Category Archives: Rajendra Pachauri

HELL FREEZES OVER…

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I missed this and am indebted to the wonderful Ozzie blog Greenie Watch for pointing it out. Don’t faint, but the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit has actually upheld a complaint against Roger Harrabin. Here it is:

ECU Ruling: BBC News at 10, BBC1, 25 January 2010
Publication date: 19 July 2010

Complaint

In a report on calls for Dr Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the BBC’s Environment Correspondent referred to him 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.

Outcome

Although the phrase was intended as journalistic shorthand for the occupant of the most prominent international post connected with climate science, the implication that he was himself a climate scientist was materially misleading in the context of this report. Upheld

Further action

The Editor of BBC News at 10 is reiterating to his team the importance of accuracy in the introduction of our contributors.

What the complaint ruling doesn’t say of course, is that Mr Harrabin, along with Richard Black, worship at the altar of the IPCC and the execrable Dr Pachauri daily, and report his every utterance with the reverence that the BBC normally only shows to Islam. For a truer picture of the Indian railway engineer, see Richard North’s latest blog here.

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Harrabin’s Black and White World

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The indefatigable Richard North has a dismissive take on the BBC’s latest article about Pachauri and Glaciergate. His point that the Beeb’s bias comes as much from what it leaves out could also apply to the most recent of Roger Harrabin’s Notes.

For the second “note” running (see previous one here) Harrabin has expressed his anguished concern over recent developments in America. He says that Scott Brown’s election “certainly puts the nail in the coffin of Democrat hopes for a full climate bill this year” but once again fails to point out that some Democrat politicians oppose such legislation too. He states that the “fossil fuel industry is poised with banknotes at the ready” to take advantage of the recent Supreme Court ruling on political advertising, but neglects, as ever, to mention the huge sums of money swirling around the warmist lobby, much of it provided courtesy of Western taxpayers. And there’s certainly no mention of the money that flows into Pachauri-linked enterprises, some of it thanks directly to the false claims about Himalayan glaciers. Harrabin takes at face value the spin that the inclusion of this material in the IPCC report was just an unfortunate “inexplicable blunder”; heaven forbid that a BBC environment correspondent would dare to suggest that there could be a link between dodgy climate research and financial gain by leading warmists.

As with the BBC line that Obama’s woes are down to Fox News, Harrabin apportions similar blame for the problems facing the warmist cause:

Part of the answer lies with the media – particularly right-wing newspapers…

Mr Cameron has re-branded his party as “vote-blue-get-green”, but many of his back-benchers rank climate change as a very low priority. A couple of his Cabinet members are likely to be outright climate sceptics, and more may be driven that way if right wing newspapers continue chasing stories about the IPCC’s failings.

[Note to Harrabin – check BBC style re “right-wing newspapers” or “right wing newspapers”]

That last line seems to imply a lack of interest on Harrabin’s part in “chasing stories about the IPCC’s failings” – ie they’re the realm of the right-wing press. It’s worth remembering that some of the Conservative-supporting newspapers have often been slow to run stories critical of the AGW orthodoxy.

For Harrabin it’s all about good versus evil, with the scientists (incorruptible truth-seekers, noble of intent), the Democrats, and the NGOs on one side and the evil fossil fuel lobby, the Republicans, and the right-wing media on the other. It’s biased, simplistic and wrong, but it’s the sort of world-view that helps people like Harrabin get through the day.

Update. Andrew Neil goes where Harrabin fears to tread.

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CONSPICUOUS BY HIS ABSENCE

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The BBC also remains eerily silent (as in the previous posting) on the subject of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, whose multiple business interests linked messily to ‘climate change’ have been the subject of intense scrutiny in the dead tree press and here, here and here. It seems that the good doctor thinks nothing is wrong in being at the head of numerous banking and industrial groups that benefit from his committee’s alarmist pronouncements.

If this had been one of the BBC’s hate figures – let us say Tory funder Michael Ashcroft – they would have been on to the story like a rat up a drain pipe. Instead, the might of the BBC’s journalistic elite is still focused on bemoaning the lack of agreement in Copenhagen, and cheeerleading for Gordon Brown’s lunatic call for a “reformed UN process” – in other words, for more corruption, more bureaucracy and more wasting of billions of pounds of our money.

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