IPCC caught lying, again: Himalayan glaciers are not melting
by Ramtanu Maitra on 01 Feb 2010 9 Comments

When the Copenhagen Summit on Global Climate Change came to naught last December, by the action of a bloc of nations (China, India, South Africa, and Brazil) which refused to accept a binding diktat on carbon emissions, the promoters and benefactors of the global warming fraud were left in a tizzy. However, the worst was yet to come: when on Jan. 22, the Nobel Prize-winning UN-propped-up Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was forced to eat crow and admit that the Himalayan glaciers, which it had claimed would be melted by 2035, were not melting at all. The finding has put a cat among the pigeons, and the proponents of global warming are ducking for cover.

 

What happened is the following: In mid-November, when the IPCC and its promoters, such as the BBC and other mass media, were issuing a flurry of reports saying the glaciers in India’s Himalayan mountains were melting at a furious pace in response to so-called climate change, V.K. Raina, the former deputy director-general of the Geological Survey of India, sought to correct the lie. His report, endorsed by the Indian Environment Ministry, asserted the plain truth: that there was no evidence that the Himalayan glaciers were melting, and that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that the glaciers would disappear by 2035, as claimed by the IPCC experts. “It’s not true,” Raina said.

 

A Cabal of Liars

 

Being a scientist, and not a member of the globalization and money-hunters’ cabal, Raina did not realize that he had grossly interfered with a gang on a “mission” to set up a supranational body which would have the authority to undermine all nations’ development plans, along with their sovereignty. To these people, real science is a nuisance. They had the capability to make up numbers, falsify evidence, build castles in the air, and then use their media to “prove” their point. That was exactly what they had in mind, when the promoters of global warming descended, with their three-piece suits and briefcases, at Copenhagen Summit. They were armed with all the lies they thought they needed to achieve their goals.

 

Also unbeknownst to Raina, he had stepped inside a den of thieves. His findings immediately were drowned out by a cacophony of lies. Even when faced with data showing the errors in its work, the IPCC was unwilling to admit it was wrong. Murari Lal, chair of the Climate, Energy and Sustainable Development Analysis Centre in New Delhi, and lead author of the 2007 IPCC report’s Asia chapter, rejected the notion that IPCC was off the mark on Himalayan glaciers. Even more petulantly, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri (more about him later) accused the Indian Environment Ministry of “arrogance” for reporting that there was no evidence that climate change has shrunk the Himalayan glaciers. He also called Raina’s findings “voodoo science.”

 

While the Pachauri-led gang was ready to tear Raina’s report apart, support came from some researchers, such as the University of Nebraska Himalayan glacier specialist, John “Jack” Shroder, who said the only possible conclusion he could draw is that the IPCC’s Himalaya assessment got it “horribly wrong.” Shroder adds, “They were too quick to jump to conclusions on too little data.”

 

How little was the amount of data on which the Nobel Prize-winning experts had staked their claim? In fact, it was less than very little: It was none at all. Mid-January, the New Scientist reported that in 1999, a Indian glaciologist and a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Syed Hasnain, had said in an interview that all glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035. Hasnain, then chairman of the International Commission on Snow and Ice’s working group on Himalayan glaciology, never published the prediction in a peer-reviewed journal. He now says the comment was “speculative.”

 

IPCC and Pachauri in the Dock

 

The claim found its way into the “rigorous” IPCC fourth-assessment report, published in 2007. Moreover, the “rigour” of the IPCC was of such a high level that the claim by Hasnain, who had never made the kind of serious study of Himalayan glaciers that Raina had, was extrapolated to include all glaciers in the Himalayas. Chapter 10 of the report says, “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world.”

 

When this cat jumped out of the bag, the IPCC went into damage-control mode - a standard operating procedure. The Panel issued a statement admitting 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 usually talkative Pachauri is silent now. “I want a personal apology from the IPCC chairperson R.K. Pachauri who had described my research as voodoo science,” Raina told the Indian news daily, The Hindu. “Forget the IPCC. Dr. Pachauri has not even expressed regret over what he said after my report - ‘Himalayan Glaciers: a state-of-the-art review of glacial studies, glacial retreat and climate change’ - was released in November last year,” Raina added.

 

One reason Pachauri is ducking for cover is that he is now being investigated for having allegedly established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests that have been investing billions of dollars in organizations dependent on IPCC’s policy recommendations. One news report indicates that the outfits in which the IPCC chairman has personal business interests include banks, oil and energy companies, and investment funds heavily involved in “carbon trading” and “sustainable technologies,” which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

 

In other words, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or advisor to many of the bodies that play a leading role in what has become known as the international “climate industry.” But that is always the nature of the individuals who peddle bad science.

 

In Fact, Glaciers Are Advancing

 

While Pachauri was using heaps of lies and distorted truths to feather his nest, Raina produced a report many scientists found compelling. It drew on published studies and unpublished findings from half a dozen Indian groups that have analyzed remote-sensing satellite data, or conducted on-site surveys at remote locations, often at elevations above 5,000 meters. While the report surveyed a number of glaciers, two particularly iconic ones stand out. The first is the 30-kilometer-long Gangotri glacier, source of the Ganges River. Between 1934 and 2003, the glacier retreated an average of 70 feet (22 meters) a year, and shed a total of 5% of its length. But, in 2004 and 2005, the retreat slowed to about 12 meters a year, and, since September 2007, Gangotri has been practically at a standstill, according to Raina’s report.

 

The second glacier, the Siachin glacier in Kashmir, is even more stable. Global warming activists armed with lies had claimed in the popular press that Siachin has shrunk as much as 50%. Raina objected: “the glacier has not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years.” These conclusions were based in part on field measurements by ecologist Kireet Kumar of the GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development in Almora. Much like the lies that Greenpeace promoted about Greenland’s ice cap, it seems reports of the glaciers’ demise were a bit premature.

 

According to a report in the Nov. 13, 2009, journal Science, “No Sign Yet of Himalayan Meltdown, Indian Report Finds,” “several Western experts who have conducted studies in the region agree with Raina’s nuanced analysis - even if it clashes with IPCC’s take on the Himalayas.” The “extremely provocative” findings “are consistent with what I have learned independently,” said Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Many glaciers in the Karakoram Mountains on the border of India and Pakistan have “stabilized or undergone an aggressive advance,” he said, citing new evidence gathered by a team led by Michael Bishop, a mountain geo-morphologist at the University of Nebraska.

 

Canadian glaciologist Kenneth Hewitt, who recently returned from an expedition to the world’s second-highest mountain located along the Pakistan-China border in the northwestern Himalayas, says he observed five advancing glaciers, and only a single one in retreat. Such evidence “challenges the view that the upper Indus glaciers are ‘disappearing’ quickly and will be gone in 30 years,” said Hewitt. “There is no evidence to support this view and, indeed, rates of retreat have been less in the past 30 years than the previous 60 years.”

 

The author is South Asian Analyst at Executive Intelligence Review News Services Inc.

User Comments Post a Comment
Comments are free. However, comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate material will be removed from the site. Readers may report abuse at  editorvijayvaani@gmail.com
Post a Comment
Name
E-Mail
Comments

Back to Top