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Claims of Himalayan Glacier Disaster Melt Away
Hugh Pickens writes "VOA News reports that leaders of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have apologized for making a 'poorly substantiated' claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Scientists who identified the mistake say the IPCC report relied on news accounts that appear to have misquoted a scientific paper — which estimated that the glaciers could disappear by 2350, not 2035. Jeffrey Kargel, an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona who helped expose the IPCC's errors, said the botched projections were extremely embarrassing and damaging. 'The damage was that IPCC had, or I think still has, such a stellar reputation that people view it as an authority — as indeed they should — and so they see a bullet that says Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035 and they take that as a fact.' Experts who follow climate science and policy say they believe the IPCC should re-examine how it vets information when compiling its reports. 'These errors could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected,' write the researchers."
If you think that's bad, for each of these errors that gets publicized, vast swaths of the population lose faith in the mountain of scientific evidence for anything whatsoever, including support for man-made global warming.
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Gpasp, there was a TYPO in a summary report, and the editing process didn't catch it.
A typo.
In a summary report. Not in an actual scientific paper. Not even in the _science_ summary (which is IPCC working group 1 report, "Physical Science Basis of Climate Change"-- this was the WG-2 report.).
Yes, it's an annoying typo-- 2350 is significantly different from 2035. Nevertheless, note that the error is NOT in any of the science papers-- it was in a summary report. It should have been edited better (especially as, it turns out, one of the reviewers actually pointed out the error, but his correction didn't make it in), but bad editing in the summary says absolutely nothing about the science. And, in fact, the scientists pointed it out and published the correction in a major venue.
The problem is, the deniers believe that even one error in a summary report means that the science is wrong, while the scientists are all aware that, yes, it's a bitch, but indeed, sometimes typos creep through.
All of you who have never had a typo show up uncorrected, feel free to kvetch.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
which estimated that the glaciers could disappear by 2350, not 2035.
Dislexyia... that would be my excuse if I were them... :-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
According to the NY Times article, a scientist (Georg Kaser) warned the working group in 2006 that the findings were erroneous. How did it take four years to bubble up?
I'd call that a pretty glacial response time. (rimshot)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
The scientists who caught this error are scientists who support the consensus that global warming is a real problem. The distinction between good science and bad science is the ability to be critical of theories and colleagues that you agree with. In that regard, while this is an embarrassing snafu, it shouldn't alter our overall confidence that anthropogenic global warming is real and a serious threat to both environmental and economic health. I'm tempted to make a comparison to Piltdown man, a fossil hominid which turned out to be a hoax. Creationists like to point to it a lot but ignore that it was scientists who realized that Piltdown man was a hoax, not creationists. I don't think that global warming is in the same category, in that there are good scientists who disagree. But the general consensus is pretty clear. And events like this show that the general scientific community is still doing good, careful science on this matter, and engaging in careful critical analysis of their own claims. This event underscores that claims by global warming denialists that climatology is a cultish echo-chamber are simply without basis.
There is something absolutely wrong with the kind of media coverage. You're telling me that a transposition of digits within a report full of otherwise solid information is "highly damaging"? This is a false sense of even-handedness at best.
How is solid evidence of shrinking polar caps not highly damaging? The hard empirical fact that we've taken the atmospheric CO2 level from ~280 parts per million to over 370? The increasing ocean acidity from absorbing this increased CO2? The fact that widespread deforestation in the midst of de-sequestering carbon locked in oil and carbon and putting it back into the atmosphere on this level has a significant impact?
The question that will matter to all of us in coming years is not whether the IPCC had, in the midst of a large report of substance, accidentally transposed numbers when discussing a real and dangerous trend. It's not about whether or not you like Al Gore. It's not about the way scientists chattered in their emails while creating and testing computer simulations. This coverage of personality cult or anti-cult, the minor gaffes in an overwhelming body of documented evidence being treated even-handedly as if it thwarts all the rest, it is responsible for promoting complacency or belligerency in the face of a severe environmental threat.
Will we come to our senses already, or will it take soaring food prices and flooded cities and islands first?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html
Whoever moderated this as Troll is being disingenuous in the extreme.
/. in the last 5 years or so - seems to be inhabited by
There is absolutely NOTHING troll-worthy in what amiga3D said.
See, this is what I've noticed about
people who can't subscribe to any anti-anthropogenic cuased global warming argument. So, anything
which is said against the AGW argument gets modded down.
FACT : AGW *IS* heavilly politicised.
FACT : anti-AGW arguments and reasoning appear to be met by insult,ridicule, and attempted censorship.
Honestly, people, if you can't simply argue your case for and against, in a reasonable manner, and have to
resort to insults, and censorship, then you have already lost the argument.
As a resident of Nepal, I can tell you we don't believe these reports anyway. In a city where there are more NGOs per captia then people (a slight exaggeration), it's easy to see what the business is all about anyway. For example, why has WWF Nepal gone from protecting Rhinos and Dolphins to protecting the "climate"? Follow the money trail...
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I am curious how and by whom you think actually discovered the flaw in the IPCC's claims.
Well actually anyone questioning these claims when first produced were called "crackpot" by the IPCC. So in fact there were other groups that pointed it out, but as is par for the course with AGW any questioning, no matter how scientific, is treated as heresy and ridiculed. Which leads to to wonder what other views currently being labeled as "crackpot" are actually just as valid.
Just how and why do you think the IPCC admitted to this error? It's not because they did any research into the claim themselves beyond the initial production, they had to be shown the door and then led through it. It was only when the embarrassment could not be contained further they were forced to make a statement.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley