In Andy Revkin’s article about Pachauri’s resignation, Revkin, apparently without awareness of the irony, included the following quotation from Grist (from The Hindu in India).

Some in India are also calling for Pachauri to step down from The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), where he is currently on leave. “To safeguard the interest of global climate science Pachauri should step down immediately from the Chairmanship of IPCC and TERI,” Iqbal S. Hasnain, a former professor of environmental studies, told The Hindu.

The surname of Revkin’s informant ought to have attracted his interest.

CA readers will doubtless recall that Syed Hasnain, a scientist working at Pachauri’s TERI with the same surname as Revkin’s source, had been at the center of the false claims about glacier disappearance by 2035. See for example Delingpole here or Booker here:

What has now come to light, however, is that the scientist from whom this claim originated, Dr Syed Hasnain, has for the past two years been working as a senior employee of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI),

Here’s the punchline. Syed Hasnain, the senior employee at TERI, is the same person as Iqbal S. Hasnain, formerly of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The identity of the two can be confirmed in various ways. The article in The Hindu about Pachauri’s resignation also says that Iqbal S. Hasnain was Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Calicut, Kerala and former Professor Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Richard North here gives the full name of Syed Hasnain of TERI as Syed Iqbal Hasnain, saying that he had previously been at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi at the time of the 2007 IPCC report, moving to TERI only after it had received lavish grants to study Himalaya glaciers. (Total grants included $500,000 from a US foundation and 3 million euro from the EU.) See presentation by Syed Iqbal Hasnain of TERI here.

Hasnain’s claim of Himalaya disappearance by 2035 was widely publicized e.g. Geoffrey Boulton here and here , IPCC vice chair van Ypersele -see here.

It turned out that Hasnain’s claim that Himalaya glaciers would gone by 2035 was without foundation. It had been contradicted in November 2009 by a report by Indian geologist V.K. Raina, a report viciously attacked by Pachauri as “voodoo science” among other expletives. Richard North’s disclosure of the financial benefit to TERI from the false information about Himalaya glaciers resulted in a challenge to Pachauri in January 2010, e.g. the Der Spiegel editorial recommending Pachauri’s resignation, with which Andrew Weaver had apparently denoted agreement to Canwest reporter Richard Foot on January 25, 2010.

Several points of irony arise. Given Hasnain’s casual science in the 2035 projection, it’s ironic that he now purports to defend the “interest of global climate science” by demanding Pachauri’s resignation. One can hardly help wondering what happened to him at TERI after the 2010 controversy. Also, given both Pachauri’s eventual resignation and the many calls for his resignation in January 2010, it’s ironic that it’s a tort in Canada to say that Andrew Weaver was one of the first to call for Pachauri’s resignation.



