Monday, July 05, 2010

An apology too far

In his latest publication, Dennis Ambler writes that anyone following the climate issue will know there has recently been an apology in the UK Times newspaper, (June 20th), recanting from a story that it had published in January this year, sharply criticising the IPCC's claims about threats to the Amazon rainforest. The apology was surgically dissected by Christopher Booker in his Telegraph column on June 26th and there has been widespread coverage and commentary across the web.

In a considerably less well-reported statement, Ambler adds, the UK Daily Telegraph had in turn apologised two weeks earlier, to the Tata Group, for comments made in an article published in December 2009, by Christopher Booker and his co-author, Dr Richard North. The article related to Dr Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, enumerating his various business activities and challenging his chairmanship of the IPCC.

At the time, Dr Pachauri demanded an apology and hinted at legal action if none were forthcoming. I am not aware of any such response, so it was somewhat of a surprise when an apology did appear this month in the Telegraph, not to Dr Pachauri, but to the Tata group, who felt they were maligned by comments in the Pachauri article.

"What is the background to this and why did the Telegraph apologise?" Dennis asks. And to find out (some) of the answer, you need to read this document. It would be unwise of me to comment – in public, at least.

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