When IPCC head has to lie about global temperatures, you know there's something seriously wrong

Last month, when the IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri was in Sydney for the Metropolis Conference, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by the moonbats at the University of NSW, and he gave a presentation which included a graph showing temperatures climbing sharply in the last decade. Michael Duffy, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, was understandably shocked by this:

As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: "We're at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]".

Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there's been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.

So it's disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri's presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.

Later that night, on ABC TV's Lateline program, Pachauri claimed that those who disagree with his own views on global warming are "flat-earthers" who deny "the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence". But what evidence could be more important than the temperature record, which Pachauri himself had fudged only a few hours earlier?

Quoting Richard Lindzen, he also correctly identifies the reasons for why alarmism is so popular in science.

Central to this is the importance of government funding to science. Much of that funding since World War II has occurred because scientists build up public fears (examples include fear of the USSR's superiority in weapons or space travel, of health problems, of environmental degradation) and offer themselves as the solution to those fears.

And he concludes:

Rajenda Pachauri's recent Sydney lecture suggests that in this relatively new field, inconvenient truths to the contrary are not welcome.

Personally, I find it incredible that anybody still believes a word the IPCC says. We always knew that it was a politically-motivated body whose sole aim was to find evidence to back up a conclusion already reached. Instead of acting like proper scientific investigators and saying, "well, the fact is that global temperatures are pretty steady or even declining, so let's use this opportunity to find out why so that we can better understand the mechanics of the climate," they lie and mislead in order to keep their preconceived ideas afloat.

The IPCC has abandoned all pretence of impartiality and has become just another in the long line of alarmist organisations desperate to keep the AGW bandwagon rolling in order to achieve political objectives. As Michael Duffy says, shocking.

UPDATE: New post with details of the presentation

Read the SMH article here.