The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now faces a similar embarrassment over a wildly alarming forecast. In 2007, the IPCC predicted global warming would wipe out the Himalayan glaciers by 2035.
We’re only 25 years away, and the IPCC is taking heat over the basis for soothsaying like this. According to The (London) Times, the Himalaya claim originated in a 1999 issue of The New Scientist magazine, and:
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.Off-hand ‘speculation.’ The prediction, to which the IPCC arbitrarily assigned a probability of over 90 percent, was based on Hasnain’s “speculation” in a 1999 phone call, not on any formal scientific study or any review of a study. This is according to Hasnain himself.
Had the IPCC found a magazine that quoted an equally obscure Indian scientist as saying the Himalayan glaciers are more likely than not to remain frozen in place at least another 500 years, would the IPCC have included that in its official report?
The IPCC appears ready to retract this prediction. But how did it get in the IPCC’s report in the first place? Who does the fact-checking for the IPCC?
Frank Warner
more Ends-Justify-the-Means science.
Posted by: Mark | January 18, 2010 at 10:31 AM
More proof that the IPCC/Hockey team peer review process is worthless.
Posted by: George | January 18, 2010 at 12:32 PM
New Scientific Study peer reviewed by the IPCC, Phil Jones and Michael Mann.
Posted by: George | January 18, 2010 at 01:34 PM
Hey, that study looks fake.
Posted by: Frank Warner | January 18, 2010 at 02:32 PM
Not only did the IPCC publish this false assertion as fact, they claimed that those who questioned it were "supporting...unsubstantiated research."
From a Guardian article.
Posted by: George | January 19, 2010 at 12:10 AM