But when will the IPCC apologise for Pachauri?

But when will the IPCC apologise for Pachauri?

By Andrew Bolt
Herald Sun, January 21, 2010

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change belatedly admits to a grossly irresponsible bit of scaremongering, but when will it admit to the suspect role played in it by its deeply compromised chairman?

To recap, here’s the IPCC’s claim in 2007:

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.

That, of course, was nonsense, and last November the Indian Government issued a report showing the Himalayan glaciers were melting much, much slower than the IPCC claimed, and there was no sign that any melting was unusual or linked to global warming..

Yet at first the IPCC thought it could defend its absurd claim with some of its old pre-Climategate shut-ups:

Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC’s chairman, has hit back, denouncing the Indian government report as “voodoo science” lacking peer review.

And again:

Today (India’s Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam) Ramesh denied any such risk (of complete melting by 2035) existed: “There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening in the Himalayan glaciers.” The minister added although some glaciers are receding they were doing so at a rate that was not “historically alarming”.

However, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”

But in fact, as The Times then reported, the IPCC claim was based on pie in sky:

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research.

Note the IPCC’s instinctive reaction to criticism: to deny, deny, deny and then abuse. But the IPCC now admits its claim that the Himalayan glaciers will vanish by 2035 is indeed false:

It has, however, recently come to our attention that a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment2 refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.

The fact that this mad claim got into the IPCC report in the first place, almost cut and pasted from a report by the WWF green group (no peer review demanded from the IPCC this time), already says plenty. Here’s that 2005 WW report:

glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood[sic] of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high

But let’s now hear from the IPCC an explanation for Pachauri’s initial refusal to even contemplate that this inherently ridiculous claim was wrong. That, I think, is the most telling part of this farce.