Times of India -spinning so hard that the head muddles

Even as the Hindustan Times' climate alarmism has cooled down(at least for now), the Times of India, India's other major daily, is spinning furiously.These are the fanatics who even as their temple collapses around them will chose not to run but to congregate around the altar and keep chanting the mantra. Their full page hit-piece on skeptics has to be seen to be believed-

Click for a larger image

Shobhan Saxena in "On Thin Ice" tries to sound neutral but cannot keep up it up long- it's too hard to play the objective writer so he ends up with-

Experts fear all these controversies may end up sabotaging a possible climate treaty. The key is to try to get a legally binding treaty, securing no more than a two-degree rise in temperature. The problem is we are working in the wrong framework, says Monbiot. Its not likely to improve the situation.

Yes, Shoban, we knew all along where you were coming from.


Then there is an anguished piece by Chidanand Rajghatta lamenting that the noble Obama is being held back by political opponents and lobbyists from imposing that wonderful and magical Cap and Trade on the unwilling citizens.



At the center of the page, the ALL FACT, NO FICTION column is the funniest section, unintentionally of course.It's hard to find a fact here but it has such precious gems as-

FACT 1 | Heat waves rising. The commonest sign of climate change. There have been periods of warming, cooling over the last 5 billion years but the change has never been so extreme

Wrong!

FACT 2 | Shrinking glaciers. At the current rate of warming, all existing glaciers will disappear in the next 100 years

Even after Glaciergate the TOI believes this -amazing! Maybe they never got to the 2350 thing. Anyway, as I said earlier -2035 or 2350, who cares as long as they can cling to their pet narrative.Or maybe climate change has changed the concepts of math -2350 will fall within 100 years. Anything can happen in post-modern science.

FACT 3 | Rising sea level. Has increased by 25cm in last 100 years; will rise 4 times in next 100. Many Pacific islands will disappear

Really?

FACT 4 | Wild storms. Occurring more frequently & with higher intensity. Result: Soil moisture will evaporate faster resulting in dryness between rain periods. Dry areas will get drier

 Again wrong!Actually - Global hurricane, cyclonic and major storm activity is near 30-year lows!

BLACK TIDINGS: A Nasa Earth Observatory image shows the spread of black soot (‘black carbon’ to climate scientists) over the Tibetan Plateau from August to November 2009. Places where the air was thick with soot are white, while lower concentrations are transparent purple. On the Tibetan Plateau, temperatures are rising and glaciers are melting faster than climate scientists would expect based on global warming alone. A recent study of ice cores from five Tibetan glaciers by Nasa and Chinese scientists confirmed the likely culprit: rapid increases in black soot concentrations since the 1990s, mostly from air pollution sources over Asia, especially the Indian subcontinent

But wait -doesn't that indicate there are causes and forces apart from CO2 that could and do impact the climate? Even more forcefully than CO2, as in this case? It weakens TOI's own case of AGW. Maybe they didn't realize it, maybe spinning so fast makes one's head turn.Thinking clearly is difficult in such circumstances.



To wrap it up we have standard alarmist fare from Jennifer L Morgan,director, Climate and Energy Program, World Resources Institute, Washington DC. Yes the same World Resources Institute that is an extreme leftist NGO-

Anti-capitalist think tank which is funded with taxpayer dollars

This is as bad as IPCC citing 'research' from WWF publications.

There are people who still live far, far away from civilization, in some deep cave in a remote place. Somehow the TOI manages to find them and gives them large space in it's paper.



Update- 
        oops! should have mentioned that this is the Sunday Times of India, 31st Jan, Delhi edition.
Update 2- 
        oops! my head must be reeling from all the TOI spin. Corrected the above date from the 30th to the 31st Jan.

Is Pachauri losing the Hindustan Times?

These are not the best of times for Rajendra Pachauri. The hits just keep coming. Even the Hindustan Times -which has been an alarmist publication par excellence- has of late taken up a skeptical tone, much to my surprise, I admit. On today's front page-

TERI got Rs 56* lakh to run UN climate meetings

 

 

The article says-

New Delhi-based NGO Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), headed by Rajendra K. Pachauri, got funds from the Environment and Forest ministry to conduct meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body he chairs.

The IPCC is a UN body comprising scientists from more than 100 countries that provides inputs to policy makers on combating climate change.

Between 2004 and 2006, the environment ministry allocated funds amounting to about Rs 56 lakh to TERI for conducting IPCC meetings to discuss the impact of climate change, show documents made available to the Hindustan Times.

Or, TERI gained monetarily from work relating to the global body that Pachauri heads.(even the HT now understands the conflict of interest thing -ed)

“There is no conflict of interest,” Pachauri told Hindustan Times .(yes,yes, and the sea is not wet -ed) in an e-mail response. “The first IPCC chairman, Prof Bert Bolin received substantial financial support from the gover-nment of Sweden for his funct-ioning as chairman. The seco-nd chairman, Dr Robert Watson, was in the White House when he was elected chairman and then moved to the World Bank, where the bank not only paid his salary but also provided all support for his functioning.”.(so the ethical problems of IPCC are older than Pachauri -ed)

But Ashish Kothari, founder of the NGO Kalpvariksh, which filed a Right to Information application to ascertain the money given by the ministry to TERI, said there was definite conflict of interest.

“In the context of TERI benefiting from IPCC findings, the government needs to consider the wider issue of conflict of interest involving ministry officials, companies and NGOs,” Kothari said.

Apart from meetings, the government also gave money to TERI to employ staff and set up secretariat support and communication facilities for the IPCC office in India.

Kothari said the government should have asked an organisation not linked with the IPCC to host these meetings.

----------------------------

Pradipto Ghosh, environment secretary at the time of allocation of these funds and now a TERI fellow.(so very convenient and cosy -and dodgy  -ed), said there was nothing out of place in the allocation of funds. “TERI has been receiving funds from the ministry before and after my tenure,” said Ghosh.

The revelation comes soon after reports that TERI got projects on the basis of IPCC’s faulty predictions on the impact of climate change in the next 30 to 50 years. Some of the predictions, such as Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035, have been found to be wrong.

In fact today's issue carries a second article not favorable to Pachauri-

‘Busy’ IPCC ignored erroneous Himalayan glaciers report

They say when you have lost the HT all that is remaining is the NDTV. It will be interesting to see how long the NDTV keeps ignoring the evidence now piling up by ton loads against their favorite cause -AGW- and their favorite son -Pachauri.

*Update -
          1 lakh = 100,000

Osama Bin Laden for IPCC

Find the odd one out-

Answer -there isn't any!
At least as far as the allegedly dangerous man made global warming is concerned.Osama sounds like Obama!
In fact some say Osama is angling to replace the discredited Pachauri!

The gates are OPEN

 Update - Welcome everyone arriving from the Climate Depot. If you have just a few minutes more to spare I strongly recommend this video -where Pachauri's old schoolmate takes him on.


The gates are open -Climategate,Pachaurigate,Glaciergate,Amazongate,Sterngate and so many posssible fill-in-your-own-namegates.

Even the Indian media -which has been almost universally alarmist - has become more skeptical.One partial exception to this near-universality has been the India news and views weekly Open Magazine e.g. see this and this.
 The latest issue does a cover story on the AGW 'science'-

The Hottest Hoax in the World

An excerpt from the cover story-

The Hottest Hoax in the World

It was presented as fact. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, led by India’s very own RK Pachauri, even announced a consensus on it. The world was heating up and humans were to blame. A pack of lies, it turns out.
By Ninad Sheth

The climate change fraud that is now unravelling is unprecedented in its deceit, unmatched in scope—and for the liberal elite, akin to 9 on the Richter scale. Never have so few fooled so many for so long, ever.

The entire world was being asked to change the way it lives on the basis of pure hyperbole. Propriety, probity and transparency were routinely sacrificed.

The truth is: the world is not heating up in any significant way. Neither are the Himalayan glaciers going to melt as claimed by 2035. Nor is there any link at all between natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and global warming. All that was pure nonsense, or if you like, ‘no-science’!

The climate change mafia, led by Dr Rajendra K Pachauri, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), almost pulled off the heist of the century through fraudulent data and suppression of procedure. All the while, they were cornering millions of dollars in research grants that heaped one convenient untruth upon another. And as if the money wasn’t enough, the Nobel Committee decided they should have the coveted Peace Prize.

Read the whole thing.Could be the most hard-hitting article in the Indian MSM on AGW fraud ever.

(emphasis mine)

Does Obama hate Israel this much?

Or is he and his team so utterly clueless. I suspect the answer is a bit of both.
Matin Perez-

I've just read the transcript of the president's remarks about Haiti, the ones he made on January 15. He noted that, in addition to assistance from the United States, significant aid had also come from "Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others." Am I missing another country that truly weighed in with truly consequential assistance? Ah, yes. There it is. Right there "among others." Yes, the country to which I refer is "among others," that one.
The fact is that, next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel. The Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery, which it did literally hundreds of times, while delivering--as of last week--at least 16 babies, including one premature infant and three caesarians. The first 250-odd Israelis were real professionals, and they were supplemented by others, also professionals. And to these can be added the many organized Jews from the Diaspora who, in solidarity with Israel, also went on a work pilgrimage, an aliyah, in solidarity with Haiti.
----------------------------
So didn't Obama notice? For God's sake, everybody noticed the deep Israeli involvement. I understand that Obama doesn't like Middle East narratives that do not contain "one side and the other side" equal valence. But he couldn't have that here. The Arabs don't care a fig, not for their impoverished and backward own, and certainly not for strangers. That's why their presence in Haiti amounted to a couple of bucks from Saudi Arabia and maybe from some other sheikhs.

An afterthought: Who would want Arab participation in the rescue effort? This was serious work and dangerous work. Amateurs weren't welcome.

Yes, I think that the labors of the Israelis were edited out of Obama's speech, either by his speechwriters (who have made dissing Israel their forté) or by his own oh-so-delicate but dishonest censoring mechanism.

Pachauri himself likes to play the conflict-of-interest card

John Tierny-

I’ve previously wondered why so many on the green side of the climate debate were so willing to play the conflict-of-interest card, as Dr. Pachauri was doing quite recently himself. It struck me as a risky political strategy — because there seemed to me to be more money to be made on the green side — as well a needless diversion from the scientific debate. So while I see some justice in this argument coming back to bite Dr. Pachauri, I still wish both sides — and the journalists who cover any kind of scientific dispute — would pay less attention to money.

Read the whole thing.

Andrew Bolt -Ten signs that the warming scare is collapsing

Pachauri is a hacker?

Steven Mosher thinks so-

All processes are subject to hacking, both from external and internal entities. The IPCC process is no exception, neither is the process of writing for science journals exempt. As recent reports show Pachauri hacked the IPCC processes to make them work against themselves and bend the system to his financial ends. An inside hacker, like Pachauri, can be especially dangerous since they play a role in structuring the very system that they hack. Not only do they exploit a system they were meant to protect, but they also act in ways to prevent detection of their hacks.

What the recent disclosures about Pachauri show is that the IPCC process is now totally compromised, compromised from the inside. Like a system exploited by a destructive hack, that system may be beyond repair. It’s time to reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, as climate scientist Hulme, spotted 101 times in the Climategate files and closely tied to Pachauri, suggested–perhaps in a moment of clarity after the discovery of the emails:

“It is also possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course. Yes, there will be an AR5 but for what purpose? The I.P.C.C. itself, through its structural tendency to politicize climate change science, has perhaps helped to foster a more authoritarian and exclusive form of knowledge production.”

Whole thing here.

John Christy witnessed UN scientists attempting to distort the science

Via Climate Depot-

Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, served as a UN IPCC lead author in 2001 for the 3rd assessment report and detailed how he personally witnessed UN scientists attempting to distort the science for political purposes.

"I was at the table with three Europeans, and we were having lunch. And they were talking about their role as lead authors. And they were talking about how they were trying to make the report so dramatic that the United States would just have to sign that Kyoto Protocol," Christy told CNN on May 2, 2007. - (For more on UN scientists turning on the UN years ago, see Climate Depot's full report here. )

Christy has since proposed major reforms and changes to the way the UN IPCC report is produced. Christy has rejected the UN approach that produces "a document designed for uniformity and consensus." Christy presented his views at a UN meeting in 2009. The IPCC needs "an alternative view section written by well-credentialed climate scientists is needed," Christy said. "If not, why not? What is there to fear? In a scientific area as uncertain as climate, the opinions of all are required," he added.

'The reception to my comments was especially cold'

And-

Christy: “When a subject is excruciatingly complicated, like climate, we see that opinion, overstatement, and appeal-to-authority tend to reign as those of a like-mind essentially take control in their self-constructed echo-chamber. The world needs to see all sides of the evidence. We in the climate business need to understand humility, not pride, when looking at a million degrees-of-freedom problem. It's just fine to say, 'We don't know,' when that is the truth of the matter.”

Read the whole thing.
Not much fresh air in the IPCC star chamber.

Pachauri refuses to appear on a channel critical of him

In contrast to NDTV,which has been behaving as if Pachauri was it's valentine, Times Now TV has a taken a more skeptical approach to Pachauri. They did Amazongate today-

Video(Youtube) -Amazongate has Pachauri cornered

Timesnow Tv link

Very interestingly, the main Times Now anchor Arnab Goswami announced that they had repeatedly asked Pachauri to appear on their channel and had been repeatedly turned down. All this while Pachauri has been so frequent on NDTV that one suspects there's room and bed reserved for him there.

We observe another Pachauri hypocrisy(from a still from the above video)-

Pachauri is escaping media persons and surrounded by security he gets into a......into a ....surely that is either a SUV or a large multi-utility vehicle! No small fuel-efficient compacts for the King of Climate.He is too big for them.

NDTV stacks the debate against Richard North

Saw this a few hours ago on the Pachauri-infatuated channel NDTV. It again gives us a lesson in how the NDTV anchors simply cannot get away from their biases.They cannot be objective even if they try.And they don't try too often.



Part 1-

Video(Youtube) part 1- NDTV anchor Sonia Singh stacks the debate against Dr.Richard North

Part 2-

Video(Youtube)  part 2- NDTV anchor Sonia Singh stacks the debate against Dr.Richard North

Part 3-

Video(Youtube)  part 3- NDTV anchor Sonia Singh stacks the debate against Dr.Richard North

Ndtv link

This time the anchor was Sonia Singh.She stacked the debate against Dr.Richard North with the following tried and tested techniques-

1) three participants,Dr.Rajendra Pachauri, Dr.Murari Lal (another IPCC author and now a notorious one), and environmental journalist Bittu Sahgal (editor of the Sanctuary Asia magazine)were on the same side -the alarmist side or if you prefer, the IPCC side-all agreeing with each other of course.Opposed to them were Dr.North and Dr.Raina.However Dr.North got little support from Raina as the gentleman was obviously reluctant to say anything beyond Himalayan glaciers(which were hardly discussed).So this is not just a 3-2 advantage to the alarmist side but more like 3-1.1

2) the alarmist side was given whale of the time

3) Dr.North appeared briefly in a phone-in at the beginning of the debate.After that he was never called upon again.That left the field for the three alarmists to have a field day apart from some neither-here-nor-there meanderings of Raina.

4) Sonia Singh was obviously sympathetic to the alarmist side. In particular she kept agreeing with the environmentalist Sahgal even when he uttered something truly stupid like -"nobody can or is trying to debate or discuss or negotiate with the planet" It perhaps never occurred to her to ask-"how can one do that?"


In all, it was mostly a collective whining from the alarmists with the anchor joining in.Sonia Singh did Prannoy Roy proud.

Update -
     changed Bittu Sahgal's words from "who's having a debate with the planet?" to the more accurate "nobody can or is trying to debate or discuss or negotiate with the planet". Sounds even more idiotic now.

Christopher Monckton’s debates Australian IPCC reviewer Ben McNeil

Video-Christopher Moncktons debates Australian IPCC reviewer Ben McNeil on Sunrise

Andrew Bolt had this to say about the debate-

Christopher Monckton’s debate this morning with Australian IPCC reviewer Ben McNeil on Sunrise, a minor temple of the warming faith, did not go well - for the alarmists. My goodness, but McNeil did seem awfully green (again) for an academic who demands such drastic changes to the way we live.

Even David Koch, long a fierce preacher of the warming faith, seemed no longer so sure of his old gospel.

IPCC lead author -"climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics"

Professor Andy Pitman, a lead author on the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports speaks to Eleanor Hall in a rare interview.

Rare because this is one of those few cases in which an alarmist has not been thrown softball after softball.

A couple of excerpts-

ELEANOR HALL: Well, the head of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri, is now being seen to benefit from that false Himalayan glacier claim with a funding grant to his institute. That just plays right into the argument of the sceptics, doesn't it, that climate scientists are making all of this up in order to get funding for their research?

ANDY PITMAN: I would have to admit that it looks extremely bad.

And -

ANDY PITMAN: Oh, my personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organised, have nothing else to do. They kind of don't have day jobs. They can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this actually isn't one of them.

 I really love his description that the skeptics are rich idlers who have nothing to do.Certainly no day jobs -we don't need any, we are so well-funded.Sounds like a nice chap!

Read the whole thing.

Pachauri on Syed Hasnain-"He's the best"

Pachauri interviewed on CNN-IBN-

Video -Pachauri on CNN-IBN

Pachauri admits that(about 2:50 in)-

It's really true that we don't have enough material as far as the Himalayan glaciers is concerned

He also says something eye-popping-

He's (Syed Hasnain)working with TERI because he's the best. Only those who are the best work with TERI

But then this is a man who thinks that IPCC's credibility has increased !

China doubts Man Made Global Warming

China could throw a huge spanner in the political ambitions of the alarmists-

China has 'open mind' about cause of climate change

China's most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an "open mind".

more-

China admits ‘open attitude’ over warming

China appeared to cast doubts on Sunday on the scientific consensus on the underlying causes of global warming, with a senior official saying that Beijing had an “open attitude” towards what he described as “disputes in the scientific community” on the issue.
“There is a view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself,” Xie Zhenhua, vice-chairman of China’s National Development and Reforms Commission, told a press conference in New Delhi. “We have to keep an open attitude.”

Wow!

Pachaurigate cartoon in the Times of India-

Richard North-Pachauri must resign or will be forced to

Richard North on TimesNow TV-

Video(Youtube).

TimesNow link.

Dr.North-

If Dr Pachauri does not resign voluntarily, he will be forced to do so.

-------------
It was not until the Sunday Times last week actually highlighted it that he was forced to take action. And on that basis I don't think he has any credible alternative but to resign an he is either going to resign voluntarily or as the media are increasingly saying he is going o be forced. It is a very clearly recognisable tactic where he simply denies the undeniable and for a while if you are in a very elevated position you get away with it. He hasn't yet recognised that his position is already untenable and the more he denies the way the media work the more evidence they are going to find until such time as his denials will be so lacking in credibility that he will be unable to operate,

Pachauri admits to 4 new errors!

 Pachauri-

Possibility of more errors in IPCC report minimal

Hindustan Times-

Pachauri won't quit, but admits to 4 new errors

More from the HT report-

--------------
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who on Saturday refused to resign over the mistake, admitted to four more mistakes in the panel’s report. He attributed these to “human error” but expressed inability to take action against the scientists responsible, saying they were not IPCC employees.

The Himalayan blunder was first reported by HT on January 18.

According to the report, the present area of the Himalayan glaciers is 500,000 sq km, when in reality it is 33,000 sq km.

The report also says there are 15,000 Himalayan glaciers, whereas the actual figure is between 9,000 and 12,000.

Furthermore, the IPCC says the Pindari glacier in Uttarakhand is melting at a rate of 135.2 metres a year, when the factual position is 25.3 metres.

It also predicts that the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra will become seasonal rivers in the “near future” — based on the research of Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who also made the 2035 meltdown claim.

“Without considering the glacial sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra in China, one can’t reach such a conclusion,” said D.P. Dabral of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology.

“We admit to the unfortunate mistakes,” Pachauri told a press conference on Saturday, adding that no Indian glaciologist pointed out the mistakes since the report came out in 2007.
The IPCC — the UN’s Nobel prize-winning body on climate change — has launched an investigation into the errors a month after the environment ministry published a paper questioning its claim.

They say when it rains......

Prannoy Roy to Pachauri-"Your credibility is impeccable"

In Hindi, a sycophant is called a chamcha. Chamcha is also the Hindi word for spoon. Thus, a common wordplay in India is to call a bootlicker(often in the context of politics) a spoon, say-

X is Minister Y's spoon.

A few days ago I was mildly amused to see perhaps Indian TV's most famous (and perhaps most influential) personality Prannoy Roy of NDTV play a fawning spoon to Rajendra Pachauri.I say 'mildly' because I have come to expect such servility from the MSM- it is their normal mode.Still, it's an amazing example of media's obsequiousness towards Pachauri.No wonder Pachauri gets miffed easily when criticized. He has had it so easy over the years.

Video(Youtube) -Prannoy Roy acts obsequiously towards Rajendra Pachauri
NDTV link

 Roy wanted to be reassured by Pachauri that the glaciers were melting, whatever the expected date of demise(it is true -certainty of disaster does comfort some people. The thought that catastrophic global warming might not be happening can disconcert them.)

The funniest part is Prannoy Roy's concern about 'Global Attack' on Pachauri.He thinks criticizing Pachauri and other alarmists is like finding "reds under the bed", like "cold war".I don't think Roy is very interested in hearing out the critics.
His 'Global Attack' also reminded me of images from all those sci-fi movies-

Listening to Roy one can almost imagine Richard North and other Pachauri critics to be hovering in the sky like Predator drones zapping IPCC scientists.And looking for Dr. Pachauri in particular.

Roy's fawning at the end has to be heard to be believed. He says-
"Your credibility is impeccable.Let's hope you fight back and win and clear your name in all these...in this widespread attack from one side against you."

Roy also didn't think it fit to disclose that his NDTV has been in bed with Pachauri for quite some time-

Rajendra Pachauri with Prannoy Roy- the guru and the spoon

Thank you, Dr.Prannoy Roy, for a seminal lesson in how not to be an unbiased mediaperson.


Update -
      Autonomous Mind has more