Guess who's making Big Money on Climate Change?

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These are the UN guys who are the authorities on Climate Change, the Hockey Stick, and all that.

And just how much is Dr. Pachauri making? A quarter million bucks. That we know of:

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’

Big bucks to an unqualifed, well connected bureaucrat for "access". This is me, looking shocked.

Dr. Pachauri has issued a press release saying that the charges are baseless and that he may sue the Telegraph for libel. People in the climate science community are unimpressed at his response:

The release provides details on more than $250,000 in payments to TERI over the past three and a half years in exchange for Dr. Pachauri's services from companies with a direct financial stake in climate policy. I do not see how this information in any way clears up the issue. In fact, it raises more difficult questions for the IPCC and Dr. Pachauri, who based on this information is unambiguously in violation of conflict of interest policies of the WMO and UN, the parent bodies of the IPCC. This level of remuneration from parties interested in specific climate policy outcomes would clearly violate conflict of interest guidelines at most federal agencies with respect to service on science advisory panels (e.g., FDA has a threshold of $50,000 per year). The fact that the money goes to an organization that Dr. Pachauri directs rather than directly into his pocket is not relevant (to the FDA, WMO or UN).

If the Intellectual Left had any honesty left, they would string this guy up from a lamppost themselves. The world could use an honest Intellectual Left.