Bishop Hill Glacial George
Oct 24, 2011 Climate: WG2 Media George Monbiot, Guardian 27 January 2000
The Himalayan glaciers are retreating so fast that the rivers may dry up in the summer by 2040. The results, if that happens, will be catastrophic.
Dr Bob Bradnock, geographer, Letter to the Guardian, 4 February 2000
Sadly, in seeking to make easy points about global warming [Monbiot] has got his "facts" wrong. Glaciers contribute virtually nothing to the flow of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Indus rivers, which depend primarily on monsoon rain and to a much lesser extent on snow melt (not glacier melt).
There has been no long term decline in precipitation in the Himalaya. The idea that the glaciers are retreating so fast that the rivers may dry up by the summer of 2040 displays an embarrassing ignorance of the normal hydrological cycle of all these rivers, whose low flow period is in the winter, and which in summer continue to pour water down from the Himalaya.
George Monbiot, The Guardian, 29 July 2009
India is finally lumbering into action on climate change.
Though this country is likely to be hit harder than almost anywhere else by the climate crash, not least because its food production is largely dependent on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers, which are rapidly retreating, it has almost been a point of pride in India not to respond to the requests of richer nations to limit its emissions.
Scientific American today
A growing number of studies based on satellite data and stream chemistry analyses have found that far less surface water comes from glacier melt than previously assumed. In Peru's Rio Santa, which drains the Cordilleras Blanca mountain range, glacier contribution appears to be between 10 and 20 percent. In the eastern Himalayas, it is less than 5 percent.
...
"There has been a lot of misinformation and confusion about it," said Peter Gleick, co-director of the California-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. "
Yes, indeed.
Reader Comments (88)
Just to liven up the Zebedee troll, if you look up Hansen and Sato's Columbia Univ. report of this year, you'll see that to keep Hansen's 4.2K CO2 climate sensitivity from the now disproved claim that CO2-GW causes the end of ice ages and now there is no heating of the World, they have introduced the need for -1.6 W/m^2 'cloud albedo effect' cooling [1st AIE], over double AR4's -0.7 W/m^2, itself having no experimental proof. [They also put in a new faster heat transfer to the ocean deeps idea.]
There's also a paper from Milwaukee which claims using modelling that the satellite estimates of this cooling, between a third and a sixth of Hansen's claim, are wrong.
It is true, the satellite measurements are wrong. This is because they wrongly assume that high albedo can only come from clouds with small droplets when in fact, it's the reverse [yes, I have worked out the mechanism]. So instead of cooling, pollution causes clouds to pass more energy. The mechanism is the 2nd AIE reducing the width of the size frequency distribution.
The need for the cooling is because of the other imaginary physics in the climate models, 'back radiation'. Trenberth dreamt this up because he hadn't the physics' education which shows it's an elementary mistake, to confuse Prevost exchange energy which can do no thermodynamic work, with an energy source.
Hansen and Trenberth have together created a pseudoscience, a new Lysenkoism combined with phlogiston, and because climate science is used to indoctrinate science students you now have professors of physics no less teaching students the imaginary 'back radiation' idea,
It's very serious when science education becomes Marxist indoctrination and true scientists who point out the mistakes and the frauds are driven out.
Patagon tx link to Ncep doesn't work for me though.
First we got a visit from Al Gore. Now Kumi from Greenwar. If we get Pachauri next week will we be able to keep them ?...
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/in-brief/3501-leading-greenpeace-campaigner-praises-scottish-governments-renewable-goals.html
Interesting. Perhaps Hengist and Zed should check in at AGW headquarters for reindoctrination. They may well be obsolete.
Last night I saw a Budweiser beer advert that cleared it all up for me. They had this very confused chameleon trying to walk over a Scottish plaid. As you know, the chameleon is a green lizard that changes color to try to match its surroundings which is exactly what Muller and Gleick are doing.
So I guess the game plan is to go from being watermelons to chameleons.
My advice to Hengist and Zed is to say way from Scottish plaids.
Whatever the water source for India, current C02 PPM, produce 10% to 15% more food with the same water then they would in a 280 PPM world, so once again, while the harm of CO2 is another unrealized hypothetical, the benefit of increased CO2 is not disputable.
Also if glaciers stop melting and increase, would this not reduce water to the regions involved?
We are going see more and more climate scare studies released in the run up to Durban. We see this happen every year. I'm expecting this to be a banner year for climate scare stories, more so than last year.
I think the alarmist PR machine will receive huge financing over the next 12 months as Kyoto gets nearer. The next 12 months will be the big push, and it starts now.
ZDB:"My point is that this place plays the man and not the ball. Look at the abuse heaped upon Peter Gleick "
LoL....there is a reason that "doing a Gleick" is being added to the lexicon.
His Amazon review will make him famous in the trade for quite some time
Never Mind!
Z obviously comes from a
race (Oooh, not PC)community which doesn't appreciate irony.I take His Grace's 'Yes, indeed' comment as such - highlighting disagreement among believers.
Still, any form of humour is not her strongest suit!
The Guardian seems to experiencing a drought with regard to climate change scare stories. They're reduced to having a go at Christopher Booker (by Monbiot) and Chris Monckton. Given up on any pretence of discussing the science.
ZDB: You seem to think that commenting on whether what someone says is true or not depends only on whether that someone is on your team or not. So for the CAGW team everything Michael Mann says is true and for the skeptics everything Michael Mann says is false. In fact you find it "inconsistent, and indicitative of your incoherant position" when this "logic" in not followed as in the case of the latest quotes by Peter Gleick.
I'm going to assume that for you Michael Mann can never ever be wrong because admitting he is wrong on some issue and right on some other issue would be "inconsistent, and indicitative of your incoherant position".
Do you think Peter Gleick is wrong when he says that "There has been a lot of misinformation and confusion about it", or is it just that since he was criticized previously on this blog he must now forever be in the "he is wrong" category, because otherwise it would be "inconsistent, and indicitative of your incoherant position".
My take away from the Peter Gleick comment - When Dr Gleick sticks to his area of expertise, it is not unreasonable to take him seriously.
Perhaps his take away from the Amazon review huffle should be to stick to his area of expertise.
The conclusion from the meatgrinder post is not clear.
zeds"It's inconsistent, and indicitative of your incoherant position."
And your "coherent position" when the when the bishop asked you a simple question was..?
Bishop "Peter said Donna was lying and when people asked for evidence he wouldn't respond.
Dead Silence from you..which is consistent..
Which means you support someone calling a CAGW sceptic a liar..and you support them not having to provide any evidence..
So at least..you are consistent in your inconsistency..
You make some salient points sometimes..but instead of backing them up with an even handed honesty in responding to questions you obviously dont like..you hide..
So please dont come here and lecture..if you dont have the honesty to admit when BOTH sides of the "debate" make mistakes..yes..I know there was no "debate" but we in OZ are getting a new CO2 tax so there must have been one..
George, after Climategate, is a lost soul in the wilderness. His faith shattered, all passion spent. Sad.
Pop Quiz:
Where did the water in the rivers come from during the time that is was so cold the glaciers were not melting at all?
Larry Sheldon
Yetis having a pee?
Pharos
A bunch of us at EURef came to the same conclusion, a while ago.
More on BEST - about Muller the "sceptic"
Quote from him in 2003 -
“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.”
the guardian also gave up on any pretense of intellectual argument on their bolshevik ringfenced baby the free NHS: they just delete all dissent. Very female!
is like on certain blackboard sites
Barry Woods.
approx 60 seconds in, here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyZEC__hfQk&feature=related
I still have hopes for our George.
Yes he's still as stubborn as a thirsty mule in a brook of fresh, sweet water with a grudge against hydration but, at heart, he's a supernova in a dull firmament of green dwarfish twinkies.
Give him time and a lot of self-searching about his lack of intellectual challenge when confronted by inconvenient facts and he will respond, slowly at first and then angrily as he comes to accept that he was lied to.
Dave the boy, Clegg the Corgi and, after careful nursing and medication, even Huhne the Howler will strike Georgie boy off their Xmas lists!
Zed & Gixxerboy,
among the most omportant errors and fabrications in the last IPCC report are
1. of course the Hockey Stick
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/02/keith-should-say/
2. very importantly, the misrepresentation of very poorly understood climate feedbacks
http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/15/boundary-layer-clouds-ipcc-bowdlerizes-bony/
3. and the deliberate misrepresentation of water scarcity, when actually, the number showed a net positive impact
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/18/how-the-ipcc-portrayed-a-net-positive-impact-of-climate-change-as-a-negative/
George has made a career selling climate lies.
Why should he change now?
I just attended what turned into a rather sad lecture by a noble prize winning chemist.
This honorable gentleman is in charge of some sort of science pressure group.
He ended up talking about climate.
He literally used every false claim the AGW community makes- increased storms and droughts, animal extinction, huge increases in temperature, etc. etc. etc.
He got to the end and blithely asserted that scientists could control his litany of woe if we only reduced CO2. He even used the (poor) analogy that if the human temperature increases 4.0 C we are really sick and claimed that Earth would face the same fate if it increased 2.0C He claimed the answer was solar. A close colleague of his is a friend of my family, so I stayed behind to pay my respects. I asked him what he knew about solar that we have not heard?
He had nothing but nice words: no specific breakthroughs at all.
I asked if he was aware that there were good studies showing that weather manifestations are not doing what he had been told?
He had no answer.
Here is one of the great accomplished minds of the last 50 years, repeating crap he has been given by his pals at Berkeley, and not applying basic critical reviews.
A list of problems that are vastly over stated.
Analysis of a nearly deceptive nature.
A demand for a dubious solution.
An offer of an alternative that does not exist and is not likely to in decades.
A-frigging-disappointing.
hunter,
As much as one can admire the impish practical-mindedness and the absolute clear-headedness of the man, there is no escaping that California has gotten into the bloodstream of Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin. I am talking about his new book: Powering the Future.
Oh dear, I've been put into the 'pre-moderated' sin bin at The Guardian for daring to tease them about their AGW approach. I suggested an iminent loss of solar energy subsidies was linked to a loss of confidence in the AGW scare. Get them while you can! And that their current paucity of scare stories suggested they could be saving them up for the Durban run-up.
I never say anything rude or ad-hom on their site. Yes, I do often have a dig. But as a lifelong Guardian/Observer reader, I think I have some right. Given they allow some very obnoxious pro-AGW comments (by their own journalists as well as posters), this is rather unbalanced for a paper who would otherwise profess support for 'freedom of speech'.
With regard to Monbiot. I think he's watching and waiting. He is at least capable of a 180 degree turnaround, as we have seen him do in some other subjects such as nuclear power.
Monbiot also has star attraction. Regardless of what he talks about, he is guarenteed to get a very high number of comments below his articles.
Manfred
Thanks for that. I was just trying to point out the indisputable, at least as far as Zed might be concerned, because the InterAcademy Council findings are not from any kind of sceptic perspective. But thank you for reminding us that numerous other IPCC proclamations, predictions and representations are arguable. At the very least.
I think Zed has declined to play in this immediate space because s/he has been shown to be mistaken. That's okay. Hopefully we learn something by visiting here. I know Zed has taken to throwing around generalised insults about everyone who visits Bishop Hill, but at least s/he engages in debate. (Though not any further in this case, obviously.)
@oakwood
I wouldn't hold your breath. If you truly are a 'lifelong Guardian/Observer reader' I have to salute your fortitude. I lost my stomach for middlebrow left wing propaganda long ago.
Well.. no, he actually doesn't. Zed is his/her own one wo/man raiding party. S/he dashes in at the first hint of a perceived weakness, furiously stabs around for a few moments, hoping to cause some damage to the sceptics' morale, invariably gets a solid kicking, scrambles off back into the thicket and disappears. You can almost hear the trailing shriek of a "Yeah, whatEVer!..." as s/he goes.
It happens every time. Pure trolling. Nothing BUT trolling.
Simon Hopkinson
You do have a point.
However, I see Zed as a canary in, what to more recent visitors may seem like, a bit of a coalmine.
Most CAGW faithful blogsites show only acolyte postings. They 'ad-hom' dissenting scientists and jump upon - or quite often and much more sinisterly - 'remove' comments that are insightful, well-cited, important and do not support the CAGW narrative.
I was attracted to BH in the first instance because the commentary you might find here shows conflicting views, contributes well-argued and supported evidence, but is conducted in a polite, tolerant and intelligent manner.
As its popularity has grown, Andrew has sometimes struggled to maintain those standards. But they clearly remain. Zed goes to the bother of complaining about their breach.
Zed may be a pain in the arse - you might think a classic troll - but how pains are received says a great deal. Consider Richie McCaw.
Shub,
You make a disturbing point.
An important part of the lecture I attended was him telling how 1962 and later Oakland / Berkeley influenced his youth PhD experience. And I will bet good money that Schneider was and Ehrlich is friends with him. Based on the misleading quality of the slides he used, I would not doubt that Ehrlich had a say in the selection.
As for ZDB- let her post. Let her post as much as possible.
That she is defending something now that was so well and definitively falsified so long ago, and that Moonbat is still pitching an idea that everyone who is informed knows is false, says a great deal about the integrity- of either their ability to learn or their character or both- regarding what they will say or do regarding the AGW community.
oooops- As for Gleick:
In the American vernacular, he is as useless to a search for truth as a bump on a log.
Begging your pardon, I have an (sortakinda) off-topic remark:
On this side of the Atlantic, way out here in the middle, a reference to a "bump on a log" would be mad to someone who sits by watch but not participating, as in "Don't sit there like a bump on a log, come help...".
In the instant case I would have used "as useless as teats on a boar hog".
Larry,
You are of course correct.
Gleick is as useless as a teat on a boar hog.
Thank you for pointing that out.
Also if glaciers stop melting and increase, would this not reduce water to the regions involved?
Oct 25, 2011 at 3:20 PM | David
Assuming the retreat of the Glacier is due the higher temps yes, but that is not clear as local temps have not risen, more likely the retreat is due to lower snow and rain fall.
Please inform Glacial George that climate change is reality, anthropogenic climate change is just a wistful socialist dream.
@ oakwood
Regardless of what he talks about, he is guarenteed to get a very high number of comments below his articles.
Only because one communist's Stakhanov is another communist's useful idiot.
Oct 25, 2011 at 8:05 PM | pax
Elegantly done, a succulence of petard irony.