WUWT first reported on this issue on 11/11/2009 and again on 12/22/2009,with
Pachauri claims Indian scientific position “arrogant”
The head of the IPCC Dr. Rajenda Pachauri had said: India was ‘arrogant’ to deny global warming link to melting glaciers.From the Guardian article:
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.”
We also reported on the finding of Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon
Texas State Climatologist: “IPCC AR4 was flat out wrong” – relied on flawed WWF report
Now who looks arrogant?
It’s now taken almost a month for the Times to catch up to this issue, and now it has made MSM news. Highlights in excerpts below are mine.
The Times, January 17, 2010
World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown
Jonathan Leake and Chris Hastings
A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: “If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”
The IPCC’s reliance on Hasnain’s 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: “Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis. Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers. not the whole massif.”
The New Scientist report was apparently forgotten until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report credited Hasnain’s 1999 interview with the New Scientist. But it was a campaigning report rather than an academic paper so it was not subjected to any formal scientific review. Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.
When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was “very high”. The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%. The report read: “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world 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.”
However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.
…
Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as “voodoo science”. Last week the IPCC refused to comment so it has yet to explain how someone who admits to little expertise on glaciers was overseeing such a report. Perhaps its one consolation is that the blunder was spotted by climate scientists who quickly made it public.
…
Pearce said the IPCC’s reliance on the WWF was “immensely lazy” and the organisation need to explain itself or back up its prediction with another scientific source. Hasnain could not be reached for comment.
The revelation is the latest crack to appear in the scientific consensus over climate change. It follows the climate-gate scandal, where British scientists apparently tried to prevent other researchers from accessing key date. Last week another row broke out when the Met Office criticised suggestions that sea levels were likely to rise 1.9m by 2100, suggesting much lower increases were likely.
Read the full article here: World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown
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Main stream media [MSM] UK :
Reported in : The Times, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph
Not reported in : Independent, Guardian, BBC
I believe this was a big enough story to be reported in all the media, and that those that did not report show themselves to be propagandists on this subject.
The Independent is a struggling newspaper which may soon be owned by the Russian, Alexander Lebedev. I am not sure the Guardian is doing much better.
Steve K (09:55:22) :
Credentials are irrelevant. They are just patch protection. RESULTS are what count. Had Einstein not gone to school anywhere for a single day his calculations would have been just as valid as they are.
When I was 21 years old, in 1962, with NO formal training in psychology let alone “qualifications” I detected Sir Cyril Burt’s fraud. And I did it EASILY without even looking for fraud. The fraud just leaped off the page to me as it should have to ANY person with some(not much required) maths knowledge. It wasn’t until ten years later that a scientist(not even a psychologist) pointed out the fraud. The point? Fraud can be detected by anyone; it doesn’t take a “scientist” with “qualifications”.
But there’s more. I consider it absurd to claim that there is such a thing as “climate science”. There is almost no science involved. It’s about at the level of Botany from two hundred years ago; a “descritive science”. Mathematics isn’t science(because no empirical content); “climate science” isn’t science because no theoretical content(to speak of).
The little boy didn’t need to be an expert tailor.
This man, Mr.Pachauri seems very arrogant indeed.
The total opposite of Anthony, who provides us freely with valid information. Some might say boasting about website hits is arrogant, but I dont think it is. I think its just a way of showing how well people are responding to the truth, because truth sells better thant lies in my opinion.
Anticlimactic (17:38:35) : “Main stream media [MSM] UK : Not reported in : Independent, Guardian, BBC”
I haven’t checked the Independent and Guardian, but as Glenn noted well up-thread, BBC had an article back on December 5th titled “Himalayan glaciers melting deadline ‘a mistake’ ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8387737.stm
I have no idea whether or not it made it onto any broadcast.
The story seems to be gaining traction and I expect that it will appear on many more media outlets over the next few days. The original BBC story went pretty much unnoticed, but the it has now shown up in enough places that other media outlets consider it news.
The news is that Mehmet Ali Agca, the fruitcake who shot Pope John Paul II, was released from prison. He announced that the world will end, and every last person will die, before the end of this century. Do you think we should put him in touch will Al Gore?
Quote: George B (09:02:34) :
“And now we all have a ring side seat as we watch Politicians navigate through the mind fields of fact. Prime Minister Rudd of Austrialia is trying hard to ignore the heads rolling. He’s hoping he can also ignore the many Letters and communications offering to inform him of the facts. Ozzies are not easily fooled, PM Rudd stands to ‘brand’ himself with a ‘mark’ that he will wear the rest of his days. so it is with others including the local news reporter who mindlessly reads the propaganda from the prompter.” – GB
George,
I sincerely hope that “Ozzies are not easily fooled”. It will be difficult or impossible to battle an alliance of Politicians, Scientists, and Publishers.
If not for internet blogs, e-mails and efforts of a few brave and talented folks like Anthony Watts, Steve Mosher et al, most USA citizens would be completely unaware of the deceit and data manipulation uncovered in the climategate scandal.
There is still little or no coverage in our news media of the climategate scandal.
Three or four decades earlier, our non-consensus papers were published in reputable journals like Nature and Science [Nature 240 (1972) 99-101; Science 195 (1977) 208-209; Nature 277 (1979) 615-620],
and Nature responded with this news report: “The demise of established dogmas on the formation of the Solar System” [Nature 303 (26 May 1983) page 286].
Today “the science is settled” – on global climate warming, the formation of the solar system, the composition of the Sun, solar neutrino oscillations, and everything else where the NAP has an official dogma. Unfortunately,
That’s the way it is,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Now that this thread is played out, I wish to note that I submitted a very amusing and apropos comment that was either spammed or snipped, even though it was right on target. The comment was:
purple monkey dishwasher
I fear the moderator was simply not aware of how droll and literary that comment was, and so rejected it. But I don’t blame you; it is also esoteric l33t. However, if you Google or Bing the phrase, you will see how truly witty and germane that comment was/is.
[Rescued from spam and posted. ~dbs]
Pretty droll, eh?
<i<Roger Knights (12:30:32) :
Bill Tuttle (00:57:24) :
“I believe he *actually* wrote “by the year 2350″ and it was the IPCC who misquoted the report. If I’m in error on that, Somebody ‘Way Smarter Than I Am™ will correct me.”
Here’s my understanding of the matter, from informally (without noting the exact wording or the links) checking this matter out, and from my recollection. The guy who exposed this error, a fellow named Pearce, initially suspected the mistake was the result of a typo from 2350 in a Russian report.
Neo (14:42:46) :
Kotlyakov, V.M., ed., 1996, Variations of Snow and Ice in the Past and at Present on a Global and Regional Scale, Technical Documents in Hydrology, 1. UNESCO, Paris (IHP-IV Project H-4.1). 78p estimates 2350 as the year for disappearance of glaciers, but the IPCC authors misread 2350 as 2035 in the Official IPCC documents, WGII 2007 p. 493!
Yay! I’ve been peer-reviewed!
I know that this is a bit late in the discussion, but I was looking at the entry (10.6) in AR4. There is a table of glacier retreat that really puzzles me.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-6-2.html
They cite 9 examples. The time periods all differ (why would they do this, unless these are cherry-picked to give the most dramatic “declines”?). The periods are: 1906-1957, 1845-1966, 1909-1984, 1977-1984, 1977-1990, 1969-1995, 1977-1995, 1986-1995, and 1985-2001. They also have one (Gangotri) with overlapping periods (1977-1990 and 1985-2001).
it is also puzzling that they have 1845-1966, whereas the rest are 20th century. I am guessing that they really meant “1945” rather than “1845”, as the annual retreat would be wrongly calculated on the earlier date.
I find it shocking that I, as a complete layman (with a puny undergrad degree in Maths and Computer Science) can immediately spot a basic error, especially since this is a “poster child” of AR4.
There are more than 20 Authors and Reviewers for this chapter.
>>estimates 2350 as the year for disappearance of
>>glaciers, but the IPCC authors misread 2350 as 2035
>>in the Official IPCC documents
Misread?? Yeah, yeah, yeah….
.
I repeat, the idea that it should have been 2350 rather than 2035 WAS JUST THE SPECULATION OF A SCIENTIST ON THE PHONE WITH NO DATA TO BACK HIM UP.
THIS MAY BE ADOPTED BY AGW BELIEVERS AS IT IS LESS EMBARRASSING AND STILL SUPPORTS AGW.
From the New York Crone (aka Times).
‘There is mounting proof that accelerating glacial melt is occurring, although the specifics are poorly defined, in part because these glaciers are remote and poorly studied. In the Himalayans plateau, there have been a growing number of disastrous floods, called glacial lake outburst floods, that occur when new lakes created by glacial melt, burst out of their rocky confines.’
Sloppy use of words denoting incoherent thought. But then the __Times__ is dedicated to making the world safe for mediocrity.
First of all, ‘proof’ is an absolute, either/or concept, like being pregnant. A woman is either pregnant or she isn’t; she doesn’t become ‘increasingly pregnant’ or ‘mountingly pregnant’ as the trimesters go by. No more does the Pythagoren theorem become increasingly proven because some one discovers the two hundred and fiftieth (or whatever) method of prooving. What the writer should have said is ‘evidence’.
So hear ‘evidence’ instead of ‘proof’; the next question is, what evidence? Evidence is something like ‘specifics’, i.e. actually occurring events (weather, not climate). But we are told that these ‘specifics’ are ‘poorly defined’. If they are poorly, i.e. hazily defined, how can they claim to be specific? As a kicker, we learn that the glaciers are ‘remote and poorly studied’ (please grant my grant to do this). We are then doled out one gruelly teaspoonful of an example in the apparent uptick in glacially-fed flooding.
Yet all of this blue-smoke-and -mirrors doubt and ignorance leads, we are instructed to believe, to confidently ‘mounting proof’ of a rapidly developing cataclysm!
@Mike Atkins: The use of different periods is probably not cherry-picking. Measurements of glacier length can be either made directly or inferred from photos, satellite imagery, or previous moraine extents. The periods are thus defined by when the measurements are available.
I hereby announce the formation of (Stop) (H)imalyn (I)ce (T)ermination). With enough moolah we can stop (S)(H)(I)(T) from occurring.
Georg Kaser says of AR4 “Its conclusions — that climate change is “unequivocal” and poses a major threat — remain beyond reproach”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/stranger-and-stranger.html
Of the Himalayan Glaciers, AR4 says the likelihood of the glaciers melting is very high. In AR4 language, the probability is greater than 90%, the same probability attached to the central forecast of 20th century warming is mostly due to anthropogenic factors, and the forecast prediction for 21st century warming.
We now know no basis made for the claim for the Himalayan Glaciers, despite statements about the report having been rigorously checked. For the main conclusions to remain beyond reproach, there are two possibilities. Firstly, there were different standards set for the central conclusions as for the peripheral impacts. Second, this was an isolated slip, or solely confined to a small section of the report. But for either case to hold, needs to be determined. This can only be established by a thorough and independent audit to determine the extent of the problem. Until such time as this takes place, the central conclusions cannot be viewed as scientifically sound.
Well one of my now treasured possesssions; for which I paid about $7 hard earned, is a book about ALL of the early British Everest Expeditions, in 1922/3/4; and mainly about the only man who was on all three and died on one of them; don’t remember which one; George Lee Mallory.
There are pictures taken at over 23,000 feet on Everest glaciers, with huge canyons carved in that mass of ice from MELTING, that dwarf the height of a man.
Now maybe it was sublimation due to low humidity aided by fierce winds up the mountain. But those glaciers were perfectly capable of receding way back then before ozone holes were invented.
Mike Atkins (03:09:57) : says ” .. at the entry (10.6) in AR4. There is a table of glacier retreat that really puzzles me.
They cite 9 examples. The time periods all differ (why would they do this, unless these are cherry-picked to give the most dramatic “declines”?). ……
The odd, irregular dates of the retreat measurements simply reflect the various expeditions that went to the various glaciers.
http://iahs.info/redbooks/a058/05828.pdf is a 4 page report from 1958 that has some history of the expeditions to the Pindari glacier. It notes that in the 59 years between a 1847 survey by Stratchey and a 1906 survey by Cotter that the snout of the Pindari had receded by 1 mile/1600m, or about 27 meters per year. In the 52 years from 1906 to 1958 the snout had retreated 1040 meters or 20 meters per year — a slight reduction in speed of retreat.
And Mike Atkins (03:09:57) goes on to say “it is also puzzling that they have 1845-1966, whereas the rest are 20th century. I am guessing that they really meant “1945″ rather than “1845″, as the annual retreat would be wrongly calculated on the earlier date.”
As some other blogger noted a month or two ago, it appears that the IPCC has a basic math error in table 10.9. 2840 meters of retreat from 1845 to 1966 is 23.5 m/year, not the 135.2m/yr shown in the table. It appears that they incorrectly divided 2840 meters by 21 rather than the 121 years between 1845 and 1966.
Whether the correct date starting date is 1845, 1847 or there were two different expeditions is unclear, but based upon the other errors in this section, my bet is on the 1958 article linked above that refers to measurements in 1847.
I also find it strange that IPCC couldn’t find any data more current than 1966.
India is very angry at the IPCC: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ramesh-turns-heat-on-Pachauri-over-glacier-melt-scare/articleshow/5474586.cms
I look forward to see the chairman at least being handed with arrest warrants some day soon.
WOW! This stroy gets reported on SBS here in Australia tonight, with a side note about the ongoing investigation at the Hadley CRU, East Anglis, UK.
Hummm….is the tide turning in Australian MSM? Let’s hope so.
Guardian Wednesday 20 January 2010 14.26 GMT
IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers
Senior members of the UN’s climate science body admit a claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded
Do go and have a look at this:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/
Title is “The IPCC and the Melting Glaciers Story” posted yesterday.
I especially enjoyed the quote …
“It is more than obvious that Pearce has a political agenda that exists prior to ‘the science’ he reports. This prior-ness is something we have emphasised here on Climate Resistance as fundamental to understanding the phenomenon of environmentalism: the disaster scenario is the premise of environmental politics, not the conclusion of environmental science.”
In fact I would recommend this site to everybody. They only post when they have something worth posting but it’s always worth the wait.
Patrick Davis (02:48:09) :
WOW! This stroy gets reported on SBS here in Australia tonight, with a side note about the ongoing investigation at the Hadley CRU, East Anglis, UK.
Hummm….is the tide turning in Australian MSM? Let’s hope so.
Not great on accuracy though, not only isn’t there an investigation at the Hadley Centre but it isn’t in East Anglia.
Dr. Hasnain’s denials notwithstanding, following is a document that he authored in 2005 which states
“it is predicted will severely retreat within 40 years as a result of global warming.”
See page 62. http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/documents/GCOS_SSWA_RAP_FINALDRAFT_Sept2005.pdf
The proposal is to conduct research at a cost of $716,500 U.S.
So why don’t we see Al Gore coming to the defense of his pal, Rajendra Choo Choo?
[Comedy: Chooch inadvertently slandered his Nobel-prize winning criminal conspirator on his web log.
“I’m a vegetarian,” bragged Chooch, “and I stay slender and healthy. Carnivores tend to become obese and decrepit-looking.” ]
oops