CLIMATE-CHANGE CLAIM UNDER FIRE
19 enero 2010
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Published by The Wall Street Journal, US
An influential United Nations panel is facing growing criticism about its practices after acknowledging doubts about a 2007 statement that Himalayan glaciers were retreating faster than those anywhere else and would entirely disappear by 2035, if not sooner.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said Monday that the U.N. body was studying how the 2007 report "derived" the information about glacier retreat, according to a spokesman at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, where Dr. Pachauri is the director. Dr. Pachauri said glaciers were melting, but the 2035 date was in question, the spokesman said.
It was unlikely that these revelations about the IPCC report would overturn the scientific consensus on glacial retreat, but they raised questions for the IPCC about how the data on Himalayan glaciers were collected and reviewed.
"There's a failure to review this data adequately by qualified experts," said J. Graham Cogley, professor of geography at Trent University in Ontario, who is one of the first people to track down some of the apparent errors.
The IPCC report stated that the total area of Himalayan glaciers would likely shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2035.
The report cited a 2005 study by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy group. That study cited a 1999 article in New Scientist magazine that quoted Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain as saying Himalayan glaciers could disappear "within forty years."
Dr. Hasnain presented a report on Himalayan glaciers in the summer of 1999, but it made no reference to 2035.
Earlier this month, Dr. Hasnain said in another New Scientist article that his previous assertions were based on "speculation," rather than firm science. Dr. Hasnain, a senior fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, couldn't be reached for comment.
The controversy comes on the heels of a scandal in Britain, where the publication of hacked emails of climate scientists suggested that they had declined to share their data with fellow researchers and tried to squelch dissenting views about global climate change. Some of the scientists whose emails were hacked were key contributors to the 2007 IPCC report, though not on the subject of glaciers.
Murari Lal, chairman of the Climate, Energy, and Sustainable Development Analysis Centre think tank, was one of four lead authors on that Asian section of the IPCC's report.
In an interview, Mr. Lal said: "Our intent was not to be alarmist, but to lay out the possible scenarios for the future. Our responsibility was to tell policy makers what was happening in this region, one of the least accessible on earth," he said.
Mr. Lal said the IPCC rules allowing peer-reviewed but still unpublished papers to be included in its assessment could have contributed to the mistakes that were made.
on Sunday's election with 51.6% of the vote, compared with 48.4% for Eduardo Frei, an ex-president who was the candidate of the center-left Concertación coalition that has governed Chile for two decades since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
With holdings in Chile's major airline, a television station and a soccer club, Mr. Piñera may well be the wealthiest man ever elected president of a Latin American nation.
An influential United Nations panel is facing growing criticism about its practices after acknowledging doubts about a 2007 statement that Himalayan glaciers were retreating faster than those anywhere else and would entirely disappear by 2035, if not sooner.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, said Monday that the U.N. body was studying how the 2007 report "derived" the information about glacier retreat, according to a spokesman at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, where Dr. Pachauri is the director. Dr. Pachauri said glaciers were melting, but the 2035 date was in question, the spokesman said.
It was unlikely that these revelations about the IPCC report would overturn the scientific consensus on glacial retreat, but they raised questions for the IPCC about how the data on Himalayan glaciers were collected and reviewed.
"There's a failure to review this data adequately by qualified experts," said J. Graham Cogley, professor of geography at Trent University in Ontario, who is one of the first people to track down some of the apparent errors.
The IPCC report stated that the total area of Himalayan glaciers would likely shrink from 500,000 square kilometers to 100,000 square kilometers by 2035.
The report cited a 2005 study by the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy group. That study cited a 1999 article in New Scientist magazine that quoted Indian glacier expert Syed Hasnain as saying Himalayan glaciers could disappear "within forty years."
Dr. Hasnain presented a report on Himalayan glaciers in the summer of 1999, but it made no reference to 2035.
Earlier this month, Dr. Hasnain said in another New Scientist article that his previous assertions were based on "speculation," rather than firm science. Dr. Hasnain, a senior fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, couldn't be reached for comment.
The controversy comes on the heels of a scandal in Britain, where the publication of hacked emails of climate scientists suggested that they had declined to share their data with fellow researchers and tried to squelch dissenting views about global climate change. Some of the scientists whose emails were hacked were key contributors to the 2007 IPCC report, though not on the subject of glaciers.
Murari Lal, chairman of the Climate, Energy, and Sustainable Development Analysis Centre think tank, was one of four lead authors on that Asian section of the IPCC's report.
In an interview, Mr. Lal said: "Our intent was not to be alarmist, but to lay out the possible scenarios for the future. Our responsibility was to tell policy makers what was happening in this region, one of the least accessible on earth," he said.
Mr. Lal said the IPCC rules allowing peer-reviewed but still unpublished papers to be included in its assessment could have contributed to the mistakes that were made.
on Sunday's election with 51.6% of the vote, compared with 48.4% for Eduardo Frei, an ex-president who was the candidate of the center-left Concertación coalition that has governed Chile for two decades since the end of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
With holdings in Chile's major airline, a television station and a soccer club, Mr. Piñera may well be the wealthiest man ever elected president of a Latin American nation.
