| megaman79 said: ^ I guess you could argue that the timing wasn't helpful. Kinda like how not finding WMD's weeks before the invasion would have been anti productive, but i am not excusing his actions either. It might be interesting to find out if the new glaciar estimates were actually available at Copenhagen. |
Well I can't think of any time when it's helpful to be caught in a lie =P
As for the estimates, Pachauri was made aware of the error before Copenhagen but it wasn't until late January that any sort of correction to the issue was seen. This is particularly damning if you understand how massive an issue the Himalayan story is to India where the majority of their fresh drinking water is from the glaciers in the Himalayans. As a native Indian himself, I find it hard to believe the gravity of the error had escaped Pachauri and I find it even harder still to believe it would garner a priority so low that it would only be addressed weeks later ...and coincidentally right after the media began covering the story.
I don't think it takes much of a leap to see that Pachauri had no intention of correcting the issue and only did so after being dragged to the issue by the press coverage and PR damage it was doing to the IPCC. He had weeks to fix it after it was pointed out in private e-mails by Pallava Bagla but only needed 48 hours once the press coverage hit a fevered pitch in the UK and India. It doesn't take a cynic to see the worst in what was going on there.
Oh, and did I mention he used this claim as the basis of grant funding for a grant that was just awarded in January? And in the abstract of the grant it was claimed:
"One authoritative study reported that most of the glaciers in the region "will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming, resulting in widespread water shortages,"
Am I being all that cynical here? I mean REALLY? Am I?
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