Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Headlines Tuesday 22nd December 2009

First Jesus-Era House Found in Nazareth, Israel

Days before Christmas, archeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.


After a heart-wrenching international custody battle, New Jersey dad David Goldman hopes today is the day he can take his 9-year-old son Sean home from Brazil.

Health Bill: Christmas Gift or Lump of Coal?
Obama, Senate Dems tout momentum behind health reform package as it heads for Christmas Eve vote

Stranded Passengers Shown the Door
DOT orders airlines to let travelers deplane after 3 hours on tarmac — or face a fine of $27,500 per person

Guilty Plea in Va. Tech Decapitation Case
Ex-Virginia Tech student pleads guilty in the grisly murder of a classmate who rejected his romantic advances

Murder suspect 'a gentle giant'
A MAN, who allegedly killed his dad and a 12-year-old girl, would never hurt anyone, family says.

Buildings damaged in cyclone's assault
HOMES have been damaged as Cyclone Laurence unleashes its fury on coastal communities

Brittany Murphy planned Aussie escape
A FRAGILE Brittany Murphy had been looking forward to spending the New Year in Australia.

Gen Y locked out of home ownership
THE tendency of Gen Ys to hop from job to job is locking them out of the mortgage market.

Television star in brutal gang attack
A STAR of reality TV hit Bondi Rescue has been savagely bashed in an unprovoked attack.

Iran holding Osama bin Laden's family
IRANIAN authorities are continuing to hold several members of Osama bin Laden's family.

The grain of salt Premier
SHE claimed to have grown up on recycled water but Kristina Keneally stretched the truth a little as she promoted our new and expensive desalination plant.

Abbott to challenge PM with health referendum
OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott is expected to go on the offensive and challenge Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on health care by pushing for a referendum on health funding reform, it has been reported.
=== Comments ===
Rudd and Wong on a climate snow job
Piers Akerman
EXACTLY which part of the word ``failure’’ can’t Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong understand?
Or Professor Tim ``Flim’’ Flannery for that matter?
===
Al Franken Insults Joe Lieberman
By Bill O'Reilly
Thursday on the Senate floor, Mr. Lieberman was speaking about the health care bill and politely asked for an extension to wrap up his remarks. The senator didn't even wait for verbal approval since it's almost always given. Almost always, but not Thursday. That's because Franken, who was in a rotation presiding over the Senate, objected to Lieberman continuing his remarks in a stunning display of disrespect. Take a look at the interruption.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN, I-CONN.: We'll provide an opportunity for broad savings in health care and health insurance for pretty much everybody in our country.

SEN. AL FRANKEN, D-MINN.: Senator, you have spoken for — I'm sorry, the senator has spoken for 10 minutes.

LIEBERMAN: I wonder if I can ask unanimous consent for just an additional moment.

FRAKEN: Um, in my capacity as senator from Minnesota, I object.

LIEBERMAN: Really? OK. Don't take it personally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

But many others did take it personally, including John McCain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: I've been around here 20-some years. First time I have ever seen a member denied the — an extra minute or two to finish his remarks. And I must say that I don't know what's happening here in this body, but I think it's wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Now, the Franken deal shouldn't surprise anyone. The man's a hater, always has been.

But it illuminates why the far left is despised by most Americans. That kind of behavior is uncalled for. There's no reason on Earth why Sen. Lieberman, an honest man, should not have been given another moment or two to finish his remarks. Franken's actions were mean, petty and disrespectful.

Americans, generally speaking, don't approve of that kind of behavior. But that's what we often get from the far left. Just look at their Web sites. Just look at the savages spewing venom on cable television.

Yes, it's true the right does some of that kind of stuff as well, but not nearly as much as the far left. I see the transcripts, ladies and gentlemen. I know who's saying what.

In the end, Franken's behavior is, of course, self-defeating. It's incredible the man is even sitting in the Senate. And now he's alienated most of the country.

Does the far left really think it's going to get the support of most Americans using tactics like that? Unbelievable.
===
No Special Interests? Carping?
Greta Wire Today
If this health care bill was not the product of special interests as the President and the Dems now claim, can you tell me why, according to a newly released study, one collection of lobbyists were paid over the past two years $635 million dollars to lobby health care issues? $635 million? And who is the [...]
===
MOONBATTLE
Tim Blair
Clive Hamilton, the man who is ashamed of his coat, fears a post-Copenhagen world:
Despite the genuflection to the two degree target in the accord document, the actions pledged by the major emitters mean that the world is now confirmed on the path to a four-degree world.
Hamilton himself holds two degrees, which shows just how dangerous this trend can be.
It is hard to convey in a few words what this means. It is a scenario so frightening that climate scientists have been reluctant to canvass it for fear of being dismissed as alarmist.
Come on, Clive. Give us a hint.
It was the unspeakable scenario, until at a conference held in Oxford in October leading scientists began to say openly what they most feared. What they said is something you don’t want to tell your children about.
Not wishing to alarm The Children, Clive declines to reveal exactly what those scientists said. Considering we’ve already often heard about climate change endangering the entire planet, it must be even worse than that. Worse than destroying the planet. But then Clive puts aside his universal existential panic to address the subject of Tim Flannery.

Clive has been gunning for fellow moonbat Flannery since at least early 2009, when he accused the “skilled media player” of flip-floppery and “opportunism”. Now he elevates that into a full-scale moonbattle. It’s moonbat combat, people:
To have any chance of limiting warming even to two degrees (itself a dangerous objective), global emissions have to peak within the next ten years then decline sharply. After Copenhagen that is now impossible …

Everyone seems to understand this except Tim Flannery, who has praised the accord as a good outcome that has made “huge advances”.
It’s on! Hamilton continues:
With his bizarre interpretations, frequent blunders and repeated changes of position, Flannery has become the butt of jokes among the cognoscenti …
And beyond. Hamilton also is powerfully joke-worthy outside of the climate cognoscenti zone. But I’ve interrupted his Flannery attack:
… although that won’t cool the ABC’s ardour for the former Australian of the Year.
Bitch-o-rama! It’s all about air time! How will Flannery respond? I’m tipping lofty disdain, although Flannery might be inclined to fight rather than flight now that he’s locked in a warming death-clamp with his academic rival.

Truth be told, I’d rather Flannery prevail, but it’s a tight call.

(Via J.F. Beck)

UPDATE. Ross Garnaut:
Copenhagen was not predestined to be such a fiasco. No one quite predicted the long diversion led by Tuvalu. No one quite predicted the extent of noise from the one-man band from Sudan with international vocal accompaniment.
These people always seem to struggle with predictions.

UPDATE II. Moonbat market meltdown:
European and United Nations carbon prices fell the most since February after the Copenhagen climate accord didn’t set targets that would boost demand for permits.
===
THINGS SCIENTISTS SAY
Tim Blair
A scientific tour through the NYT’s archives …

• 1910: “DOG SPEAKS SEVEN WORDS; Scientists Say He Understands German and Replies to Strangers.”

This was back when the Times was a trusted source of serious non-tabloid news.

• 1910: ”SCIENTISTS SAY SELENIUM WILL WORK MIRACLES.”

Sadly for selenium investors, the expected miracles failed to eventuate.

• 1925: “TRUST AMUNDSEN’S SKILL; Philadelphia Scientists Say There Is No Reason to Fear for His Safety.”

And they were right! Roald Amundsen survived his 1925 adventure. Then he was killed in 1928.

• 1936: “WORLD POPULATION HELD NEARING PEAK; Johns Hopkins Scientists Say 2100 A.D. Will See High Point of 2,645,500,000.”

We’re already pushing towards three times that number.
===
2010 LOOMS
Tim Blair
Good poll news for Barnaby Joyce:
The Rudd government is clearly determined to create a media image of the opposition’s finance spokesman, Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce, as totally compromised in his new frontbench role, the economic village idiot or a combination of both.

Unfortunately for Labor this spin isn’t working.
And good news too for Sarah Palin:
One is a former vice presidential candidate who has been vilified in much of the press. The other is a former two-term vice president who has been celebrated in much of the press. So which is more respected by the public at large?
===
VOTE WARM
Tim Blair
It’s freezy in Joisey, according to latest Bingley reports featuring an unhappy snowdog. We’re a little warmer here in Sydney:

Behold your terrible, terrible future, earthlings.

UPDATE. In other labrador news, watch this yellow bouncer hunt down a fat salmon.
===
LOSE WEIGHT NOW! ASK ME HOW!
Tim Blair
Climate hunger-monger Paul Conner presents evidence of his pointless weight loss, in order to halt the “unseemly rash of lies all over the net about our cause.”

Speaking of unseemly, what’s that on Paul’s back? Oh, my … he’s got the sacred number tattooed there. But why hide it? The truly committed go for the face.

UPDATE. Paul has wasted away to nothing! Either that, or he’s taken those pictures down. Let’s enjoy his prayer instead:
I know that this prayer can come true. But I also know that to achieve extraordinary results, we must be willing to do extraordinary things. To inspire a generation, we ourselves must be inspirational. We cannot afford to wait around for miracles. We must be the change we need to see.

Scientist Tim Flannery was a keynote speaker at the June Australian youth climate conference Powershift. Looking out over the thousand young people present, he asked whether we are really willing to make the sacrifices required to solve the climate crisis.

I know that we are. And by fasting for climate justice we sought to show this to him …
He’ll be ever so proud.
===
Hope that Iranians move against their leaders before the West must
Andrew Bolt
One day it will blow completely:
The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a vast and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities.

As mourners carried the body of the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, tens of thousands of his supporters surged through the streets of Qum, chanting denunciations of the leadership in Tehran that would have been unthinkable only months ago: “Our shame, our shame, our idiot leader!” and “Dictator, this is your last message: The people of Iran are rising!"…

The funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri, who died in his sleep on Sunday at the age of 87, appears to have put Iran’s rulers in a difficult position. They had to pay public respect to a senior religious scholar who helped build Iran’s theocracy and was once the heir apparent to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution…

But Iran’s hard-liners have long spoken dismissively of Ayatollah Montazeri, who was under house arrest from 1997 to 2003 for his antigovernment critiques. In the months since June’s disputed presidential election, he had unleashed a series of extraordinary denunciations of the government crackdown on protesters, declaring that the government was neither democratic nor Islamic and that Ayatollah Khamenei was unfit to be the supreme leader. He also dismissed the results of the election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won officially by a landslide, as fraudulent, echoing the claims of opposition leaders.

Ayatollah Montazeri’s criticisms carried a special weight because of his status as Iran’s most senior cleric.
But how much longer dare the West wait?
Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

The notes, from Iran’s most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. Foreign intelligence agencies date them to early 2007, four years after Iran was thought to have suspended its weapons programme.
(Thanks to reader Kent.)
===
News to chew over
Andrew Bolt
British teeth are best. Actually, Germanic teeth generally are best, and those of former communist nations worst:

===
Carbon is now the millstone around Rudd’s neck
Andrew Bolt
The failure of Copenhagen makes it now impossibly hard for Kevin Rudd to sell his emissions trading scheme to Australians. Already the revolt is fast gaining steam:
WHEN Keith De Lacy was treasurer of Queensland, a certain K. Rudd was the other can-do man in the then state government.

Now that the Prime Minister has come up in the world, Mr De Lacy has a message for him: the Australian coal industry was sold out in Copenhagen, and Kevin Rudd needs to drastically revise his climate change response.

These days, Mr De Lacy’s main job is with miner Macarthur Coal, which he chairs. His concern after the failure of the summit in Denmark to secure binding international action on global warming is that the Rudd government’s decision to persist with emissions trading will do more harm than good to export-exposed industries such as coal. “It (an ETS) will erode our competitive position, while it does absolutely nothing to reduce greenhouse emissions,” he told The Australian.

“If you replace Australian coal with Canadian coal or South African coal or Indonesian coal, that doesn’t do anything for anyone.”
Rudd vastly overplayed the warming scare, and now his carbon millstone threatens to drown not just him but his party.

UPDATE

Terry McCrann:
Many things can be said about the extraordinary fortnight in Copenhagen. Three stand out with particular relevance to past and present politics in Australia.

First, that passing the government’s ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) legislation would have made four-fifths of five-eighths of a very small number difference to either the process or the outcome…

Secondly, both the process and the outcome demonstrate that it was an exercise of criminal irresponsibility by the prime prat to try to force the ETS into law ahead of the gathering.

We would have locked in binding carbon dioxide emission reduction targets - and to some extent more damagingly, a process, the ETS - in a context in which the two countries that together account for 50 per cent of global emissions, are doing neither…

So what is the Greens’ reaction? To call for not the 5 per cent unilateral cut proposed by the government, but 40 per cent.

That’s the third thing to be said. If ever the Greens’ claim to say anything remotely sensible was ever going to be utterly, finally and irredeemably shredded, this is it. More particularly, they have demonstrated they really are intent on taking Australia back to a primitive pre-civilisational lifestyle.
UPDATE 2

Here’s my take on the fiasco, as told to 3AW. The first caller proves how much two fictional movies have corrupted public understanding of the issues.
===
It’s the shamelessness that’s worst
Andrew Bolt
What on earth is going on?

Sydney:
POLICE were forced to shut down a rowdy carol service in Sydney last night after an officer Tasered an 18-year-old who punched him in the face.

Patrolling officers were required to assist when a number of altercations broke out at a Carols by Candlelight function at Five Dock, attended by about 4,000 people on Monday evening.
Melbourne:
VANDALS have attacked one of Melbourne’s most-loved Christmas icons, smashing part of Myer’s traditional window display…

The incident is just the latest in a string of vandal attacks on Christmas displays, with some councils and companies spending thousands to employ security guards to protect decorations… (T)he Christmas tree in the City Square on Swanston St and the two giant baubles in Docklands are protected day and night by security guards.
Bendigo:
On Sunday, despite a security guard being on duty, vandals in Ballarat managed to burn down the city’s big Christmas tree, causing an estimated $60,000 damage.
===
Britney Spears denies eating squirrels
Andrew Bolt
Great headline, though.
===
Where’s Rudd?
Andrew Bolt
OK, so Copenhagen was a disaster. But would John Howard have stayed so hidden afterwards?
===
Want that warming, after all?
Andrew Bolt

A colder planet is far more dangerous than a warm one, as the post-Copenhagen freeze shows:
The death toll from winter storms across Europe rose to at least 80 as transport chaos spread amid mounting anger over the failure of Eurostar high-speed trains.

With tens of thousands stranded by the cancellation of London-to-Paris trains and hundreds of flights across the continent, new accidents and mass power cuts added to the big freeze tumult.
Missing from the death toll will be the thousands of the frail who die each winter from pneumonia and other cold-induced ailments.

MEANWHILE in the US:
The Mid-Atlantic states were completely white on Sunday, December 20, 2009, in the wake of a record-breaking snow storm. The storm deposited between 12 and 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. on December 19, according to the National Weather Service. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=41979&src=nha” title="For many locations, the snowfall totals broke records for the most snow to fall in a single December day.">For many locations, the snowfall totals broke records for the most snow to fall in a single December day.
Not proof of global cooling, but an indication of how dishonest some people are to seize on a hot day as proof of global warming.
===
Arguments, not sneers, will win this debate
Andrew Bolt
Barry Cohen, Environment Minister in the Hawke Government, wisely warns Labor that sneering at Tony Abbott is as stupid as sneering at sceptics:
With the leadership issue finally settled and the reversal of the Coalition’s climate change policy, voters suddenly had a choice and they appear to have liked what they saw… More and more people were starting to ask questions (about global warming) because they didn’t understand the issues. They were confused because, while most elite scientific opinion supported human-induced global warming and climate change, some disagreed. Those who asked questions were called climate change sceptics or, worse, deniers. Most, however, were “don’t knowers” who resented being sneered at and patronised by those who had no more qualification to pass judgment on the issue than they did…

If the Prime Minister wants to regain the initiative he must go back to square one and try explaining his proposals in greater detail. He also should suggest to some of his ministers that they rid themselves of the supercilious manner they adopt whenever anyone questions them on the subject. Their hauteur is turning off voters in droves. Now, with two clear opposing views, the gap between those for and against the legislation will narrow.

It’s early days but increasingly Abbott’s new approach looks as if it will garner considerable support. He has accepted that climate change is a big problem but questions how much of it is caused by human activity. And he rejects the Rudd government’s ETS legislation, arguing it is a huge new tax. Abbott will offer voters a genuine choice. The debate, and it will be a big factor in determining who wins the next election, will be won by the side that has a clear, understandable and believable policy and not by the party that out-sneers the other.
Mind you, what Cohen doesn’t address is the fact that sneering is actually the best weapon Labor has had. Making people too ashamed to study the arguments for dangerous man-made warming has stopped many from seeing how shoddy they really are. Take the shame out of scepticism and Rudd is in deep strife.
===
Heating climate or just hot air?
Andrew Bolt

Fox News interviews the two extraordinary men who have done the most to explode the great global warming scare - and have also done most to show how “peer review” became just “mates’ network”, and the crucible in which the Climategate scandal was forged.

Every time Steve McIntyre speaks, his calm and methodical air is a startling contrast to the moral badgering and hype of alarmists.

This is part of an excellent overview on the issues at stake:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqi7fxERiqk&feature=player_embedded

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCLQIYNYgo&feature=player_embedded

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UisVhZHouq4&feature=player_embedded

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Pj6uWTgXM

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWYuZs6Idb8

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BTS3K9DFy0
===
Climategate: How the cabal conspired against sceptics
Andrew Bolt
David H. Douglass, a professor of physics, and John R. Christy, a renown professor of atmospheric science, descibe how the Climategate scientists conspired against them:
The CRU e-mails have revealed how the normal conventions of the peer review process appear to have been compromised by a team* of global warming scientists, with the willing cooperation of the editor of the International Journal of Climatology (IJC), Glenn McGregor. The team spent nearly a year preparing and publishing a paper that attempted to rebut a previously published paper in IJC by Douglass, Christy, Pearson, and Singer (DCPS). The DCPS paper, reviewed and accepted in the traditional manner, had shown that the IPCC models that predicted significant “global warming” in fact largely disagreed with the observational data.

We will let the reader judge whether this team effort, revealed in dozens of e-mails and taking nearly a year, involves inappropriate behavior, including (a) unusual cooperation between authors and editor, (b) misstatement of known facts, (c) character assassination, (d) avoidance of traditional scientific give-and-take, (e) using confidential information, (f) misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of the scientific question posed by DCPS, (g) withholding data, and more.

*The team is a group of climate scientists who frequently collaborate and publish papers which often support the hypothesis of human-caused global warming. For this essay, the leading team members include Ben Santer, Phil Jones, Timothy Osborn, and Tom Wigley, with lesser roles for several others.
===
It’s The Castle, with the greens as the villians
Andrew Bolt

Justin Jefferson on how green planet savers robbed Peter Spencer (shown being visited by Barnaby Joyce, left):
Last Friday I joined a protest of over 80 people at farmer Peter Spencer’s property in the mountains near Cooma. Peter (61), is now past the twenty-eighth day of a hunger strike, perched high above the ground on a communications tower on his property…

Peter Spencer is demanding the Australian government pay fair compensation to him and all Australian property-holders whose property rights were taken without compensation pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol…

The Commonwealth decided to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions by restricting farmers’ land use across Australia…

Under the Australian Constitution, if the Commonwealth wants to acquire a person’s property, it must do so on “just terms”, i.e. pay fair compensation. Since land-use rights form part of the equity of a property, the taking of those rights, and vesting the control and benefit of them in government bodies, is in effect a compulsory acquisition of property rights.

To give you some idea of the scale, Peter Spencer’s property is 12,000 acres, the use-rights of which were in effect confiscated along with his livelihood. One farmer at the protest said these laws cost him $30,000 a year. Another landowner lost $1.2 million worth of equity from a 40 acre block of land…

Coveting private property, but not wanting to pay for it, what did the Feds do? They got the States to take it instead. Unlike the Federal Constitution, State Constitutions (except one) contain no provision for the payment of fair compensation for the taking of property. NSW legislation requires it, but the NSW State simply overrode that with ordinary legislation, smacking of rule by decree…

So Mr Spencer’s case is this. He can’t sue the Commonwealth because, though they sponsored the acquisitions of property, acquired the benefit for their purposes, and are constitutionally liable to pay compensation, they didn’t actually do the deed themselves. And then he can’t sue the State because, although they acquired his property rights, they aren’t legally liable to pay for it…

All Australians should understand that the Commonwealth is implicated up to its neck in what it blames on its accomplices the States, and should join in demanding a Royal Commission into this devious and appalling abuse, and fair compensation for all persons affected by this unprecedented case of massive governmental theft.
(Thanks to reader Col and others.)
===
Pachauri’s climate of cash
Andrew Bolt
Now London’s Daily Telegraph also wonders how many millions the IPCC chief, Rajendra Pachauri, is making from the great global warming scare:
The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director-general in 2001. Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India’s largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group…

Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries… However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved, such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms…

Even odder is the role of TERI’s Washington-based North American offshoot, a non-profit organisation, of which Dr Pachauri is president. Conveniently sited on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol, this body unashamedly sets out its stall as a lobbying organisation, to “sensitise decision-makers in North America to developing countries’ concerns about energy and the environment”.

TERI-NA is funded by a galaxy of official and corporate sponsors, including four branches of the UN bureaucracy; four US government agencies; oil giants such as Amoco; two of the leading US defence contractors; Monsanto, the world’s largest GM producer; the WWF (the environmentalist campaigning group which derives much of its own funding from the EU) and two world leaders in the international ‘carbon market’, between them managing more than $1 trillion (£620 billion) worth of assets…

But this is peanuts compared to the numerous other posts to which Dr Pachauri has been appointed in the years since the UN chose him to become the world’s top ‘climate-change official’… In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise £100 billion…

The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on. He has become head of Yale University’s Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding. He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank…

One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies for which he works publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.
Among the people tipping into Pachauri’s pockets to curry favor:
Australian Prime Minister Mr. Kevin Michael Rudd announced $1 million contribution to The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) for the project between CSIRO and TERI, aiming to develop a zero emissions solar cooling system for use in remote rural communities in un-electrified areas.... Reciprocating to the Australian premier..., Dr R K Pachauri, Director General TERI, and Chair Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), said “Our aim is to broaden this interaction over the coming years...”
Senator Steve Fielding and Christopher Monckton are now threatening to call in the police.

(Thanks to readers Craig, John and others. UPDATE: Link fixed.)

UPDATE

Pachauri hits back, and with a bizarre conspiracy theory that only confirms that his sort inhabit a strange Manichean world in which critics are not wrong, but evil:

Reacting to the report, Pachauri told TOI: ‘‘These are a pack of lies from people who are getting desperate. They want to go after the guy whose voice is being heard. I haven’t pocketed a single penny from my association with companies and institutes. All honoraria that I get goes to TERI and to its Light a Billion Lives campaign for reaching solar power to people without electricity. All my dealings are totally above board.’’…

‘‘The people who have flung these charges are part of the same vested interest group which hacked the server of UK’s East Anglia University. They are getting desperate because the world is now serious about moving away from fossil fuels. I want to ask them how much money they spent in the operation? Hacking a server is a costly exercise,’’ he said.

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