10/54,000 = .0185 % That’s an impressively small sample size. Apparently Pachauri’s zeal to get back the Himalayagate claim of melting by 2035 outweighs any rational attempts at science. In any other discipline, a sample size this small would be laughed off as ridiculous, but this is climate science, where ridiculous has become the norm, especially when trotted out for the Durban Climate Conference.
Excerpts from the UK telegraph:
Himalayan glaciers are melting, says IPCC research
The Himalayan glaciers are melting after all, according to new research released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The research was released in an effort to draw a line under the embarrassing mistakes made about the effects of global warming on the region in the past.
The IPCC were forced to apologise for claiming that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.
The 2009 scandal, known as ‘Himalayagate’ led to criticism of the IPCC, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to warn governments around the world about the effects of climate change.
In an effort to move on from the embarrassing episode, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, has now announced that the latest statistics show the glaciers are melting, according to the limited amount of science available.
The reports, presented at the UN climate change talks in Durban were brought together by the the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
…
One three year study, funded by Sweden, found that of 10 glaciers measured in the region all are shrinking, with a marked acceleration in loss of ice between 2002 and 2005.
==============================================================
“…funded by Sweden” Does anyone care to place any bets on WWF and/or Greenpeace involvement in this? I’m sure Donna Leframboise will take a good look into this one.
Meanwhile, here’s all the reason you need not to trust anything the IPCC says. This comment left on our open thread today from Roger Knights is about as growing into Himalayagate 2 as you can get:
Three Strikes Against the IPCC’s Asia Group (By Roger Knights)
(Summary: This post points out the cherry picking of quotations by the IPCC’s Asia group to spice up its widely publicized claim that 3/4 of a billion Asians were at risk of water shortages from glacier-melt.)
Here’s a bone for the gang to gnaw on and flesh out (to mangle a metaphor). I haven’t fully researched the matter, but what I’ve noticed is intriguing.
During a dispute with one of the one-star Amazon-reviewers (T. Bruner) of Donna Laframboise’s Delinquent Teenager book about the IPCC, I wrote:
“She [DL] wrote, at Location 763 in Chapter 14: ‘When the IPCC declared that three-quarters of a billion people in India and China depend on glaciers for their water supply, is it not strange that its only source for this claim was the Stern review?’ The link she supplied there takes one to that section of the IPCC report, 10.4.2, where one can see the single citation for oneself, as I have done.”
(My exchange with T. Bruner starts on the 5th comments page of his review, linked to below, but the most relevant material is on the 6th page. http://www.amazon.com/review/R3D6YKUGYE4WA0/ref=cm_cd_pg_pg5?ie=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2983WIRKIRW6A&cdPage=5&asin=B005UEVB8Q&store=digital-text&cdThread=TxO5HUAZSS2GUT#wasThisHelpful )
Bruner pointed out that the Stern Review in turn had cited, as its authority for that statement, Barnett et al., which, unlike Stern, was a peer-reviewed and before-the-deadline publication. He added that the Fresh Water Group had cited Barnett alone, in Section 3.4.3 (of AR4).
This made me wonder: Why had the Asia group taken the risk of violating the IPCC’s rules by citing Stern alone? Wouldn’t citing Barnett in addition, or instead, have been prudent?
It’s unlikely that the group hadn’t been aware of the Barnett paper, given that it was cited by Stern, and given its relevance, recency, and prominent & prestigious source, which could be found in Stern’s bibliography:
Barnett, T.P., J.C, Adam, and D.P. Lettenmaier (2005): ‘Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions’, Nature 438: 303-309
So this relevant, recent, and prestigiously published primary source, Nature, which all contributors had access to in their libraries, was omitted in favor of citing a gray, secondary, after-the-deadline (2007, hence unpublished per the IPCC’s rules) source. (It’s not cited anywhere in the Asia Group’s chapter, per its References section.)
Why? Let’s get started by looking at what the two sources and the Asia Group said. I’ve emphasized the most pertinent passages. (h/t to T. Bruner for the quotes.):
1. Barnett et al., as summarized by the Fresh Water Group, in AR4 WGII Section 3.4.3:
“Hence, water supply in areas fed by glacial melt water from the Hindu Kush and Himalayas, on which hundreds of millions of people in China and India depend, will be negatively affected (Barnett et al., 2005).”
Go to 5th paragraph, last sentence, here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch3s3-4-3.html
2. Stern Review, 2007, Section 3.2, page 63:
“Climate change will have serious consequences for people who depend heavily on glacier meltwater to maintain supplies during the dry season, including large parts of the Indian sub-continent, over quarter of a billion people in China, and tens of millions in the Andes. (Barnett et al., 2005)”
Go to p. 8 at this link: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Chapter_3_How_climate_change_will_affect_people_around_the_world_.pdf
4. Asia Group, in AR4 WGII Section 10.4.2.1:
“Climate change-related melting of glaciers could seriously affect half a billion people in the Himalaya-Hindu-Kush region and a quarter of a billion people in China who depend [unqualified] on glacial melt for their water supplies (Stern, 2007).”
Go to the second paragraph, second sentence, here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-4-2.html
Strike one: If the Asia group had cited Barnett at all it would have exposed its claims about three-quarters of a billion and “seriously affected” as being hyperbole. (Barnett et al. had used the less-exaggerated, less-alarmist words, “hundreds of millions” and “negatively affected.”) It’s not a big leap to infer that that was the motive for its omission. What other motive could there have been?
(“Hundreds of millions” suggests the lower end of the one-hundred-million-to-one-billion range. If Barnett et al. had had three-quarters of a billion in mind when they wrote “hundreds of millions,” they’d likely have indicated that they were thinking of the upper part of the range by saying something like “over a half-billion” or “many hundreds of millions.”)
Strike two: The Asia Group lied by omission by omitting Stern’s key qualification, “during the dry season.” Including it would have muted the alarmist impact of their sentence. It’s not a big leap to infer that that was the motive for its omission. What other motive could there have been?
Strike three: The Asia Group’s gray-lit-backed claim of a 2035 melt-by date now looks likely to be a similarly culpable instance of cherry-picking in the service of alarmist hyperbole, rather than clueless unfamiliarity with the dynamics of glaciers. They were likely knaves, not fools, in other words.
One reason it’s “likely” is the context provided by the two “strikes” above. Another reason is the context provided by their refusal to correct the error in their 2035 melt-by date when reviewers pointed it out to them, and their turning a deaf ear to Dr. Georg Kaser’s subsequent attempts to have it corrected.
(I’m skeptical of the IPCC’s excuse that Kaser sent his first complaint to the wrong department—wouldn’t they have forwarded it?—and that his second letter wasn’t received—a “likely story.” It seems more likely to me that the group couldn’t possibly admit to ignoring his letters—so it didn’t.)
Strike four: The three strikes above suggest that the IPCC has been infected by gang-of-green alarmism. The IPCC’s apologists have spun a deceptive damage-control message about the 2035 error by attributing it to ignorance, not malice—to cluelessness, not culpability. In the context of the deceptive pattern described above, that’s hard to believe.
Obviously, it would be awkward for the IPCC if the second interpretation gained traction, because that would raise the questions, “Where did the gangrene start?”, “How far has it spread?”, “Is amputation needed?”, and “Or maybe a mercy killing?”.
Paging Dr. Kevorkian!
========
For a brief history of Himalaya-gate, see my comment here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/17/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-real-climate-scientist-dr-ray-pierrehumbert/#comment-683880
=============================================================
It gets even better, commenter DirkH adds in the same thread:
The funniest part is that the IPCC report contains a table of glaciers and the speed with which they retreat or grow. ON THE SAME PAGE AS THE 2035 DATE!
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch10s10-6-2.html
The only part they left out is the length of the glaciers; in the case of the Gangotri, for instance, 30km. So obviously nobody of them ever did this mental exercise called “computing” where you divide a length by a yearly distance to get an estimate of the number of years that have to pass until the thing is gone. This is, as the media repeatedly told us, the Gold Standard of climate science, and serves as the blueprint for all future international scientific collaborations under the UN.
Here’s the IPCC errata and table 10.9:
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 let’s do the math for Gangotri glacier, which according to Wikipedia: The glacier is about 30 kilometres long (19 miles) and 2 to 4 km (1 to 2 mi) wide.
30 kilometers (30,000 meters) divided by 28 meters/year = 1071.4 years for Gangotri glacier to disappear at the current retreat rate.
That’s a bit further out than 2035.
UPDATE: I’ve updated IPCC table 10.9 and it is shown below with two column additions. I was unable to find a reference for length of the the Ponting Glacier but if someone can locate it I’ll update the table to include it.
Note that the Pindari Glacier does have a chance of disappearing by 2035 if the rate of retreat keeps up. Perhaps that one was the source of confirmation bias. Looking at this photo from Wikipedia though…
…it looks rather “dirty” with a lot of albedo reducing components in it. That might explain why it is melting at a much faster rate than all the others.
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“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world” So it’s a regional issue then? Why is CO2 working differently in the Himalayas?
if Pindari Glacier was really melting at 135.2 m/y from 1845 till 1966 and (at least ), I presume, at the same rate since 1966 till now (3000m length), it must have been 25 km long back in 1845! Quite impressive…
Bet out of that 54,000, there’s at least 10 that are advancing!!!
Sadly there will be a lot of hype at the moment including , no doubt, some horror stories in BBC’s Frozen Planet this week. One lives in hope that reason and genuine inquiry will eventually win the day.
Great website, thanks Anthony.
@son of mulder, like many IPCC claims it is just another assertion without evidence.
Greenpeace claims to not accept cheques drawn on Corporate Accounts …
“Where does Greenpeace get its funding from?
To maintain absolute independence Greenpeace does not accept money fromcompanies, governments or political parties. We’re serious about that,and we screen for and actually send checks back when they’re drawn on acorporate account. We depend on the donations of our supporters to carry on our nonviolent campaigns to protect the environment.
Our books are audited every year, in every office around the world, and we publish our Annual Report on the web every year so you can see exactly how much money we’re given and how it gets spent.”
The annual reports make interesting reading, particularly their bit about “non-violent” direct action which, given that they now hold training camps in how to disrupt, block and obstruct, I find more than a little ambiguous. So to are their Financial Statements which demonstrate vast amounts of capital being invested, but not what they are invested in or who manages these investment funds.
The full report on finances can be found on Page 24 of the 2010 Annual Report. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/publications/greenpeace/2011/GPI_Annual_Report_2010.pdf The size of the funds available explians a great deal about how they are able to commission and operate a large number of ships that are engaged in barely legal “stop and search” activities that frequently put the lives and safety of the ships they are targeting in jeopardy. In short, this is a legitimised pirate organisation operating under a cloak of “morality.”
It is widely believed here in Europe that they earn vast amounts of money from investments in windmill manufacturing and from the construction of windfarms which is why they foam at the mouth at the mere mention of any alternatives to wind or solar. Looking through the names of the Directors there is also a suspicion that the organisation is run by some very wealthy and powerful individuals who, unless they have become completely detached from the family fortunes their names are linked to, must in some way, also represent those families.
The report doesn’t go big on science, it is written one suspects by a PR person and is big on hyperbole and self congratulation. While I think the majority of its ordinary members may have very good intentions, the activities of their “scientists” and “activists” are highly suspect in my humble opinion.
The Barnett 2005 aricle is available on-line and is much cited and is interesting if disappointing (http://meteora.ucsd.edu/cap/pdffiles/barnett_warmsnow.pdf). In the string of comments on the Bruner review, I noted what for me is a money quote in Barnett et al (2005): “Without adequate water storage capacity, these changes will lead to regional water shortages.” (P307) Which presumably is the semantic equivalent of saying that “With adequate water storage capacity, these changes will NOT lead to regional water shortages!”
By the way the Barnett article is very disappointing. As far as I can see they do not give any estimates as to the % contribution of fossil water to total run-off. Without that number I see no way of gauging the significance of glacier loss for the long term water supply.
In short, in the unlikely event that (a) fossil water from the glaciers is a significant portion of the actual water supply, (b)the glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate and (c) the change leading to the melting is not also leading to increased preciptiation, then since the glaciers are essentially natural reservoirs the problem can be largely addressed by creating man made reservoirs and other water management practices.
Green”peace” and WWF do not like civilisation. They want to set us back to the stone age.
And they want to reduce our numbers to the same as a medium sized monkey-tribe in africa.
Simple as that.
The reason Anthony couldn’t find a reference for the “Ponting Glacier” is that it’s a spelling error.- the name is actually Poting. Also note the observation periods in table 10.9 – the end dates range from 1957 to 2001.
Those interested could do little better than read the report Pachauri dubbed “voodoo science” – http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/MoEDiscussionPaper.pdf
– which has much up-to-date data (to 2009), and for which he clearly adopted the Gleick method of review.
Of the Gangotri glacier, it says:
“Gangotri glacier, it may be noted, had been showing a rather rapid retreat at an average of around 20m per year till up to 2000 AD, which had led to the imaginative prediction of the end of this glacier in [the] next 35 years or so. In actual fact, since 2001AD, rate of the retreat has come down considerably and between September 2007 and June 2009 this glacier is practically at stand still.”
As far as meltwater contribution to river flow goes, there are a number of papers which refute the IPCC claims (which don’t actually distinguish between glacial melt and spring snow melt). Here’s one worth a read:
“By measuring the isotopes in river water, scientists have determined that mountain glaciers contribute less than thought to downstream water supplies
A growing number of studies based on satellite data and stream chemistry analyses have found that far less surface water comes from glacier melt than previously assumed. In Peru’s Rio Santa, which drains the Cordilleras Blanca mountain range, glacier contribution appears to be between 10 and 20 percent. In the eastern Himalayas, it is less than 5 percent”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=research-casts-doubt-doomsday-water-shortage-predictions
When picking samples in an audit, as the population increases, the sample size increases. But there does come a point when no matter how big the population, a maximum sample size tapers off at around 270.
On that basis, the glacier study should have used a sample size of 270 for a population of 54,000 glaciers. But to use 10… that is simply a joke!
FrankK says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Interesting read while I’m sitting here in Sydney Australia after the coldest first week of summer for 44 years!! Bring on global warming.!
=====================
glad I am not the only cold one down under,, I am using wheat bags to keep warm, and wearing a woolen jumper as I write, and this? is summer?
see the climate institute says 2010 was another hot one?
I,d love to know how they spun those figures, we had less than a week of real warm days last year, and even the bushfire days were about the only hot ones, we got rain the day after.
I should have added that I can’t find a length for the Poting glacier, but it’s prominence in references I’ve found suggest it’s significant and of substantial size.
Anyone else suspect the IPCC is cherry picking?
Is it not the least bit suspicious that only one of the glaciers has had its snout position measured in the last 10 years? In the case of the Pindari Glacier (apparently a tourist attraction – see AnthonyIndia’s post above) the snout position hasn’t been measured since 1966. Why?
If there was serious interest in the advance/retreat of these glaciers someone would have been out there with a GPS marking the snout on all the glaciers of interest. How hard are they to access?
When I see measurements of the snouts of these glaciers all taken this century I will be less skeptical. At the moment my BS meter is off the scale.
This from Richard Black swanning around in Durban:
“However, stabilising at 350ppm CO2e is a very demanding target, given that the current concentration is more than 450ppm.”
Erm, what?
“Compare it to” … what? Something is missing. — John M Reynolds
mods – looks like there is an issue with the italics flag? (Or have the last 10 posters italicized their whole posts?)
[Thanks, fixed. WordPress glitch. ~dbs, mod.]
Mostly Harmless:
Thanks for the link. It is an interesting if badly written article. It does make the point though: The sky is not actually falling! The comments are a hoot. The persistence of Chicken Littles is amazing, if not their ability to think critically.
[snip]
joshua Corning says:
December 4, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Yes, but in a fair poll (and some pollsters work very hard to come up with a fair poll) the sample is a random selection and perfectly adequate.
In a cherry picked poll, I could show that Ron Paul will win the New Hampshire Primary in a landslide.
Is the data available for all 54,00 glaciers so that other 10 sample extrapolations can be done ?
Al Gored says:
December 4, 2011 at 11:11 pm
Those are valid points for objective scientific research. But this is IPCC work. Amazing what they can do with a tree, ten glaciers, and four drowned polar bears.
=====================================================
That almost sounds like the start of an AGW version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”!!
Mods, as a side note, is anyone else having trouble signing in on WordPress? Haven’t been able to at WUWT for at least a few days now
Michael Mann calls us deniers in Wall Street Journal letter to the editor
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204449804577068211662483248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket
Claims emails were stolen, says hackers who stole them need to be brought to justice. Also claims hockey stick has been validated over and over again, evidence is overwhelming
~More Soylent Green!
Stern also assumes there is no such thing as dams and reserviors.
The last sentence in the text that I was reading is: “…it looks rather “dirty” with a lot of albedo reducing components in it. That might explain why it is melting at a much faster rate than all the others. Compare it to”
And there it ends. Did anyone else have the same problem. I am curious to know what I missed. (I have not read most of the comments, so someone else may have mentioned this.)
IanM
Mervyn says:
December 5, 2011 at 4:25 am
When picking samples in an audit, as the population increases, the sample size increases. But there does come a point when no matter how big the population, a maximum sample size tapers off at around 270.
am a pygmy
On that basis, the glacier study should have used a sample size of 270 for a population of 54,000 glaciers. But to use 10… that is simply a joke!
—————————————————————————-
Mervyn, I understand what you are getting at, but it does highlight that ‘sampling’ is widely misunderstood. The lack of basic statistical literacy that has bedevilled so-called climate science is not confined to any part of the wide spectrum of views on the subject.
There is no Golden Rule of sampling. It is never perfect and always (or always should be) shaped by what is being sampled. In areas like political polling, and consumer market research, for reasons of profit and power, a lot of work has been done on refining the techniques. They are not perfect, but they are certainly more accurate than any of the alternatives. In the case of political polling, high quality research is well within accepted ‘scientific’ confidence intervals, even if it doesn’t predict the result of a two horse race 100% of the time.
I am not going into the theory of statistics here, as I am a pygmy among other readers. Suffice it to say that there is not a lot of doubt that dealing with small numbers (whether in toto or within a larger number) is highly problematic.
Of course 10 glaciers out of 54,000 proves nothing. But, it is not about statistics in that sense when you are discussing geographical features. It is like comparing the Murray-Darling to the Coorparoo Creek, the Mississippi to the Hudson, or any of them to each other.
If there was a trend for glaciers in a (small) area to recede or grow, the crude measurement techniques that have been cited could be a starting point. But, it has nothing to do with statistics.
It is impressive to see how citizen scientists do detailed research and present their findings, a job that the “realclimate” scientists are being paid for but are not interested to do, for a “cause”.
It shows once more how unbelievable Pachauri’s woodoo science statement was. Every honest person would have stepped back afterwards.
Keep going. We’re getting closer in uncovering the “cause”.
Many thanks to FOIA2011, for a wonderful christmas gift.
May I suggest to distribute that introduction statement as much as possible?
I have spent a year in Thailand and know something about their water situation.
They have hundreds of times more water than they need. If you haven’t experienced a monsoon you have no idea what rain is.
I remember the Mekong river as a little stream 200 ft down in the gorge and a week later it was over the top and all the fields were flooded. The children were floating over what had been dry land.
The point is that these people are not dependent upon glaciers for water. A dam is a human built glacier which stores water over the dry season. Don’t these people think Asians are smart enough to build dams ?