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Raina, who has done extensive research on the Himalayan glaciers, said in February 2007 that “claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions.“
The row has escalated since Glaciergate emerged, and Ramesh last Thursday demanded an apology from Pachauri for his voodoo science remark.
The melting glaciers gaff comes on the heels of the Climategate scandal in which critical temperature data from the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—data used by the IPCC—appears to have been intentionally manipulated to show increased warming trends. CRU head Phil Jones, who has denied any impropriety, has stepped down while an investigation is being carried out.
Global warming skeptics say the Himalayan glacier error has further damaged the credibility of the IPCC and there have been calls for Pachauri’s resignation. Pachauri has also had to defend himself against allegations in some British newspapers that he has profited financially from his role as IPCC chair—a claim he has vigorously denied.
“They can't attack the science so they attack the chairman," Pachauri, told the Guardian. "But they won't sink me. I am the unsinkable Molly Brown. In fact, I will float much higher.”
The Sunday Times reported that Pachauri has used “bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
Catastrophic Forecasts
Tom Harris, a Canadian mechanical engineer and executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), says questions have surrounded the IPCC Himalayan glacier claim for at least three years.
“It’s coming to light now because this particular statement in the IPCC report is shown to be ridiculous, but the whole idea that the glaciers are melting at any abnormal rate, people have been talking about that in the glacier community for at least the last three years, it's just not really made it through to most media.”
The ICSC is an association of scientists, economists, and energy policy experts from around the world that bills itself as “an alternative to advice from the IPCC.
It is precisely the IPCC’s tendency to issue catastrophic forecasts such as its warning about the Himalayan glaciers that prompted the ICSC to issue a “Copenhagen climate challenge” during the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December.
The challenge, which was backed by 150 leading climate experts from 15 countries, demanded that the IPCC produce “convincing observational evidence for their claims of dangerous, human-caused global warming, and other changes in climate.”
“For so many years they've been stonewalling on allowing the real data to get through to the researchers who want to cross-examine it, and that's been one of the things about Climategate is that they're finding that some of the data that was requested through access to information in the United Kingdom has actually been destroyed rather than giving it to the skeptical scientists, and that's against the law,” says Harris.
The IPCC’s previous report, issued in 2001, also contained erroneous data. A hockey-stick graph showing that temperatures rose sharply in the twentieth century—supposedly proving that industrialization causing greenhouse gases was changing the climate—was later discredited by two Canadian researchers.
Supporters of the global warming movement say the IPCC’s mistake on the Himalayan glaciers is just one in a massive three-volume report. Harris disputes this.
“We think there are many mistakes and that this is just an indication of one. Their forecasts for all sorts of things are not coming true, their models are not working, it's not getting warmer, and so we think that this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
However, he says the fact that the claim has been discredited is “useful and interesting in that it’s getting people to look more closely at what the data really says.”
