Pachauri patiently rebuts bias charges

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - "Pass me the microphone when he's finished, please," Rajendra Pachauri leant over and asked this correspondent after a U.S. skeptic accused his U.N. climate panel of exaggerating the threat of global warming.

Pachauri, an Indian scientist who heads the panel awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday with ex-U.S. Vice President Al Gore, had just been accused at U.N. talks in Nairobi of failing to reply to a letter from U.S. Republican Sen. James Inhofe.

Pachauri often runs into sharp questioning and gives patient, meticulous replies that may have helped widen acceptance for IPCC conclusions that humanity is "very likely" to blame for climate change and that urgent action is needed.

But the attack by Inhofe's spokesman Marc Morano in November 2006 was one of the toughest I had heard, especially the allegation of not replying to a hand-delivered letter.

So I passed Pachauri the microphone -- I was sitting beside him as mediator at a debate among scientists and other experts -- and thought that he seemed remarkably unflustered.

Even Pachauri, who lists two doctorates on his business card and was busy preparing mammoth scientific reports based on the work of 2,500 people published this year, might have problems talking his way out of this one, I thought.

"But I did reply," Pachauri said to Morano. "If you give me your e-mail I will send you it again."

Inhofe, who once famously said the threat of catastrophic climate change was "the greatest hoax every perpetrated on the American people," has been sharply critical of the IPCC. He was at the time the outgoing chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works.