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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“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.”
35.5c, that’s *NOT* hot for Brisbane, in summer.
nofreewind (16:53:35) :
World Wrestling Federation has no official stance on AGW. For this reason, their reputation will not be damaged by these latest revelations from Climategate.
If anyone disagrees, Hulk Hogan will pay a visit.
“Alan the Brit (01:33:47) :
…For example, the head of the Met Office used to work for WWF. He knows Sweet Fanny Adams about weather forecasting, but then again, that wasn’t the issue was it?”
Actually Alan does not go far enough. Seven of the eleven Met Office Board members have direct connections with “social housing”, which in other parts of the world is known as “municipal housing”. At least two of the remaining four have have indirect connections (through planning) with social housing. At least three of them are known for their connections with Mr. Brown and the ruling Labour party and research would probably show that all of them are supporters of the Labour party. They answer to a Labour Minister, and probably are dependant on him or his predecessors for their appointments.
None of them has any relevant meterological experience and there are only two who have high level experience of running a commercial company.
None of them has any significant computer or statistical expertise despite the fact that the Met Office boasts that its climate and other forecasts are based on models using one of the largest computers in the world.
There are, almost certainly a number of excellent meteorologists in the Met Office but how can we expect them to risk their livelihoods by being off message in their medium term and long term forecasts
“Or is a hot day just an excuse for the cameraman to go down to the beach and film some young women in bikinis?”
As a former news cameraman in Sydney, I can vouch for the validity of this statement! Many a time on a slow, hot news day we’d head down to Manly or Bondi for a “weather” story. The obligatory “topless” shot always made it into the nightly bulletin.
“If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. ” The IPCC only attached medium confidence (About 5 out of 10 chance) to it’s general Asia findings (which is WG2/Ch 10 in its entirety, and doesn’t even address 10.6 in its Executive Summary for chapter 10. So, if this is “one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research,” it sure gives me a lot of confidence in the rest of the research.
Since CO2 isn’t the reason for global warming, what’s the problem? Or more to the point, what is it that humans can do to stop it? Why not just bask in a slightly warmer climate, enjoy the bounties from improved plant growth from increased CO2, and work on bigger problems.
WWF??? New Scientist? [snip] The correction here seems rather apparent. Assemble the names of key players in government and private sector who took money from tax payers and perpetrated the AGW fraud. Appoint a Special Prosecutor, drag the ring leaders into court and prosecute under RICO and other fraud, racketeering statutes.
Catch phrase of the year around DC… “What Intelligence??”
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Tom Jefferson
Wait until winter time here in Australia. If we get anything like what is happening in the northern hemisphere now, I wonder what the news media will be saying. Blame it on global warming? They are already a laughing stock to most thinking Australians. Keep it up and they will lose lots of advertising money and go broke.
“A number of scientists who backed the CO2 based AGW theory are now suffering from buyer’s remorse. According to atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh,’many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly, without having their professional careers ruined.’”
1. Source of quotation, please.
2. Did he provides names for the “many?”
FYI
When Pachauri calls the non-alarmist stance (re glaciers) from Indian scientists “arrogant” – he is tapping into a subconscious vein in Indian thinking/philosophy.
The fear that the Himalayan glaciers are melting away is comforting. Anyone who assuages those fears claims to have knowledge of Nature herself and is therefore arrogant.
Think, why the word arrogant? Pachauri knows to chose his words well.
Latest news hot off the press.
IPCC to disappear by 2035 or even earlier!
I read New Scientist back in the 80s and got turned off by all the left-wing propaganda. As a conservative, I can’t watch TV, read newspapers or magazines, enjoy a cutting edge movie (Avatar), or enjoy almost any movie at all due to all the left-wing BS we are bombarded with. I’m sick of it.
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Alan the Brit (01:33:47) :
Things over here in Blighty seem to be surfacing, scepticism seems to also be surfacing here & there. People want to speak out but are frightened to do so I suspect. Cracks, huh, more like gaping chasms to me.
***********
I hope you Brits can find a way to throw off the yoke of socialism. You Aussies, too! All the best to you.
RE
imapopulist (00:20:08) :
OT – But potentially significant. The sea ice in the Bohai Sea in North China is the worst in 3 decades and yet the Arctic sea ice extent is below the average of the last 20 years. Further the NSIDC map shows barely any sea ice in the seas to the north of the Bohai Sea. Whats up with that?
Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) — PetroChina Co. took steps to reduce the impact of the worst sea ice in three decades on its oilfields in the Bohai region where shipping activities were disrupted. The weather was forecast to deteriorate this week. At its thickest, the ice cover in Bohai Bay measures 1 meter (3.3 feet) deep, according to the State Oceanic Administration. The freezing may extend to the southern part of the bay, according to Beijing-based Global times said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=aAO063SVkkLA
I have copied this as there has been no comments to “NSIDC map shows barely any sea ice in the seas to the north of the Bohai Sea” Vs “worst sea ice in three decades”.
Could this be more Data Manipulation that needs an Investigation?
relied on flawed WWF report
This whole thing dates back far enough that the report may be from the WWF (Worldwide Wrestling Federation) instead of the WWF (World Wildlife Fund).
“Peter of Sydney (05:57:43) :
Wait until winter time here in Australia. If we get anything like what is happening in the northern hemisphere now, I wonder what the news media will be saying. Blame it on global warming? They are already a laughing stock to most thinking Australians. Keep it up and they will lose lots of advertising money and go broke.”
Errm “thinking” Aussies, that *IS* an oxymoron! A thinking Aussie, I didn’t know such beast existed, esp with cricket, tennis and other BS sports on TV!! More worried about which AFL player is defecating in a hotel corridoor than really imporatnt stuff!
I don’t know if you recall, but *LAST* winter was several weeks early, in Victoria (After the bush fires, 6 week early as I reacall) and here in NSW, about 3 weeks early. I estimate, based on my Catweasle electickery smoke globe, we will have a cold one again, this winter.
Nobel?? It should be the Nobble Prize for the IPCC There are also scientists such a Raymond Arritt (Short Brigade Harvester Boris) who contributed to the IPCC winning the Nobel peace prize that are gatekeepers on the wikipedia climategate page. http://www.wikisynergy.com/wiki/Short_Brigade_Harvester_Boris
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~nscentral/news/2007/oct/nobel.shtml
Does this mean that the gatekeepers will allow an entry on the IPCC’s incompetence then. realclimate connected Connolley and Sidaway been altering wikipedia entries on this glacier story too.
“Assert !? Is that all is necessary for the IPCC to publish reports which support their agenda. That says it all.”
Yeah, it might also say that by now the ipcc doesn’t even know how to do good PR, or that it thinks it doesn’t matter. “Just say anything that sounds possible as a valid response, and they’ll believe it since we’re the Experts. And they can’t touch us anyway.” Or it could be that the ipcc is simply falling apart.
Related anecdote: once I called the Sears official emergency hotline, after exhausting other avenues including a repair, because the top of the line gas stove I bought had a critical defect which allowed pots and pans placed on the grills to slide around and tip, somewhat like a plate within a bowl, which could have resulted in spilling hot contents on anyone around the stove, especially dangerous for children. They asked me why I was calling the emergency line for that. So I asked them what the emergency line was for, since for a regular emergency, like a fire or spill onto someone, I would have already done something else. I certainly wouldn’t be calling them right off.
When I first called the non-emergency line, they told me not to worry because people aren’t cooking at home very much any more. Right. I told them I didn’t live in Bangladesh either.
Obviously they had no clue what they were there for so they’d given me some answer that sounded good to them but didn’t make any sense. Finally I got to upper management where I threatened to deliver the stove back to them through their showroom’s front window, to get them to replace the stove with one that was safe, which they did. Then after a little while, I got 3 emergency alerts about the first stove’s serious danger.
One would hope that we can get the ipcc either correct or go out of business.
It should be no surprise that this nonsense originated with the WWF.
Robert Napier, the current chairman of the UK Met Office, was formerly chief executive for the WWF.
Napier’s talent for overseeing the production of climate fantasies, proven in his time at the WWF, evidently got him the Met Office job. It is no coincidence that the Met Office’s principal role is now fabricating warmist propaganda in support of the UK government’s policies on climate change.
Even the mundane sideline of forecasting the UK’s weather has been subverted in the cause of the AGW Religion. Computer models with their “warming” fiddle factors tweaked to support AGW views have produced the Met Office’s ludicrous “barbecue summer” and “mild winter” forecasts.
Ref – Steve Goddard (18:24:10) :
“Interesting watching the collapse in confidence in these institutions. CRU, The Met Office, and the IPCC.
“So far American institutions have survived relatively unscathed, but how long will that last?”
_________________
Probably a lot longer than is healthy for the country. We always think stuff like this is the fault of crazy Europeans or others in various parts of the world. Unfortunately, more than we care to believe starts in our grand old Ivy League institutions and Hollywood “academies”. The AGW mess would have been a flash in the pan if not aided and abetted by New England Persian-carpetbaggers and Left Coast anarchists. Joe the Plumber and John & Mary Doe don’t have a clue; too busy doing their own thing. “Besides,” they think, “Americans wouldn’t destroy their own country.” No, their right, Americans wouldn’t, but “americans” would.
u.k.(us) (19:52:34) : If nobody has answered it before. The “actual” statement would have been “Tooth out, and 35 pigs stolen”. A delayed reaction joke, keyed by the Yeth when the editor called back. Groans applicable.
Chris Wright (03:29:45) :
“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”.
:-)) Honest mistake?????????????????? My dear, dear fellow your talent for understatement knows no bounds, impossible for an organisation with 2,500 scientists who cannot be wrong producing the reports, 400 lead authors, 850 co-authors, (400 + 850 = 1250 x 2 (for the hell of it = 2500) & reviewed line by line by 140 governments & their representatives around the world? Their words, not mine, & not one of them spotted it. Doesn’t say much for their accuracy. Somebody’s telling porkies IMHO! After all, 2350 is not as worrying as 2035, & after SPM 0/1 Rate of Sea-Level rise fiasco in AR4 where they couldn’t get the decimal place in the right position nor add the column of figures up correctly! 2,500 scientists couldn’t be wrong my arse. :-))
Voodoo (which was common in Haiti)
and imagination. What is that with the “science is in”?
How does Real climate defend the phone call? What is Algore’s take????
Surely James Hansen knows. Joe Romm already has maps of gulf coast shoreline that is under water from this meltdown.
Jmanon:
So the former head of the WWF is now the head of the UK Met office?
Not so much WWF as [snip]
Another former noble charity taken over by ‘Professional’ bleeding hearts.
I use the term ‘professional’ in terms that ‘Bleeding hearts’ don’t often do something for nothing.
Even a grotty enviromentalist won’t get out of bed unless there is a pop concert as a reward.
Atten. trolls, psyclones, climate gaters, castin agents – legal definition of treason:
“Levying war against United States, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort.”
Penalty – death by firing squad.