, including the Tata Energy Research Institute.
The IPCC’s–and Rajendra Pachauri’s–real problem is not a conflict of interest. It is a lack of interest. Pachauri fiddled while the IPCC foundered. He should go.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Gareth says:
August 31, 2010 at 6:30 pm
I echo the calls for the IPCC to be disbanded.
….
For as long as the IPCC has existed it has mostly served as an excuse for inaction, taxpayer funded jollies to holiday resorts (and Copenhagen) and props up potty answers to a *potential* problem. It is riddled with vested interests and highly susceptible to fraud.(see: Clean development mechanism, carbon credits, REDD, etc) We do not need them. Redistribute wealth by choice through trade and nations can afford their own climate change adaption programmes, if they chose to spend anything on it at all.
__________________
You guys don’t seem to get it: IPCC does not pay writers or chair persons,
nor Pauchuri. Don’t mix governmental summits (Copenhagen), Kyoto
mechanisms (CDM) and programs (REDD) with IPCC.
In fact the IAC report, which, I understand, is rather to your liking at WUWT,
proposes to pay fees and salaries to key persons, grants for developing country participants for attending meetings etc.
Well educated people tend to believe stuff the average peasant would react to by demanding “Prove it!”
The UN has proved time and again that it is a wonderful mechanism for advancing careers for its often dubious insiders without acheiving much of any real worth, apart from a few ‘show trials’ of war criminals in various theatres long after the deeds. A friend who voluntarily drove trucks full of food and medical supplies in aid convoys in the Balkan nastiness of recent memory was scathing about that august body and was convinced that the UN, as he experienced it in a wartime context, was spectacularly and expensively useless for its stated purpose, but was a wonderfully effective gravy train for those who had swallowed their principles and boarded it.
In my view, the IPCC was formed to promote an agenda; now the actual and real scientific evidence against that agenda is emerging, the IPCC and its spurious aims must be disbanded and abandoned.
Dear Mr Pihlstrom; where on earth did you get the hilarious idea that the MSM is mostly at fault for the world-wide phenomenon of Joe Public deciding they don’t trust the Warmers and their message that we are all doomed by producing plant food.
I suggest you do a small piece of research – go in to a random newspaper’s ‘morgue’ and count the pro-warming articles vs the articles sceptical of AGW. You may learn something!
Another one from the UK Press:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7974521/IPCCs-Rajendra-Pachauri-is-damaging-the-world.html
An article criticising Pachauri from Geoffrey Lean, no less, who has been an open AGW supporter in many other articles previously.
Alexander K says:
September 1, 2010 at 3:52 am
Dear Mr Pihlstrom; where on earth did you get the hilarious idea that the MSM is mostly at fault for the world-wide phenomenon of Joe Public deciding they don’t trust the Warmers and their message that we are all doomed by producing plant food.
I suggest you do a small piece of research – go in to a random newspaper’s ‘morgue’ and count the pro-warming articles vs the articles sceptical of AGW. You may learn something!
—————————
I was refering to the IPCC review as presented by the press; overall
sloppy and inacccurate reporting + deliberate misrepresentation from
in the worst cases.
For instance, Express: “A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims
about global warming.”
Compare that to the IAC text:
“The Committee concludes that the IPCC assessment process has been
successful overall and has served society well. The commitment of many
thousands of the world’s leading scientists andother experts to the
assessment process and to the communication of the nature of our
understanding of the changing climate, its impacts, and possible
adaptation and mitigation strategies is a considerable achievement in
its own right.”
“Our task was to broadly assess the processes and procedures of the IPCC
and make recommendations on how they might be improved in order
to enhance the quality and authoritative nature of future assessments.”
In other words they did not primarily evaluate the science, but still
praised it many times.
vigilantfish says:
August 31, 2010 at 6:24 pm
It’s a sign of how far the IPCC’s status has dropped that there are so few comments (so far) on this posting and the one about the IAC report on the IPCC. This is about chickens coming home to roost and these outcomes were long ago predicted here at WUWT. It’s almost like deja vu.
——————-
Has IPCC’s status really dropped?
– at WUWT it has been constantly low, no drop here
– the IAC report suggests procedural improvements to raise IPCC’s status
– the IPCC 2007 report is still the standard reference for scientists and
governments in the Western world
– such a broad summary is perhaps not so needed in the near future
– IAC was supportive, only Pauchuri was kind of targeted – that may
be a political move, remove him to appease non-informed citizens
UK Sceptic says:
September 1, 2010 at 1:31 am
It’s weird really. While the IPCC scientists expend billions fantasising about the end of the world their leader expends company time writing a book fantasising about getting his end away. Synchronicity?
————–
Again the IPCC scientists don’t spend billions. They do the work for
free, considering it their duty to society, I would guess.
As the IAC report points out, this represents a huge monetary value, which is
taken from personal time or research time.
Dear Mikael,
Why did you go to the trouble of quoting me, then following it with a long list of irrelevant justifications, given the context you had set by quoting me, supporting the IPCC? Because of your odd and provably mistaken idea that the MSM has been actively promoting the sceptical message, I attempted to point out to you how you can prove for yourself that the MSM has been very firmly in the Warmist camp, with a few notable exceptions, up to very recently.
But perhaps your convictions are more meaningful to you than actual evidence.
mikael pihlström,
Thanks for your response to my comment: John Whitman says; August 31, 2010 at 2:19 pm
I have not checked your numbers yet about the ~60% new faces on the AR5 team. I will double check. But even if there is a >50% turnover from AR4 to AR5, we still have the concern of the IAC as follows:
So, I am already uncomfortable with the new faces if more transparency of the selection process was not implemented and it is just the buddies of the old IPCC crews.
Who to blame for the AR4 shame? It is the IPCC itself. It was openly biased for an anthropogenic cause of GW. They did not follow even their own biased rules.
I think there is a broader issue about why the world chose to implement such a flawed concept/model as the IPCC as a venue for climate assessment. It is the concept/model that inherently supports more authoritarian models of government. My impression is that the more ideological environmental groups are fundamentally anti-capitalistic, therefore they seem to be supporters of more authoritarian types of government rather than the most free of the democracies/republics. I support an approach to climate assessment that involves no government. If you wish I can discuss this further with you.
John
JimF
The website you cite (http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/266) mentions a story from 2007. The following links are from 2009 or newer.
This is how newspapers such as the Guardian talk about Václav Klaus and his views on climate change:
Czech leader joins meeting of climate change deniers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers
Vaclav Klaus: climate denial’s mythical man
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/may/19/vaclav-klaus
EU’s new figurehead believes climate change is a myth
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5430362.ece
I think people are missing a significant aesthetic point here. He also needs to go because of his increasingly obvious and ugly hairpiece. Those jetting in first class around the world must be becoming increasingly embarrased by his company. A bad look for the climate…
mikael pihlström said: “You guys don’t seem to get it: IPCC does not pay writers or chair persons, nor Pauchuri. Don’t mix governmental summits (Copenhagen), Kyoto mechanisms (CDM) and programs (REDD) with IPCC.
In fact the IAC report, which, I understand, is rather to your liking at WUWT, proposes to pay fees and salaries to key persons, grants for developing country participants for attending meetings etc.”
You do realise that the Copenhagen climate change conference, the clean development mechanism and the IPCC are all done under the auspices of the UN don’t you?
Governments pay the bills of the UN including for the work relating to IPCC reports, and Governments get their money from taxpayers. What the UN ultimately wants is a source of income that is largely independent of the member nations. The usual suggestion is a simple 0.7% GDP tithe. My view is that this is a vested interest driving the shoddy claims made about climate and it would be wise to prevent it. Not by keeping the UN as it is (funded at the whim of national Governments) but by demolishing the entire thing.
At the moment the CDM, REDD and other projects enable member nations to increase tax revenues so there is a surplus that can go to the UN. They are UN or UN endorsed projects. Why do we never see member nations announcing that they will meet the peer pressure obligations of contributing to a climate change fighting fund by reducing the operations of their own Government so taxpayers are not relieved of even more money? The various revenue raising projects recieve UNFCCC approval precisely because a portion of the funds they will raise will one day be at the disposal of the UN.
The UN *is* out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop until it has its own source of income.
mikael pihlström “Again the IPCC scientists don’t spend billions. They do the work for
free, considering it their duty to society, I would guess.
As the IAC report points out, this represents a huge monetary value, which is
taken from personal time or research time.”
They may do their IPCC “duty” gratis but their reports, as acted on by politicians and warmist pressure groups, is costing us billions and wrecking western economies. How many of these scientists are funded by taxpayers to carry out research to support their “findings”?
Gareth says:
September 1, 2010 at 7:16 am
America should simply resign from the UN.
That will dry up a large splodge of wonga and others will follow.
It is very hard to identify anything useful that comes from the UN that the USA doesn’t drive, pay for and take most of the criticism for it.
The UN has had it’s day.
I disagree with this.
It is scapegoating Pachauri to avoid a real analysis of conflicts of interest. They fire Pach and all is forgiven in the past, look to the future!!! The real problem is not that Pachauri was a bad leader.. It is that the organization was such that Pachauri was given an option to lead in the first place.
Don’t fire Pachauri.. Audit the whole mess for conflicting interests. THEN we can engage in some dialogue.
Keith Battye;
Agreed, US has to leave the UN – just saw where the UN is giving North Korea $290 million in aid.
And yes, I know it’s off topic.
DCC says:
August 31, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Given the boners the Peace Prize Committee has awarded lately, I would be hiding as well if I were them.
For some strange reason, Rajendra Pachauri’s photo for this article reminded me of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin…
paulw says:
September 1, 2010 at 7:05 am
That you have the temerity to reference The Guardian’s opinion in the matter of AGW completely debunks your authority. And, despite which articles, Vaclav hasn’t changed his tune since 2007, nor has he lost any credibility or experience in his views of communism and the similarities of that system to present-day environmentalism. (Gee they both end with ism).
No, no, no, no, no, no. My “confidence in the IPCC” is not “restored” by a PR message on review procedure and openness, even when it’s delivered with a message spinning Rajendra Pachauri’s corruption as just not paying enough attention.
The IPCC has no legitimate reason to exist.
Rejecting articles without reading them is bad form. I am happy to read from different sources and establish if they represent credible information.
You quoted Vaclav from 2007, I quoted him with three articles (two from the Guardian, one from the (London) Times).
And here is another article from Dec 2009, the speech that Vaclav Klaus gave at the Washington Times Climate Change Policy Conference,
http://www.klaus.cz/clanky/872
Do you still describe Vaclav Klaus as a ‘communist’ that believes that the climate is changing (due to humans)?
We, as blog commenters, have disparate views and we lack a direction.
I do not see us having a credible view on the issue of climate change. This needs to change. We can’t say at one time “there is no human-induced climate change” and then claim “the Earth is moving to an ice age so if we pump CO2 we make Earth warmer”.
We need to get a direction and tone down our responses. Otherwise, we appear as angry people.
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907
@paulw says:
September 2, 2010 at 4:08 am
“…We, as blog commenters, have disparate views and we lack a direction.
I do not see us having a credible view on the issue of climate change….”
You speak for yourself there. My view is informed by my degrees in geology, and by reading the works and commentary of people expert in other fields. Global warming may currently be remarkable, but in 4.5 billion years it never got out of hand; and based on the last 5 million years, a glacier is right around the corner.
And where do you possibly come up with the following comment?
“…Do you still describe Vaclav Klaus as a ‘communist’ that believes that the climate is changing (due to humans)?…”
Klaus – in my opinion, based on his biography and statements – is an ANTI-COMMUNIST who ascribes to climate warming fear-mongers the traits of the Communists he knows so well and despises. Reading a statement such as the one you so kindly provided (below), how could anyone doubt that?
“…Quoting Vaclav Klaus: The people who had never believed in human freedom, in impersonal forces of the market and other forms of human interaction and in the spontaneity of social development and who had always wanted to control, [..] came up with the idea of global warming.
[Calling for a market solution to climate change] reminds me of the communist planners who similarly talked about “using market instruments” when they finally came to the conclusion that “planning instruments” did not work….”
Guys,
I suggest to quote Klaus completely. He said: “The people who had never believed in human freedom, in impersonal forces of the market and other forms of human interaction and in the spontaneity of social development and who had always wanted to control, regulate and mastermind us have been searching for a persuasive argument that would justify these ambitions of theirs. After trying several alternative ideas – population bomb, rapid exhaustion of resources, global cooling, acid rains, ozone holes – that all very rapidly proved to be non-existent, they came up with the idea of global warming.”
Non-existent population bomb? Yes, becaue the world population is decreasing. Non-existent rapid exhaustion of resources. Yes, because resources are always increasing, see deep water drills because there is a depletion of landbound oil wells. Non-existent global cooling? He is perfectly right, global warming is the issue. Non-existent acid rains? Yes, the lakes in Scandinavia were never acidified, only fish died for whatever reason. And rain pH in many countries including the U.S., Europe and China never decreased below pH 5.6! Non-existent ozone holes? Yes, all the satellites images are fakes. The scientists misinterpreted Dobson units.
Vaclav Klaus is a better scientist than all scientists of the world!