The children of controversial climate bloke Rajendra Pachauri have spoken out for the first time about a lifetime of “lies and deceit”. The global warming scientist was unavailable for comment after it was revealed that he had given his children a number of fake warnings throughout their childhood.

“At the time, we thought it was all true”, admitted Rohan Pachauri, now aged 32 and living in Mumbai. “He used to tell us that if we didn’t wash behind our ears properly, potatoes would grow there. My brother and I, we just panicked and scrubbed behind our ears every day. Now I’m seeing parallels and quite frankly, I don’t believe my father’s work on global warming at all. If he tells us about the potatoes and everyone else about glaciers, who’s to say what’s true and what’s not?”

“I still scrub behind my ears every day, and I’m still afraid of the potatoes”, he added.

The lies were thought to have started at the birth of first child, Brian. Mrs Pachauri was initially skeptical over whether the lies were of any value, but says that she just “went along with it all” because he was such a dominate figure: “He started telling the children all these things about the tooth fairy and the monster in the cupboard. I thought – what the hell – he’s the man in the family and he’s doing all this hard work. Our children are so scarred now.”

Older brother Brian said that he may never trust his father again: “He told us that the monster in the cupboard would come and eat us if we didn’t go to sleep. Basically, we could have done anything we liked and got away with it, but Pop hoodwinked us. He used to tell us that if we pulled a face and the wind changed direction, our faces would stay like that – well, I’ve never known it to be proven true. I tried it a few times when I was about 19 or 20, and it didn’t happen.”

A spokesman for Mr Pachauri said that the warnings were, at the time, perfectly valid. “Mr Pachauri stands behinds all of the warnings he gave his children,” he told reporters. “There was a monster in the cupboard, your face does stay that way if the wind changes, the tooth fairy’s rates are perfectly fair, and yes, if you eat your crusts, your hair will turn curly. Mr Pachauri has carried out painstaking research into these warnings, and has the scientific proof to back them up. Got a problem with that?”