Bishop Hill It wasn't me guv!
Jan 19, 2010 Climate: WG2 Courtesy of the Hindustan Times we learn that Syed Hasnain, the glaciologist who was said to have been the source of the "glaciers gone by 2035" story, is now denying ever having said those words.
The man blamed so far for the false alarm about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 surfaced on Tuesday to say he never made such an exact assertion and, worse, he had been misquoted.
“On the basis of our research in 1999 I must have said that glaciers in the Central and Eastern Himalayas will lose mass during the next 40/ 50 years at their present rate of decline,” Hasnain told Hindustan Times.
But a date was put to this “approximation”, Hasnain said, by a journalist, Fred Pearce, who quoted him in an article in New Scientist, a respected London-based magazine.
Was Hasnain aware that he had been misquoted? If yes, did he seek a clarification?
Yes, he was aware of the misreporting. And no, he didn’t seek a clarification. “It was not a scientific journal, just a news report. Therefore, I did not ask for a clarification.”
H/T Turning Tide in the comments
Reader Comments (12)
"Was Hasnain aware that he had been misquoted?" - "Yes";
"If yes, did he seek a clarification?" - "No";
Hasnain -> eithics of a cesspit
Why is he being allowed to profit from his unethical behavior - because it fits in with the agenda of TERI
To paraphrase; A misquote can be half way around the world before Richard North gets his boots on.
1. The 2005 WWF paper that, as far as I can ascertain, was the IPCC’s only source for glacier “science” in its 2007 report, is called “An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China”.
2. One page 2, this report refers to Hasnain’s 1999 New Scientist interview thus:
The New Scientist magazine carried the article “Flooded Out – Retreating glaciers spell disaster for valley communities” in their 5 June 1999 issue. It quoted Professor Syed Hasnain, then Chairman of the International Commission for Snow and Ice’s (ICSI) Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, who said most of the glaciers in the Himalayan region “will vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming”. The article also predicted that freshwater flow in rivers across South Asia will “eventually diminish, resulting in widespread water shortages”.
That means that the glaciers would have “vanished” by 2039. Elsewhere in the paper, it is suggested that they would be down to 20 per cent of the 1999 levels so “vanish” is a reasonable word to use and we won’t quibble with the “40/50 years” he gave The Hindustan Times. The man is in a corner, after all. So if it is claimed that he said 2035 in the NS piece, then he was almost certainly misquoted.
3. But not seriously misquoted. On page 29 of the same report, it says:
"In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated that: ‘glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the livelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high’. ”
As we know, Hasnain was chair of that working group at the time. It is inconceivable that he was unaware of the controversial claim made in his own report and he surely has to take responsibility for its content. However, though I’ve looked for long enough, I cannot track down a copy of the ICIS paper.
4. Until I or someone else finds it, we are left with the WWF's rehash and three choices:
Choice 1: WWF misquoted the report in 2005 and no one connected with ICIS made any effort to correct the error at the time or later when the point resurfaced in the IPCC report. If so, given the importance of the IPCC report, it seems light-minded of everyone involved.
Choice 2: Hasnain has a poor memory and cannot recall the 2035 quote despite all the recent publicity.
Choice 3: Hasnain has not told the HT the truth.
5. Professor Graham Cogley, a glaciologist at Ontario Trent University, drew attention to another work prepared under the auspices of ICIS, the 1996 Unesco paper,"Variations of Snow and Ice in the past and at present on a Global and Regional Scale". He suggested that its text was, due to some remarkably sloppy editing, the original source of the WWF (and ICIS) all-gone-by-2035 claims. On page 66, the paper reads:
‘The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates – its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km² by the year 2350’.
Readers (if any) must of course make up their own minds whether Cogley's hypothesis has merit and which, if any, of the three choices is right.
Just like I did.
Dave
i put these up at WUWT but when i saw your thread, thought i should put them here as well:
Indian Express: Hasnain speaks: Didn’t set glacier deadline, says man at centre of row
“All that I said then was that considering the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding, the mass of the glaciers was likely to decline dramatically in about 45-50 years. The 2035 date and the reference to the entire glaciers melting away was the journalist’s own speculation. I do not have any control over what a journalist writes after talking to me,” he said, adding that he continued to stand by what he had said then.
Asked why he did not issue a clarification after the publication of the interview, Hasnain claimed that he had never seen the interview.
“In those days, these magazines were not readily available. Besides, with time one tends to forget these things,” he said. ..
Hasnain, a former vice-chancellor of Calicut University who was honoured by the government with a Padma Shri last year, attacked the IPCC for not cross-checking facts before including them in its report.
“The biggest question is that why did the authors of the IPCC report rely on a news report and not go through other peer-reviewed studies on glaciers. There are plenty of studies on glaciers readily available,” he said.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Didn-t-set-glacier-deadline–says-man-at-centre-of-row/569498
Hindustan Times: ‘IPCC has a lot of answering to do’
Environment and Forest minister Jairam Ramesh, the first to challenge the IPCC claim on Himalayan glaciers in November his stand vindicated. He spoke to HT exclusively on the issue.
What do you say now that the IPCC has been proven wrong on Himalayan glaciers?
I was right on dismissing IPCC’s claim on Himalayan glaciers in November 2009. Then they (IPCC) termed it a voodoo science but now my position has been vindicated. The IPCC claim that glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on iota of scientific evidence. IPCC has to do a lot of answering on how it reached the 2035 figure, which created such a scare.
What about the glaciers’ health?
Most glaciers are in a poor state, which is precarious. Some of them are receding but the rate of retreat like that of the Gangotri glacier has slowed down. A few glaciers are also advancing..
Most studies on the glaciers are from the West. Why?
It is true. Our scientific input on glaciology has eroded in recent years. It is for the second time, western studies have been proven wrong. In 1990, US Environment Protection Agency reported that 39 million tonnes of methane emitted each year was from wet paddy cultivation (mostly from India). We then found that it was actually 2 to 6 million tonnes. It emphasises that we need to improve our scientific capabilities on climate science.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/newdelhi/IPCC-has-a-lot-of-answering-to-do/499568/H1-Article1-499098.aspx
Economic Times, India: IPCC imperialism on Indian glaciers
by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar
It speaks volumes for the huge biases within IPCC that it took two years for this hoax to be exposed. Any hoax opposing the global warming thesis would be exposed in ten seconds flat. The IPCC is willing to swallow unexamined what it finds convenient, while raising a thousand technical objections to anything inconvenient. This is religious crusading, not objective science. The tactics being used to discredit and destroy heretics is reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition.
Climategate-II is also a sad example of green imperialism. Rather than accept the findings of foreign scientists alone, Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, appointed a panel of Indian scientists on Himalayan melting. “My concern is that this comes from western scientists … it is high time India makes an investment in understanding what is happening in the Himalayan ecosystem.”
The Indian panel, headed by V K Raina, looked at 150 years of data gathered by the Geological Survey of India from 25 Himalayan glaciers. It was the first comprehensive study of the region. It concluded that while Himalayan glaciers had long been retreating, there was no recent acceleration of the trend, and nothing to suggest that the glaciers would disappear. In short, the IPCC had perpetrated an alarmist hoax without scientific foundation.
Scotching IPCC claims that the Gangotri glacier was retreating at an alarming rate, the Raina Panel said this glacier, the main source of the Ganges, actually receded fastest in 1977, and “is today practically at a standstill”.
Raina said that the mistake made by western scientists “was to apply the rate of glacial loss from other parts of the world to the Himalayas… In the United States the highest glaciers in Alaska are still below the lowest level of Himalayan glaciers. Our 9,500 glaciers are located at very high altitudes. It is a completely different system.”
Justifiably, Jairam Ramesh felt vindicated. But the Raina report threatened the claim of IPCC scientists to omniscience and Nobel Prize status…
Goebbels once said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will think it is the truth. The glacier fiasco is the latest example of this.
Scientists are supposed to ask hard questions about spectacular new claims. Instead, the IPCC simply accepted without verification the reports of Himalayan glacial melting, and prominently highlighting this in its 2007 report.
Pachauri appointed Hasnain as a senior fellow at Teri. Together, they raised millions from international donors for research on glaciers at Teri. But when Climategate-II came to light, Pachauri declared that he had no responsibility for what Hasnain may have said! And Hasnain said, rather cheekily, that the IPCC had no business to cite his comments!
Pachauri is reported to have said in a telephonic interview, “We are looking at the issue and will be able to comment on the report after examining the facts. The science doesn’t change: Glaciers are melting across the globe and those in the Himalayas are no different. We’re not changing anything till we make an assessment.”
Clearly the true climate denier is Pachauri: he swears by glacial apocalypse even after its exposure as a hoax. When the Raina panel produced solid scientific evidence challenging the glacier melting thesis. Pachauri instantly decried it as schoolboy science and said condescendingly that it was not peer-reviewed. Yet he was happily willing to sanctify schoolboy speculation on glacial melting, and so were other members of the IPCC. All their high-faulting talk of peer-reviewed science proved to be just a tactic to keep out inconvenient views.
IPCC scientists responsible for this fiasco must resign. The 2007 IPCC report must be amended, preferably with an apology.
Various green NGOs — including one I respect, the Centre for Science and Environment — backed the IPCC against the Raina Panel. They blindly echoed western scientists with less intimate knowledge of the Himalayas than our own scientists. Stalin would have called this a case of Indian compradors acting as the lackeys of western imperialists, and on this occasion I would find it hard to disagree with him.
These green groups claim to be watchdogs for civil society, and often do a good job. But in this case they blithely allowed a hoax to go unchallenged for two years.
Glacier alarmism is not new. Greenpeace once published photos showing the rapid retreat of the Uppsala Glacier in Argentina, ascribing this to global warming. But when I visited the glacier, I was told that global warming was too gradual to account for the dramatic retreat of the glacier, and clearly powerful local causes were responsible. Of several glaciers descending from the South Andean Icefield, Uppsala was retreating, Perrito Moreno was advancing, and several others were stable. Such varying outcomes obviously reflected local geoclimatic variations, not global climate at all.
Will Greenpeace admit it? Not a chance. But if the IPCC wants to make amends for Climategate-II, perhaps it can start by apologising for glacier alarmism. That will help restore its scientific credibility.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/swaminathan-s-a-aiyar/IPCC-imperialism-on-Indian-glaciers/articleshow/5478293.cms
Times of India: Glaciologist demands apology from Pachauri for ‘voodoo’ remark
India’s senior-most glaciologist V K Raina today said the chief of the UN climate body should apologise to the scientist fraternity for dubbing their work on melting of Himalayan glaciers as “voodoo science”. ..
“The IPCC had dumped our report that the glaciers have not retreated abnormally. Now, with the truth out in open, the IPCC should dump its own report which was based on mere speculation,” Raina told PTI…
IPCC must be answerable to all the scientists and experts associated who stand vindicated that glaciers melting is not being happening at the abnormal pace as declared by it, Raina noted.
“It only shows that IPCC has based its arguments on speculations and did not verify it before making it public,” the former deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India said.
Raina, in his report, had maintained that glaciers have “not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years and the reports of the glaciers demise are a bit premature.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Glaciologist-demands-apology-from-Pachauri-for-voodoo-remark/articleshow/5477796.cms
Water shortage in India? 1.2%
From page 42 of University of Arizona's "Background support presentation for NASA “Black Carbon and Aerosols” press conference" Dec. 14, 2009 :
"9. As we have calculated,melting glaciers(specifically, negative mass balance components of the melt) contribute an estimated 1.2% (perhaps factor of 2 uncertain) of total runoff of three of the most important drainages, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra combined. The seasonal flow regulation influences and the negative mass balance is more important in local drainages close to the glacier sources, where glaciers can dominate the hydrology in arid regions, but on the scale of the subcontinent, glaciers are secondary players in looming hydrologic problems, which stem more from population growth and inefficiency of water resource distribution and application."
http://web.hwr.arizona.edu/~gleonard/2009Dec-FallAGU-Soot-PressConference-Backgrounder-Kargel.pdf
For glacial melting in the Eastern Himalaya's they suspect black soot (from lorries, factories and fires) as an important cause.
(New Scientist) was not a scientific journal, just a news report.
Heh! Just like the skeptics have been saying
I can pretty much follow Syed's reasoning: Just another spurious report made by a lazy journlaist. Newspapers after all hardly ever get their stories right anyway - so what's the big deal. Happens all the time..
Can anyone expect scientists like Syed to chase down every false claim made by a newspaper? Nobody has got that kind of time.
The IPCC doesn't have time either!
If it sounds great, then go with it!!
Many thanks to Antony & Pat for their very helpful posts. I missed the first on WUWT where the S/N ratio is sometimes a bit low.
"a respected London-based magazine"
Good grief! For years New Scientist has been a font on New Age superstition and socialist rant. Almost every article in it is suspect, even in such areas as particle physics.
Bunkonium on this.
The report was exactly what was wanted: fear mongering and extreme and NOW.
This putz, and the IPCC and the rest of the AGW promotion industry latched onto this because it gave them more credibility and more money.
When examined carefully and critically, not one of the central claims of the AGW community holds up.
I found this reference to an article dated November 2008 on the TERI website. TERI is Hasnain's empoyer. How is he claiming he was misquoted from an phone interview in 1999?
Himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035
The Tribune, 11 November 2008
The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, a large number of them may disappear by 2035 because of climate change, warn Indian and foreign environmentalists and geologists. The Himalayas have the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar caps. That is why, they are called the "Water Towers of Asia." The Himalayas lie to the north of the Indian subcontinent and to the south of the central Asian high plateau. They are bound by the Indus on the west slope of Mt Nanga Parbat (near Gilgit), and in the west, by river Jaizhug Qu on the eastern slope of Mt Namjabarwa. The Geological Survey of India claims that the Himalayan glaciers occupy about 17 per cent of the total mountainous range, while an additional 30 to 40 per cent area has seasonal snow cover. TERI's scientist, Prof Syed Hasnain, in a recent study claimed "All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating, and they could disappear from the central and eastern Himalayas by 2035."
http://www.teriin.org/index.php?option=com_teriinnews&task=cstudies&title=hasnain&submit1=GO