UPDATE: WUWT Gets results – Time fixes the error! See below.
Reader HowardW sends this tip. Almost two years after the discovery of this ridiculous error, once labeled “voodoo science” by IPCC Rajenda Pachauri when told of skeptics pointing out this error, only to have to admit it is a real mistake later, the “Himilayan Glaciers will melt by 2035” is back. Here’s the screencap of the article:
It is amazing that this false date of 2035 is still in circulation at a major media outlet, isn’t it?
I ask that WUWT readers make sure the editors of Time are aware of the error. Here’s where you can fill their Inbox:
http://www.time.com/time/letters/email_letter.html
As for author Julien Bouissou, you’d think that somebody who has immersed himself in India and is a member of the Institute for the Practice of Journalism would hear about the IPCC fiasco over glaciers. But, no.
Maybe one of our French speaking readers can locate the original article in Lemonde and notify them too.
UPDATE: 3:00PM PST 11/16/2011 – Responding to the attention brought to bear by WUWT, Time has retracted the statement about glaciers disappearing in 2035 and added this statement:
It only took about 6 hours – good job folks!
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A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain
Diaboloical article, Time was but is No longer. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that’s the problem with the internet, in years to come, people will still believe the 2035 garbage because the internet said it was true and the offending article was never withdrawn
BS always gets the most attention. Ask any politician.
Here’s a couple of people the reporter could have talked to (from the UK Times article)
“…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 [Syed]
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…”
Facts about a story that could have been verified by at least two sources.
Journalism 101…
I hate conspiracy theories ,but I’m beginning to wonder about the AGW crowd . Someone one said once,” to control the world, one thing to use is an environmental scare to confuse people”. I’m also thinking maybe there is a little something to this “new world order” thing. But, I’m also thinking about all those leaves in my yard.
Sent:
Sir,
While I understand the point of your publication is to reprint stories of note in English that were originally in other languages, one would expect some level of Editorial checking of those stories. If Le Monde were to publish a story about ‘Havard State’ sacking its long time football coach due to a scandal; you would not print it without comment. Therefore, I am surprised that you reprint a glaring error that the glaciers are melting in the Himalayas and will be gone by 2035 when this has been accepted as totally false by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who originally published the claim.
As this false claim is the basis for the ‘importance’ of the story, I am puzzled that you thought it fit to print. It is very easy to descend to the level of a checkout magazine with garish claims; it is far less easy to gain respect as an authoritative source. Regaining that respect once lost can be impossible.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8284223/Some-Himalayan-glaciers-are-advancing-rather-than-melting-study-finds.html
A similar version of this story, also from The Telegraph and about the study, was covered here on WUWT, includes the university press release about the study:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/27/new-science-on-himilayan-glaciers-shows-debris-fields-to-be-a-regulating-factor-in-melting/
Also on WUWT besides what’s linked in the post above:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/29/uh-oh-pachuri-caught-out-in-ipcc-glacier-issue/
and this gem:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/23/breaking-news-scientist-admits-ipcc-used-fake-data-to-pressure-policy-makers/
Somebody grab a plunger. I’m tired of seeing this IPCC/WWF chunk floating around in media circles instead of going down the hole to where it belongs.
@henrythethird
Journalists by and large, long ago gave up being reporters of events and became instead cheerleaders for various ideologies (mainly various shades of socialism). They commit lies by omission and commission. They ignore any fact that contradicts the tenets of faith of whichever flavor ideology they believe. Occasionally, like a blind squirrel finding a nut, they stumble upon and report something inconvenient to their ideology, but those incidents are rare and usually result in the offending reporter being ostracized and excommunicated from the society of journalists (I believe “hack” is the term then used for them).
We used to have an old saying in the intelligence community that you could learn everything you needed to know about the USSR by reading Pravda: you looked at what they praised and knew that sector of society was failing. All press now is Pravda of the old USSR days (I understand that in many ways, today, the Russian press is more even-handed and transparent then their western counterparts.) You have to read western press with a twist and look for what is hidden in plain sight, but you know the stated conclusion of the report will be that government needs to encroach further into the daily lives of individuals in some new way.
Aside from the obvious 2035 nonsense the article basically states:
“The climate is changing. Experts blame climate change”
Anyone else spotted a slight circularity in their point?
Looks like the French media people are braindead zombies much like their German colleagues.
The original article in Le Monde is behind a paywall, but an excerpt can be read, where the reference to 2035 can be read.
http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=1172627
Perhaps Pachauri was right all along! After all, he is still described (even some places on wikipedia) as the “UN’s top climate scientist.”
Okay. I, too, am tired of the crap that passes for “news”. As such, I decided to send a brief Letter to the Editor. As I was writing, I noticed my irritation was growing. I think I might have been a bit antagonistic, but it comes after reading far too many propaganda pieces masquerading as news. Since I’m fairly sure it won’t be posted, I’ve decided to post it here. See below:
Gentlemen,
It is one thing for an allegedly unbiased news medium to choose one side of a controversy and relentlessly pursue that agenda. It’s quite another to promote discredited information as fact.
As has been proven, the IPCC relied on a couple of non-peer-reviewed, anecdotal stories on which to reach their conclusion that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. It has since been shown to be a completely incorrect hypothesis. Yet, your story is entirely based on this disproved idea. Your staff failed to fact check. If accidentally, then incompetence was reinforced by editors who didn’t check on their staff. However, “Time” continues to proclaim that there is no ‘real’ controversy over anthropogenic global warming and that nearly all scientists are in agreement. Both are woefully incorrect, which easily can be found by the slightest research into the subject. As such, it appears quite likely there was no attempt to check facts, because that would have rendered the story worthless.
While reporting only one side of a controversy as ‘true’ reduces “Time Magazine” to that of an unreliably biased information source, promoting that agenda with falsified information degrades you to a promoter of propaganda.
No point messing about with french media, they really are zombified. Most of france is still. Go figure they have 80% nuke energy at 8 cents tax included but have just decided to build a huge windfarm. They still go on about CO2 reduction at every avenue they can, from agriculture to ads for cars.
In france the IPCC from the 90’s rules, mostly because hardly any frenchperson speaks anything but french.
Unreal. I had to double check the date of the article, thinking it must be aged. I can’t believe this false claim, long ago shown to be incorrect, is still touted in a story by a major news weekly.
Kind of like the ‘97% of scientists believe in AGW,’ meme continuously touted by the alarmists, despite the study that claim is based on was shown to be of highly questionable methodology — a charitable description.
It is
amazingpredictable that this false date of 2035 is still in circulation at a major media outlet, isn’t it?FTFY
Time Magazine, like most MSM outlets, has descended to the level of the ignoramuses they imagine they are propagandizing.
To answer your question, No. The big lie is alive and well, always has been, probably always will be. The true problem is no one takes responsibility any more, if they ever really did. The consequences to the publisher of printing something as discredited as this are zero, the consequences to the author are even less.
I have been unsuccessful in my search of LeMonde’s arcane archive system. While I found articles mentioning 2035, I could find nothing on Bhutan. Here’s an article referring to the date, while showing the usual cooling towers belching out vast clouds of water vapor.
http://ecologie.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/11/08/reduire-nos-emissions-de-30-et-favoriser-l%E2%80%99emploi-le-rapport-qui-derange/
Bad enough that it recycles the 2035 thing, but the elementary arithmetic of the claim that the rate of melt is 20-30m (metres presumably) per year and that in 24 years the glaciers will have gone doesn’t quite add up – unless the total width is already less than half a mile! . . . Do they really think their readers are stupid enough to miss that?
What difference does it make if it is 2035 or 2100? If its a problem its a problem no matter when the consequence will be fully realized.
For those who read french (sorry for the others), I wrote to Le Monde the following e-mail :
Monsieur,
Je suppose que la rédaction du “Monde” s’est félicitée d’avoir vendu au “Time” l’article de Julien Bouissou sobrement intitulé “Des “tsunamis de montagne” menacent le Bhoutan” et paru dans votre édition datée du 4 novembre. Dès son introduction, cet article annonce la couleur en évoquant la fonte annoncée des glaciers himalayens pour 2035, une grossière erreur du GIEC qui a été corrigée piteusement par celui-ci il y a près de deux ans. Je suppose aussi que Stéphane Foucart, qui s’occupe en général de la question du climat pour votre journal, n’a pas eu l’opportunité de faire le travail de relecture le plus élémentaire, trop occupé qu’il était sans doute par son propre article dans lequel il dit tout le mal qu’il pense des climatosceptiques comme moi (sans bien entendu leur donner la parole). Il me reproche notamment de ne faire que recopier des sites internet anglo-saxons : je vous suggère néanmoins d’aller voir par vous-même sur internet le bel effet de la traduction du Time de l’article de Julien Bouisseau sur la réputation internationale de la presse française.
Cordialement,
Benoît Rittaud.
As a wise man once said, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. The more they claim catastrophe, the deeper hole they dig. I, for one, am more than happy to hand them the shovel. Let’s let them continue to claim the glaciers will all be gone by 2035. Let’s help them proclaim that Tuvalu and other island nations will be underwater in 50 years. Let’s cheer with them the demise of coastal areas as the seas rise up to claim the land, or the deserts grow to wipe out the arable parts of the world.
When each year they grow more shrill, and each year they have to put off the date of the inevitable doom that Catastrophic Global Anthropogenic Climate Change has wrought, the sweeter the victory will be for those of us who said, “I don’t think so.”
I’m no shill for the Oil Companies. I’d love to see a clean energy source for mankind, something that does not have to be pumped from the ground and filtered to remove noxious gases and hazardous particulates. Until we find one, however, hydrocarbon based fuels are what we have.
I am, however, happy to watch the train wreck that is the Carbon Dioxide is Killing Us scare. It is costing a lot of money that could be used for other purposes, that’s true, but on the other hand, at least studying the climate is less damaging that other things the Governments could be using the money to do.
‘Mountain Tsunamis’? I guess it’s possible for the entire glacier to change state instantly and pour off the mountain… that is, If thermodynamics is completely false. Or, maybe if the sun comes in direct contact with the glacier- hmmm.