Life “heats up” for Ex UN global warming chief

News continues to get worse for the former head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. The former top man at IPCC last week resigned from his remaining job, head of The Energy And Resources Institute (TERI) of India, where he has been for 34 years.

Pachauri’s pinnacle career achievement was in 2007 when the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which he accepted (with Al Gore) on behalf of the IPCC. He gave the acceptance speech that year.ⁱ It quickly began to heat up for Pachauri.

First, there was the “climategate” scandal where leaked emails from East Anglia University, home of the now infamous faked “hockey stick” temperature plot, revealed that IPCC researchers had actively sought to “hide the decline” in recent temperatures.ⁱⁱ

Then there was what turned out to be completely unsupported IPCC claim of glaciers rapidly melting and disappearing in the Himalayas. When exposed, Pachauri dismissed this false prediction, (based not on science, much less peer-reviewed science but a mere magazine article), as a “human failure”.ⁱⁱⁱ

While Dr. Pachauri (not a climatologist but an engineer) has proclaimed saving the planet from CO2 emissions his religion, he racked up over 400,000 air miles in an 18 month period, including flying from New York to Delhi, India and back to participate in a sporting event.

More recently, 2015 has not been kind to Dr. Pachauri. First, allegations that he stalked a co-worker surfaced in early 2015. The New York Times reported that he “was accused of assault and criminal intimidation by a 29-year-old female research analyst”^iv at TERI. Pachauri was 74 at the time. As a result of the complainant’s charges and the resulting Indian judicial investigation, Dr. Pachauri canceled plans to attend the IPCC conference in Nairobi, Kenya and abruptly resigned from IPCC entirely—a UN agency he had held the top position in for 13 years.

Already barred by an Indian court from returning to work at TERI, in May an internal TERI investigation found he had “harassed the employee and recommended action against him”,^v though action was put on hold by a Delhi court.

The court ruled on July 17th that Dr. Pachauri could return to most parts of TERI. Protests erupted among women’s rights advocates, and the Delhi police, who are conducting their own investigation, charged Pachauri with “influencing witnesses."^vi

Within a week, the protests and public outcry against Pachauri had swayed the governing council of TERI to announce Pachauri would be replaced.

In an ironic twist, in 2010 Pachauri published an Indian “romance” novel (Return to Almora, rated 1 ½ stars on Amazon), partly about the sex escapades of a man in his sixties. One reviewer called it “racy” and “smutty”, and drew comparisons between the main character in the book and Pachauri himself.^vii

ⁱNobel Peace Prize lecture, online, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/ipcc-lecture... accessed August 1, 2015.
ⁱⁱDelingpole, James; Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?, The Telegraph, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-..., accessed August 1, 2015.
ⁱⁱⁱRajendra Pachauri says glaciers mistake in IPCC report was 'human failure', http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/14/rajendra-pachauri-def..., accessed August 1, 2015.
^ivNajar, Nida, “Indian Energy Institute Replaces Director Accused of Sexual Harassment,” New York Times, online at New York Times, online, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/world/asia/indian-energy-institute-rep... accessed August 1, 2015.
^v Najar, Nida, op. cit.
^viThe Hindu, “Delhi Police seek cancellation of Pachauri’s anticipatory bail,” http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rk-pachauri-sexual-harassment-case..., accessed August 1, 2015.
^viiMendick, Robert, et.al.; “Revealed: the racy novel written by the world's most powerful climate scientist”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/7111068/... accessed August 1, 2015.