Rajendra Pachauri, who led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, resigned today. He faces possible arrest on accusations of sexual assault, stalking, and harassment of several female employees.
You might be as appalled as I was to read the statement above, quoted from Pachauri’s resignation letter — which has nothing to do with the allegations and everything to do with his attitude to science and thus his leadership of the IPCC.
Journalist Donna Laframboise could not have said it better than I regarding Pachauri’s statement:
“Yes, the IPCC – which we’re told to take seriously because it is a scientific body producing scientific reports – has, in fact, been led by an environmentalist on a mission. By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling.
Even here, at the end, Pachauri fails to grasp that science and religion don’t belong in the same sentence; that those on a political mission are unlikely to be upholders of rigorous scientific practice.” [emphasis in original]
The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group and conservation organizations like Polar Bears International routinely tout the IPCC as the highest arbiter of science on issues of present and future climate. For 13 long years this man has been their leader.
Add this to “The Politics of Polar Bears.”
Read the rest of Donna’s commentary here, and the Pachauri resignation letter here.
UPDATE 1 (24 Feb 2015): Amazingly, the press release issued by the IPCC makes no mention of why Pachauri has resigned: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/P41_acting_chair.pdf
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