Environment: In 2007, the U.N. said the Himalayan glaciers will be gone by 2035 due to man-made global warming. Yet four years later, some are advancing. What’s retreating is the global warming narrative.
Global warming alarmists felt a tingle in their legs when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report claiming “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of their disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the earth keeps warming at the current rate.”
The announcement was enough to set off celebrations by greenshirts everywhere.
Turns out, though, that the claim was nonsense. It was not based on scientific research but on one scientist’s guesswork, which was lifted from a telephone interview. It was carelessly — or intentionally? — included in the report.
Despite its mistakes and clear political bias, the IPCC survives.
Oh Yea! The Himalayas that’s where the third pole is!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzum9XqoWOM&w=480&h=390]
HAHAHAHA look at the size of that hole!
..and thanks to the likes of Donna Laframboise, the IPCC has had a thorough mangling. I mean that as a Good Thing.
The UN has no better insight than you or I about whether humans are causing global warming, or what is happening in the Himalayas. Certainly the total globe is warming and, admittedly, CO2 rate of increase correlates with industrial development. However,
correlation does not prove cause and effect. It is probable that we are contributing to the Greenhouse Effect and global warming. Causing?!!
Personally I believe humans are having a negative effect and should do all they can to reduce (all) their impacts. However to say we are “causing” climate change, or can stop it,
seems to me to be a bit of conceit.
Michael:
It is not certain the entire globe is warming! Are you talking about the weather that some regions have experienced over the last 30 years? Are you talking about a warming from a cold period known as the Little Ice Age? Where are the trees that grew before the ice sheets covered them if the globe is warmer than then? If the globe recovers from the LIA we should enjoy 400 to 500 years of conditions that allow farming in ground that now has perma frost or is under a glacier!
The “Man Made Warming” is most likely an artifact of the methods used to record temperature changes and so far inside the errors induced by the methods we do not know if any change has happened “Globally”! Regionally there has been little change in many locations and evidence of cooling in others when looking at 100+ years of surface temperature records!
Steve,
Really?
“The announcement was enough to set off celebrations by greenshirts everywhere.”
One might compare to see which celebration was larger. The enviros who believed this nonsense or the deniers who continue to beat this mistake to death.
Skeptics, Tony, skeptics.
Tony, the reason why it gets repeated is because it was a watershed moment. It confirmed what the skeptics had been saying for years. But for the duration of those years people kept calling us whacked.
Tony, that wasn’t the only lie tossed into the IPCC report nor was it the only lie spewed by the media in relation to climate change. What about the eminent demise of the Amazon? It isn’t an issue of some bad piece of science that made its way through a flawed process. It is what happened before and after. Remember the words “voodoo science”? Remember Pachy telling us all of the material is “peer-reviewed”? You probably didn’t see the e-mails informing him of this unscientific paper being included in the IPCC report, before he defended it in the general arena, but I did.
For years we were told this was a gathering of the greatest scientific minds, and they were in consensus and the information was accurate, and that the scientist we simply seekers of truth, trying to save humanity from humanity.
Turns out, it was all garbage. The many of greatest minds refused to go to this humanity hate-fest. Many that did were so enraged that their name was attached to the report that they felt compelled to publicly ask for the removal of their name. Much of the “science” was simply stuff made up, just as the skeptics had been saying for years. The “scientists” are nothing but well educated(for what an education is worth today) advocates for an anti-human cause.
Tony, you ought to read Dr. Curry’s view on this. While I consider her somewhat of a fence rider and her science mediocre, for a time in the alarmist community, she was something of a rock-star. This event(and the similar quasi-science being spewed) was one of the reasons she re-thought her position. It was an interesting conversion to watch. You can go through the archives on WUWT to see most of it. Its interesting, Wiki, has her listed, and even provides a link to WUWT. But, while they mention that she started a blog, they don’t even have the decency to link to it. Pure oversight, I’m sure.
Anyway, the IPCC’s Himalayan event needs to be in the public domain forever. Lol, I remember the certitude people had about information in the IPCC, and many still have it. But, the ones that do are stripped of all pretenses of objectivity.
SUYTS
I only see it as a watershed moment for people looking to find anything they can use to discredit an enemy. it was a mistake and it was corrected. I know of no scientist that supported the figure when it was pointed out.
of course I am aware of the part Pachauri played in it initially, but he backed down as soon as other climate scientists made it clear there was no way it could be possible. and his “voodoo science” was referring to an Indian paper that has dubious conclusions. I knew it was ridiculous as soon as I heard about it, just as the position paper that came out predicting 2° temp rise by 2020.
As far as I know the paper related to the Amazon has science that supports it, and the Netherlands reference was also a small mistake that was corrected.
As I have repeatedly asked for, please tell me what peer reviewed papers have been retracted because of mistakes in the IPCC report
As for Curry, I have responded in depth about her views, and I have read a number of things by her. My conclusion is that she has a limited understanding of the sociological and political forces involved in climate research. She treats the issue as if we lived in an ideal world where scientists and the other actors are naively pursuing the truth and when she encounters scientists that are NOT doing that, she is shocked, but does not look at anything cola to the whole picture and she actually admits she is not qualified to address the depth of these issues. Pilke Jr’s views are a bit more nuanced, but his leftist ideology causes him to attribute political forces that I think are overstated and ignores possible explanations that are, in my view, more realistic.
You say “it turns out it is all garbage” from these few pieces of information. To me it is like creationists saying Piltdown man shows evolutions is all garbage. There is not one scientific theory that has proven to be exact in every respect and have every hypothesis or prediction turn out to be correct. Our understanding of gravity is pretty much totally up in the air in certain ways, but that does not mean that we can’t use Newton to predict 99.99 % of all issues relating to gravity, and he is 2 paradigms removed from current limited understanding.
Steve, shouldn’t that read “hair shirts”?
V.K. Raina and Richard North about Pachauri and the Himalayan glacier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xvOm6QO1Ztg
Erik,
Here is the one of the first sites I found regarding North’s allegations.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/08/26/the-smearing-of-an-innocent-man/
I got a moron trying to tell me it was a typo and the real date was 2350. Oddly, I cannot find any supportable evidence that this is true.
Matt, google these words.
glaciers will be gone by 2035 2350
There had been a reference to 2350 but I think it is pretty clear that it was from Haisnan’s quote in 1999, that was not based on science
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8387737.stm
In itself, the claim is not important. It’s just one of a thousand baseless claims designed to panic the public into drinking the Kool Aide.