By IANS,
New Delhi : Minister of New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah Saturday compared the embattled UN climate change panel chief R.K. Pachauri to Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammad and Mahatma Gandhi and said people would one day realise the importance of his work.
“Pachauri has been under tremendous attack over the goof-up in the IPCC report, but the Indian government is supporting him. Let me tell you one thing, people did not spare even Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammad and Mahatma Gandhi when they were spreading the message of goodwill and harmony, but later they realised the importance of their work,” Abdullah said at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS).
“So one day people criticising Pachauri will also realise the importance of his work and he should stand firm and fight against all of them,” he added.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was Friday joined by the prime ministers of Greece, Norway, Finland, Slovenia and Bhutan in backing Pachauri and defending the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impact of global warming on glaciers and sea levels.
On Friday, while inaugurating the three-day DSDS conference, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: “Let me here assert that India has full confidence in the IPCC process and its leadership and will support it in every way that it can.”
The IPCC has been facing flak since revelations last month that its Fourth Assessment Report mistakenly predicted that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 as a result of global warming.