UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning

[Henk Elegeert]

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6994774.ece

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UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning

>From The Times
January 21, 2010

Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent

The UN’s top climate change body has issued an unprecedented apology
over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to
disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said yesterday
that the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was “poorly
substantiated” and resulted from a lapse in standards. “In drafting
the paragraph in question the clear and well-established standards of
evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,”
the panel said. “The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC
regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance.”

The stunning admission is certain to embolden critics of the panel,
already under fire over a separate scandal involving hacked e-mails
last year.

The 2007 report, which won the panel the Nobel Peace Prize, said that
the probability of Himalayan glaciers “disappearing by the year 2035
and perhaps sooner is very high”. It caused shock in Asia, where about
two billion people depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers for
their fresh water supplies during the dry seasons

It emerged last week that the prediction was based not on a consensus
among climate change experts but on a media interview with a single
Indian glaciologist in 1999. That scientist, Syed Hasnain, has now
told The Times that he never made such a specific forecast in his
interview with the New Scientist magazine.

“I have not made any prediction on date as I am not an astrologer but
I did say they were shrinking fast,” he said. “I have never written
2035 in any of my research papers or reports.” Professor Hasnain works
for The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in Delhi, which is
headed by Rajendra Pachauri, head of the climate change panel.

Dr Pachauri has defended the panel’s work, while trying to distance
himself from Professor Hasnain by saying that the latter was not
working at the institute in 1999: “We slipped up on one number, I
don’t think it takes anything away from the overwhelming scientific
evidence of what’s happening with the climate of this Earth.”

Professor Hasnain confirmed that he had given an interview to Fred
Pearce, of New Scientist, when he was still working for Jawaharlal
Nehru University in 1999. “I said that small glaciers in the eastern
and central Himalaya are declining at an alarming rate and in the next
40-50 years they may lose substantial mass,” he said. “That means they
will shrink in area and mass. To which the journalist has assigned a
date and reported it in his own way.” Mr Pearce was not immediately
available for comment.

Despite the controversy, the IPCC said that it stood by its overall
conclusions about glacier loss this century in big mountain ranges
including the Himalayas. “This conclusion is robust, appropriate, and
entirely consistent with the underlying science and the broader IPCC
assessment,” it said.

The scandal threatens to undermine the panel’s credibility as it
begins the marathon process of drafting its Fifth Assessment Reports,
which are due out in 2013-14. Georg Kaser, a leading Austrian
glaciologist who contributed to the 2007 report, described the glacier
mistake as huge and said that he had warned colleagues about it months
before publication.

The error is also now being exploited by climate sceptics, many of
whom are convinced that stolen e-mail exchanges last year revealed a
conspiracy to exaggerate the evidence supporting global warming.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Environment Minister, said on Tuesday the
scandal vindicated his position that there was no proof that Himalayan
glaciers were melting abnormally fast. “The IPCC claim that glaciers
will vanish by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence,”
he said.

Monitoring Himalayan glaciers is extremely difficult because most of
them lie in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the word at an
altitude of more than 5,000 metres (16,000ft).

Most studies until now have therefore been based necessarily on a
mixture of outdated and incomplete data, satellite imagery,
photography, and anecdotal evidence.

Last year, however, TERI launched a project to install high-tech
sensors on three glaciers which it will use as benchmarks to assess
the situation across the Himalayas.

Professor Hasnain, who is running the project, said that he would soon
be presenting a report on the status of Himalayan glaciers, based on
research works by Indian and international scientists published in
different peer reviewed journals across the world.

He hopes that these studies will help to produce more incontrovertible
evidence that the Himalayan glaciers are under threat. In the short
term, however, it seems they will do little to convince climate change
sceptics, or to repair the image of the IPCC.
"

Henk Elegeert

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