The IPCC is now damaged goods. Pachauri is toast, and nobody will be able to cite the IPCC AR4 again without this being brought up.
The Daily Mail’s David Rose in the UK broke this story, it is mind boggling fraud to prod “government action” and grants. Emphasis in red mine.
From the Daily Mail
The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.
‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’
Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035
Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.
According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.
The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.
It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.
The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.
Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.
Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’
In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.
h/t to WUWT reader “Konrad”
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Google cache of climate.nasa.gov as it appeared on 19 Jan 2010 09:48:55:
http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:0osmsixKS-sJ:climate.nasa.gov/evidence/+site:http://climate.nasa.gov/+%22may+disappear+altogether%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz
“Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030” [IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Summary for Policymakers, pp. 5, 7]
REPLY: thanks!
In reply to Kate S:
“Kate S (19:49:38) :
From: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Google cache of this page from earlier in the week promoted the 2030 claim:
Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas, by 2030.
Today it reads as such:
Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres, and may disappear altogether in certain regions of our planet, such as the Himalayas.
Seems like NASA is even retracting their outlandish claims.”
And now it has changed again!:
“Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa. 5”
Note that it is not now linked to the IPCC either! It now links to (5):
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/dataexp.html
I note that site says: “Note: the location coordinates are given as reported to the WGMS and may not exactly match the glacier position.” So I thought I would dig a little more on the basis that if the locations may be wrong I wonder what other caveats there may be. Downloading the excel file (WGMS_FoG_v2007.xls) on that page we have this statement in it:
“The data might be subject to errors and inaccuracies. We, hence, strongly suggest to perform data quality checks and, in case of ambiguities, to contact us as well as the investigators and sponsoring agencies of the glaciers!”
Not exactly confidence building is it. And that is where the reference from NASA’s fast evolving “evidence” page points to now.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
This is beyond a joke.
“According to Prof Graham Cogley (Trent University, Ontario), a short article on the future of glaciers by a Russian scientist (Kotlyakov, V.M., 1996, The future of glaciers under the expected climate warming, 61-66, in 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! ”
So there you go. That’s how they came up with 2035. It was supposed to be 2350.
The govt case rests entirely upon the IPCC,the collaspe of credibility of IPCC =fall of govt case.I just recieved 2 non answers to written enquiries,as to who at Environment Canada verified the science of the IPCC,or what evidence independant of the IPCC proved AWG,or CO2=warming.No answers but assurance that E.C relies on and builds upon the IPCC 4th report.I feel the continuing unravelling of this fraud cannot be stopped.The agenda masqueraded as science,this is what is destroying it now.Science holds a special place in our mythology,out of the unreason of our past we developed a method to help avoid the pitfalls of mob hysteria.Attempts to destroy the method enrage me.I do not see the agenda surviving public recognition of “we have been scammed and abused.”2010 will be very entertaining.
the end is nigh.
for starters, jones, mann, hansen, pachauri, lal must go….NOW.
class action by farmers and other directly affected.
class action by the public against the govt for funding this rubbish.
i can dream, can’t i? let’s make it real.
as someone said, we must inform everyone we know…for starters, notify everyone on your mailing list.
Just a follow up on my previous post, what upsets me the most about the NASA “evidence” page is not so much the fact that they used heresay as “evidence” but that they have now changed their evidence without comment. The fact that they are trying to “hide the decline” in their evidence says more about the evidence than the fact that no such evidence of glaciers dissapearing by (according to NASA’s original “evidence” 2030, faster even than the debunked 2035) 2030. Why do this if you have such strong “peer reviewed ” or “consensus” evidence. Why do it if you are not trying to justify a belief already held rather than a conclusion built up by “the science”.
Is it that the means justifies the ends? Do they have their conclusion and anything contrary to that is ignored and anything supporting it, even heresay, gets cited UNCHECKED. Shame NASA. An absolute disgrace.
The science is settled… on shifting sand.
Triple Bay: I am a scientist, and can assure you its not science LOL
Dr Murari Lal:
“The Chair, Vice-Chairs, and Co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance.”
Just a poor application? OK, I suppose that means those people are off the hook. Anyone can make a poor application.
OK, I suppose they shouldn’t use a quango/NGO for their info. But it sounded reasonable at the time, and the grants were generous, so I guess Dr Lal and his team are off the hook.
Well, if they were humiliated for being unsound, and since they regret any confusion, I guess that lets them off the hook. They’ve suffered enough.
So I guess that lets Dr. Lal off the hook. Why didn’t the working group notify him? It must have been just an unfortunate mis-communication. These things happen.
Well, that would certainly leave the Working Group off the hook. And five hundred external reviewers all missed these obvious errors? And each of their governments missed the errors, too? Well, who can blame the IPCC reviewers for missing something like that, if everyone else missed it too ? Taxpayers of the world will simply have to pay them more to catch errors like these.
With all these people pointing at each other, it will be impossible to assign blame. And who would adjudicate it? Ban Ki Moon? The University of East Anglia? The prosecutors in the formerly Great Britain?
No, these misunderstood people know by now they need to go back and work on the problem. They understand that mistakes were made – but we’re all human, right? With a
slightmeaningful bump in pay, these problems can all be worked out, given sufficient time. Next time they will really get it right. They will give us their solemn promise: “Trust us.”.
See what’s happening?
Perhaps already a comment …
Okay this is a “minor” point in such a large report and they will claim “Just one wee error. Pfft.”
But if this keeps escalating, one wonders when the folks over in Oslo will think they erred in handing out the Peace Prize to Dumb and Dumber. (Al Baby and Pachauri.)
What would it take to have the prize rescinded?
Anthony, you are always welcome to edit or delete my comments. I am on your side and will not take offense. I sometimes have a very sharp tongue that can be controversial. If you choose to not include my comment, I do understand and bow to your good judgment.
The three Bs of Big Brother:
1. Big unethical climate.
2. Big unethical bureaucracy.
3. Big unethical media.
Question is, will the people put up with it? Don’t bet on it.
Verified? VERIFIED?
The idiotic speculation would require a number of highly unlikely events to occur. A 10C degree rise in the upper Himalayas. Or the total absence of snowfall and a significant rise in temperature. Or 200KPH winds for 20 years with no snowfall.
All this nonsense is even more unlikely given that the rivers have flowed within historical limits for 200 years. Hello. Are these people moron’s?.
The IPCC is corrupt.
Used for political pressure.
Doesn’t that just about sum up the IPCC?
Connecting the dots:
+ The 4th IPCC report is released.
+ Government scientists in India decry the glacier section. Lots of glaciologists register complaints.
+ Pachauri declares the complaints “voodoo”
+ Intrepid reporters tracked the facts and found the “Himalayan glaciers melted by 2035” claim is pure speculation.
+ Five errors found in one paragraph, including “Himalayan glaciers would shrink from 500,000 km^2 to just 100,000 km^2,” when in fact, Himalayan glaciers currently cover only 33,000 km^2.
+ Initally, Indian glaciologist Murari Lal, lead author of the offending IPCC chapter, defended the IPCC and Pachauri. Lal reports directly to Pachauri.
+ Pachauri is assailed, and when cornered, said “… It was a collective failure by a number of people. I need to consider what action to take… I don’t want to blame them, but typically the working group reports are managed by the Co-Chairs. Of course the Chair is there to facilitate things, but we have substantial amounts of delegation…”
+ Lal reads the handwriting on the wall, that he is about to be the scapegoat!
+ Lal takes the plea-bargain and confesses to the Daily Mail’s David Rose that
:: the glacial melt scare was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders
:: he was well aware the glacial scare statement did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research
:: It related to several countries in this region and their water sources… if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action…
When faced with crucifixion, the small-fry roll-over on the big fish.
Given the micro-management of the IPCC by the egomaniac Pachauri, it is hilarious for him to assert that he was unaware of the fabrication of the melting glacier claim. It is much easier to believe that he directed all his chapter chairs to find compelling punch lines, and he and Al Gore were ecstatic that Lal told them that they could allege that the fresh water supply of many Asian countries would be destroyed unless politicians “went green” and ceded control of the worlds’ carbon economy to the IPCC.
Pachauri should never have threatened to hang his subordinate out to dry. The subordinate’s self-preservation functions kicked-in. I hope that Phil Jones, Michael Mann and James Hansen make the same mistake.
Newt Love (my real name) newtlove.com
Aerospace Technical Fellow: Modeling, Simulation & Analysis
Has NASA been reading WUWT? They changed this:
to
Perhaps WUWT enlightened them earlier this week that snow cover is increasing, not declining.
Will US MSM carry this story? For PeeB.S., silence is golden– Except when it comes to out and out propaganda. In the lead up to Copenhagen, on the PBS Newshour Margaret Warner interviewed the UN’s de Boer and she stated [18 September NewsHour] that “this huge team of scientists from all over the globe issued these unanimous warnings about the really extreme danger to the planet.”
But not a word has been heard about Glaciergate now that 2035 has been shown as a sham, and Climategate was only grudgingly noticed long after the event.
Now PBS, as an agent of Minitrue, certainly subscribes to the Newspeak of AGW. But if enough of us would complain about their coverage, I believe that they would have to change a bit.
We need to send them articles like this.
Here is the link to Newshour feedback:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/letters.html
email: onlineda@newshour.org
And link to the PBS Ombudsman:
http://www.pbs.org/ombudsman/feedback.html
‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action”
Like this?
http://tinyurl.com/yed3my8
Glad to see the “f” word is back in use. I hope that “hoax”, “con game”, “snake oil”, and “global extortion” trickle back in, too.
How can 2,000 scientists be wrong? Easy. Happens all the time.
How long ago was the debate declared over? That the consensus was so overwhelming that only kooks and flatearthers were still skeptical? That deniers were being paid off by coal train of death merchants?
This game is not over, not by a long shot. Too many $trillions in carbon credits and “green” energy are at stake. Rajendra is a puppet, and will be swiftly replaced by another. The AGW conspiracy is big, very big, global in fact. Kudos to all you who have fought this beast so valiantly for so long. But armor up; the battle is not the war.
Glaciers have been declining for 15,000 years. Anyone seen any glaciers in Yosemite Valley or Chicago recently? They used to be a mile deep in both places.
Astonishing that NASA and the IPCC could cite “retreating glaciers” as evidence of global warming. Did any of these people actually attend a science program at a University?
Doctors Doctors Everywhere,
Not an Honest Scientist Among Them.
Am I the only one who gets the urge to chant “auumm auumm” when I see that mans pic?
WWF ,for an environmental lobby group does seem to have had undue influence in high places over a long period.
This July 1999 CRU email link shows Adam Markam (WWF) trying to get Mike Hulme to ‘beef up’ the section on variability and extreme events in Australia.
http://www.assassinationscience.com/climategate/1/FOIA/mail/0933255789.txt
How is it that this minor player on the world’s environmental stage seems to have so much influence?
Is it this Dr Murari Lal?
From the WWF web site:
Climate Witness Science Advisory Panel (SAP)
Prof. Dr Murari Lal, specialises in global and regional climate variability, scenario development, regional environmental change, sectoral vulnerability assessment (water, biodiversity and agriculture), landscape ecology, biophysical remote sensing – GIS applications, ecosystem modeling, regional adaptation & mitigation potential, water resource management; Environment and Carbon Trading Group Halcrow Consulting India Ltd., India
http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/people_at_risk/personal_stories/about_cw/cwscientists/
About Prof. Murari Lal
Lead or Co-ordinating Author on several chapters of IPCC Assessment Reports
http://4dweb.proclim.ch/4dcgi/proclim/en/Detail_Person?lalm.newdelhi
About Halcrow Consulting:
“Environment and Carbon Trading Group Halcrow Consulting India Ltd., India”
http://www.halcrow.com/html/documents/pdf/india/halcrow_india_environment_brochure.pdf
Carbon Trading is part of the Environment Division, now that is a surprises.
Murari Lal->WWF->CRU
Murari Lal-> Halcrow Consulting->Carbon Trading
How about we skip the middle man:
Carbon Trading-> Halcrow Consulting-> WWF->CRU
Does that look right?
Unbelievable. Well, in a normal world it would be so. But this is no longer a normal world, unfortunately. It has already been discussed recently, so I will propose the following: not only should Pachauri immediately resign, but IPCC should be immediately disbanded, dismantled, and the political employees/bureaucrats who worked over there should all be fired and never allowed to work again on ANY international science matter whatsoever. Unemployment should suit them just fine – they know how to grub for money, they’ve obviously been doing it for years.
Steve Goddard (21:54:34) :
Yes Steve, and the point all to often missed, is that those mile thick glaciers were there just yesterday in geologic time. Far to many people confuse them with dinosaurs, and other things older by four orders of magnetude.
I’ve been skeptical from the go, because of my science background. I have been at odds with some friends and family for ten years. I am enjoying these days.