|
I am not resigning: Pachauri
India Blooms News Service
New Delhi, Jan 23 (IBNS) R K Pachauri, the man in the eye of a storm over the wrong predictions of a Himalayan glacier meltdown by 2035 by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he would not resign as the head of the UN body on climate change owing to the “regrettable human error”.
 |
|
| |
“I have no intensions to resign,” Pachauri told a press conference in New Delhi saying he has been elected by the support of various countries to the UN body, which won Nobel Prize for its works.
“I have a task to complete. I have to complete the fifth assessment report (on climate change). We have a very robust fourth assessment report,” he said, adding that the error on the Himalayan glacier predictions no way undermines the works of IPCC at large.
Admitting human error and slip up on following standard procedures and the same would not be repeated, he said he is not going to be distracted by the controversy since the job of IPCC is not only about Himalayan glaciers but billions of species facing extinction and lot more.
He also clarified that TERI (The Energy & Resources Institute), the organization he also heads and been slammed by British media, is in no way linked to IPCC.
“TERI has not benefited at all (from IPCC),” he said. The research of a scientist- Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain- and his interview published in New Scientist publication was the basis of the 2035 predictions. Hasnain is now with TERI.
He said truth will prevail on the reality of climate change and there are not merely skeptics of climate change but also an effort to demolish the sincere work on the subject.
Earlier in an email statement, Pachauri admitted that IPCC erred in asserting meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 owing to global warming owing to human error.
On Wednesday, IPCC had said from Geneva: "In drafting the paragraph in question (of 2035 meltdown date), the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly."
Pachauri, who faced the media on Saturday, was avoiding comment on the issue and a host of other controversies and allegations of his commercial gains as heads of many organizations as levelled in British media.
Earlier, Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain, the scientist with TERI who allegedly made the Himalayan glacier meltdown predictions, said he never said it would occur by 2035 and that prejudicial forces are campaigning to denigrate scientists who have established the impact of climate change.
“To reiterate, I have not given any date or year on the likely disappearance of Himalayan glaciers -- neither in any interview nor in any of my publications in various journals,” said Hasnain on Wednesday reacting to the controversy and his 1999 interview in New Scientist quoting the date.
On Saturday, Pachauri said Hasnain was not part of TERI when he made the research.
“He was with Jawaharlal Nehru University then. Only the past two years he is with TERI as a senior fellow,” he said.
A warning based on Hasnain's alleged predictions that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is being retracted by the Nobel-prize winning UN body on climate change, Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
|
