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Moutains Out Of Molehills…. Or Himalayans – The IPCC Strikes Out

One of the stated policies of the IPCC is to only use peer reviewed materials in their AR publications. Setting aside questions of peer review accuracy that have been raised due to Climategate, there are instances where they don’t stick to the stated goal. There was one instance where they used a no-peer reviewed graph to show temperature rise. To me, that wasn’t a big deal. But, thanks to the pro-political AGW  RealClimate website, I recently became aware of another instance where the IPCC published a scientific prediction based on non-peer reviewed literature. The issue here is Himalayan glacier melt, and the time frame on which the glaciers are melting. Here is what the IPCC 2007 AR 4 report conveys:

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in 2007 that they could disappear by 2035, causing famine, water wars and hundreds of millions of climate change refugees.

The next paragraph reads:

The problem is that because of their inaccessibility, there is still not enough systematic scientific data to prove the melting is caused by climate change, allowing naysayers including, as of last month, India’s own Environment Ministry, to deny that the glaciers are retreating abnormally fast.

One problem is that, if you can’t be scientifically certain to at least a large degree, then maybe this bit about the glaciers should not be in the report at all. Well, that’s not the only problem. Another is the use of the year 2035 as the date of doom. Seems it’s off by, oh, 300 years. This report again states the official position of the IPCC:

In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: “Glaciers in the Himalayas 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.

But in this BBC article, another scientist, J Graham Cogley of Ontario Trent University, points out that not only did the IPCC use three non-peer reviewed sources for the section dealing with the Himalayan glaciers, but those sources where the date of  2035  was lifted is also wrong. Here is a quote from V M Kotlyakov, the guy who wrote the original report:

The degradation of the extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be apparent in rising ocean level already by the year 2050, and there will be a drastic rise of the ocean thereafter caused by the deglaciation-derived runoff (see Table 11 ). This period will last from 200 to 300 years. 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.

The BBC reporter has conformation that this is not proper:

Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich also said the IPCC statement on Himalayan glaciers had caused “some major confusion in the media”.

“Under strict consideration of the IPCC rules, it should actually not have been published as it is not based on a sound scientific reference.

“From a present state of knowledge it is not plausible that Himalayan glaciers are disappearing completely within the next few decades. I do not know of any scientific study that does support a complete vanishing of glaciers in the Himalayas within this century.”

So, what does the IPCC chairman RK  Pachauri have to say about all this?

“I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.”

In light of the Climategate scandal, he really doesn’t inspire much confidence, does he.

More on this here.

Footnote:  Here is the typical response from the RC readers:

Phil C at 144. This is called “grasping at straws.” Read the IPCC report, then read the WWF report which was compiled as a review article from work by scientific institutes in India, Nepal and China. The article contains tables, graphs and more than 200 references. One thing it does contain is the number “2035? and it does not contain “2350?.

Tom Maguirehere is trying to track down the exact origin of the 2035 number in the WWF report, but hasn’t had any luck yet. And again, the WWF was not peer reviewed. The RC comment continues:

Now, does the fact that the IPCC authors used this article as reference material change the fact that the glaciers are in fact melting? Does the fact that you let yourself get worked up by a blog report of a claim by someone who is wrong on at least one key claim mean anything?

BTW, better expand your conspiracy — it’s not just the evil “hockey stick team” plus UEA — that chapter 10 was authored entirely by Asians! From Iran to China to India to Japan to the Philipines, they’re all part of the world-wide conspiracy to raise taxes in the US and the EU!

And here is the response by RC co-author Eric Steig:

[Response: Well put. It would be awfully nice — really really nice — if mainstream journalists would point out the ridiculousness of this too.–eric]

As they always seem to do, they ignore the main point of the question, and go all “grasping at straws” themselves.