Where are the Vice Chairmen, and Other IPCC Questions

See any vice chairmen? Al Gore (l) and the IPCC’s Rajendra Pachauri take their bows in Oslo

Acknowledging that there may be even more errors in the Nobel Peace Prize-winning IPCC‘s 2007 climate report than the “scientific fact” the IPCC partially copied from a thinly-sourced World Wildlife Fund propaganda document, IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri seems to be blaming his vice chairmen:

The IPCC’s 2007 report, which won it half the Nobel Peace Prize, claimed the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

But it emerged last week that the forecast was based not on a consensus among climate change experts, but on a media interview with a single Indian glaciologist in 1999.

The IPCC admitted on Thursday that the prediction was “poorly substantiated” in the latest of a series of blows to the panel’s credibility.

Dr Pachauri said that the IPCC’s report was the responsibility of the panel’s Co-Chairs at the time, both of whom have since moved on.

They were Dr Martin Parry, a British scientist now at Imperial College London, and Dr Osvaldo Canziani , an Argentine meteorologist. Neither was immediately available for comment.

“I don’t want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs,” Dr Pachauri said. “Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation.”

You’ll notice from the picture, however, that when it came time to take bows, the vice chairmen were nowhere to be found.

P.S. For fun, here’s a quiz on this blog post:

Question: What did we learn from this story?

A. Never trust the IPCC.
B. The Nobel Peace Prize can be ridiculous.
C. Be wary of people who refer to other people as “chairs.”
D. All of the above.

Answer: D

Image from Wikipedia


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