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 The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.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 ...

...

Some scientists have questioned how the IPCC could have allowed such a mistake into print. Perhaps the most likely reason was lack of expertise. Lal himself admits he knows little about glaciers. "I am not an expert on glaciers.and I have not visited the region so I have to rely on credible published research. The comments in the WWF report were made by a respected Indian scientist and it was reasonable to assume he knew what he was talking about," he said.

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.

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the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy

Oh music.  Cut your power.  You are making pollution that I am forced to breath.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research

This is precisely my problem with much of what's published--in print, on the web, and posts here.

People like conclusions, especially when those conclusions mirror their opinions. Science doesn't give a damn about conclusions, which are overturned or expanded continually. It's the methodology, the process by which those conclusions were reached, that's the science, the knowledge, the facts. "We looked at this, in this way, by this method, and here's what happened and what we think it means."

Anytime--as we see frequently on these boards and popularly on the web and in the media (whatever its particular bias)--we grab onto conclusions without looking carefully at the research and the study--whether those conclusions are true or not--we are appealing not to science or any factual basis, but simply speculation and opinion.

It's a game of shots back and forth, instead of looking at what actually happened, what we actually can know. And it gets us all nowhere.

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
Youns are no one to talk when you have done very little to cut back your own personal use of carbon.

Thanks to you my electric bill is 28% higher this year.  Same usage.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
Youns are no one to talk when you have done very little to cut back your own personal use of carbon.

Thanks to you my electric bill is 28% higher this year.  Same usage.

Can you prove that nobody on here has made any effort at all?

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Ah. The red herring. A favorite of those who don't like it when people ask to look at how conclusions are reached.

Not to mention ad hominem, here along with straw man. You know nothing of me or my home--doesn't stop you from making conclusions based on nothing.

It's exactly my point. You decide what you think, and then look at "evidence," taking what suits, ignoring or dismissing what doesn't. The evidence itself and what it does or doesn't show is irrelevant to you.

That's a problem for meaningful discourse, not to mention actually evaluating and addressing issues reasonably.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
Youns are no one to talk when you have done very little to cut back your own personal use of carbon.

Thanks to you my electric bill is 28% higher this year.  Same usage.

Can you prove that nobody on here has made any effort at all?

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ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
Youns are no one to talk when you have done very little to cut back your own personal use of carbon.

Thanks to you my electric bill is 28% higher this year.  Same usage.

Can you prove that nobody on here has made any effort at all?

I have made a huge effort personally. I traded in my 1.6litre Renault for a 3litre Jaguar a year or so ago and then, just this afternoon, managed to achieve 12mpg out of it, instead of the nearly 40mpg it should be able to make, by driving like a nutter. And it was great.

I hope this will not be one of those stories I tell my grandkids that they utterly disbelieve and put down to senility.

Lets see the PM and the Queen in an electric car, instead of the hugely polluting vehicles they have now, before I'm asked to use one.

E

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Are you still talking about your media bias thread, where you change the terms in the middle and discount any evidence that goes against the view you held at the beginning, while pretending your challenge had not been met?

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ORIGINAL: AnimusRex

So here we are again- a sicentist overestimated a minor point, and of course this is seized upon as evidence to bolster an opinion on the larger issue.

Has anyone wondered how insurance companies feel about climate change? Insurance companies have no agenda other than protecting themselves, they are neither liberal or conservative, but simply eager to predict future losses.

Well, in this article the Association of British Insurers is convinced enough about climate change that they are encouraging governments to do something about it.

And as I wrote elsewhere, even if you don't believe that we are changing the climate, what no one can argue, is that we are inflicting incredible damage on the Earth's ability to feed us, and provide us with clean air and water. THAT is the underlying issue of climate change which we need to act on.