Missing the point - by Richard... Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Missing the point - by Richard... Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Now we have The Financial Times adding its voice to the throng, noting that the time has come for Rajendra Pachauri to move on. But one wearies of the follow-through suggestions that the IPCC "needs stronger leadership to maintain credibility".

The FT thus thinks that a rejuvenated IPCC leadership could tackle the deficiencies in its review process. It says this should become more inclusive, welcoming alternative views where these are scientifically valid, and at the same time more exclusive, rejecting unsubstantiated claims of dramatic change.

But the paper is wholly wrong. The whole point of AR4 is that if you strip out all the unsubstantiated claims, there is no case for the Armageddon scenario that its authors wished to portray.

It was in the absence of such material that they cast around for material that would support their case, whatever the provenance. The senior authors and editors knew exactly what they were doing, people like Martin Parry who were instrumental in setting it up.

Having Pachauri in place to back them up was all part of the grand scheme, and changing the leadership will not change the basis of the project. Of course he should go, but it would be better if he was not replaced and the collective of nations walked away from the IPCC.

The whole thing was based on a lie - is based on a lie. And, whatever leverage Carter Fuck might have been able to exercise on The Sunday Telegraph, the High Court in Delhi branded Pachauri a liar. Nothing will change that - the man is a consummate, practiced, serial liar, and he is head of the IPCC.

The thing about so many of the warmists in this context is that they think I am as stupid as they are. For sure, I make the odd mistake, get confused about some things and get some details wrong. But my underlying research is sound.

Thus, I would be perfectly happy to stand up in court and defend myself ... many people know of my role in the MacDonalds case and I could repeat the whole charade. It would cost them millions and me just my time - I have nothing else to lose.

It matters not whether they rise to the challenge though - they lose either way. The main accusations against Pachauri stand, and I would be seriously foolish if I had not also salted away some additional material, to use at the appropriate time.

And eventually the truth will out. Then there will be some reckoning because this thing has gone too far and cost too much for people simply to walk away and forget that it ever happened.

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Not incapacitated - by Richard... Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Thirty-nine year-old Gian-Paul De Vito-Tracey (pictured), who has held a senior position at the Department for Work and Pensions, is seeking £300,000 damages from the government after falling off a newly issued swivel chair in 2008 and hitting his head on a wall.

This is almost twice as much as a soldier was given after suffering severe burns in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan, but Mr De Vito-Tracey is to claim he is left 80 percent disabled for life.

The injury, we are told, caused "downgrading of general intellectual functioning". Strangely, The Sunis less than impressed, showing the man holding two short planks (is this a veiled comment?).

Mr De Vito-Tracey has experienced "slowed speed of information processing, impaired executive function, severe verbal communication difficulty and mild to moderate word-finding difficulties". It will be asserted in his formal claim that all this has "left him at a severe disadvantage in the job market", hence the level of the compensation demanded.

This is very hard to take seriously. The features described would seem to make Mr De Vito-Tracey admirably qualified to be a senior civil servant, quango chief or politician. In fact, Mr De Vito-Tracey's misfortune is that some of his incapacity is only "moderate". Were it more severe, he could be qualified for the role of environmental correspondent for a media organisation, or even to write an environment column for The Guardian.

We could, of course, offer to improve his employment prospects. Our charges are very reasonable.

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Continuing the smears - by Richard...

I suppose Moonbat was right, after a fashion. "Rajendra Pachauri innocent of financial misdealings but smears will continue," he wrote in a particularly idiotic piece which had his warmist claque all a twitter over the vile accusations that Booker and North had made about this saintly figure.

Well, the "smears" have continued, and leading the way is the Moonbat's spiritual home, The Guardian, with a headline "Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN climate change body, under pressure to resign".

The proximate cause of this apparent volte face is the report of the Inter-academy Council (113 pages PDF), helpfully summarised in a much shorter press release.

Nobody expected much from the Council, which has been looking at the IPCC and its procedures. And then head of the Pachauri fan club, the Hindustan Times, told us that "Pachauri escapes indictment". But it then added that the "embattled chief" of the IPCC, "escaped direct indictment in the UN’s review of his panel's assessments, only because he was not up for scrutiny personally."

There was enough in the panel's findings and recommendations, it goes on to say, "to suggest Pachauri runs a bad ship". The IPCC lacks transparency and, worst, "it relies on unsubstantiated scientific claims." Now, we may have made a point or two in that direction and while the Council only specifically mentions the "alarmist meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers" it quite clearly "errors" in the plural.

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The IPCC's slow and inadequate response to revelations of errors in the last assessment, as well as complaints that its leaders have gone beyond IPCC's mandate to be "policy relevant, not policy prescriptive" in their public comments, have made communications a critical issue, the report says. Pachy can no longer play his silly, self-serving games ... he has been exposed for what he is, all in the nicest possible way.

The Daily Mail, however, isn't quite as nice. It interprets the "scathing report" as calling for the IPCC "to avoid politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science." The probe, it says, "took a thinly-veiled swipe at Rajendra Pachauri."

Watts Up With That has a welcome go, and reprints the NYT comments. This paper, which has had the hots for Rajendera ever since he became chairman, is now stating that the scientists involved in producing the IPCC reports "need to be more open to alternative views and more transparent about their own possible conflicts of interest".

Amusingly, one wonders whether this can apply to Pachauri. The BBC seems to think not. Editorial Complaints Unit has just upheld a complaint about the reference to this Pachauri as "the UN's top climate scientist".

A viewer complained that this was inaccurate and misleading, as Dr Pachauri's scientific qualifications and credentials were in a field unrelated to climate science. This had the ECU agreeing that the implication that he was a climate scientist was "materially misleading".

The Editor of BBC News at 10, we are told, is reiterating to his team "the importance of accuracy in the introduction of our contributors." But then, I suppose, to suggest that Pachy isn't a climate scientist is just another of those "smears" about which the Moonbat was so rightly concerned.

But more smears are on their way, it seems. Korea in October is the place and time. We may see the back of the old charlatan then.

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