Good news! We are now being told that the Himalayan Glaciers are not about to disappear. Just as well. We have been inundated (if you would pardon the expression) with docuphobias about the terrible floods that are going to afflict India as a result of the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. Apparently it was just a "Memphis meltdown" all along. (A "Memphis meltdown", for those of you unlucky enough not to know, is mere figment of a creative advertiser's febrile imagination.)
The reputation of global warmist climate "science" is in tatters. The tears and rips get bigger every day. Now we hear that the BBC is thinking of dumping the UK Met Office as its forecaster, since it has failed so abysmally over the past few years. It has routinely predicted warmer summers and warmer winters, when the actual temperatures have gone in the other direction. Their "barbecue summers" prediction went up in smoke (well, actually were doused with rain) and their most recent "mild winter" forecast has just shattered in ice shards. A BBC weatherman has accused the Met Office of having a computer with a warm-bias. Hmmmm.
But back to the Himalayas. The Times Online reports that when questions were raised recently about the scientific credibility of the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were melting, Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as "voodoo science". I suppose this kind of reactionary ideological burp is to be expected, since it was the IPCC which published the claim the claim in the first place, and as we know, the IPCC deals only in credible scientific stuff--which has been peer reviewed, and which is the acme of scientific knowledge on climate change, yada, yada, yada.
Here is what has now come to light:
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.
Two years ago, full of alarmist enviro-indignation, the IPCC solemnly intoned:
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."
But glaciologists know that the Himalayan glaciers are so thick and vast that this claim had to be nonsense--even if they were melting at the rate the IPCC claimed. But, as we would expect, that actual shrinkage is far, far less than what the IPCC asserted it to be. As always, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, especially one that promises a big pot of money at the end of the tale.
Don't expect any headlines or even minor corrections in the the organs of our MSM. After all, everybody now knows that the IPCC has got stuff wrong all over the show--so it's hardly news any more, right?
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