Pachauri under pressure to resign over Himalayan glacier goof-up - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Reports indicate that Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is under pressure to resign over the error that the IPCC made on the issue of the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Dr Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, has insisted that he will remain in post for another four years despite having failed to act on a serious error in the body's 2007 report. But, according to a report in The Times, John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, said that Dr Pachauri should have acted as soon as he had been informed of the error, even though issuing a correction would have embarrassed the IPCC on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit. A journalist had told Dr Pachauri several times late last year that glaciologists had refuted the IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Dr Pachauri refused to address the problem, saying, "I don't have anything to add on glaciers." He suggested that the error would not be corrected until 2013 or 2014, when the IPCC next reported. The IPCC issued a correction and apology on January 20, three days after the error had made global headlines. According to Sauven, "Mistakes will always be made but it's how you handle those mistakes which affects the credibility of the institution. Pachauri should has put his hand up and said 'we made a mistake'. It's in these situations that your character and judgment is tested. Do you make the right judgment call? He clearly didn't." "The IPCC needed a new chairman who would hold public confidence by introducing more rigorous procedures," Sauven said. "The IPCC needs to regain credibility," he added. "If we get a new person in with an open mind, prepared to fundamentally review how the IPCC works, we would regain confidence in the organization," he opined. But, Dr Pachauri told Indian television that he believed attacks on him were being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits because of actions against climate change recommended by the IPCC. "My credibility has been established because I was re-elected chairman in 2008 by all the countries of the world," he said. "They must have been satisfied with what I did in terms of the fourth assessment report (published in 2007) because they have given me the mandate of completing the fifth assessment report (to be released over 2013 and 2014) which I intend doing," he added.