XM MLB Chat: Dozens die in cold in India, home of rich UN global warming advocate and steamy novelist Pachauri

"Indian homes rarely have central heating - a regular feature in buildings in the West."

1/3/2011, "India shivers in deadly cold snap," BBC

"An intense spell of cold weather has disrupted life across northern India, reportedly claiming

two dozen lives.

The capital, Delhi, has been hit worst by the cold snap, along with Indian-administered Kashmir, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh....

Delhi, which is experiencing one of its coldest winters in years, has been hit by thick fog which disrupted flights.

Sunday was Delhi's coldest day this winter with temperatures dipping to 7.8C - cold by the standards of the Indian capital.

Indian homes rarely have central heating - a regular feature in buildings in the West.

The cold wave is being felt most intensely in Kashmir with the summer capital, Srinagar, recording sub-zero temperatures.

The highway linking Kashmir with the rest of India has been shut due to snowfall, officials said.

Homeless people have taken to gathering around street fires to try to keep warm and the night shelters for

the poor in Delhi are overflowing.

Five more people - including a 70-year-old man and a two year-old boy - suffered cold-related deaths in Uttar Pradesh, reports said."...

Photo above UN climate guru Rajendra Pachauri at the Jan., 2010, launch of his romance novel which he wrote instead of working on 'climate' issues.

1/30/10, Telegraph: "In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter.

The book, which makes reference to the Kama Sutra, starts promisingly enough as it tells the story of a climate expert with a lament for the denuded mountain slopes of Nainital, in northern India, where deforestation by the timber mafia and politicians has "endangered the fragile ecosystem".

But talk of "denuding" is a clue of what is to come.

By page 16, Sanjay is ready for his first liaison with May in a hotel room in Nainital. "She then led him into the bedroom," writes Dr Pachauri.

"She removed her gown, slipped off her nightie and slid under the quilt on his bed... Sanjay put his arms around her and kissed her, first with quick caresses and then the kisses becoming longer and more passionate....

"Afterwards she held him close. ‘Sandy, I’ve learned something for the first time today. You are absolutely superb after meditation. Why don’t we make love every time immediately after you have meditated?’."

More follows, including Sanjay and friends queuing to have sexual encounters with Sajni, an impoverished but willing local: "Sanjay saw a shapely dark-skinned girl lying on Vinay’s bed. He was overcome by a lust that he had never known before ... He removed his clothes and began to feel Sajni’s body, caressing her voluptuous breasts."

Sadly for Sanjay, writes Dr Pachauri, "the excitement got the better of him, before he could even get started"....

"He enjoyed the sensation of gently pushing Susan’s shoulders back a few inches, an action that served to lift her breasts even higher," writes Dr Pachauri. "He was excited by the sight of her heaving breasts, as she breathed in and out deeply."

A friend of Susan is taken to a motel by Sanjay but only after he has fondled her breasts – "which he just could not let go of" – inadvertently sounding the car horn at the same time.

Other passages in the novel involve group sex and more risqué sexual practices.

The novel was launched amid much fanfare with Bollywood stars and wealthy industrialists in attendance, a reflection of

Dr Pachauri’s esteemed status in the country.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In the acknowledgement of his novel, Dr Pachauri admits to writing the book while flying around the world between meetings as IPCC chairman or else in his

capacity as head of a research institute in Delhi.

But with calls for him to resign over academic blunders in the reports he presides over, some critics will question whether he should have devoted more time to

scrutinising the science behind the reports.

Some will also wonder whether just a little bit of Dr Pachauri is reflected in Sanjay, although there is no suggestion Dr Pachauri has ever lusted after women quite so readily. "...