No, no, not that Nobel Laureate. Not Michael E Mann - and far be it for me to imply that the tree-ring doesn't fall far from the tree. No, in this case, Mann's sometime boss at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, is facing arrest in Delhi after female employees of TERI (The Energy & Resources Institute) accused him of sexual harassment. See the Times of India story:
Pachauri Gets Relief Till Thursday
As I've noted previously, I'm a contributor to the new book Climate Change: The Facts, and in said tome I happen to mention Dr Pachauri en passant:
In the interests of saving the planet, IPCC honcho Rajendra Pachauri demands the introduction of punitive aviation taxes and hotel electricity allowances to deter the masses from travelling, while he flies 300,000 miles a year on official 'business' and research for his recent warmographic novel in which a climate activist travels the world bedding big-breasted women who are amazed by his sustainable growth. (Seriously: 'He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni's body, caressing her voluptuous breasts.' But don't worry; every sex scene is peer-reviewed.)
This was a seriously lawyered passage - because Dr Pachauri is even more litigious than Dr Mann. But, in fact, the bit about his warmographic novel is all true. Here's what I said at the time:
Rajendra Pachauri, the cricket-loving climate-profiteering Nobel Peace Prize-winner with a carbon footprint almost as big as Al Gore's, heads up the IPCC, the global climate-change racket whose "settled science" is getting less settled by the minute. It seems an odd moment for Dr. Pachauri to branch out into bodice-heaving fiction:
'In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter.
'The book, which makes reference to the Kama Sutra, starts promisingly enough as it tells the story of a climate expert with a lament for the denuded mountain slopes of Nainital, in northern India, where deforestation by the timber mafia and politicians has "endangered the fragile ecosystem".
'But talk of "denuding" is a clue of what is to come..
'"Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay's bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before . . . He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni's body, caressing her voluptuous breasts."'
Alas, as with the IPCC reports, after all the lascivious anticipation the ol' hockey stick fails to keeps its end up:
Sadly for Sanjay, writes Dr Pachauri, "the excitement got the better of him, before he could even get started".
Oh, dear. There are times when even a climate expert can't "hide the decline".
As it happens, the above piece was requested of me by Michael E Mann's Big Tobacco lawyers as part of discovery for the forthcoming trial - as was this column of mine from Maclean's:
Nor are we allowed to make jokes about Rajendra Pachauri. I always love those experts who go on TV and say you can't pronounce on this subject unless you're a bona fide climatologist. Dr. Pachauri, the head honcho of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a graduate of the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. He's not a climatologist but a railroad engineer. So, if he ever avails himself of a free half-hour with a Copenhagen hooker, I'm sure, like the Bombay to Cochin express, he'll pull out on time. But it's hard to see why he should be presiding over a multi-trillion-dollar shakedown of the global economy. For one thing, Dr. Pachauri has one of the largest carbon footprints on the planet. He's in favour of "hefty aviation taxes" to "deter people from flying," but fortunately once you're part of the transnational jet set nothing can deter you. He flew 443,243 miles on "IPCC business" in the year-and-a-half run-up to Copenhagen. I'm not sure whether that includes his two weekend round trips from New York to Delhi, once for a cricket practice, once for a match.
Needless to say, opening the Carbonhagen shakindownen inaugural session, he dismissed the "Climategate" revelations as a "theft." Not so. They were a leak by a concerned insider—the sort of chap we usually hail as a "whistle-blower." In this case, he can blow the whistle as loud as he likes but, like a deaf Central Railways conductor waiting to pull out for Wadala Road from the Victoria Terminus, Dr. Pachauri can't hear him. All the science has been "peer-reviewed," he says, so what could possibly go wrong?
I've no idea why Dr Mann's legal team want that piece, unless perhaps it's to demonstrate that I have a habit of disrespecting the most eminent and acclaimed figures in the climate-change community, all the way up to the top guy. (Incidentally, it's a year since I responded to Mann's discovery requests and, in the arid dung heap of DC justice, we're no nearer a trial date, so I'm thinking of publishing the above and all the rest in a new anthology called Doctor Fraudpants' Discovery Requests. Hope to have it out soon, but in the meantime I hope you'll consider supporting my pushback against the Mann/Pachauri Clime Syndicate via our Steyn vs the Stick Free Speech Special, our other fine products, or one of our SteynOnline gift certificates.)
At any rate, it seems Dr Pachauri has not been merely writing warmographic novels, but trying out lines from the next book on every comely climate chick in the research department:
Here I am sitting and chairing an IPCC meeting and surreptitiously sending you messages. I hope that tells you of my feelings for you!
The science may be settled but his pants aren't. Is that the IPCC meeting where they decided the Himalayan glaciers were about to crack open and rain down an almighty cascading torrent washing everything in sight out into the Bay of Bengal?
Sadly, the object of his affection does not share his feelings. But you can understand why a guy who's spent the entire 21st century insisting cooling is evidence of warming might well conclude that, when it comes to the IPCC office party, no means yes.
By the way, did you know that the launch party for Dr Pachauri's sustainable-growth romp was paid for by BP? Hold that thought.
Now, on the whole, I'm not one to go in for guilt by association: The fact that Michael E Mann's boss at the IPCC is facing sex charges for harassing women is no more relevant than the fact that Michael E Mann's boss at Penn State - Graham Spanier, the guy who hired him - is under indictment for obstruction of justice, failure to report child abuse, and child endangerment.
But guilt by association is the entire modus operandi of Mann's Big Climate enforcers. They clobbered poor old Lennart Bengtsson, one of the most respected men in his field, simply for having the temerity to associate with Nigel Lawson. They're currently taking the tire-iron to Willie Soon for taking money from fossil-fuel corporations. You mean, like the head of the IPCC took money from a fossil-fuel corp for the sex-book launch that emboldened him to try out his character's best lines on real-life gals? Or is that kind of fossil-fuel money okay?
Oh, and let's not forget Greg Laden, the strange furtive Mini-Me to Michael Mann's Doctor Fraudpants, who tried to bully Judith Curry into a public apology merely for committing the crime-by-association of favoriting a Tweet from yours truly.
Unlike Laden, who seems to be making a career out of trying to get people fired, I'm a general believer in freedom of association. But I do feel a touch of the Lady Bracknells coming on re Michael E Mann: To lose one boss in a sex crimes case may be regarded as misfortune; to lose the other boss in a sex crimes case looks like carelessness.
UPDATE: Dr Pachauri isn't going the finger-wagging I-did-not-have-sexual-relations route. The IPCC chair for the last 13 years, has resigned. Sad climate flack Bob Ward warns that "there will no doubt be some climate change 'sceptics' who seek to use Dr Pachauri's resignation as an opportunity to attack the IPCC" Oh, can't have that, can we?
~The Oscars? Oh, I'd hoped Interstellar might win a special Academy Award for Most Intriguing Villain for Matt Damon's portrayal of insane megalomaniac scientist "Dr Mann". Alas not. But the other night I went to see the Colin Firth spy caper Kingsman, and once again the world-domination super-villain was a climate-change madman, played by a lithping Samuel L Jackson, who manages to recruit an Obama lookalike president to his deranged scheme. He's less Michael Mann perhaps than a Rajendra Pachauri with a little less legover action.
I'm an old Fleet Streeter, and I know the rule: it takes three to make a trend. But in the last six months we've had two multiplex blockbusters that cock a snook at the Big Climate crowd. Is there a third in the works? Or do we have to wait for the film of the Mann vs Steyn trial?
~If you'd like to join Mark as one of the snook-cockers, we hope you'll drop by the SteynOnline bookstore to support his legal offense fund via our exclusive Mann vs Steyn trial merchandise, or an autographed copy of Mark's free-speech book, or our SteynOnline gift certificates.
