CLIMATE CHANGE GURU FACES CALL TO QUIT

Tory MP Tim Yeo said Dr Rajendra Pachauri “lost credibility”.

Friday September 24,2010

By John Ingham

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PRESSURE is hotting up on the controversial head of the UN panel on climate change to stand down.

A leading Tory said Dr Rajendra Pachauri should quit because of errors made under his leadership.

Tim Yeo, a former Environment minister and current chairman of the all-party Energy and Climate Change Committee, said Dr Pachauri had “lost credibility”.

Dr Pachauri, an Indian railway engineer, is head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports are shaping worldwide global warming policy.

But the panel’s reputation has been rocked by blunders including a claim in its 2007 report – overseen by Dr Pachauri - that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.

The panel's report in 2007 claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035

In January the IPCC admitted the claim was not based on scientific research but on a magazine interview.

The mistake emerged at the time of the Climategate furore in which emails from experts at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit appeared to be rigging evidence in favour of man-made climate change.

The UEA scientists have been cleared of wrongdoing.

But last month a report by the world’s top scientific societies issued a thinly veiled call for Dr Pachauri to resign.

Yesterday Mr Yeo told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think Dr Pachauri should resign. It’s vital that this body is led by someone whose academic and intellectual credentials are unquestioned.”

Dr Pachauri has made it clear that he plans to continue as IPCC chairman but his fate could be sealed at an IPCC meeting in South Korea next month.

Mr Yeo told the Daily Express: “Scepticism about climate change is rising more now than at any time in the past 15 years.

"Clearly there was a serious blunder about the Himalayan glaciers. It damaged the credibility of the IPCC and allowed sceptics to say scientists are making ridiculous and alarmist claims. Dr Pachauri was involved in that. It makes his position untenable.

“Sceptics might be on the rise but those of us who have looked at the science objectively for the past 20 years remain convinced that there is serious evidence of a link between rising carbon dioxide concentrations and climate change.”

When are people going to realise this is just a con a bit like legalised scamming .Noone can really believe this anymore .