From the : 
India ‘arrogant’ to deny global warming link to melting glaciers
IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri accuses Indian environment ministry of ‘arrogance’ for its report claiming there is no evidence that climate change has shrunk Himalayan glaciers
A leading climate scientist today accused the Indian environment ministry of “arrogance” after the release of a government report claiming that there is no evidence climate change has caused “abnormal” shrinking of Himalayan glaciers.
Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, released the controversial report in Delhi, saying it would “challenge the conventional wisdom” about melting ice in the mountains.
Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN agency which evaluates the risk from global warming, warned the glaciers were receding faster than in any other part of the world and could “disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner”.
Today Ramesh denied any such risk existed: “There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening in the Himalayan glaciers.” The minister added although some glaciers are receding they were doing so at a rate that was not “historically alarming”.
However, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”
read the entire article at the Guardian here
For a scientist to say something like ““disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner” does it not imply they have a model of the behaviour of the artifact to disappear, and therefore they must be able to make statements about its state in the intervening years? E.g. they must be able to say something like (or plot a graph):
2015 – 90% of 2007 levels
2020 – 70%
2025 – 45%
2030 – 15%
2035 – 0%
Does that model exist for the Himalayan glaciers?
I asked the UK met office for their intervening year projections on arctic ice melt since they claim it would disappear by 2060-80 by have yet to receive any reply.
Mr Pachauri needs a good haircut. A beard trim wouldn’t go astray either.
It wasn’t very long ago that glaciers covered Yosemite Valley several thousand feet deep. An intelligent person might conclude that glaciers have been retreating since before the invention of the internal combustion engine.
Mr. Pachauri is also n the Board of Directors of the Chicago Carbon Exchange.
The IPPC is the worlds foremost agency on climate change, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri is the head of the agency and is therefor the worlds foremost climate change science expert. No other credituals needed.
EXPERT is a former drip under pressure
Pachauri should have been here!
We know that glaciers are always either advancing or retreating – they must do one or the other. Are people like Pachauri saying they would rather see glaciers advancing? And if they were advancing we would no doubt have another set of alarmism ranting about a coming ice age – caused by man of course. “The glaciers are advancing – faster than the most dire predictions!”
What a load of nonsense it all is. We should just pack those people off to a commune where they can cavort with nature and the rest of us with jobs to do can get on with our lives.
This “Glacier War” has been going on for quite a while.
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New Study Casts Doubt on Cause of Himalayan Glaciers Melting
10 08 2009
Weather variations, not global warming cause glacier melt
From the The Hindu, 9 August 2009
excerpts:
New Delhi (PTI): Himalayan glaciers, including the world’s highest battlefield Siachen, are melting due to variations in weather and not because of global warming, Jammu University scientists have claimed.
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Geologists R K Ganjoo and M N Koul of Jammu University’s Regional Centre for Field Operations and Research of Himalayan Glaciology visited the Siachen glacier to record changes in its snout last summer. “To our surprise, the Siachen glacier valley does not preserve evidences of glaciation older than mid-Holocene, suggesting that the glacier must have advanced and retreated simultaneously several times in the geological past, resulting in complete obliteration and modification of older evidences,” they said reporting their findings in ‘Current Science’.
Ganjoo and Koul dubbed as “hype” some earlier studies which suggested that the Himalayan glaciers were melting fast and caused serious damage to the Himalayan ecosystem.
“There is sufficient field and meteorological evidence from the other side of Karakoram mountains that corroborate the fact that glaciers in this part of the world are not affected by global warming”, they said.
Ganjoo said that the east part of the Siachen glacier showed faster withdrawal of the snout that is essentially due to ice-calving, a phenomenon that holds true for almost all major glaciers in the Himalayas and occurs irrespective of global warming.
Ganjoo contended the Siachen glacier shows hardly any retreat in its middle part and thus defies the “hype” of rapid melting.
The research findings by R.K. Ganjoo and M.N. Koul are published in today’s issue of CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 97, NO. 3, 10 AUGUST 2009 and are available at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/aug102009/309.pdf
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comment
This has to be the most sadly hilarious glacier story printed. It is absolute proof that the crisis of global warming is “man-made”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1203500/In-pictures-How-global-warming-changing-face-northern-hemisphere.html
The glacier is growing madly, choking a lagoon with ice, yet this is all claimed to be from global warming. Here is on of the comments from a geologist on that story.
“I am a geologist who has worked frequently in Alaska for 45 years. I would like to state that the reason the lagoon is filling up with ice is that the glacier is apparently advancing towards the sea. Glaciers advance when snowfall increases and temperatures decline enough for the snow to remain throughout the year. Less snow melts than falls in the year. Glaciers recede when melting exceeds the amount of new ice that forms from each year’s accumulation of snow. I hope that your article was a test to see how many people would believe the ridiculous conclusion you presented. Better yet, I hope it was a joke. I am not laughing, however. I am only shocked that the advance of a glacier could be presented as “evidence” of global warming.”
Here is an article in The Times of India, March09, regarding their glaciers.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/No_threat_to_Gangotri/articleshow/2892632.cms
We are fed NONSENSE on every single angle of this fabricated crisis.
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I had to dig up this oldie but goodie from Nat Geo. It’s from the “heads I win, tails you lose” department, i.e., glaciers melting – global warming; glaciers growing – global warming!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060911-growing-glaciers.html
Some Glaciers Growing Due to Climate Change, Study Suggests
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
September 11, 2006
Some glaciers in Pakistan’s Upper Indus River Basin appear to be growing, and a new study suggests that global warming is the cause.
The glacial growth bucks a global trend of shrinking ice fields (photos: melting glaciers) and may shed light on the regionally varying effects of Earth’s changing climate.
Meteorological data compiled over the past century show that winter temperatures have been rising in parts of the Western Himalaya, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. But the region’s winter snowfall, which feeds the glaciers, has been increasing. And average summer temperatures, which melt snow and glaciers, have been dropping.
“One of the surprising results we found was a downward trend in summer temperatures,” said David Archer, study co-author and a hydrologist at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. “That seems to be at odds with what people would expect, given the news about glaciers melting in the Eastern Himalaya.” (Read “Himalaya Ice-Melt Threat Monitored in Nepal” [March 2006].)
The combination of reduced summer melt and more winter snowfall could account for glacial growth, according to work to be published by Archer and colleagues in an upcoming issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.
The new study compiled thousands of pages of climatic data that were collected at weather stations during the past century. The records even include 19th-century documents taken from British archives that predate the creation of modern Pakistan in 1947.
In addition to explaining growing glaciers, the combined data could help scientists predict and manage critical meltwater resources that support about 50 million Pakistani people.
Temperatures and precipitation are the main drivers of seasonal water runoff into the Indus River and its tributaries, which nurture Pakistan’s largely agricultural economy.
Fed by snow-melt and glacial runoff, a massive dam and irrigation system in the Indus Basin supplies water to farmlands that cover about 65,640 square miles (170,000 square kilometers).
The waters also drive hydroelectric power facilities at the Mangla and Tarbela Dams.
Hayley Fowler is lead author of the study and a senior research associate with Newcastle University’s School of Civil Engineering and GeoSciences. “Our research suggests we could be able to predict in advance the volume of summer runoff, which is very useful in planning ahead for water resources and also the output from the dams,” Fowler said in a statement.
About a third of the annual runoff comes from glaciers in the high mountain peaks and is regulated largely by summer temperatures.
The latest study suggests that a 1.8°F (1°C) drop in mean summer temperature since 1961 has cut that glacial melt by 20%. But winter snowfall drives the remaining two-thirds of annual runoff. This volume has been increasing as snowfall totals rise.
Temporary Trend?
The data also reveals another climatic oddity—a change in the basin’s diurnal temperature range, or the span between daytime high and nighttime low temperatures for a given day. “There’s a large increase in the diurnal temperature range observed in all seasons and in all the annual data sets,” Archer said. “In most parts of the world there’s been a decrease in diurnal temperature change, and this is what’s being predicted by global climate change models.”
All together, the area’s regional variations are at odds with most glaciated regions worldwide, including the Eastern Himalaya, where glaciers have been shrinking significantly.
Lonnie Thompson, a paleoclimatologist and glacier expert at Ohio State University in Columbus, thinks the latest findings might be a short-term trend only. “My guess is that the glaciers in [Haley and Fowler’s] area of study might find short-term benefit where increased winter snowfall outweighs summer melt,” Thompson said. “[But] it’s likely these glaciers will follow the same pattern of those in Sweden and Norway, which were growing until 1999 due to increasing winter snowfall even as temperatures rose. However, since 1999 these same glaciers are now retreating. The balance of glaciers globally shows retreat and even acceleration in the rate of retreat”, Thompson stressed. (Related news: “Greenland Glaciers Losing Ice Much Faster, Study Says” [February 2006].)
It may take many years to understand climate change’s lasting effects on Pakistan’s glaciers. But Archer hopes for much more immediate payoff from the recently published climate data. “We’re not entirely sure what long-term climate change trends will do,” he said. “But in the meantime, [water forecasting] is a really important, immediate, practical issue”.
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note: India wants the transfer to them of very large sums of money and free technology to compensate for the efforts they are expected to make to reduce their own emissions and in order to ensure the blame for AGW is put firmly on the West.
Creating scientific reports that claim there is no AGW effect is entirely contrary to their interests as that reduces the liability and culpability of the west .
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What a surprise, the melting and reformation of Himalayan glaciers responds routinely to the latitudinal positions of the main air circulation systems as they move poleward in response to increased energy output from the oceans and equatorward from decreased energy output from the oceans.
Just like everywhere else on the planet.
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You can read more about Pachauri here at the website of The Energy and Resources Institute.
http://www.teriin.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15
He has been appointed as from July 2009 onwards:
Director-General. TERI
Director, Yale Climate and Energy Institute
Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Adviser, International Advisory Board, Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan,
President, Asian Energy Institute (1992 onwards).
Board member of the Global Humanitarian Forum, (Kofi Annan)
Member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Climate Change
Board of Directors of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd
Board of Directors of the NTPC Limited
Board of Trustees of the India International Centre, New Delhi
Chairman of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Heritage Foundation
Member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Environment Agency, Government of Japan
Board of Trustees of the India International Centre
Vice President of the Bangalore International Centre
Nice to see he still retains an interest in railways…..
Look at his picture… Would you buy a used car from that man? Then would you buy a complete overhaul of the world’s economic and political system?
“Not only is Pachauri not a “climate scientist” but an engineer who worked in managing transport issues.”
A railroad ‘engineer’? Reminds me of Jimmy.
Spent two year’s at Georgia Tech and was rushed through Annapolis in a year at end of WWII. Spent six months as junior officer, training for commission on the original nuclear submarines.
Resigned to run the peanut farm before completing training.
Nonetheless, he described his professional training as “Nuclear Engineer”.
Poor Rajendra. Not only does he bear a striking resemblance to Osama Bin Laden, but his own countrymen have effectively sabotaged Raj’s Copenhagen fest. The train has jumped off the IPCC tracks. The whole world is laughing at Raj and his army of petty UN bureaucrats, who mill aimlessly now, bashing into walls.
I almost feel sorry for him.
It was a shock to me that IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri is also an external advisory board member of the Chicago Climate Exchange… Along with Elizabeth Dowdswell (ex head of UNEP) and the ubiquitous Maurice Strong is on the board of directors… Not that this is a conflict of interests or anything:
http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/content.jsf?id=68
Scroll down to see his bio. No doubt advising them on the best carbon financial instruments to purchase… The hypocracy and the kelptocracy…
Um, kleptocracy. Not kelptocracy… sounds like a seaweed society 🙂
PG 22:38
Rajendra Pachauri is a Mechanical Engineer. He heads a political organization IPCC that compiles global warming research to create policy recommendations. (IMHO biased to the point of hysteria) He has not produced research in the field and is no more qualified to pass judgement on the researchers findings than you or I. He does have a Political opinion about Global warming but then so does everyone else in the world.
My suggestion is that he pass judgement on areas where he has real expertise such as the economics of Railway engineering and leave Global warming research to the experts.
Shiny
Edward
Even when confronted with the latest science, the IPPC continues it’s lies:
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/himalayan-glaciers-not-melting
This may be somewhat OT:
I don’t have sources to note, but over 30 years ago (well before the AGW issue was brought up in the MSM), in a book that was well footnoted, I read that the assumption that the glaciers around the world had been around “forever” at some semi-constant state is simply not supported by the evidence. I do not have the capacity to prove or disprove this assertion, but it was something that made an impact on me at the time.
It stated that a study was done, extrapolating backward in time, how long each of many glaciers had been receding – from the ends of their moraines, if I recall.
The results were that apparently none of them – at the observed rates of receding – had been receding for more than about 2000-2500 years. (I am sure this was a straight-line regression.)
While that doesn’t mean that the glaciers were at their full length only 2500 years ago, it does mean that there are things about reading glaciers* that conflict with the idea of steady state glaciation, and that we really don’t know enough to conclude much about them.
The study did extrapolate that the glaciers, at their current rates of receding – would only last approximately X number of years. I cannot now recall what the X value was, but do recall it was not far into the future.
Considering that this was back in the early 1970s, prior to the alleged recent warming trend, and that the study had been actually done decades earlier, it suggests that glacier receding has been going on at a rate we don’t understand.
I, for one, completely object to straight-line regression of climate data curves. I’ve done enough rucimentary regressions in my work to know that there are always trends over short periods that do their own thing. Over-reliance or over-emphasis on straight-line trends is ridiculous; one can always pick out ranges to show just about anything in the data – from “no problem” to “abject alarmism.” But the real-world of it all is that climate changes in both directions all the time, with trends over more periods long and short, and that the trends themselves also change – in both directions.
Glaciers receded and glaciers grow, at varying rates. It mostly doesn’t mean much – at least, not much that we know enough yet to ascertain. The scientists should basically STFU and collect their data. When they open their mouths about conclusions they only set themselves up for counter conclusions and make themselves look stupid in the long run.
I am sure no current day glaciologists are referring to that earlier glacier evidence in their studies. Scientists strongly tend to think observers of past decades (and especially past centuries) were not as astute of observers as those of the present, so they tend to sweep past studies under the carpet – if they even read them at all – thinking they can re-invent the wheel better than some old-timers.
* One more somewhat OT point:
With the slow-motion turbulence that can exist within viscous fluids, I personally am very skeptical about ice cores as proxies for past climate. I strongly suspect the fundamental assumption is wrong: that the layers have been laid down in pretty strata, just sitting docilely their while snow above compacts into ice and does nothing internally within the glaciers. As long as glaciers flow, massive uncertatinties exist as to what those internal dynamics are.
Wow – you could not make it up. This is a great example of why I’m a skeptic.
The 2007 IPCC report alarmingly predicts the glaciers in the Himalayas would disappear by 2035.
The leading glaciologist in India, and many other glaciologists, rejected the unjustified claim. Even the Environment Minister of India accused the IPCC of being alarmist.
It turns out this information was taken from a single news article in 1999. It was never published in a peer reviewed paper. Even the scientist from the news interview says the 2035 date was a “magic date” he just made up.
The Chairman of the IPCC accused the Indian government of “voodoo science” and lacking peer review. Now this is complete hypocrisy, as the claim made by the IPCC was not peer reviewed!
Also note the remark from the lead author of the IPCC defending their process…
> The IPCC authors did exactly what was expected from them. We relied rather
> heavily on grey [not peer-reviewed] literature
So much for the peer review process and the credibility of the IPCC reports.
Even the original scientists in the 1999 news interview objected to it being used by the IPCC, adding “no peer-reviewed journal would accept such speculations.”
Also interesting to note the journalist in the following article was the one that published the 1999 interview that later became the source for the IPCC.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18363-debate-heats-up-over-ipcc-melting-glaciers-claim.html