Glaciers Fine; "Consensus" Melting

By Daniel Foty

Astute readers may have seen this story elsewhere, but once again it's just too sweet a target to not pump in a few rounds:

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.

And what's the story behind the story?  We'll go there below the fold....

You know all that hyperventilating about "THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!!" that we were subjected to (by, um, non-scientists) over the past few years?  Well, follow this drilling-down to the bottom of the "science" behind the claim:

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 [emphasis mine - ed.].

(If you're not familiar with New Scientist, it's sort of a British version of Scientific American - except that it's even more obnoxiously political, if you can believe that.)

It's interesting that as we finally get to excavate (spelunk?) through the morass of "science" in this matter, we keep finding out that there is little more behind it (at base) than the fevered imaginings of zealots....

Comments

[Joshua Coursen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

Glaciers fine?

It seems that you are more interested in discrediting the IPCC than in finding a balanced view of the issue.

[Daniel Foty]

(N.b. - The comment above that I'm responding to may end up being removed; having no author name, it may be a violation of site policy. That's up to The Boss.)

Sigh. Same-old, same-old - parrot someone else's (outdated) talking point(s) and drop a wikipedia link....

First, I don't need to discredit the IPCC - it's doing a pretty good job of that on its own, with the continuing cascade of incidents like this one.

Second, since when is the IPCC the holy writ of an unimpeachable priesthood? Since when are these people above questions from the peasants? And since when are they and their "sacred texts" (sic) exempt from inquiry and granted the perceived equivalent of authoritarian infallibility?

I'll ask again - what the heck ever happened to all of those "Question Authority" bumperstickers that once seemed to festoon ever third or fourth rear bumper on Vermont roadways?

Meanwhile, let's look at some real history and science, rather than be bamboozled by another instance of very careful cherry-picking to support an irrational (and dangerous) narrative.

The great ice sheets have basically been in long-term secular decline since the last Ice Age ended (for reasons unknown) some 10,000 years ago. (Of local interest, the great ice sheets had squished down the local landscape so much that at the onset of the present warmer epoch, Lake Champlain was actually salt water - an arm of the sea. Since then, the land has slowly rebounded about 100 vertical feet, and the Lake became fresh water.)

After the early spectacular disappearance of the great ice sheets (note all of those "potholes" around even Vermont), the general rate of retreat slowed as the climate stabilized. Since then, there have been notable fluctuations.

The most recently-notable of these was the "Little Ice Age" of the 15th/16th century well into the 19th century. During that time, the glaciers grew again. I don't need a book to tell me that - I've seen the resultant terminal moraines in the northern (Canadian) Rockies, the Alps, and the Andies first-hand. (The "Little Ice Age" terminal moraines in the Peruvian Andes are particularly spectacular.)

As we've come out of the "Little Ice Age," the ice sheets have been undergoing generally small retreats. That "coming out" began in about.... well, 1850. (This is why the use of 1850 as a baseline is scientifically misleading and dishonest, as foreshadowed above.)

The problem with the now-discredited narrative is that it was trying to "sell" the notion that some catastrophic and rapid meltdown is in progress. This isn't the case.

However, astute readers may want to note how this unsupportable claim was more-or-less "laundered" so as to be worked into the IPCC scare-mongering.

[the vermont patriot]

I was the one who listed the original comment with the wikipedia link. Not sure why the name did not show up but I've been having difficulty posting on this site.

Now, I am not defending the IPCC. I do not accept their conclusions without skepticism. I like Wikipedia, while not perfect, because of the use of citations (98 in the previously linked article) as well as a section on external links and references. This is a good starting point to learn about any topic.

While we can recognize the naturally shifting variations in global climate throughout history, it is particularly disturbing to see the accelerating pace of glacial retreat around the world since the early 1980's as well as the coinciding increase in global temperature readings. Where in the scientific community is this discredited? Here is one recent study (from the 98 listed in the Wikipedia article) from the glaciers in Afghanistan that substantiates that glaciers are in retreat. http://www.glims.org/glacierdata/data/lit_ref_files/haritashya2009.pdf

Ultimately, I disagree with the title of your post and that your point is only substantiated by pointing out the bad scientific practices (if you can call what they did as a scientific practice) of the IPCC. You didn't prove that glaciers are fine nor did you prove that the consensus is broken. All you pointed out is the incompetency of the IPCC predictions of the Himalayan glaciers being eliminated by 2035 (which is regarded as preposterous by everyone anyways). Not much to hang your hat on.

[Vermont Friend]

For your information

"Another expert, J. Graham Cogley of Trent University in Canada, has said the 2035 forecast was an "egregious" error which may have originated in an older document predicting a massive melting of glaciers by 2350.

In December, the BBC quoted Cogley as saying that the authors of the IPCC report "misread 2350 as 2035."

[Daniel Foty]

(Catching up. D*mned work thing.)

TVP - Thanks for the nomenclature clarification; never trust a browser to leave a field filled for you. :-)

The core problem is that the contentions of accelerated glacier retreat in recent years AND the claim of "increased warming" both are now known to be incorrect.

The latter has of course collapsed more spectacularly, as we finally have had the lid pried off the can and have found "hide the decline," the destruction of raw data, the presentation of "adjusted" data as raw data (tsk, tsk), the cherry-picking of only certain trees in tree-ring analysis, and so forth and so on and so on and so on.... There isn't a runaway warming event in progress.

I'm just suggesting that everyone who bought into this narrative take a time-out and revisit the realities; if what has been learned in recent months doesn't change minds, then what's happened is that "surging warming" has become a pseudo-religious belief system rather than anything based on science.

On the glacier front, the behavior of glaciers is all over the behavioral map (which doesn't surprise me at all); if there's one thing we've learned about glaciers, it's that their behavior is now based more on local conditions than on global conditions.

The problem is that the "2035" claim was turned into a shrieking chorus - yet now we find out that it was based on nothing. Anyone who is willing to now walk away from that, good - but one cannot deny the clubbing that stemmed from nearly three years of that claim.

Here's some commentary from India today:

"India's environment minister slammed the UN's top climate body in comments published Tuesday, claiming its doomsday warning about Himalayan glaciers was not based on 'scientific evidence.'

"'The IPCC claim that glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence,' minister Jairam Ramesh told the Hindustan Times.

"'The IPCC has to do a lot of answering on how it reached the 2035 figure, which created such a scare.'

"Ramesh conceded to the Hindustan Times that 'most glaciers are in a poor state,' but said they were receding at different rates and a few were even advancing."

[I'm not sure how one defines a glacier as being in a "poor state" - I've been on glaciers all over the world, and the mental images we often have of these pristine palaces of bluish-white sparkling crystal isn't close to the truth; glaciers everywhere always look like cr*p because they scoop up so much cr*p as they flow. But note the real finding - some glaciers are retreating, but some are advancing. - ed.]

"Ramesh recalled how IPCC chief R K Pachauri had scornfully dismissed doubts raised by a government agency about the veracity of the UN body's sensational projection about melting of glaciers. 'In fact, we had issued a report by scientist V K Raina that the glaciers have not retreated abnormally. At the time, we were dismissed, saying it was based on voodoo science. But the new report has clearly vindicated our position,' he said."

Sources:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gd5RorHuuh-MTKVEOkaXimj2xZUQ

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Ramesh-turns-heat-on-Pachauri-over-glacier-melt-scare/articleshow/5474586.cms

Oh, BTW, "All you pointed out is the incompetency of the IPCC predictions of the Himalayan glaciers being eliminated by 2035 (which is regarded as preposterous by everyone anyways)."

I'm sorry, but that last contention is false. If *you* never bought into it, that's great (really). But this "glacier-melting-panic" was something that the IPCC was clearly both believing and using as a cudgel to abuse anyone who had the gall to question the contention.

The bottom line is that there is no catastrophic glacier disappearance in progress. Another pillar falls out of the so-called "consensus."

VF, that's an interesting story that I hadn't heard elsewhere. It will be interesting to see what comes of that, since it conflicts with the comments of the originator of the "report" that it all stemmed from an off-hand comment he made (with nothing behind it other than idle speculation) in a short telephone conversation. Is this going to be the "official" CYA story to try to make this controversy go away? We'll see....

Any predictions for 2350 would sure as heck be nothing more than the most idle speculation.

The other thing to note is that whether it was 2350 being translated into 2035 or something else, the entire system failed badly. This is exactly the kind of thing that the vaunted "peer-review process" is supposed to catch; unfortunately, review is only as good as the people doing it, so the notion that no one involved even said "2035?! That's less than 30 years ahead! Can someone tell me what's going on here?" Of course, as we saw above, prominent outsiders questioned that claim but were treated with the aristocratic disdain that became endemic among those over-invested in the narrative.

[Vermont Woodchuck]

What can you expect when you get someone that runs choo-choos around for a living, suddenly becomes an authority on climatology. (IPCC chief R K Pachauri)

Don't sweat the small stuff. I'm getting along in years, but I'll bequeath the world my recipe for ICE. You'll be sure to have a glacier or a bunch around to fetch more rocks!

[Jack]

Oops!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/20/ipcc-himalayan-glaciers-mistake
IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers

Senior members of the UN's climate science body admit a claim that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 was unfounded...