Surely not even an organisation as a corrupt and dishonest as the IPCC can afford to keep Dr Rajendra Pachauri on as its chairman after the weekend’s damning revelations by Christopher Booker and Richard North?

But Pachauri – with all the chutzpah we have come to expect of our favourite jetsetting, millionaire, troll-impersonating railway engineer - is not going down without a fight. Just as he did after Climategate, Pachauri has produced his classic ‘nothing to see here’ ‘Big Brother knows best’ defence.

In an interview with the Times of India he says:

‘‘These are a pack of lies from people who are getting desperate. They want to go after the guy whose voice is being heard. I haven’t pocketed a single penny from my association with companies and institutes. All honoraria that I get goes to TERI and to its Light a Billion Lives campaign for reaching solar power to people without electricity. All my dealings are totally above board.’’

Richard North, however, is not convinced. There is, he suggests, a very good reason why those “honoraria” are funneled through TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute; formerly Tata Energy Resources Institute), the mysterious company he heads but which doesn’t publish its annual accounts, let alone his salary.

Pachauri, who recently took up the post of the head of the Climate and Energy Institute at Yale University, then says the appointment was held up for a while because he had insisted that his salary be credited to TERI. “My conscience is clear and that is why I am cool towards these allegations.”

That, of course, is a good move. If his Yale salary (which is likely to be at least in six figures) was paid directly to him, he would have to pay US income tax on it. And, Tony Blair has just found out, the details are then publicly available through the IRS. As it is, he can launder the money through TERI and take the money out of the business in India where there is less scrutiny.

You wonder how more damning evidence it will take before the Kool-Aid Drinkers pushing AGW (and the need for carbon taxes) will wake up and realise that the whole thing is a scam to make a few people – carbon traders, third world kleptocrats, Al Gore – very, very rich while the rest of us much poorer…

Quite a bit, to judge by this editorial from one of today’s papers, I forget which:

In recent months, the stridency from both sides of the argument has turned many ordinary people off. It is up to the politicians to find the language to engage the masses on this issue. Only then will they go to the conference chamber with the people at their backs – and that might start to concentrate minds wonderfully.

In other words, Copenhagen was a failure of communication, rather than scientific evidence – and if only our leaders worked a bit harder on persuading us of The Truth (maybe spending the £12 million on the next state eco-propaganda ad rather than a mere £6 million) we would all see the errors of our false consciousness.

I feel sometimes as if we are living in two parallel universes, one inhabited by our Mainstream Media, our Government leaders, Big Business, Big Oil and the Green movement, in which it’s perfectly OK for scientists to cheat and lie for political ends, and where the global economy can easily afford trillions of dollars being thrown at a problem that doesn’t exist. And one inhabited by the rest of us. I know which place I’d rather live.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk
By: James Delingpole