Q: What do you think about the small but vocal group of doubters still out thereI really don't like that quote that I could possibly imagine you saying
Pachauri Answer: There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every year to say the Earth is flat. The science about climate change is very clear. There really is no room for doubt at this point.
Q: What have you done personally to shrink your carbon footprint?
A: I’ve become a vegetarian. I try to minimize the use of cars. Where I’ve failed is my impact with regard to air travel. I tell people I was born a Hindu who believes in reincarnation. It will take me the next six lives to neutralize my carbon footprint. There’s no way I can do it in one lifetime.
It is possible to imagine a George W. Bush, Mark Latham, Pauline Hansen or Sarah Palin saying something like “Well, in principle, I think global warming in winter would be a good idea but I don’t think we could afford to do it for everybody in the world”.
He said there were "reasons for dismay" at the rich countries' failure to cut carbon emissions. "This really doesn't give anybody the conviction that those that had agreed to take action as the first step are really serious about doing so..."Also note the cliched photo of people trying valiantly to bicycle through a cloud of "carbon dioxide".
...As for me, I'm going absolutely crazy travelling (laughs). I can only accept 5 to 10 percent of the invitations I receive, but even that is enough to keep me flying continuously. This doesn't make me feel very good but the message has to be spread.A quote from Pachauri from earlier in the very same interview:
Mahatma Gandhi said; "to be the change you want to see in the world". I believe strongly in this.
"...By 2020 there will be a 50 per cent reduction of agriculture in Africa effecting their people's survival", Pachauri said.
PARIS (AFP) — Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper -- that's how you can help brake global warming, the head of the United Nation's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change said Tuesday.
The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued last year, highlights "the importance of lifestyle changes," said Rajendra Pachauri at a press conference in Paris.
"This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it."
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Since the Nobel was awarded in October to the IPCC and the former US vice president Al Gore, Pachauri has criss-crossed the globe [on a bike?] sounding the alarm on the dangers of global warming.
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Pachauri also sees cause for optimism in the fact that, for the first time since the world's nations began meeting over the issue of global warming in 1994, "nobody questioned the findings of the IPCC."
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N. Panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, said he would look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.
"One would really have to see on the basis of some analysis what this really represents," he told Reuters, adding "are there natural factors compensating?" for increases in greenhouse gases from human activities.
He added that skeptics about a human role in climate change delighted in hints that temperatures might not be rising. "There are some people who would want to find every single excuse to say that this is all hogwash," he said.
[WMO's] Delju said temperatures would have to be flat for several more years before a lack of new record years became significant.
Since his appointment, Pachauri, who is known for his diplomatic skills, has managed to forge a global consensus on one of the most debated issues in the world -- climate change.2. From this article:
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"It was not an easy job reaching a consensus on research by 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries," said Nitin Desai, former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for economic and social affairs and an expert on climate change.
"His skills as a diplomat and a consensus builder are what sealed the deal," he said about the report which stated it was more than 90 percent likely that mankind's activities were the main cause of warming in the past 50 years.
A strong believer in the teachings of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, the 67-year-old Indian economist and engineer took over the job in 2002 amid controversy.
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At the time, Gore denounced Pachauri in the New York Times and said his "virulent anti-American statements" would undermine the IPCC's authority in the United States.
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Born on Aug 20, 1940 in the scenic town of Nainital in the foothills of the outer Himalayas, he is a hard-core vegetarian, partly due to his religious beliefs as a Hindu and the impact meat production has on the climate.
Married with two children, he also heads one of India's leading environmental think-tanks, The Energy and Resources Institute, which does research in areas from energy and the environment to biotechnology.
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He spends much of his time travelling and speaking on climate change at international fora and jokes he "lives at 30,000 feet".
OSLO (Reuters) - The science on climate change is indisputable so the world must now act to limit greenhouse gas emissions or face "abrupt and irreversible" change, the head of the Nobel prize-winning U.N. climate panel said on Sunday.3. From this article, dated 1/8/08:
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"The science is very clear -- it's loud, articulate and incontrovertible. On this basis I think it's time the world moved on," Pachauri told Reuters a day before he and climate activist Al Gore receive the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
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"You will never get a more robust set of conclusions and findings than what we have provided. If this doesn't move the world to action, then I don't know what will," Pachauri said.
OSLO (Reuters) - India's Rajendra Pachauri said on Monday he will probably seek a new term as head of the U.N. climate panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore.4. Another quote from Pachauri is here:
"I think we are riding a crest ... as far as climate change is concerned, particularly spreading the information of climate change," Pachauri, 67, told Reuters in Oslo after making an evening speech about the risks of global warming.
"I feel that even though it's going to be very tough ... I will probably throw my hat in," he said when asked if he would seek re-election in April for a second six-year term as head of the U.N. panel that draws on the work of about 2,500 scientists.
"I am tending towards that ... I feel that I should decide formally in the next couple of weeks," he said of the election to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
We have been so drunk with this desire to produce and consume more and more whatever the cost to the environment that we're on a totally unsustainable path. I am not going to rest easy until I have articulated in every possible forum the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development.5. Some information about Pachauri's poor performance in a recent climate debate is here.
According to Norwegian Aftenbladet, Pachauri had done his usual alarmist presentation in a good mood. He even included a joke about 20-30 percent of species dying out as a cause of global warming, and this extinction would include climate skeptics.
Åm had done his homework and disproved the outrageous statements, and concluded by accusing the IPCC of committing scientific fraud. One of his strongest points was the scientific critique of the hockey graph that the climate alarmists love so much.
Personally, I have read so many science reports discrediting that graph that it is hard to believe that IPCC is still using it with a straight face, but that is just my meager science reporter’s opinion…
Pachauri did not take kindly to the accusation of scientific fraud, but was not able to turn room back around after Åm’s devastating debunking, according to Aftenbladet.
After the debate, Aftenbladet asked Åm what his scientific credentials on climate science was, and Åm answered “I have the same credentials as Al Gore”.
We have been so drunk with this desire to produce and consume more and more whatever the cost to the environment that we're on a totally unsustainable path. I am not going to rest easy until I have articulated in every possible forum the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development.Also from that above link:
...the formal mandate of the IPCC is to be "policy neutral."Update: Pachauri was evidently just named "Newsmaker of the Year" by Nature.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. panel of scientists on climate change, said people are going to have to change their lifestyles to become part of the solution, but "that doesn't mean we have to go back to life in a cave." He said his own children "shamed" him into changing his habits, and he urged young people to realize the influence they have over adults.Ok, Mr. Chairman: you're telling us with all that allegedly great evidence of impending human-caused catastrophe, you wouldn't even change your own personal habits until your kids shamed you into it?!
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