U.N. climate panel says claim of melting glaciers "poorly substantiated"

Confronted with the reality that a claim about the loss of glaciers in the Himalayas was bogus, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today issued a statement saying it was wrong. Contained within the group’s 2007 AR4 report was a paragraph saying the glaciers would disappear by 2035. That has since been discredited.

In their statement the United Nations' global warming advocacy group said that the questionable claim “refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.” The IPCC said it expects better of its work but that in this case if failed to adhere to “clear and well-established standards of evidence.”

The AR4 report is considered a primary source of information for policymakers and scientists in trying to push the manmade climate change theory. Issued in the same year that Al Gore and the group won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work, the report said, “the likelihood of [Himalayan glaciers] disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

Get all the latest from the Climate Change Examiner
             

It was discovered this week that the claim came from a report issued by the environmental activist group the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). They in turn had obtained the statement from an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said the statement was purely “speculation.”

The episode is yet another black eye on the IPCC and some of the world’s top climate change scientists who are still trying to recover from the Climategate email scandal that erupted in November. As a result of that event, many have questioned the accuracy of the IPCC’s work after it was revealed the scientists worked in concert to prevent dissenting opinions from being heard.

Recent stories from the Climate Change Examiner: