The Himalayan glaciers

Many readers will have seen by now reports of the correction by the IPCC, retracting the claim in the 2007 4th report that the Himalayan glaciers may have 80% melted by 2035. The IPCC report said:

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035.”

Now one error doesn’t negate the proposition that if you keep increasing greenhouse gases, it will place upward pressure on temperatures. But what the error does do is allow us to understand better how rigorous, or not, the IPCC reports are. You see there was not just one error, but three, in that paragraph:

1. The 2035 date is absolute nonsense, and was either made up or was 2350 transposed.
2. The rate of receding by the Himalayan glaciers are not in fact receding faster than anywhere else in the world.
3. The size of the Himalayan glaciers is around 1/15th of 500,000 square kms – 33,000 square km.

So what does this tell us about IPCC processes:

1. An assertion made by a single scientist in a phone conversation in 1999 is deemed credible enough to make the IPCC report (even outting aisde whether the assertion is true).
2. No one in the IPCC applied a common sense test to the claim, that there is no way the Himalayan glaciers would be mainly melted in under 30 years – something that would require an 18 degree c warming in 30 years.
3. An obviously incorrect assertion can remain in an IPCC report for around three years before it is retracted.
4. No one in the IPCC fact checked whether Himalayan receding was in fact faster or not than aothe rglaciers.
5. No one in the IPCC face checked the size of the Himalayan glaciers, despite them being out by a factor of 15.
6. That when someone attacks an aspect of an IPCC report, the Chairman labels your attack as “voodoo science”, even though you were in fact correct.

To my mind this casts more doubt on “the science is settled” than the Climategate e-mails. It just points to a process where any assertion that was supportive was included, without checking.

Now again, for me this doesn’t change my basic viewpoint that there is a link between increased levels of greenhouse gases and upwards pressure on temperatures (other factors can exert downward pressure).  But it certainly changes my view as to the robustness of the IPCC reports, and when they publish their 5th report, they’d better display a far higher level of basic competence, if they want policy makers to place much reliance on it.