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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Heres one British MP who is getting the message, Douglas Carswell talks about the above here:
http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1253
“Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. ”
Was it peer reviewed?
Reply: Peer speculation. ~ ctm
davidmhoffer (20:26:32) : You are correct IMHO
“When the ice is thick enough it starts to flow under the force of
gravity. Amountain glacier flows mainly downhill, but can flow uphill in places, as in the rotational flow that creates cup-shaped cirques. In an ice sheet the flow is from the depositional high centre towards the edges of the ice sheet. The flow of ice is generally slow, as expressed in the common metaphor “glacially slow”, but the rate is variable. The Upernivek Glacier in Greenland flows at about 40 metres per day, which is as much as a smaller Alpine glacier covers in a year.
When the ice reaches a lower altitude or lower latitude where
temperature is higher it starts to melt and evaporate. (Evaporation and melting together are called ablation, but for simplicity we shall use ‘melting’ from now on). If growth and melting balance, the glacier appears to be ‘stationary’. If precipitation exceeds melting”.
The above from a paper by Ollier Paine “Why the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are not Collapsing”. You can read the rest at the SPPI site
“crosspatch (22:34:45) :
Patrick Davis:
Apparently the AVO is no more, nobody makes the mechanical parts anymore.
The US version was probably the military TS-352.”
Correct. However, they were still in use at the time I was working for said computer comany (Early 80’s) because they were more accurate for certain work. Never the less, anyone studying electronics should have a grasp of what A V O means.
It’s a bit like a climatologist not knowing what a GCM is.
ooops didn’t quite finish the quote.
“If precipitation exceeds melting the glacier
grows. If melting exceeds precipitation the glacier recedes”.
Moderator, remove my post about peer review, I was too hasty in posting.
Reply: But…but…but…I used it to make one of my “Zany” jokes.
No removal for you! ~ charles the post nazi moderator
New Scientist – Setting the standard in quality reporting.
Here is another story sure to make it into the next IPCC tome. It has all the right ingredients for success. It mentions “past its tipping point”, “catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres”, “a new modelling study”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18383-major-antarctic-glacier-is-past-its-tipping-point.html
What a chain of evidence..
A claim based on a telephone speculation morphs into a New Scientist article which in turn becomes IPCC “fixed (er, settled? no, fixed is right) science”.
No one comes out of this untarnished and what does this do for the New Scientist’s reputation? It is about as trustworthy now as those newspapers at the supermarket check out which proclaim “Elvis abducted by Aliens”.
Someone queries what the WWF has to do with this?
Good question.
What does the WWF have to do with AGW and why has its chairman managed to get himself in control of the MET Office? and why is the MET in such a state that the BBC may not renew its contract? (I suspect this is partly the BBC covering it’s a**e and looking for a face saving way to justify its own bias by blaming the MET. The MET, in turn, with contracts like the BBC under threat and finance for its super computers being squeezed, may turn on its own 25% bonus/pay rise chairman as their own scape goat).
Why has the RSPB been so complacent about windfarms in the UK and only now, with 1 in 6 areas of outstanding beauty or sites of special scientific interest at risk of becoming wind farms do they and FOE object?
The real message from all of this is how just a few like minded people can take control.
Just a few people in the US and the UK control the temperature records. It is from the UAE that we had a scientist who manipulated the New Zealand temperature data. Just a few “scientists” at the IPCC, those few happy to agree and who did not sue to have their names removed, and really, despite the many people involved at the IPCC it was the very few who had control of the report writing that needed to be fellow travellers.
What about environmental lobby groups like Friends of the Earth? how many activists does it need to take control and subvert the organisation? FOE and other similar groups then become acredited NGOs (non governmental organisations) at policy making groups within the UN such as MARPOL, the marine pollution legislation policy making group. FOE is working hand in glove with Senator Boxer and thus they influence national governments.
This is a lesson in how democratic processes are corrupted and neutralised just as much as it is a lesson in how science is corrupted – by a few activists.
Oh and don’t let’s forget how the climategate emails reveal they manipulated the peer review process and supressed un-favourable science and how a certain gentleman is said to have manipulated Wikipedia entries….
Add them all up and instead of an army of tens of thousands needed to create the new world order of a global government (as envisaged by Maurice Strong), you have a need for perhaps less than 100 hard core players and the sympathy of some others.
The rest you rule by fear. Fear of losing their jobs, as one editor did, fear of losing their man’s of making a living… how many scientists had to stay quiet or risk losing their grants or who dared not oppose the tenets of the new religion.
There is a lesson to be learned but I doubt we’ll learn it. All we can hope is that each time this type of lunacy threatens is that wheels will fall off before it is too late.
However, history teaches us that we should not expect that to happen all that often. There are too many examples of how democratic government has been replaced by totalitarian regimes.
And while there may be a bit of wheel wobble at the moment, this juggernaut is still rolling. Why? it is getting out of the control f those who set it rolling, the lure of big money has taken over. Carbon Credits, the fraud in Belgian, the prospects of the great Al Gore being a carbon billionaire, the questions surrounding the IPCC chairman’s financial interests.. the market is full of Carbon credit scams. It isn’t about the environment or a new world order, it is now about the money. All those protesters in Copenhagen were protesting about the direction a sudden lurch has sent their juggernaut off in. So that is also why we here James Hansen hoping Copenhagen would fail….
All we can hope is that enough people get angry enough to put a stop to the whole charade before it is too late, before the damage is irreversible.
What is really worrying is that this time it is within the heart of democracy, the US an UK goverements, (Less surprise at the EU) where this cancer has struck hardest and where there is the most to lose.
AGW is a trojan horse that exploits liberal thinking guilt complexes and which is very near destroying whatever democracy there is.
In the end, this isn’t about the climate. The climate is simply a vehicle. Quite how it started or how it all gained momentum or when it evolved from idle speculation into a full blown theory is irrelevant. But somewhere along the line it became a vehicle for a new world government and then it became a cash machine. Which of those is the more dangerous? that’s up to you to decide.
Do I overstate the situation?
I hope so, but what I really fear is that I do not and that we may not have the time to put a stop to it all. And if we do put a stop to it, will anyone audit the death toll? How many specie at risk through bio-fuel cropping? How much of our landscape scarred by wind farms, how much damage to our economies? Have we put beyond reach that all important condition in the energy market when we naturally progress from fossil fuels to fusion as we did from coal to oil (without ever running out of coal) so that once our fossil fuels really are gone we will have nothing? But most importantly, how many actual lives will have been lost? will it put malaria deaths that resulted from banning DDT into the minor leagues? How many people will die of cold because they can’t afford the inflated energy prices in a hard winter? How many poor people with already short, disease and starvation prone lives will be pushed over the edge by the high marine fuel costs resulting from “eco” alarmist propaganda to the point where such exports as they could produce can no longer be afforded?
And how many of those behind this scam, who knowingly cynically helped manipulate public opinion and influence governments will lose a single night’s sleep over real deaths or real people. No Al Gore, I’ll bet and not our IPCC chairman. Not Obama and not Gordon Brown or Tony Blair or David Cameron. Not the Green party nor “Friends” (what a joke) of the Earth nor Greenpeace.
And will any of them be prosecuted for fraud? Well, maybe one or two scapegoats. Maybe Phil Jones. Maybe Michael Mann, if they can make anything stick. But probably it will be as dificult to bring any of the major players to book as it is to get George Bush or Tony Blair called to account for the second IRAQ war. There will always be a scapegoat somewhere, some patsy to be thrown to the lions while the rest escape with their money.
Here`s a French language article which points to a new paper that shows that Alaskan glaciers are melting less than previously thought. This is usually a pro-AGW newspaper.
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/environnement/dossiers/changements-climatiques/201001/17/01-940047-les-glaciers-dalaska-fondent-moins-vite-que-prevu.php
OT but you have to see this. Danny Glover the actor pontificating on the Haitian disaster. Apparently its a CLIMATE disaster and its all the fault of world leaders who failed to agree at Copenhagen! Well I never. . . .
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022430/haiti-disaster-caused-by-failure-of-copenhagen-summit-says-actor-danny-glover/
(Lifted from James Delingpole’s excellent blog)
There was another famous man who managed to hypotise powerful people into holding ridiculous beliefs. Look familiar? http://www.alexanderpalace.org/2006rasputin/p/rasputin22.jpg
We are in the process of throwing trillions at controlling Global Warming through CO2 taxes, yet Pachauri, the head of the UN’s IPCC, who supposedly is leading the world on Climate Change, is not even on a salary at the IPCC.
Wouldn’t you think the job would least be full time and come with a salary and that person would be involved in no other business than that of the IPCC’s for the sake of transparency. Afterall the IPCC warns we are nearing that crucial “tipping point”. 🙂
If I remember correctly, WUWT carried a report about this error a few weeks ago. I believe the original date was 2350, which somehow mutated into 2035. It may have been an honest mistake, but such an absurd claim should have been picked up by the ‘experts’. Unfortunately, so many of these experts are blinded by the AGW religion that absurd claims like this are likely to pass unquestioned. Actually, this might be changing now as the media are definitely taking more note of what the sceptics have been saying. This may be a very beneficial result of Climategate.
Today’s printed Dailly Telegraph has a report which blames the IPCC for this error. On the same page is a report that the Met Office may lose its BBC contract due to its poor forecasting record.
There’s an obvious link between these two reports: both organisations, which are obsessed by their belief in man-made climate change, are guilty of misleading the world on a huge scale.
Chris
so are people going to start “finding out” all the other dirty secrets the greens don’t want them to know? like how wind power and fluorescent lights are terrible for the environment? or how DDT is the best, safest, and most environmentally friendly pesticide ever invented?
“catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres”
So what are we going to do about it now that’s it’s past the tipping point? Ask the China, India and the US to contract their economies by 99%? Even that won’t be enough as it’s too late. Can the New Scientist be any more stupid? It’s more like reading a fiction magazine.
Mr. Pachauri calls this arrogant:
“Himalayan Glaciers – A State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies,
Glacial Retreat and Climate Change”, edited by V.K.Raina, the
former Deputy Director of the Geological Survey of India:
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/MoEF%20Discussion%20Paper%20_him.pdf
60 page PDF, wait as it loads…
Just a thought, if the Himalayn Glacias weren’t melting, there would be no River Ganges! No fresh water for anyone downstream! Oh dear.
Chris Gillham (18:21:20) :
Patrick Davis (17:15:57) :
I really wish more stories like this are covered by the MSM in Australia before the Federal Govn’t tries to ram it’s ETS through the Senate in February.
Exactly. The Australian newspaper ran it as their lead page 1 story this morning:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/united-nations-blunder-on-glaciers-exposed/story-e6frg6n6-1225820614171
That’s about 2% of Australia’s population who are informed (i.e the weekday readership of The Australian newspaper).
Let’s see how much coverage is given to the story later today by Australia’s mainstream electronic media, which usually broadcasts entertainment masquerading as journalism. Put a celebrity on a glacier and the story might get coverage.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation may run the story because they have enough adequately trained journalists to overcome their pro-AGW bias.
If the ABC does broadcast, combined with the readership of The Australian, that’ll mean about 20% of the Australian population is properly informed.
Watch the commercial TV news tonight to see if the story has any penetration with the voters, and thus any influence on the politicians.
Update for anybody interested … neither the ABC or any of the commercial TV stations in Western Australia ran the glacier story at all in their 6pm news. They all led with Perth’s hot weather over the past two days.
Snow in NSW in the middle of summer? Didn’t happen.
i.e. about 2% to 3% of Australians know there are doubts about the IPCC claims re glaciers so, for the vast majority of people in this country, melting glaciers are still irrefutable proof that AGW is happening. Why? Because I have(n’t) seen it on the media!
I saw it in a magazine…so I put it in the IPCC report.
Good grief…
“Fasool Rasmin (21:37:39) :
It was 96 degrees F here in Brisbane today, but just down the road in the mountains it was zero in places.”
Yes, a hot one today. But I noticed with interest that the news channels, while running with their ‘hot weather’ stories, managed to hold back from getting some talking head to say ‘climate change blah blah warming blah blah emissions’. In fact I didn’t hear climate change mentioned once, which warmed (forgive my pun) my heart.
On another note, they managed to lead with the headline ‘hottest day in 2 years’. Wow, a whole 2 years! Talk about unprecedented warming! You have to go back to 2008 to see temperatures this high! Can’t they just report the news normally? Or is a hot day just an excuse for the cameraman to go down to the beach and film some young women in bikinis?
I think it was a good 5 or 6 degrees (c) under the January record.
So if Hasnain asserts that it is a correct presumption it will be kept in future IPCC assessments. This is irrespective of whether the result was obtained through diligent research or through casting knuckle bones at midnight on the dark of the moon.
There is also no guarantee that it will be excluded from the next report if Hasnain asserts it is incorrect, only that a recommendation would be made to not include it. Past experience of discredited Hockey sticks and IPCC reports makes me believe that model parameters and data measurements are being adjusted as we speak so as to include similar claims in the next report.
Re: brc (04:21:13) :
Seems reasonable to me.
That old “voodoo” magic will getcha every time. Heh heh
“Chris Gillham (04:14:35) :
Update for anybody interested … neither the ABC or any of the commercial TV stations in Western Australia ran the glacier story at all in their 6pm news. They all led with Perth’s hot weather over the past two days.
Snow in NSW in the middle of summer? Didn’t happen.
i.e. about 2% to 3% of Australians know there are doubts about the IPCC claims re glaciers so, for the vast majority of people in this country, melting glaciers are still irrefutable proof that AGW is happening. Why? Because I have(n’t) seen it on the media!”
More interested in the cricket, tennis and the movie awards.
She’ll be right mate! Oh hang on……d’oh! Too late!
The important thing is that if it were true it would have had a severe impact on hundreds of millions of people. It was probably the scariest monster of AGW as it was within most people’s lifetime. Now the monster is dead, and in such a farcical way, perhaps the politicians will be less scared, come out from under the bedclothes, and start using their brains.
Now, wherever you look at the AGW case, all you find is a sea of propaganda. And that is one sea-level which IS rising rapidly!