Pachauri not to quit over Himalayan glacier row
My job is to complete the fifth assessment report: IPCC chief
Notwithstanding the brouhaha on Himalayan glacier melting misinformation, beleaguered chairperson of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, R K Pachauri, has asserted that he would not quit the top job.
“I have no intention of resigning. I was elected by all countries in the world and have a task. My job is to complete the fifth assessment report and to come up with a robust report,” Pachauri said here on Saturday, clarifying his position in the aftermath of the scandal that have dented the image of the Nobel Prize winning organisation.
On Wednesday, the IPCC regretted publishing the year 2035 as the deadline by which significant portion of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away in its fourth assessment report (AR4). As things turned out, the doomsday forecast was based on a “speculation” by Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain who is currently working as a senior fellow with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) headed by Pachauri.
Pachauri refused to take any responsibility on Hasnain’s comments arguing that when he made it, he was in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“The mistakes have never come to anybody’s attention. I cannot remember every part of a 3,000-page report (AR4),” he said. The second-term chief of the IPCC turned the heat on climate sceptics using this mistake to bolster their criticism of the science behind climate change and its predicted fallouts.
“Sceptics deny scientific development till it blows up on their face. The Flat Earth Society still exists. There are people who do not believe in any link between smoking and cancer ,” he said.
Hinting at a nexus between climate sceptics and energy industry, Pachauri said there were 1,200 lobbyists in Washington DC paid by 770 companies who are trying their best to stop anything related to climate change policies proposed by the USA.
The industries behind the skeptics are not concerned about poor nations like Bangladesh or Maldives which are the climate victims, or India where rainfall events would be extreme in nature.
“They are only concerned about their profligate ways of lives,” Pachauri said making it aptly clear that new additions in the fifth assessment report would be consumption pattern and lifestyle changes. Asked whether action would be taken against the lead authors of that chapter which have inaccurate information on Himalayan glaciers, he said those authors are not IPCC employees. Rather they put in their labour of love.
While selecting authors for the next report, the IPCC would be more circumspect. “We will exercise higher level of surveillance to ensure such human errors do not creep into the fifth report,” he said.
