Of course, the only people who are really going to be shocked that an alarmist group like the UN IPCC was making it up as they went along (grant money, anyone?) are the climate alarmists who WANT to believe that Mankind is bad and caused the warming, mostly or solely, since the end of the Little Ice Age. They gnash their teeth about it, then jump in their SUVs to drop the kids off at soccer before running to their cocktail parties in over heated/cooled domiciles to discuss climate change. The Times of London will surely be on the hit list of the chicken littles now! World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown
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.
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.
So, maybe the New Scientist report had merit?
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.
If the UN IPCC folks, mostly bureaucrats, can look in their crystal balls, let me check mine. ……… Ah, there it is. It’s telling me that they saw this in the New Scientist, and, during cocktail hour in Manhattan, decided that this would be a great way to highlight their belief system, gain some world wide renown, and some cash, and not one person thought to ask “do we have actual scientific data for this?”
So, alarmists, what happened to your precious peer review? Interestingly, Professor Murari Lal, who was in charge of the section on glaciers, which included this Himalayan pant load, is not actually any sort of expert on glaciers, as he himself states (page 2 of the Times story,) and as his credentials. This all begs the question, if the UN was so sloppy with this, what else is false?
Tom Maguire says they just believed what they wanted to believe in the UN version of group think. Bishop Hill is asking how this could make it through the supposedly bulletproof layers of UN fact checkers. And Biased BBC is wondering when the BBC, a huge proponent of the Himalayan report, will retract their claims.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU
Where oh Where are BSr and realsick to tell us that what is going on is Not what is going on? Will the REAL deniers please speak up, we haven’t heard from you in a month!
My guess? Curled up in a fetal position in the corner of their mothers’ basement, gibbering away.
I haven’t seen John in quite a while. I know some of the places Reasic hangs at, including Hooah Wife and his own site, but, interestingly, I have seen a dearth of liberals commenting at the sites I frequent a lot, including Right Wing News and Blogs For Victory. It used to be that they were very involved, throwing out the liberal talking points, but, over the last few months, they have disappeared. I guess they are having a tough time actually defending their agenda and elected Dems, what with their whole Progressive agenda collapsing.
Hope they’re licking their wounds, and nothing worse!
Meanwhile, the news gets grimmer and grimmer for the AGW crowd!
Well, just you wait till they get a hold of the current warmer, and normal average temps expected for the next 2 weeks or so. They will be back to beating their same old drum.