Problems With Authority

This is too funny. And sad at the same time.

The IPCC will likely be retracting one of its main claims, the claim that the glaciers in the Himalayas will likely melt to nothing by 2035, if warming continues at the same rate.

This claim has been in IPCC reports for two years. According to a report in the Times, when the claim was previously questioned by glaciologists,

“Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, has previously dismissed criticism of the Himalayas claim as ‘voodoo science’ ".

Now, however, a persistent geographer, Graham Cogley, has forced a revelation: the claim of total glacier melt was included in the IPCC report by Prof. Murari Lal, who had no expertise in glaciology, so he depended on a “WWF” study, which in turn depended upon a statement in a 1999 New Scientist magazine article by Fred Pearce, a journalist who had interviewed Indian Scientist, Syed Hasnain.

Hasnain says the claim was not based on empirical data, and was “speculative” on his part. Plus his claim did not encompass all the glaciers in the Himalaya massif, only some of them.

So here we have a) a speculation, concerning b) a portion of the Himalaya glaciers; this is taken by an IPCC non-expert and is placed into the following context:

” When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further, suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was "very high". The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.

The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate." .

The idea that the information in IPCC reports is the result of unbiased expert analysis takes a hit here. This major error was not found by the IPCC “experts”, it was found by a geographer, who pushed hard enough to (potentially) force the admission out of the IPCC. What the IPCC has not addressed is why a non-expert was in charge of an area of major importance to their position, and why a non-scientific, non-peer reviewed speculation was allowed to have such weight, and finally why the IPCC did not catch it, leaving that to outside non-experts.

And one last question: how much more of this type of major error lurks, waiting to be found? OK, just one more question: why is Rajenda Pachauri allowed to make such stultifyingly stupid statements, and still retain his position?