The IPCC says that any idiot can make any stupid statement on scientific matters. The IPCC may then take such a statement and make it the official position of the UN and so advise the leaders of interested countries. This official position remains until and unless the perpetrator officially denies that he made the original statement or was misquoted.

Here is the official IPCC statement.
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: “If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments.”

There. I could not have put it better myself or maybe I did…..

Oldnp

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece

Roger Pielke Sr also posted on this issue at http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/global-warming-and-glacier-melt-down-debate-a-tempest-in-a-teapot/

It appears that when this story is viewed in ‘context’ it makes the IPCC behaviour on the issue even more manipulative and deceptive.

Here is a quote from the IPCC report:
“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) 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. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005)

Note that the credit is given to the WWF who also lifted the New Scientist article. It sort of gives a more authentic ring, does it not?

Next, you might be confused as in two consecutive sentences Pachauri claims that the glaciers will disappear and also have an area of 100,000 km2 which for all I know might be a greater area than at the present time. Well, you could go to an unrelated report, cut out a sentence and add that to the end of the WWF report.

Here is the quote from an Indian Goverment website. “The glacier will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates. Its total area will shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square km by the year 2035,”

What does it mean when Pachauri claims he is presenting a report from the WWF yet he has pasted in an unrelated comment? Does this indicate that the United Nations has now moved from fake science to deliberate misinformation?

A colleague of Hasnain used the year 2350 in an unpublished report. Both (Indian) scientists, Hasnain and Kotlyakov, were then quoted on an Indian Government, public information, website. It was there that the change the year 2035 appears to have first occurred. Strangely, in the report that uses the year 2305, Kotlyakov the author, says that he is referring to world glacier formations in general and makes the specific statement that the Himalayan glaciers will counter the trend and survive past 2350. Even stranger, the Indian Government web report specifies that the Himalayan glaciers will vanish by the year 2035 – and refers to the above report!

This is not just a typo. Not only was the year changed in the Indian Government report but the Himalayan Glaciers were changed from survivors to non survivors.

So how did all this get into the New Scientist? Hasnain appears to be the sole link. Interviews with Hasnain seem to have been the sole source for both publications (one on the web) and neither mention any documentation being supplied for authentication. No known report of Hasnain ever mentioned vanishing Himalayan glaciers or the years 2035 /3250. He was however a source (apparently an interview) quoted by the Indian Government which did say that the Himalayan Glaciers would be gone by 2035.

How to become a media star…..

I am indebted to John Nielsen-Gammon the Texan Climatologist who tracked all this down..Np)

Refer Bishop Hill. http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/1/15/new-scientist-on-glaciers.html