Land of the faries - by Richard... Thursday, December 24, 2009

Land of the faries - by Richard... Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Met Office has really excelled itself today - see forecast above. Heavy snow overnight and now snowing heavily again - the heaviest I recall since the 60s and unprecedented for Christmas eve. Traffic at a standstill, and side streets socked in. Bitterly cold, no wind and low, overcast sky.

Pretty grim for many travellers.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Pachauri: admits to $300,000 in payments - by Richard...

In a press release purporting to rebut ourSunday Telegraph piece, Dr Pachauri's TERI – of which he is Director General - admits to receiving over $300,000 for "services rendered by Pachauri."

This, however, only covers "some of the payments made to TERI". It includes €100,000 from the Deutsche Bank, $25,000 from Credit Suisse and $80,000 from Toyota Motors. The institute also received $48,750 from Yale University, $4,425 from the Asian Development Bank - which has given loans to Tata - and €1,200 from the French electricity giant EDF. At current conversion rates, that totals $302,746.

The periods for which the payments were made are not specified and neither are the precise "services rendered" identified. For some organisations, such as Yale University, Pachauri performs more than one service – and his current post as head of the Climate and Energy Institute has only just started. 

Pachauri's institute denies that it has received any payment from the Risk Governance Council in Geneva, the Chicago Climate Exchange, or the New York Investment Fund Pegasus for which he is "strategic advisor". This is difficult to believe in respect of the latter two, but the phrasing of the "rebuttal" does not rule out the possibility of benefits in kind being offered by these companies.

No mention is made of Pachauri's other current posts. Thus, we know nothing of payments (if any) from GloriOil, Siderian ventures, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Nordic Glitnir Bank, the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, SNCF, his work as a Hindustan Times columnist, the Asian Energy Institute, FEOP (Far East Oil Price) Advisory Board, the International Solar Energy Society, the World Resources Institute or the World Energy Council.

Nor do we learn whether payments were made for Dr Pachauri's work for the Indian government, in particular the National Environmental Council, the Economic Advisory Council and the Oil Industry Restructuring Group. Nor is it specified whether he is paid for his role on the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre. Other notable omissions are, as admitted by Pachauri, the "sometimes pretty generous honoraria, for giving talks in various places" - which themselves could amount to millions of dollars.

As to why TERI's (Indian) accounts are not published, the reason given is that TERI has tax-exempt status in every country in which it operates. "Such status is granted on the basis of proper auditing of accounts and proper scrutiny of documents." Nonetheless, accounts are published in the UK and the US relating to local operations, but not in India. 

The US IRS return for the TERI-NA operation in Washington identified a total revenue of $66,701 against expenses of $121,810, leaving a loss on the trading year ending in 2009 of $55,109. The expenses included two remittances totalling $54,000 to TERI India. Also identified is a payment made to Dr Pachauri from a "related organization" – which is not identified – of $45,791.

This is the only public record of which we are aware which identifies a direct payment to Dr Pachauri. Neither Pachauri nor TERI have chosen to reveal payments made to him by TERI or his salary and other emoluments from the IPCC.

Despite that, TERI is claiming as "unfounded and false" our charge that Pachauri holds posts in a number of organisations, including Credit Suisse Bank, and is silent about the money he earns, "which must run into millions of dollars". Yet nothing so far offered by way of evidence would even begin to rebut that charge.

And neither has there been any attempt so far to explain how a UN official can work on a fee-paying basis for organisations such as the Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, without there being a potential conflict of interest.

PACHAURI THREAD

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This is not supposed to be happening - by Richard...

I should have saved the local Met Office forecast because, as I recall, the weather was going to turn yesterday and we were going to have rain clearing away the snow. As it is, after a cold, crisp day, we had the longest period of sustained snowfall we have so far had in this cycle (pics above and below). Unless the weather does turn, in Yorkshire we are set to have the first white Christmas in living memory.

And, apart from the travel chaos, which has caused untold misery and disruption, we saw yesterday a possible sign of things to come when The Daily Telegraph reported on how the snow and freezing temperatures have meant that the Brussels sprout harvest has had to abandoned in parts of Norfolk, Lincolnshire and much of the south east of England.


This is also picked up by the Farmers Guardian which has Phillip Effingham, chairman of the British Brassica Growers' Association, telling us: "The last time we had snow like this in the week running up to Christmas was in the mid-1980s "

"We've ground to a halt in Lincolnshire," he says. "It's been impossible to get any mechanical picking done. I think there over the next few days shoppers will notice a real shortage of loose sprouts."

Without mechanical pickers, however, TJ Clements, one of the country’s biggest sprout growers, has had to draft in hundreds of extras workers to pick the harvest. The grower said 10 percent of the crop may have to be destroyed.

This is small beer compared with what more severe weather could do, but it is a timely reminder of the vulnerability of agriculture to cold weather.


Needless to say, there are no strident calls from the warmists, telling us to prepare for the coming cooling, but as we noted only recently, with just a few severe winters we could be in serious trouble. Nothing less than the security of the global food supply is at stake.

According to those self-same warmists, of course, this is not supposed to happen. Food shortages they will predict – but only arising from warming. But the cold is a much more deadly enemy, and it looks as if nature could be about to remind us of that fact.

CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD

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Pachauri: hornet's nest stirred - by Richard... Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has expressed pain over the "unfounded and motivated" attack against the institution, especially its head R K Pachauri, in a leading UK newspaper.

It was ridiculous to suggest that TERI was a company about money and did not ever publish its accounts because it was registered under the Societies Act and submitted detailed an audited account to the government, they said. Thus do they confirm that they have never published their accounts.

Nevertheless, nine Fellows of the Institute have written a letter (they say not to whom). And these appear to be the cream of the Indian establishment. They are:

S Sundar, currently NTPC Professor in Regulatory Studies in the TERI School of Advanced Studies

R K Batra, formerly Board of Directors of Bharat Petroleum and a part-time Director on the Board of Cochin Refineries

C Dasgupta, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, former Indian Ambassador, Brussels

Prodipto Ghosh, former Secretary, Ministry of Environment & Forests
Ashok Jaitly, former chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir

K Ramanathan, former Member (Power Systems) in the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Government of India

 J L Bajaj, former Chairman, Uttar Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission

Nitin Desai, formerly head of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Prabir Sengupta, formerly Commerce Secretary, Indian Government and then Director, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade

Dr Pachauri has some powerful friends. And these men are demanding an unqualified apology from the newspaper for the "libellous" piece of journalism, "failing which the institute would take recourse to other measures it would deem appropriate."

I guess we're off their Christmas card list then.

PACHAURI THREAD

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Back to normal - by Richard...

I knew that there was something missing in my life ... that gaping void, that unrequited yearning. And then, suddenly, all is well with the world. The Daily Scarygraph has resumed its global warming "scare of the day". With some things, you don't realise how important they are until they're not there.