Monbiot hits back at the Sunday Telegraph Pachauri Fabrication

onAug 26, 2010 @ 11:06 PDT

You can’t link to the original article that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph in December that makes false accusations about Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) because the newspaper has scrubbed the story clean from its website.

But as Guardian columnist George Monbiot points out today the lies in the article had their desired effect.

Monbiot writes:

“The story (which has subsequently been removed from the Sunday Telegraph’s website) immediately travelled around the world. It was reproduced on hundreds of blogs. The allegations it contained were widely aired in the media and generally believed.”

The allegations put forth by the Telegraph were that Pachauri was profiting from his position as the head of the IPCC.

Turns out the story was completely false after the accounting firm KPMG was brought in to study all of Pachauri’s financial records.

In fact, Pachauri’s compensation for his tireless work as the head of the IPCC is a whopping zero dollars and zero cents. That’s right, he isn’t paid a dime by the IPCC.

Check out Monbiot’s in-depth analysis here: The Smearing Of An Innocent Man

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.