... that they should experience global warming for themselves. Could be cheaper in the long run.
CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD
Definitely no comment. I'm saying absolutely nothing.
CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD
"Natural catastrophes have left the world's insurers with a claims bill totalling $22 billion (£13.7 billion) this year as the number of disasters linked to climate change increased markedly."
So writes Miles Costello for The Times, adding to the steady drip of MSM propaganda to reinforce the proposition that "climate change" – i.e., global warming – is a serious problem.
Yet the source of this information is Munich Re, the German reinsurer. It has issued its annual assessment of catastrophe losses, noting that, although overall losses were dramatically lower this year than last, the number of destructive events was higher than its average over the past ten years.
Spokesman Peter Höppe, head of the company's Geo Risks Research division, is unequivocal. He says: "We should make no mistake: despite the lack of severe hurricanes and other mega-catastrophes, there was a large number of moderately severe natural catastrophes. In particular, the trend towards an increase in weather related catastrophes continues."
Höppe goes on to assert that: "Initial analyses indicate that, apart from socio-economic factors, this is already due in part to climate change," on which basis his company argues that there is an "urgent need" for international agreement to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
However, what is lacking entirely from this account is any indication of the Munich Re's motivation for spreading its concerns about "climate change", or any suggestion that it might be a partisan player - at several levels.
In the immediate term, the catastrophe re-insurance market - as Höppe hints - has had a good year, with no major payouts. This is leading to pressure to reduce premiums, so the climate change "threat" is thus being used as a counter - as outlined here.
For the longer term, we have to look elsewhere for the motivation, to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy jointly funded by the London School of Economics, Leeds University, the Economic and Social Research Committee – and Munich Re.
Within that unit we find the Munich Re programme. Scrutiny of this quickly dissipates any suggestion of altruism or neutrality on the part of the company. The heading of the programme is: "Evaluating the Economics of Climate Risks and Opportunities in the Insurance Sector".
Therein, we also see one of the major research packages, which further gives the game away. It tells us that:
Mitigation and adaptation activities will bring about a plethora of new financial products, introducing new risks and opportunities into the financial sectors. This research package will explore the impacts of alternative approaches to carbon finance and emission trading for different industries, informing the design of trading schemes and new financial service products. The second phase of the package will investigate how better balance investment between mitigation and adaptation, survivability and sustainability from the perspective of market participants.Thus, the very evident concern of Munich Re is to exploit the financial opportunities created by climate change, its enthusiasm for talking up the "threat" clearly influenced by its perception that there are major gains to be made.
In espousing the cause of climate change alarmism, however, it is in good company. The Centre steering committee, on which Peter Höppe sits, is chaired by Lord Stern. It counts amongst its members Dr Keith Allott, head of climate change, WWF-UK, Antonio Hill, senior policy adviser for climate change, Oxfam GB, Ronan Palmer, chief economist of the Environment Agency, and Richard Price, chief economist, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).
The presence of Richard Price from DEFRA is particularly apposite for, alongside him is a now familiar figure, none other than Ritu Kumar, director of TERI-Europe.
TERI-Europe, of course, is carrying out its own study "investigating the exposure and potential of the Indian insurance industry to cover risks related to climate change". This, remarkably, is funded by DEFRA and "links have been established" with Munich Re, as we now see from Kumar's participation on the Steering Committee of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy. This makes for one real busy lady.
But what it also makes is one giant scam. Whatever the original motivation of the climate alarmists might have been – and one can concede that many people have been genuinely concerned about global warming – the issue has now been hijacked by the money men and the financial institutions, who are intent on exploiting the "opportunities" afforded.
PACHAURI THREAD
In a small step sideways from looking at TERI-Europe, we need to pick up a few loose ends before progressing the story.
We thus return to Ritu Kumar, whom we met in an earlier piece. She has it seems a taste for directorships, and is turning out to be a past master at multi-tasking.
It is not enough for this lady that she should be a director and company secretary of Pachauri's little enterprise, TERI-Europe, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (STIC), a consultant to the Commonwealth Science Council and a senior adviser for Actis UK.
For the idle moments in her otherwise busy life, she as acquired another directorship, this time of a company called Investor Watch, formed on 27 April 2009. Her co-directors are Cary Krosinsky and Mark A Campanale, the latter being responsible for company research on the Jupiter Merlin Ecology Fund, the Merlin International Green Investment Trust PLC and the Skandia Ethical Selection Fund at Jupiter Tyndall Merlin.
Having placed the marker, we will return to these two gentlemen and their shared enterprise in due course. Both have very interesting links into the green movement. But we need also to look briefly at another of Kumar's co-directors of this newly-formed company, none other than Nicholas Vivian James Robins (pictured).
It is he, we ascertained in our previous piece, shares ownership of 27 Albert Grove with Ritu Kumar, the rather unlikely registered office of Pachauri's TERI-Europe. Both give this address as their residence.
Amongst his other activities, he is a leading light in the Network for Sustainable Financial Marketsbut his current paying day-job is director of the HSBC's Climate Change Centre of Excellence, which he joined in late 2007.
He started off his career with the Economist Intelligence Unit, moved to the EU Commission's Environmental Directorate and thence to the Business Council for Sustainable Development. From there moved to the International Institute for Environment and Development, before ending up with Henderson Global Investors, where he was head of SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) funds prior to joining HSBC.
If this is an interesting snapshot of a green activist pursuing his career path, what Robins does not reveal in his general cv (apart from the fact that he is living in the "head office" of TERI-Europe, prop. R K Pachauri) is that he is an active member of the Green Party - and has recently been a generous donor, contributing £5,500 to the party coffers. Moreover, he stood for electionas a councillor in the 2006 local elections in his home area, the London Borough of Merton.
Here, strangely, there is a link with TERI, because TERI-Europe claims as one of its "partners" the London Borough of Merton which it assisted in "organizing a major seminar on energy efficiency and in incorporating renewable energy technologies in building design."
Why a suburban London Borough should need the help of the European arm of an Indian "think tank" is not explained. Even less so is why the seminar was funded by the European Union under its €42.3 million "Asia Urbs " project. However, as first sight, this looks to be a mechanism for channelling EU funds into TERI. Was Robins involved?
Whether there was a link, there is certainly a more tangible association between Robins's employer, HSBC, and an offshoot of TERI-India known as the TERI Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD). In partnership with this organisation, the HSBC proudly sponsors the Living Business SME Award.
Whether there is link between Robins and this award, again is not stated, but HSBC have certainly benefitted from their sponsorship. On 5 February 2009 at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, Naina Lal Kidwai, Group General Manager and Country Head, HSBC India, was presented by Dr R K Pachuri with the "prestigious" Green Globe Award in the business enterprise category "for her commitment to environment sustainability".
Sponsored by the newly-formed Green Global Foundation, the initiative of the Indian Film Academy and Wizcraft International Entertainment, UNEP and TERI, headed by R K Pachauri, are the partners of the foundation.
Friends of R K Pachauri, it seems, tend to do rather well out of their association with the man.
PACHAURI THREAD
On being leader of UKIP. The man actually comes over as a human being ... that will never do. We can't have that in politics.
COMMENT THREAD
Devil's Kitchen is on the trail of Actis and Dr Pachauri's funny money. Birds of a feather, it seems, flock together.
PACHAURI THREAD
The Foreign Policy magazine ranks the "top 100 global thinkers" of the year, putting Rajendra Pachauri in fifth place – for ending the debate over whether climate change matters.
He beats Bill and Hillary Clinton, who share sixth place. President Obama is placed second – which really tells you all you need to know.
PACHAURI THREAD
Part of the great global empire controlled by Dr Rajendra Pachauri is an organisation called TERI-Europe. And, like everything to do with Dr Pachauri, it is not quite what it seems, apparently enjoying a flood of grant-funded work, yet living off thin air.
Everything about the organisation is shrouded in mystery and even the most straightforward of details raise serious questions about its operations. For instance, the organisation was incorporated on 10th June 1999, its articles then amended by special resolution dated 2 September 1999. But, although it is registered as a charity, it seems to be running an accumulated deficit over the last five years.
In its year ending 30 June 2004, it reported an income of £21,286 yet showed an expenditure of £35,403. The following year, it attracted a paltry £456 yet still managed to spend £24,379. For the next two years, it took in £7,000 and £9,000 respectively, spending £8,100 and then £5,000. In its year ending 30 June 2008, it made £8,000 and spent £3,000. Grossing just over £45,000 in the period, that left it short by about £30,000.
Nevertheless, this "charity" is also registered as a company, and it tells the Company Registrar that it has a healthy cash balance, currently listing its cash assets as £63,000, which happens also to be the "capital employed" by its two directors. One, rather predictably, is Dr Rajendra Kumar Pachauri – who gives his address as 160 Golf Links, New Delhi.
But we also have a new (to us) character on the scene. She is Ritu Kumar (pictured), the second of TERI-Europe's two directors. Kumar describes herself as an "environmental economist". She is also the company secretary.
The next strange - very strange - fact is that you might expect this hub of empire to be registered at a prestigious central London address - in common with the Washington office. Instead, it is located in an unprepossessing Edwardian detached residential house, deep in suburban Merton on the fringes of South London. This, Ritu Kumar also gives as her address - 27 Albert Grove, London, SW20 8PZ (pictured, below right).
That she gives it as her address is unsurprising. She is what the Land Registry describes as the "proprietor", along with a certain Nicholas Vivian James Robins, who also gives this as his address. The property was purchased for £215,000 on 15 April 1999 - two months before TERI-Europe was incorporated - with a mortgage from the Nationwide Building Society. But this was paid off on 28 September 2001, when Kumar and Robins assumed "title absolute", becoming the legal owners of the property. We will have a closer look at Robins later.
To add to the mystery, there is no mention of company directors in the official TERI-Europe website, which claims that the organisation was "set up by TERI India". This it clearly was not. But Pachauri is not listed as a director - only as a "trustee", along with a galaxy of notables, including Sir John Houghton and Sir Crispin Tickell - who would hardly be seen dead in Merton.
Ritu Kumar, just as strangely, is not identified as a director either - much less as the Secretary of the company. She is mentioned only as a "contact" - with the Albert Grove address and a TERI-India e-mail.
There is also another "contact", a lady called Rochelle Mortier. She has a very interesting cv, currently working for Alexander Ballard Ltd, an environmental consultancy, via Cargill, Coopers & Lybrand and Price Waterhouse and Greenpeace - as well as TERI-Europe.
What all makes this so very mysterious is that, despite the incredibly low level of trading, TERI-Europe seems to be able to afford the services of the likes of Mortier, to say nothing of Ritu Kumar, who rather hides her light under a bushel, as far as the TERI-Europe website goes. Furthermore, she seems to have several different versions of her cv.
One of the more interesting of these makes it clear that we are dealing withDr Ritu Kumar, described as "one of India's topmost environmental economists, experienced in issues related to sustainable production, trade, and climate change." We are also told that she is currently Director of TERI-Europe and Executive Director of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (STIC).
Initially government-funded (by the Dutch), STIC is another of those interesting NGOs, with a lot of detail here. In the brochure other funding partners are identified: the Commonwealth Science Council (CSC), UK, the European Partners for the Environment (EPE), Brussels, and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam.
Kumar is then identified as the representative of the Commonwealth Science Council, giving her address as 27 Albert Grove. In another instance, however, she gives a slightly more prestigious address: Commonwealth Secretariat, Marlborough House, Pall Mall.
In a book to which she contributes, edited by Cary Krosinsky and her housemate Nick Robins, called Sustainable Investing, Kumar offers a slightly different version of her cv. Here, we are told that from 2000 to 2006 she was director, UK, with TERI-Europe. That - insofar as it implies that she no longer worked for TERI-Europe after 2006 - clearly is not true. All the official records – and much else – have her currently still a director.
But this cv has Dr Kumar from 2006 as a senior adviser on environmental, social and governance issues with Actis UK - a private equity firm investing primarily in Africa, China, India, Latin America, South and South East Asia. She has advised on "environmental, social and business integrity since 2006." The company handles $7.3 billion in investments and has over 100 investment professionals in nine offices worldwide.
Thus far then, with a great deal more to cover in what becomes an increasingly murky story, we have a charity which is a company wholly owned by Dr Pachauri and Dr Kumar, the latter who not only works for TERI-Europe but also for a government-funded NGO, the Commonwealth Secretariat and a private equity company handling billions in investment funds - aided by another "part-timer" working for another company.
Interestingly, much of TERI-Europe's activities are devoted to encouraging Indian corporates to be more "transparent". As we will see in the next part, though, this does not apply to TERI-Europe. The plot is about to get very much thicker.
PACHAURI THREAD
While British schools are scraping together their pennies in anticipation of funding cuts, hard-pressed taxpayers and parents will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that they are subsidising Indian education, to the tune of £1 million through a project called the UKIERI programme.
This is described as a "five-year roll-out of networked partnerships" between UK and India schools, funded by the FCO, the DCSF (Department of Children, Schools and Families), the British Council and the Office of Science and Technology.
Although ostensibly directed as schools, however, the small-print tells you that the bulk of the funding goes to the HE (Higher Education) sector. Two principal activities, we are told, will be promoting research partnerships between centres of excellence in sciences/social sciences. A priority is to encourage more doctorate and post-doctorate collaboration between India and UK, through split PhDs or research fellowships.
It will this come as no surprise to learn that a major beneficiary of the programme is TERI University (pictured), the chancellor of which just happens to be Dr R K Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC and director general of TERI.
Thus, in October of this year, the "university" was able to offer a PhD position "in the area of catalysis." This is partly funded by UKIERI (UK-India Education and Research Initiative) and the research is to be carried out in collaboration with Department of Chemistry, University of Glasgow.
Whether the work should qualify for a PhD, though, is an interesting issue, as it has been well and truly explored by numerous authors and was the subject of a paper by TERI itself in November 2007.
Only a few months later in January 2008, though, TERI (director-general RK Pachauri) – but not TERI University – was able to announce the funding of a project on "Red mud catalyst for hydrocarbon cracking and carbon adsorbent production." Its sponsor was declared as: "UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) ".
Original work or not, the outcome – if successful – is likely to have considerable commercial value, along the lines of Pachauri's OBTL venture. Thus, rather than primarily an educational exercise, this looks more like a cross-subsidy for another of Dr Pachauri's money-making enterprises.
British taxpayers will be so pleased.
PACHAURI THREAD
"I have to marvel at the irony of all this, and the fact that such stinging cold, and for too many people, lethal, is a product of a world that has simply bought into those that sought to take advantage of them to advance their own agenda. Fortunately, cooler minds (weather patterns) are going to prevail in time to force people to wake up to the idea that this is not a done deal, and far from it, as is my opinion, ICE not fire may be the bigger worry for causing hardship on the planet's life by 2030.
They will have no one to blame but themselves, as they built the road that will ride their idea to its death, one that may not deserve to die, but will."
Joe Bastardi on his blog.
"Elevating any person, or model, to something that you put blind faith in the face of the majesty that is the Earth, and all that surrounds it, has a word – Foolishness," he writes.
CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD
The Indian company, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC), is ranked 152nd in the Fortune Global 500 list of companies. It contributes 77 percent of India's crude oil production and 81 percent of India's natural gas production.
The Indian government holds 74.14 percent equity stake in this company which, in the financial year ending 2009, achieved its highest-ever sales revenue of £8.6 billion.
And, for the period of June 2006 to June 2009 it had the good fortune to have as one of its non-executive directors a certain Dr R K Pachauri, also director general of TERI and chairman of the IPCC.
When it comes to "Big Oil", there are bigger but ONGC certainly qualifies as a member of this club. And at the heart of the beast for three years, at a crucial point in the development of the IPCC agenda, was Dr Pachauri.
During that time, though, no one could accuse the good doctor of getting rich out of the deal – not directly at any rate. The company paid its non-executive directors a modest attendance fee only. And for the two years of 2007-08 and 2008-09, such was his pitiful attendance record that he netted only just over £2,000.
However, Dr Pachauri is nothing if not good at multi-tasking and networking. And, while diligently looking after the interests of ONGC he was, of course, looking after his own, setting up an offshoot of his institute TERI as a separate company called TERI-Biotech.
This company had developed a patented process for the biodegradation of oil, which could be used for extending the productivity of oil wells and for cleaning up oil spills. And its first – and main – client became ONGC, which allowed it to test and refine its process.
So successful was the association, we are told, that the two companies, TERI-Biotech and ONGC decided to formalise the relationship, forming on 26 March 2007 a joint venture company called ONGC TERI Biotech Ltd (OTBL). TERI – director general Dr R K Pachauri – holds 47 percent of the equity, while ONGC has 49 percent. The remaining 2 percent is held by financial institutions.
Needless to say, the financial contribution to Dr Pachauri's evident wealth has not been recorded, but his continued partnership with "Big Oil" is now set to yield dividends. Reported in April 2009, two months before Pachauri stepped down from the main board of ONGC, the joint venture company had decided to bid for a share of a $3bn UN-funded contract to clean up the oil pollution in Kuwait, left behind by Saddam's invasion.
That Pachauri just happens to be a senior official of a UN institution is, of course, a complete coincidence. But his joint company seems remarkably confident of getting a sizeable slice of the work, so much so that it was telling the Indian financial press that it has "a plan to clock a top line of $2.1 billion in the next three to four years."
One can only wish the enterprising Dr Pachauri the best of luck in his venture, but it should be recorded that, while the likes of George Monbiot are quick to associate "climate deniers" with Big Oil, no one is actually closer than his all-time hero, Dr R K Pachauri.
PACHAURI THREAD
Do environmental journalists sing to the same hymn sheet? Biased BBC offers some evidence to that effect. When you also get BBC journalists such as Nik Gowing involved climate change conferences as paid moderators, you begin to get the picture.
CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD
Temperatures are expected to plunge to minus 3°C in most of England and Wales on Thursday night, New Year's Eve, and minus 8°C in Scotland, with widespread snow showers also predicted. New Year's Day will also be chilly, with the northern half of Britain struggling to get above freezing during the day.
But don't worry boys and girls. The Met Office is on the case (above). It is "... more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998." So, turn off that central heating, get out there and enjoy yourselves. This cold is all in your imagination.
CLIMATE CHANGE – NEW THREAD
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