Climate Conversation Group

Andy Reisinger – powerful global links to climate profits

Dr Andrew Reisinger, Senior Research Fellow, New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute (CCRI), sits at the right hand of God. The god, that is, of the IPCC — Dr Rajendra Pachauri. Andy is head of the Technical Support Unit for the Synthesis Report group of the IPCC, and from that exalted position controls what the world’s national leaders get to know about climate change.

For he was responsible to his “core group” co-author Rajendra Pachauri for co-ordinating the drafting of the Synthesis Report for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). The SR is “the concluding summary of the IPCC’s most recent assessment of our current knowledge on climate change,” as Andy’s cv puts it.

That sounds like proper influence to me — real, transformative power. For what comes out of the IPCC’s Assessment Report (or more particularly the summary of it) goes straight into the ears of national leaders around the globe and they will act upon it. They don’t read the actual reports, so they won’t spot the differences between them and the summary. Neither will they fault the summary for themselves, because they are not scientists.

So they are necessarily at the mercy of the authors (or manipulators) of the Summary Report. Much has been said elsewhere about the politically-motivated alterations that were made to many of the IPCC reports. The reports are meant to represent the best of current scientific knowledge, but in practice they are watered down, uncertainties are grossly understated, certainty is claimed where it doesn’t exist and what the scientists said has even been reversed — without their approval.

The mother of all conflicts — of interest

Most importantly, a human influence on climate is constantly asserted, even in the absence of evidence. Any doubts of that influence are expunged or buried deeply where they are hard to spot.

Reisinger has strong ties to NIWA — at CCRI he works closely with the NZ Climate Change Centre, which is controlled by NIWA in the person of Dr David Wratt, Chief Scientist, Climate.

Dr Richard North, at EUReferendum, is following a complex trail of financial transactions and uncovering interwoven chains of business linkages surrounding Dr Rajendra Pachauri which, not to put too fine a point on it, threaten together to destroy Pachauri’s reputation, along with the IPCC and all it stands for. This is North in The Sunday Telegraph:

Pachauri has established an astounding worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

This is the mother of all conflicts of interest: advise the whole world the world itself needs saving, using methods you provide for a handsome profit. That was impartial advice, then, was it?

Climate-related business activities involve billions of dollars. They include carbon trading, provision of “offsets” such as planting forests or not felling them, the search for alternative fuels or energy sources, improving the efficiency of motors and energy-consuming processes, renewable energy projects, environmental education projects, carbon police training seminars and a lot more. Well, maybe not the policing seminars — although anything’s possible.

Richard North has written a series of articles about Pachauri, the latest of them chilling in its meticulous depiction of the links between Pachauri and big business, especially giant oil and gas companies. We thought the IPCC would detest “big oil” for the greenhouse gas emissions they make possible, but they do not, apparently, if there’s money to be made!

Pachauri’s company, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), engages in climate-related business ventures around the world, from consulting to the IPCC to developing microbial technology for cleaning up oil spills, pipeline corrosion inhibitors and microbial enhanced oil recovery. Questions have been raised in Pachauri’s native India about the various conflicts of interest exposed by North.

The world’s greatest hypocrite

I strongly recommend you go to EUReferendum and read some of the Pachauri investigative pieces. They are stunning.

The overall impression of Pachauri from North’s writing is twofold. First, he seems a man with no declared income living the life of a multi-millionaire. This does not make sense and one wonders why one of the world’s top public servants does not disclose all the sources and amounts of his income.

Reisinger — climate profit?

Second, his undeclared personal activities, as a captain of industry steering large oil and gas companies, provide a grotesque counterpoint to his public campaign to save the world from fossil fuel emissions.

Pachauri must be the world’s biggest hypocrite.

Hitherto the only link North knew of between TERI and the IPCC was Pachauri. But now, confirmed by Ritu Kumar, director and company secretary of TERI Europe, we hear that Andy Reisinger works for both TERI and the UK Met Office. Money has been paid to him by the British government through strange, circuitous routes which demand explanation. North concludes that:

it would appear that one of the most powerful and influential men in the IPCC process, second only to Rajendra Pachauri, actually works directly for TERI India, which – like its master – has benefited and stands further to benefit from climate alarmism.

We see evidence in Reisinger’s affairs of a powerful personal interest in climate change and yet he is charged with giving impartial, independent advice to our government — and every other government, too, through his position with the IPCC. Such undeniable conflict of interest promises shortly to become acutely embarrassing for Dr Reisinger. Will we need an official inquiry into the climate advice tendered to the government in recent years?

Ian Wishart got no answers from Reisinger about these issues the other day — apparently he doesn’t answer awkward questions when he’s on parental leave.

Richard North promises something special in The Sunday Telegraph this Sunday. I can hardly wait.