Article

2010-01-17 International-UN-NGOs

World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

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Posted by tipper 2010-01-17 06:22|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 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.
From the U.N. Whadja expect?

Posted by Bobby 2010-01-17 07:49|| 2010-01-17 07:49|| Front Page Top

#2 India 'arrogant' to deny global warming link to melting glaciers

A leading climate scientist today accused the Indian environment ministry of "arrogance" after the release of a government report claiming that there is no evidence climate change has caused "abnormal" shrinking of Himalayan glaciers.

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, released the controversial report in Delhi, saying it would "challenge the conventional wisdom" about melting ice in the mountains.

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".

Posted by john frum 2010-01-17 07:52|| 2010-01-17 07:52|| Front Page Top

#3 And another domino falls. I wonder exactly how much science was in that scientific report.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2010-01-17 09:13|| 2010-01-17 09:13|| Front Page Top

#4 not much, CS:
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

smell The Consensus?

Posted by Frank G 2010-01-17 09:21|| 2010-01-17 09:21|| Front Page Top

#5 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. ... Despite this it rapidly became a key source for the IPCC when Lal and his colleagues came to write the section on the Himalayas.

That would be the World Wildlife Federation - the Environmentalist / Socialist Advocacy organization with the TV ads claiming that the Polar Bears are drowning (a flat out lie).

In short the UN's IPCC, which got a Nobel Peace Prize for their work, relied on a (non-peer-reviewed) political organization's propaganda as a 'source'.

Posted by CrazyFool 2010-01-17 10:46|| 2010-01-17 10:46|| Front Page Top

#6 In response Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of "climate change deniers and school boy science".

Schoolboy science.

Pachauri, a railway engineer, is dismissing the work of Raina, a geologist who has studied glaciers for decades.

Glacier Atlas of India
V.K. Raina and Deepak Srivastava, Geological Society of India, 2008, viii, 316 p, 179 col. figs, 151 black and white figs, tables, ISBN : 81-85867-80-9,

Posted by john frum 2010-01-17 11:17|| 2010-01-17 11:17|| Front Page Top

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