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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Beneath the tip of the Climategate iceberg is this emerging shadow of an unholy alliance of Politicians, Scientists, and Publishers – directed by a still invisible world government.
The PSP plan that the internet web has frustrated:
a.) Al Gore was to become the first President, King or Savior.
b.) NAS => NAP [National Academy of Sciences became the NA Propaganda].
c.) EPA => NAP tool [“CO2 is a dangerous pollutant”].
d.) National sovereignty/boarders/governments were to disappear.
e.) Democracies would vanish.
That’s how it looks from here,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Emeritus Professor
Nuclear & Space Studies
I think I might start referring to ‘climate catastrophe due to man-made global warming’ as history’s biggest SNOW job…
In answer to Jimbo (02:23:46), CTM coined a new phrase:
> > Was it peer reviewed?
>
> Reply: Peer speculation. ~ ctm
I like it; add it to the lexicon; fits SO well with so much of the politically-correct and UNscientific IPCC-AGW dogma. :-]
BTW: If you throw ”IPCC glaciers melting speculation” at Google, it returns ~30K hits. Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Times Online, Australian, Times of India, etcetera all have good coverage of this latest IPCC fiasco.
BUT (our friends Down Under REALLY need a change in government leadership):
Australian Climage Minister Penny Wong STILL (report this morning) sez:
”This is a report that has been peer reviewed extensively; very few errors have been found in it and none that challenge the central findings,”
Is Ms. Wong REALLY that clueless ?? . . .
See full report at:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/18/2794830.htm
SIDEBAR: This thread on WUWT shows up pretty close to the top in above Google search. Better watch out, Anthony & Friends:
Continue like this, and with 32.5M hits and counting, pretty soon you may start to be considered ”main stream”. . . . ;-]
This is a very sloppy posting… and totally obfuscates the point. Glaciers over much of the Himalayas are melting at an unprecedented rate… the exact date doesn’t matter. The implication of the facts is important, and there is very strong evidence. Even students papers require references and, heavens!, even the bozos in Realclimate actually give good references.
Once again I plead to please maintain standards.
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. REFERENCE?
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. REFERENCE?
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: REFERENCE? to whom did he say this and where?
This is sloppy writing and meaningless without references. it could simply be made up by some punter with a political axe to grind… God forbid..
David Kitchen writes: “This is a very sloppy posting… and totally obfuscates the point. Glaciers over much of the Himalayas are melting at an unprecedented rate… the exact date doesn’t matter. ”
David, in the brief time I have visited this website, I have discovered that the the philosophy of science for many here is that, if you’re wrong about one thing in the science, then everything else must be wrong.
“MikeP (06:55:40) :
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.”
Mike, I think it would have been, “Two sows and thirty-pigs.”
You were close though….
Peer Reviewed Science
“Apparently NASA knows by reading IPCC, who knows by reading World Wildlife Foundation reports, who know by reading a magazine article where one scientist’s speculation is quoted as fact.”
Notice: This is exactly how Jane Lubchenco has operated for years. Before NOAA, OSU professor Lubchenco speculated her way into science publications and all of her supposition morphed into established science.
Now as head of NOAA Lubchenco promises to produce a National Climate Service and institutionalize her brand science by fabrication.
Re: David Kitchen (07:32:31) :
Very sloppy comment. Please define what you mean by unprecedented. Do you mean over the last 10, 100 1000,10,000 years? What is your timescale for unprecedented?
************
Steve K (05:59:58) :
“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?”
**********************************
Here’s where the quote came from …
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
For context:
The actual claim is on page 493 of: Asia. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
It reads:
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).
So there’s the WWF reference. Pretty lame.
But that’s it- The rest of the section refers to other sources, and the claim about these glaciers disappearing repeated only once, a few pages earlier in a figure. The rest of the claims about glaciers receding refer to other published research.
So, the IPCC goofed this one. Hooray, another (teeny) scalp.
BTW- the IPCC acknowledges the impacts of land use! Same page as above: “The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be
attributed primarily to the global warming due to increase in
anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases. The relatively high
population density near these glaciers and consequent
deforestation and land-use changes have also adversely affected
these glaciers.”
This revelation about the IPCC report was published in New Scientist which expressed surprise that a speculatiuve story was the original source. The story about this revelation is on the New Scientist website with blog postings about it on this blog and Pielke Jr’s among others
Patrick Davis, :
My intial electrical/electronic engineering training was in the Royal Air Force and we used AVO’s (Amps, Volts, Ohms) in 1980 and right up until I left in 1994. Built like Chieftan tanks they were! (Of course by 1994 we did have DVM’s as well!) 🙂
WUWT, it appears now, is the last person in the circle in The Whisper Game.
The story has gone around the circle, each governmental agency and scientist and reporter adding their own spin on the “facts”, until finally WUWT blurts out the end result……and we all sit here in hysterics because we know the truth.
Too bad it’s not funny. But it would be if the MSM had the cahones to carry it.
“Two sows and thirty-pigs.” should be “Two sows and thirty-five pigs. “, I was close too…
“Steve Oregon (07:47:53) :
“Apparently NASA knows by reading IPCC, who knows by reading World Wildlife Foundation reports, who know by reading a magazine article where one scientist’s speculation is quoted as fact.””
The science of rumor. It is truly astounding that any credibility is given to any supposed organization that gets its “facts” either directly or indirectly from an internet rumor. In essence that is what it is.
Steve Oregon: I’m not interested in your criticism of Jane Lubchenco, but as I read your post is suggests that you are in support of a strong peer review process for publishing scientific research. Am I correct?
The story was covered during the main news time in India on cnn-ibn under “Himalayan blunder”.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/un-body-admits-to-wrong-report-on-glacier-meltdown/108851-11.html?from=tn
Re: David Kitchen (07:32:31) :
Did you try following the links actually provided? They DO have other links and other REFERENCES. This story is not new. It may be new for The Times, but it is not new here and has been covered before. You have been provided the links. Follow them.
Just in case you are unable to find the whole story:
http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/atmosphere.html?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=54e0b21f-aaba-475d-87ab-1df5075ce621&plckPostId=Blog%3a54e0b21f-aaba-475d-87ab-1df5075ce621Post%3aa2b394cc-5b5f-47ad-8bb5-c1aec91409ad&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest
Re: previous ‘O.K. Manuel’ Comment
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
The Tribune India – November 11, 2008
Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)’s scientist, professor Syed Hasnain, in a recent study claimed that “All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating, and they could disappear from the central and eastern Himalayas by 2035.”
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20081111/main5.htm
Professor Murari Lal should appologise to the world and resign from the IPCC. Before he loses all credibility.. whoops too late. Another member of the IPCC discredited and humiliated. The list grows by the minute.
Stop Press.
Syed Hasnain, the scientist at the centre of the growing controversy over melting Himalayan glaciers, is now working for Dr R K Pachauri’s TERI as head of the institute glaciology team, funded by a generous grant from a US charity, researching the effects of the retreat.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/pachauri-theres-money-in-them-glaciers.html
Just goes to show eh! Give out the wrong information and 11 years later you have your feet under the table. How long has this corrupt behaviour been going on.
David Kitchen (07:32:31) :
Well, that’s no excuse for you to not. I fear I don’t know for how long Himalayan glaciers have been studied. I have read some sources that say Swiss glaciers were retreating as fast in the 1940s as they are now. I provided some links and notes at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/03/swiss-eth-glaciers-melted-in-the-1940s-faster-than-today/#comment-280018
I’m not clear as to what is “the implication of the facts.” If you look at some of the Swiss data, it’s clear that the rate of retreat varies hugely over time, look at http://glaciology.ethz.ch/messnetz/glaciers/obgrindelwald.html , so whatever is happening in the Himalayas today may well be very different in the next decade. It is clear that it would take a huge increase in the current melt rate to make them disappear by 2035 as the IPCC claims. (Present tense, nothing here says they’ve retracted that claim.)
Do you or RC have a link to a site like ETHZ’s for Himalayan glaciers?
Jim writes:
“Here’s where the quote came from … http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html”
I count about ten different names at various places in the link you provide, and no quotations from any stating anything I would categorize as “buyer’s remorse.” A review of the names indicates that some of those do not meet my defintion of scientist. For example, Steve McIntyre, does not have any formal training in climate science, so I wonder if you include him as part of your statement. Therefore, what you write here does not meet my definition of “A number of scientists who backed the CO2 based AGW theory are now suffering from buyer’s remorse.”
Elsewhere in the document is the statement “Recently, several NASA scientists have resigned in protest” but there’s no link to anything, nor any names of those scientists. Therefore, absent any evidence, this assertion has yet to reach the level of attributable fact.
In short, I’m not finding the facts for what you assert in the website you pointed me towards.