Pachauri’s …… Pichkaari

R K Pachuri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Presently R K Pachuri is very busy person; it is not because of the climatic change but because of the Himalayan controversy, due to an error in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report- which states that the Himalayan Glaciers would disappear by 2035.

(As stated in WEEK) IPCC is known to follow a stringent quality check of its report. But this controversy has raised doubts about the reporting and science behind climate change. Dr Pachuri defended by saying that the error was just one in a report of over 3000 pages. But admitted that there were procedural lapses. That allowed the error to creep in.

According to Prof. Murali Lal, a climate expert who authored the report says “rules where changed for the fourth assessment report, which allowed use of grey literature”. Grey literature refers to non – peer reviewed reports and articles. Prof Lal blames climate scientist Prof. Syed Iqbal Hasnain for the fiasco because he is the person who mentioned the year 2035 without any supporting proof or data.

The whole issue came up when Union environment Minister Jairam Ramesh invited few scientists to discuss about the Health of the Himalayan glaciers. During this discussion came the presentation by V K Raina (Former Director-General, Geological Survey of India) which contradicted the claim by IPCC. The statement that glaciers would disappear by 2035 was also noticed by WWF .

Dr. R K Pachauri is not only involved in the Himalayan controversy but surrounded with other scandals too, for instance the financial irregularities at The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) which was reported by The Sunday Telegraph of UK. Dr. Pachauri is the Director – general of TERI. What else do we want??????? A perfect recipe for a perfect scandal.

This is what we can expect from a person who started his career with Indian Railways Diesel Locomotive works, a PhD in Engineering and a PhD in Economics, now heading an organization on Climate change.

By this we can infer that “it is not the glaciers that are melting at a faster rate but R K Pachauri’s climatological credentials that is melting away at a rapid rate”.

Now another opinion would be: why do we have to make such a hue&cry about these statement. anyhow the glaciers are melting(not as proposed by IPCC, but at a lower rate), so why don't we think about doing something that would prevent this melting.