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Glacier-gate: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
photo by mckaysavage (source: Flickr Creative Commons)
Erroneous claims concerning melting Himalayan glaciers made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report have embarrassed the IPCC and prompted apologies from chairman Rajendra Pachauri. The Nobel-winning report stated that the glaciers could be gone by the year 2035 due to rising temperatures associated with anthropogenic global warming. The number apparently came from a WWF statement, which unintentionally misquoted an Indian scientist back in 1999. Misquotes and journalistic inaccuracy are not that strange, but the fact that the number was used in a recent, definitive scientific report and focused on as a particularly shocking number is obviously discrediting. According to an AP article, the actual data puts the year that ‘the ice could melt’ at 2350. Perhaps someone simply misplaced a zero.
Now somewhat vindicated, Indian scientists’ data never agreed with the IPCC report’s statements about Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035, yet still prompt concern about the melting of the glaciers. After all, millions in South and Southeast Asia depend on the water sourced from the Himalayas. Furthermore, the chief message of the report is that global warming is taking place – and despite the careless errors contained in one paragraph, the rest of the report is sound, according to Pachauri:
‘”I have no intention of resigning from my position,” Pachauri said on Saturday, adding the errors were unintentional and not significant in comparison to the entire report. The mistakes also do not negate the fact that worldwide, glaciers are melting faster than ever, he said.’
–Associated Press
For certain politically motivated climate change ‘skeptics’ it would make sense to throw out all of the IPCC’s science because of the mistakes on the glaciers contained – and now admitted to – in the report. Those whose priorities lie in industrial development based on fossil fuels in China and India may also jump on the error as a means to their own ends. But let’s not throw out the baby with the glacier water – so to speak. This is about science, not politics. After all it was the scientific process of peer-review that caught the error, not some skeptical journalist who hates ‘warmers’. And besides, it is good news that the Himalayan glaciers are predicted to supply water for another 300 years or so. Is anyone celebrating that?
From an article in the Guardian:
‘Glaciergate actually shows we can police ourselves, say researchers. And while the glacier claims exaggerate the impact of climate change, other parts of the 2007 IPCC report clearly underplay the risks. “We should also remember the overwhelming evidence still shows global warming is real and manmade,” adds Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. “Arctic ice sheets are shrinking and droughts are spreading while nine of the last 10 years have been the hottest on record. Only rising emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can explain that.”‘
Check out this short video report from CNN/ITN for a concise and reasonably balanced summary of glacier-gate:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says a report on the Himalayan glaciers contained errors.
by Graham Land
Additional resources:
The National Geographic archives: The world’s melting glaciers
The National Geographic archives: Antarctica’s glacial melt
Tags: Climate change, errors, glacier-gate, glaciers, global warming, Himalaya, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, melting, report
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Gangsta, this is not a scientific paper quoting sources for data. The quote was from an journalistic story (Associated Press) and referred to an interview with Pachauri where he was obviously asked to comment on the controversy. Anyway, I haven’t found anything where he admitted anything as bold as you say. The conservative Telegraph puts his admission as “a serious system failure”. Anyway, it’s not about religion, certainty or weirdo conspiracies where bankers are going to make more cash on windmills than oil, coal and nuclear power.
Besides, we write on all kinds of environmental issues and I try for my part to keep it fair and think critically. What doom and gloom scenarios that have failed to “come to fruition” are you talking about anyway? Whose science do you listen to? Exxons? Seriously…
You know what’s REALLY REALLY funny about this article? The fact that they quote Pachauri as a credible source after HE ADMITTED THAT HE PUT INFORMATION IN THE REPORT KNOWING IT WAS BASED ON ERRONEOUS INFORMATION IN ORDER TO MAKE POLICY MAKERS ACT!!! How can you act like anything this man is involved with is not suspect? You people cling to your religion no matter how many times the people at the top of this scam are caught lying, cheating, manipulating, conspiring etc etc. Then to have a quote from another shill claiming that only “rising emissions of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere” can explain changes in the weather, what are you smoking? You think the sun, water vapor, etc doesn’t have an effect on climate? Are you arrogant enough to believe that we actually know enough about climate to come anywhere near being able to make such a statement, especially after the doom and gloom predictions keep on failing to come to fruition? You really believe your sacred computer models are proof of anything? If they were then the top scientists in the field wouldn’t have to email each other telling them how to work the code in order to manipulate the results into something more desirable. This stuff is as dishonest as it gets. Anyway, enjoy your carbon guilt while REAL environmental issues continue to be forgotten in the name of the great carbon scare/scam. You people are working harder to destroy the environment than anyone else by pushing this banker/globalist scam so real environmental destruction falls to the side. Good job.
Keith – good points. This is the first time (as far as I can tell) that scientific review has been so much in the journalistic and public eye. I suspect that this level of error is par for the course. In academia, opposing professors are at least as venomous and merciless to any small mistake.
Regarding the carbon markets money you mentioned – though not exactly the same thing, surprisingly it seems that the UK govt is dipping into aid funds for their share of ‘climate aid package’. Unfortunate, I understood this was a separate package.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/25/climate-aid-uk-funding
As far as CO2 being processed efficiently by the planet, the state of the oceans and vanishing forests certainly don’t help that situation. Indeed, it isn’t poison, but like N20, methane and water vapor, it is a greenhouse gas, which performs an essential function. Whether we want that function exacerbated is the issue.
Casey, you may be right about Pachauri, but I wonder who would survive under this scrutiny.
Climate Chief Pachauri has ruined his reputation in the scientific community and the public-at-large by pushing the faulty Himalayan-glacier estimates. If the IPCC is to restore its reputation and become an effective advocate for climate change legislation, they need a new leader and more transparent research reporting mechanisms. Himalayagate cannot happen again.
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What glaciergate, climategate and now NASA GISS’gate is showing is a consistent failure of objective independent reviewing going on. Either the process is not working as intended or it is being ‘manipulated’ to make it powerless.
Also there is a lot of interrelations between the peer reviewed science via the data sets they have used, NASA GISS is dependent upon CRU data for sea temp measurements. The Satellite data is calibrated using CRU data.. This is a real shame as it makes it hard to find detailed global data sets that are not effected by the various ‘gates’ going on at the moment.
To me this creates a real opportunity cost problem – the science was meant to give a clear fact based ‘signal’ that we could depend upon; we might have man made warming going on, we might have no warming going on, or just natural cycle warming going on, or a combo of the three – atm the science cannot give us a clear direction on this. Now if we go down the road of assuming CO2 is the cause, this will result in trillions of dollars being redirected through the carbon markets – if we are wrong, those trillions could have been used to say reduce poverty, or improve food availability, cure cancer, etc – So we really need to get to the facts behind this issue, as lives literally depend on the outcome.
Myself I think we have had an impact on the climate (just look at CFC’s) but not the warming via CO2 – the climate and ecology is high efficient at processing and using CO2; and I do not count it as a pollutant as such.