Even though these clean cut dudes (by today’s standards) may be favorite sons of 60’s alarmism, at least they can add years correctly. Their signature song telling tales of doom in future years is pretty close to this issue, so it seemed appropriate.
John Nielsen-Gammon who is the state climatologist for Texas has found a serious error in the IPCC AR4.
Roger Pielke Sr. reports that “he has published an effective summary and further detailed analysis of the error Madhav Khandkkar reported on in a guest weblog Global Warming And Glacier Melt-Down Debate: A Tempest In A Teapot?” – A Guest Weblog By Madhav L Khandekar.”
The story from Nielsen-Gammon is on the Houston Chronicle website, and is titled By the way, there will still be glaciers in the Himalayas in 2035
It seems IPCC made a serious error in judgement, and violated their own rules. The mistake was relying on a flawed report from WWF for a key piece of information. This turns out to be a World Wildlife Fund project report (PDF) An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China that was not peer-reviewed.
This is a problem; the IPCC is supposed to rely only on the peer-reviewed literature. Gee, where have we heard that before?
The key error is in this sentence on page 29 of the WWF report:
“glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high”.
Remember that year, 2035, as you read on.
Excerpts:
“Lost amid the news coverage of Copenhagen and Climategate was the assertion that one of the more attention-grabbing statements of the IPCC AR4 was flat-out wrong: [the IPCC text is]
Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).”(IPCC AR4 WG2 Ch10, p. 493).”
“To recap, the available evidence indicates that the IPCC authors of this section relied upon a secondhand, unreferreed source which turned out to be unreliable, and failed to identify this source. As a result, the IPCC has predicted the likely loss of most or all of Himalaya’s glaciers by 2035 with apparently no peer-reviewed scientific studies to justify such a prediction and at least one scientific study (Kotlyakov) saying that such a disappearance is too fast by a factor of ten!”
To see how that year of 2035 figures in, read the complete report here: By the way, there will still be glaciers in the Himalayas in 2035
@ur momisugly Duncan (19:44:38) :
I used to make an annual contribution to the WWF.
My heartfelt apologies for it; I thought they were about wildlife conservation.
That is where environemtal organisations should return to, imho: Saving wildlife, landscapes. That is their core business, and the public would appreciate them for it.
Mapou (22:42:52) :
Same thing as Bernie Madoff and his super-secret investing formula. Any sensible person knows that a super-secret investing formula is a load and should be treated as such. There are no magic bullets, and CO2 causing climate change is a magic bullet. People are just searching for a way for humans to be in control of everything. I think this is why they want to believe so badly that we are affecting the climate terribly.
Speaking of WWF and IPCC (not to mention the CRU Crew), there are 8 eamils from 1997 through 2003 involving WWF and CRU people; Considering all that we now know, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the CRU Crew provided some assistance in this latest revealed travesty!
FWIW, on the CRU side, the common thread seems to be Mike Hulme.
Here’s a sampling. (The second one I discussed in some detail in http://hro001.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/the-fog-of-uncertainty-and-the-precautionary-principle/ )
[Source: http://www.climate-gate.org/email.php?eid=152&s=kwWWF%5D
876250531.txt
From: Angela.LIBERATORE@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
To: “m.hulme” , “Martin.OConnor” , alcamo , jaeger , [and several others]
Subject: Copy of: climate: Japanese proposal
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 14:55:31 +0200
From: Andrew Kerr, WWF Climate Change Campaign
re.: “scandalous” Japanese climate change proposal
[long list of recipients]
[interesting rant] and:
WWF PRESS RELEASE
JAPAN PROPOSAL FOR KYOTO SUMMIT SCANDALOUS, WWF SAYS
KYOTO, JAPAN, 5 October 1997 ? The World Wide Fund for Nature condemned as
“scandalous” the Japanese government?s proposal for reducing greenhouse
gases responsible for climate change, Sunday, and called on industrialised
nations to flatly reject it. [,,,]
880476729.txt
Subject: Re: ATTENTION. Invitation to influence Kyoto.
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 11:52:09 -0700 (MST)
[Tom Wigley, quite correctly – but well beyond the deadline saying this is a very bad idea]
On Tue, 11 Nov 1997, Tim Mitchell wrote:
> Reference: Statement of European Climate Scientists on Actions to Protect
> Global Climate
>
> Dear Colleague,
> Attached at the end of this email is a Statement, the purpose of which is
> to bolster or increase governmental and public support for controls of
> emissions of greenhouse gases in European and other industrialised
> countries in the negotiations during the Kyoto Climate Conference in
> December 1997. The Statement was drafted by a number of prominent European
> scientists concerned with the climate issue, 11 of whom are listed after
> the Statement and who are acting as formal sponsors of the Statement.
[…]The UK and other European WWF offices have agreed to assist in
> this activity, although the preparation of the Statement itself has in no
> way been initiated or influenced by WWF or any other body. This is an
> initiative taken by us alone and supported by our 11 Statement sponsors.
[…]
[Methinks he doth protest too much -hro]
======
933254004.txt
From: Mike Hulme
To: Jennifer F Crossley
Subject: Re: masking of WWF maps
Date: Thu Jul 29 09:13:24 1999
Jenny,
Thanks for these.
After entering into debate with Barrie Pittock, I have decided to shift to using the 1 sigma level as a mask for all maps. This will not affect any of the temperature plots you have done until now, but means that the China and C.America precipitation maps will need re-drawing using 1 sigma. Please let me know when these are done.
Note also for Russia and that everything from now on for WWF (both T and P) should use 1 sigma as the mask.
Sorry about this and I realise this squeezes even more time away from the RCM.
Given what has happened and your role in producing these plots, you may interested in the exchanges I have had with Barrie Pittock – it illustrates nicely the nuances of presenting climate scenarios in different Fora. Read these three emails in reverse order.
Mike
________
Dear Mike,
Thank you for your careful consideration of my “trenchant comments”. I
am now much happier with what you are doing, and indeed grateful for
your hard work and enterprise is getting the new scenarios out so
quickly for both IPCC and WWF. […]
=====
941483736.txt:
From: Tom Wigley
To: Mike Hulme
Subject: Re: CONFIDENTIAL: CRU scenarios
Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 14:15:36 -0700 (MST)
[A fascinating E-mail in which Wigley tears a strip off Hulme]
On Sat, 30 Oct 1999, Mike Hulme wrote:
> Bob,
>
> You will have seen Tom Wigley’s email asking me about the climate scenarios
> I prepared for WWF and which were distributed 2 weeks ago. I have just got
> back from a trip away and am concerned that *you* are concerned, hence >my immediate reply.
In Australia, for the first half of my life, and before, WWF stood for Waterside Workers Federation – a communist controlled union of longshoremen, who held the country to ransom – both for reason’s of their leader’s ideology and their need to steal and abstain from work. It then transferred to World Widelife Fund and my children used to bring home “save the whale” type stuff which no one except the Norwegians and the Japanese disagreed with. It has turned full circle. The initials now represent an organisation which has ideals even to the left of our old “wharfies” – and still “on the take”. WWF – initials of infamy!
MidwestGreen (20:08:05) : As another winter snow storm prepares to pound the midwest after one greeted Obama after his trip home from Dopenhagen.
Not only is a large storm slowly going to cross the USA and dump ANOTHER load of snow, but TWC is predicting a 3rd blizzard after that… (And Europe is getting whacked a bit too…)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/twc-another-usa-blizzard-or-2-and-100-dead-in-eu-from-cold/
Looking forward to a couple of more weeks of “From the Climate is not Weather” department…
(Oh, and wondering if Australia / New Zealand got a summer yet…)
Texas, we know, is getting buckets of rain dumped on it (but sometimes those Canada express storms bring snow… maybe a Texas weather story too?…
But if we are shuddering under the stuff that left Canada, what’s happening to the Canadians?!…
So much weather, so little time… or CO2 impact…
Ok, I added this to wikipedia, under the criticism of the IPCC, right here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Use_of_Non-Peer-reviewed_Literature
Anyone want to take bets on when it will get erased and by whom (likely Schulz, Connolley, or Petersen)?
Too bad I don’t have an email list of people to help me scrub wiki articles I don’t like.
I wonder what Coca-Cola has to say about this?
Water is vital to both World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and The Coca-Cola Company. Beverages are The Coca-Cola Company’s business, and water is the main ingredient in every product we make. Safe water also is vital to the sustainability of the communities we serve. WWF’s mission is the conservation of nature and the protection of natural resources for people and wildlife. Protecting freshwater ecosystems is a top priority in WWF’s work. Now, through a partnership announced on June 5, 2007, we are combining our international strengths and resources to support water conservation throughout the world.
Here is what we will do together:
Measurably conserve seven key watersheds;
Improve the efficiency of the Coca-Cola system’s water use;
Support more efficient water use in the Company’s agricultural supply chain, beginning with sugarcane;
Decrease the Coca-Cola system’s carbon dioxide emissions and energy use; and
Inspire a global movement by uniting industries, conservation organizations and others in the conservation and protection of freshwater resources around the world.
Well they could be right about the loss of ‘livelihood’ (theirs) by 2035.
just added this to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
Within minutes in was reverted 🙁
It is not possible to talk to these people is it 🙁
What quality can you expect from an organization that spends what 3.5-4 times more on AGW propaganda than they do on saving the polar bears.
Their budget report seem to be of higher quality.
And at least they give the polar bears a bit more than they give their head honcho per year and that’s always something I guess.
Back in 1999, Syed Hasnain was apparently putting out the word about his opinion that the Himalayan glaciers would soon be gone. The WWF cites the June 5, 1999, article in New Scientist that cited Hasnain as its source. Here are two other articles from 1999.
One in the Independent predates the New Scientist by a couple of days:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/himalayan-glaciers-are-melting-fast-1097703.html
Himalayan glaciers are melting fast
Charles Arthur Technology Editor
Thursday, 3 June 1999
THE GLACIERS of the Himalayas are under threat from global warming, which could melt most of them within 40 years – perhaps unleashing floods across areas inhabited by millions of people.
Another, in the Christian Science Monitor in November 1999 comes after Hasnain presented his unpublished paper at the July ICSI meeting. Its wording seems very close to the WWF report, so it looks as though they were both based on an actual written report–just one that was never published anywhere, much less in a “peer reviewed” journal:
http://www.csmonitor.com/1999/1105/p7s1.html?s=widep
By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / November 5, 1999
NEW DELHI
The 1,000-year-old Hemis Buddhist monastery in Ladakh is one of the world’s oldest and most famous. Yet in August….
“Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world,” according to a study by the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI). “If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high.”
“Even if the waters dry up over 60 to 100 years, that is an eco-disaster of stunning proportions,” says Syed Iqbal Hasnain, the head of ICSI, and a leading professor of environment at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
, and here’s one in the Christian Science Monitor dated two days earlier–June 3, 1999–that seems very close to the wording in the WWF report:
Oops, I didn’t notice that my editing to correct my mixup about the Independent and CS Monitor articles left that remnant in the last two lines. Can you delete “, and here’s one…WWF report:” for me, now that I’ve posted without knowing it was still there?
What took you so long? Even the BBC reported this weeks ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8387737.stm
REPLY: Climategate pushed aside many news articles. Cathing up with important things we missed. – A
kadaka (22:57:28) :
Heh
Brian Macker (21:38:46) :
WWF like any single issue non-profit is going to be alarmist in order to raise funds. That’s why they make unsubstantiated claims about the number of species going extinct, to raise money.
Has the WWF noticed that the Yangtze River dolphin have been pretty much polluted into extinction while everybody was wailing about polar bears?
Decrease the Coca-Cola system’s carbon dioxide emissions…
New, improved, and environmentally-friendly — Non-Carbonated Coke!
Why anybody would accept information from WWF or any of the others jokers is beyond me, since none have any scientific creditability, unless of course they knew that what they got was what they wanted.
This from the BBC page linked by John Hooper (01:37:23) shows that even they have figured out what it’s all about.
‘Copenhagen fails green investors’ (also ‘Copenhagen depresses carbon price’ link on the same page)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8426036.stm
I resigned from WWF(UK) this year, having been a member for some 30 years, when it became clear that this NGO had diverted its attention away from front-line conservation of highly endangered tigers, rhinos, habitats etc to join the political AGW activists. The last straw was a members’ magazine showing satellite images claiming to show large losses of Arctic ice cover between two recent summers. Closer inspection showed that the ice extent (and minute edge irregularities) in the two images were identical except that a large expanse of ice near Canada had been air-brushed out!
I haven’t taken the World Wildlife Fund seriously since they sued the World Wrestling Federation over the use of the letters WWF, and managed to win by “jurisdiction shopping” until they found a judge who’d rule in their favor.
The WWF claimed “Public confusion resulting from the misuse of the name persists, especially in the United States, where the organization is forced to couple the global WWF name with World Wildlife Fund, to clarify its meaning.”
Wow. “Forced” to print out three words, along with their panda logo they use in all their PR material (which I bet they don’t pay China for using), to “avoid confusion”.
Well gee, maybe I can see their point. http://wrestlingclique.com/avatars/crocker.gif Sorta looks like a Giant Panda, eh?
The suit would most likely have been tossed out in an American court (but maybe not the 9th circuit) due to it being an obvious NON-infringement of trade dress and copyright.
Two organizations with totally different “products” and logos and names, which only coincidentally have the same initials – WWF.
Can some lawyer round up a bunch of people born prior to 1961 with the initials WWF and file a class action suit against the WWF? 😉
I always suspected this sort of thing in the IPCC; well done for digging up the roots of this vine of lies, Mr. Nielsen-Gammon.
So, the greenshirts jsut repeat any lie that is convenient to their cause. Sierra Club, Enviromental Defence Fund, WWF, Greenpeace, how about a little ‘coming to Jesus’, a little Mea Culpa, an ending of charitable status, an opening up of your books?
There are an estimated 100,000+ glaciers on the planet. The World Glacier Monitoring Service, which claims to be a primary repository of glacial data worldwide, has mass balance data 0.1-0.2% of them and front variation data on somewhat more
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/index.html
Their website has these nice maps
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/MB_world/index.html
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/FV_world/index.html
which show their monitored glaciers. If you click on the colored dots,you get a popup box which, if you scroll to the bottom, displays the years they were first and last surveyed and the total number of observations.
If your interested in the state of our knowledge of the glaciers of the world I recommend trying the exercise. I haven’t done a comprehensive survey, but I hit a fair percentage of the longer term sites and found quite a few on both maps which hadn’t actually been surveyed in over a decade, some not since the 80s, and many with total observations in the low single digits. Given the large possibility of a selection bias in favor of declining sites and the gaping holes in the observational sequences, it seems to me, that anyone who suggests they can say anything definitive about the state of the world’s glaciers is either fooling themselves or trying to fool the world.
Black Soot Might Be Main Culprit of Melting Himalayas, http://www.livescience.com/environment/091214-black-carbon-himalaya-glacier.html. This is obviously a regional not global problem right now.
rbateman (20:04:19) :
Only 315 years off.
Missed it by ‘that much’, Agent 99.
It was Max, not 99.
http://www.entertonement.com/collections/4300/Get-Smart
Thank you for bringing that to my attention,you wonderful person! I may well start an advocacy group for the elimination of pets after christmas.
kadaka (20:36:27) :
A dog is twice as bad as an SUV.
Pets are horrible things for the environment. They are destroying our planet. We should immediately get rid of them.
Notify the WWF, to save the planet the pandas and the polar bears at the zoos need to be put down!
And the koalas as well!
> peeke (23:08:35) :
>@ur momisugly Duncan (19:44:38) :
>I used to make an annual contribution to the WWF.
>My heartfelt apologies for it; I thought they were about wildlife conservation.
>That is where environemtal organisations should return to, imho: Saving
>wildlife, landscapes. That is their core business, and the public would
>appreciate them for it.
I second the sentiment. I’ve been involved in many environmental organizations over the years, and it’s sad to see that almost all of them have hitched their carts to AGW, regardless of their original missions. Unfortunately, I think they are all going to pay a price ultimately for blindly chasing the goodies on offer from the IPCC/AGW funding stream. There are some good environmental causes out there (really, there are) that could use some support, but I suspect a huge backlash from the average citizen against these organizations when this fraud finally winds down.
2035-2350: On another issue, I’ve been wanting for a while to make a webpage that collects all of the bizarre predictions made about AGW, including links to the source, and publish them in a simple table with countdown timers attached to them. It would be fun over the years to watch the various clocks tick down to armageddon, while nothing at all unusual happens in the world around us. Of course, I barely have the computer skills to fill in this comment box, so someone out there will have to take up the challenge for me!
Regards from the ice floe. Stay warm.
Ursus