A report by the BBC has declared that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s vice-chairman has admitted that the agency erroneously asserted that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by the year 2035.
This data was included in the 2007 assessment of climate impacts before a number of scientists disputed the 2035 date. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-chairman of the IPCC and a Climatology and Environmental sciences professor at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, told BBC News that this was an error.
However, Dr van Ypersele still insists that this does not change the wide belief of man-made climate change. But many commentators are now questioning the credibility of climate science due to the leaked emails that contained damaging information against man-made global warming claims.
The date of 2035 surfaced when a 1996 study was misread that actually gave a date of 2350. The information still made it into the IPCC report in 2007. Then in December four leading glaciologists argued that a complete melt of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was physically impossible.
The thickness of the ice is about 200-300 meters, in some cases even 400 meters. If the loss of ice rate is at a meter per year, then a 200 meter ice-loss in a quarter century will not even come close, explains Jeffrey Kargel of the University of Arizona..
This implicates the lack of scrutiny that the IPCC has for the information it includes in its reports. And to further implicate the situation, Georg Kaser from the University of Innsbruck in Austria said he had warned the IPCC in 2006 that the 2035 figure was wrong before it even got published in the report.
Kaser also suggests that the IPCC should revise its working practices before it begins to work on its next report due in 2013.
Comments
It's a shame when serious mistakes like this are made. I know several people who point to 'evidence' like this as proof that they can continue treating the Earth any way they wish.
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These people will never agree...All I know is that we can treat the Earth a lot better than we do.
I guess there will always be opposing sides to global warming but I think it's a little kooky that it was below freezing in Houston last week and today, I'm wearing shorts and sweating. If that isn't global warming, I don't know what is. :-)
The very nature of science is a search for the truth. When people manipulate the truth to move their own agenda, good causes suffer! We all know we must stop the waste and pollution! There were no mistakes, only statistics being massaged. This has greatly damaged the real Green movement. It will be years before we can convince the public to conserve and respect the Earth!! What a tragedy!
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