Glaciers and the IPCC

Off-base camp

A mistaken claim about glaciers raises questions about the UN’s climate panel

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Readers' comments



I wonder if the IPCC used "Inconvenient Truth" as a source too.

The point about Himalayan glaciers is a small point in the overall IPCC report. However, the problem with the uncertainty and inaccuracy of IPCC's estimates and their loose interpretation by politicians and the public lies in the enormous leverage associated with small points in climate science and economics - whether the leverage is real or imagined. Foretelling "the elimination of the primary source of water for hundreds of millions of people", as in the case of the Himalayan glaciers, or other apocalypses like that (and not trying to "cost" these effects) leads in turn to efforts to reduce CO2 emissions costing trillions of dollars. Quite costly such mistakes are.

Without knowing too much about the IPCC, I suspect it has fallen victim to two phenomena we have seen before: a) propensity of scientists to work on issues, and produce “results”, on which they can get funding; and b) groupthink. According to Wikipedia - forgive my laziness here - groupthink is: “a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. Individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of group cohesiveness, as are the advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought that might normally be obtained by making decisions as a group. During groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. The term is frequently used pejoratively, with hindsight.”

Having said that, the existence of global warming cannot be denied by anyone in their right mind. Whether it is caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions is a different story, but even if we assume it is, and I do think that’s likely, this is not enough to justify CO2 emissions reduction. We need to establish what the cost function of climate change is (and that requires NOT using terms such as apocalypse, catastrophe, and genocide) and set equal marginal cost and marginal benefit. The key to this exercise is to estimate the benefits of CO2 avoidance, something no-one attempts to do properly (except Stern but his report has been discredited by serious economists). Actually, Al Gore tried to do something like that by insinuating, for example, that Katrina, and consequently all damages it caused, was the result of global warming. I hope we all agree he showed us how NOT to estimate the costs of climate change. Saying that ocean acidity will increase is not enough. Nor is saying that the ice cap or the glaciers will melt.

Currently the IPCC has adopted an arbitrary target of maximum 2 degrees rise of global temperatures. What would the marginal cost to mankind be, in terms of extra damages from climate change, if we accept an extra 1 degree rise, for example, and what would the marginal benefit be, in terms of saved expenditures on emissions reduction? This is the kind of question we need to answer. If we don’t, we will end up making highly inefficient decisions on resource allocation, to say the least – for example, saving a million fish rather than saving a million African children. I am bringing up African children here because every action has an opportunity cost. The amount of money required to reach the UN millennium development goals is a thousand times less than the amount required to stop global warming though CO2 emissions reduction. Adaptation may be a much better solution. Ultimately, dealing with climate change is a scientific, but also economic and, yes, moral problem too.


There is something wrong in BjornU's logic: His arguments drive the precautionary principal beyond the climax and beyond its usefulness. The risk of death is inherent of all life. So you better stay at home forever to avoid any accident, but still you are not sure to become a victim of a heart attack even at home...... You wouldn't pay a monthly insurance fee of 1000 $ to insure an asset value of 100 $, but these are the real cost-benefit-relations the IPCC is suggesting us. The probability of dangerous anthropogenic climate change is very, very low. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for the probability figures of future temperature increase presented by the IPCC, and there is too much cleverly hidden bias in the Summary for Policy Makers as to make a critical reader believe readily any figure produced by this international agency.

No Mist

Pachauri by his family members has made millions in trading in "green industries" coz he is privy to insider info on the coming regulations and also he can influence regulations. besides he has absolutely no scientific credentials himself. he is a very shrewd operator. how he has managed to chair IPCC would itself be a thrilling novel.

the question is why he should not be tried for insider trading ? what is the difference between him and ken (enron) or raju (satyam) ? the global green mafia is hell bent on green terrorism. and they are funded by big polluters of US/europe who wants to stifle competition from India/china/east asia. they can hardly have much headway in china but at other places this mafia is no less dangerous than al qaeda.


Mr. Kargel -

** explains why Venus is so torrid being so close to the sun and having a greenhouse atmosphere 100 times denser than Earth's. **
We are not comparing the Earth to Venus. We are comparing the Earth to the Earth 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, 18,000 years ago (lot of melting since then, don't think it was all the result of burning fossil fuels). Has Venus experienced average variations in climate of 5-10 deg C? You don't know, do you?
** The models are based on physics, the science which has given us missions to Mars, submarines to the seafloor, jet airplanes, air conditioners, power plants, automobiles, and a comparatively high standard of living for Brits and Americans and Indians and Chinese. **
They are also based on assumptions. Applied physics (otherwise known as engineering, with validated and tested prototypes) gave us all the things you list. For engineers, computer models are an intermediate products to be tested, not the end result.
** people qualified and educated to make an independent assessment **
Ah yes, who is qualified? I have a Master's degree in geology, I enjoy reading about science history, I'm employed as a professional scientist ... in the private (energy) sector ... for a company that advocates cap-and-trade as a means to limit CO2 emissions. I suppose that makes me unqualified. Does an amateur enthusiast reading about science have a more objective perspective than an academic researcher whose grant funding depends on demonstratively upholding Global Warming while at the same time exploring niches of uncertainty to justify additional funding?

As a professional geologist, it amuses/saddens me to no end that CLIMATE ALWAYS CHANGES on rapid timescales! Always has, always will. Do we honestly believe that climate would remain fixed if it weren't for people burning fossil fuels?

Estimates vary on the pace of sea level rise as a result of global warming. First of all, RELATIVE SEA LEVEL RISES AND FALLS DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU ARE. Some areas are uplifting (Scandinavia, Hudson's Bay - still rebounding from melted ice thousands of years ago), some areas are subsiding (Venice, Holland) due to tectonics or sediment compaction. Other places experience relative sea level fall where sediment deposition exceeds the rate of subsidence (any river delta, for example). So you can't look at one place and definitively say that absolute sea level is rising or falling.

Second point. 18,000 years ago my birthplace in Ohio was under 1000 meters of ice, Cape Cod was a terminal moraine (and so was Long Island). Sea level was 125 meters lower with all that water locked up in ice. Since that time glaciers have receded to Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Sea level rose at an average rate of 70 cm/century ... FOR 180 CENTURIES (check to see how that compares to estimates for 2100 as a certain result of Global Warming' (as a result of CO2 emission). Humans have been burning fossil fuels extensively for 1 century. How about the other 179 centuries? It hasn't been a steady pace, smaller fluctuations (like the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period) are well-documented.

Finally, melting ice doesn't mean global warming is taking place (oh no, glaciers are melting!). As a matter of fact - MOST MELTING (IN TERMS OF ICE VOLUME MELTED PER UNIT TIME) OCCURRED AT THE PEAK OF THE LAST ICE AGE! Melting all around the fringe of greatly expanded polar ice caps, massive tabular icebergs breaking off an expanded Arctic ice shelf. What is important is the NET, the balance between new ice creation (compaction of snow in the source areas for the icefields) and the melting of ice around the fringes. So enormous volumes of melted ice were matched by enormous amounts of snow and ice accumulation in the source areas. Currently some glaciers are advancing, some are contracting. Most seem to be contracting. But climate is a whole series of cycles superimposed on another (Milankovitch cycles, sunspot cycles?). We may be in a warming trend on a short-term cycle and a cooling trend on another longer-term cycle. There have been periods in the earth's history when no ice caps existed.

What I'm trying to say is that we don't know enough about climate to be making all sorts of policy decisions. Thankfully (?) oil/gas are a (large) finite supply (based on economic prices of extraction) and it is hard to maintain 86 MMbbl/d supply. When I look at Copenhagen it would seem that for proponents of Global Warming, it's about almost everything except for climate change. It's about politics, it's about post-colonial guilt, it's about inequities in wealth distribution, it's about the interests of 'Big Business vs. the public', it's about generating tax revenue, it's about 'social justice', etc etc etc.


First of all, I want to second Dr. Jeffrey Kargel's comments - a very good analysis of the situation. My comments are related to what perspective a question like climate change is best analysed from. Instead of taking any talk of uncertainty or biased media coverage or leaked emails as an opportunity to dismiss the whole climate change debate as a hoax and a conspiracy to destroy the economy or propagate socialism upon the whole world or whatever, we should use a more rational approach based on the logics of RISK and UNCERTAINTY to analyse the situation.

Risk is the product of probability and consequence. If the consequence of an event is really serious then the risk is substantial, even if the probability is low. If you are getting on a plane, the consequence of it crashing is very serious - certain death. What level of probability of it happening are you willing to accept? 10 percent? 1 percent? 0,01 percent? Even if the worst case climate change scenarios have low probability of happening, the risk they represent is very serious due to magnitude of their consequences. In this perspective, what is rational behaviour?

Just like the IPCC very openly states, assessing the risks of climate change is complex due to uncertainties in how greenhouse gas emisssions are likely to develop, exactly how the response of the climate will be on a global and local scale, and the consequences it will have on human society and the ecosystems upon which it depends. In situation of uncertainty, there are two fundamental mistakes you can make.
a)You can take the infomation to be valid (climate change is happening and will have a grave consequence on both humans and the ecosystems upon which they depend) and choose to act to reduce emissions and avoid the problem - and then find out the problem was not real. Then you will still have switched to a renewable source of energy, cleaned up the air, stopped wasting resources, saved the coral reefs and the marine life systems that depend on them, and so on.
b)You can decide that the information is false (climate change is not happening or anyway not something human activities are causing) and not act to reduce emissions, later to find out that the information was valid. Then it will be too late to avoid really troubling consequences (oops!), and you will not have been able to catch any of the co-benefits of changing to a more sustainable use of resources.

From the perspective of risk and uncertainty, we should be
a) continuing the scientific analysis of climate change (observations, causes, effects, consequences, adaptation, mitigation), while at the same time
b) taking immediate action to stop unabated use of fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy and clean technologies, stop wasting energy and use it more efficiently, and halt deforestation, and
c) investing in measures to adapt human infrastructure to the effects of climate change that inevitably will happen due to time-lags in the climate system.


Your comments, Dr. Jeff Kargel, seem to be kind of a helpless self defence in order not to offend to much the IPCC and not to risk further funding from the mighty AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) community. None of your claims convinced me. Just to the contrary: I wonder if you are not aware of the fact that global average temperature (UAH satellite data: up to 300.000 measurements a day, equally distributed across the globe. - I do not refer to the handpicked surface temperature data of CRU!) has not been increasing the past 12 years (but slighlty declining), while CO2 has been further increasing and all (without any exception) the modelled temperature projections of the IPCC are steeply pointing upwards over the same period.
My list of IPCC supported biases, inaccuracies, selective use of data and information, and of inconsistencies in the use of physical basic science, - everything concentrated in the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), not so much, however, in the Technical Reports, of the AR4 of 2007 - is fairly long, far too long to be shown here. There is no scientific consensus whatsoever about global warming and its causes, as you claim.
Dr. Albrecht Glatzle, Paraguay


Man made climate change or not? IPCC's truth or Lord Monckton's?

911 terrorists attack or 911 US government attack? Mainstream media News or Richard Gage's Blue Print science?

who should I believe as I am neither climatologist nor architect? Who's truth is truer?

Does a big enough lie equaling a truth apply to Climate change as well as 911 attack?

Or, I am just as mad as hell, and I am not gonna take this anymore?

Do you feel the same?

Or, it is just me?


I'm shocked to hear that scientists at East Anglia University debated amongst themselves the need to suppress contradictory evidence against anthropogenic global warming.

I'm shocked to hear that climatologists exaggerated the threat of Himalayan glaciers melting.


(if 'global warming' was a stock you might want to consider selling it)


A man made disaster is very accurate description for this event. In the age of Obama this term is however being used for terrorism. So we still have some steps to make


Just NOW the Economist is questioning the UN's climate panel?!

Which is more complex, the global economy or the global climate?

Which is easier to manage or control properly?


Correction to my previous post.
I use voice recognition software. When I said " many aspects of CLIMATE science". it interpreted it as ... in many aspects of CRIME science.


Manic Beancounter

Consider three (hypothetical) scenarios form the UK.
1. The police investigation into a (possibly) racially-motivated murder is flawed, leading to the acquittal of the accused. The Chief Superintendant blames it on lack of funds for staff training, having previously said race was not a motive.
2. A profitable, listed company goes bust as a result of long-term massaging of the figures. This occurs three months after a respected accountancy firm signs off the annual accountants with no adverse comments. A senior partner says that the auditors were denied access to certain data, but had a signed note from the CFO that another accountancy firm had reviewed that data as part of a management-consultancy exercise. The CFO claims that the company was sound, and has an independent audit to prove it.
3. A highly-rated hospital turns out to have significantly higher death-rates than the average. The hospital chief executive says that it is due to having to cut back on the cleaning, having previously stated that the figures were flawed and politically biased.

In every case, the press and opposition politicians, would be asking for independent enquires (to assess the extent of the problem and to make preventative recommendations for the future), the suspensions of those involved and the sacking of top person in the organization. So why no such questions, when there is a serious procedural failing in (probably) the most important scientific report of all time? A report that could adversely impact the living standards of billions of people should be to the highest scientific standards ever achieved.
It is not a minor mistake to misquote and embellish a tract from a campaigning group – and then say the forecast is highly likely, without any statistical analysis. This report is written by top Phd’s in their field, not first-year undergraduates. They should know how to assess reports, and draw accurate conclusions based on the evidence.
Further, whilst it is right for the UN IPCC to recognize the error and apologize, it is not for that organization to say, without internal investigation, that this is an isolated incident.
There should be an independent audit of all the report, to make sure that it is uniformly based on clearly-defined scientific standards. The starting point of an audit should be an evaluation of the laid-down scientific standards, and the documented internal control procedures for evaluating the adherence to those standards.
Areas of a full audit might include:-
- identification of assumptions;
- measurement errors compared to the changes measured;
- competing peer-reviewed science noted;
- checking that both costs and benefits have been taken into account;
- the robustness of conclusions over differing timescales;
- and statistical probabilities verified by qualified statisticians on the key forecasts.


It seems to me that the Economist, while accepting that the IPCC made an error in this case, accepts the assurance of the now discredited Pachuari (discredited because he rubbished someone who gave a contrary and correct view last year) that all the rest of their science is kosher. Even if it were true - and there's heaps of evidence such as the discredited hockey stick, to show that it is not true - why should anyone accept what he says?

The only proper response is to insist that an independent enquiry be mounted to find out if many other claims made by sceptical scientists about the dubious veracity of much of the IPCC's work are, in fact, correct.

They could start with the IPCC's claim of 90% confidence in man-made global warming stated unequivocally in the Summary for Policymakers. To my knowledge, nobody has found supporting evidence for the statement in the technical reports. In the technical reports, there is abundant evidence of very large uncertainties in many aspects of crime science.

Dr. Jeffrey Kargel

As a coauthor of the letter to the editor of Science, and a glaciologist, and lead investigator of the GLIMS project (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space), and somebody who was interviewed for and quoted in this article, I should probably respond to some of the comments that simply do not flow logically from what is written in Oliver Morton's Economist article. But first, I was not a part of the IPCC or a reviewer of the voluminous IPCC Fourth Assessment. I am a reader and user of it; and as reasonable readers of the Economist may surmise, I do not fear the truth, and will work to uncover the truth. This Economist article is fairly accurate and reflects the situation reasonably well; there was a very embarrassing, grossly erroneous paragraph in an encyclopedic document. The IPCC Fourth Assessment is 99.9% correct, as far as science knows; this Economist article, and almost all media reporting in the last week, is not about the 99.9%, it's about the 0.1%. There is a strong consensus about this among people qualified and educated to make an independent assessment. It is filled with facts and measurements and observations, models, and inferences. The factual data are very solid throughout almost the entire set of documents. It was painstakingly reviewed and well substantiated in almost every section of every chapter; this is evident in the thoroughness, the references, the presentation quality, and the depth and insight of the analysis. It is a very good documentation of the state and recent changes of the Earth climate system and of projected future changes. The models are based on physics, the science which has given us missions to Mars, submarines to the seafloor, jet airplanes, air conditioners, power plants, automobiles, and a comparatively high standard of living for Brits and Americans and Indians and Chinese. If you want to look for nails in coffins, go to a graveyard; the IPCC is not where you'll find them. There was a really--REEEALLY--bad paragraph. A horrific paragraph; unbelievable inaccuracy, poor referencing, basically no basis in reality, amidst an exceedingly detailed and accurate overall document. One paragraph. It had to be corrected, and I helped to force a correction. Such is not a nail, it's not a sliver of a coffin. People who have pre-ordained conclusions, handed down by God or otherwise, will not find logic or reason or observations or common sense to be something worth listening to. So I comment to the others among you, who may have the capacity to listen and to try to comprehend and fathom what is going on all around you. The climate science that explains why Earth is warming due to greenhouse gases accumulating in our planet's atmosphere is the very same climate science that explains why Venus is so torrid being so close to the sun and having a greenhouse atmosphere 100 times denser than Earth's, why Mars is really cold but a tad warmer than it would be without its tenuous greenhouse atmosphere, and why Earth had ice ages and super-hothouse periods in the geologic past. The physics is not mysterious. It's a little more complex than the fact that ice taken out of the freezer in your home will melt, a little more complex than your 5-day weather forecast, a little more complex than why a your night-time temperature cools a little bit on a cloudy night but a lot on a clear night; a little more complex than the explanation for why your car heats up with the windows rolled up or your bed warms up when you climb in with your spouse. The greenhouse effect is not speculation, it's not hypothesis; it's observed reality. CO2 is transparent to visible light and opaque to infrared; water vapor is, too; likewise, methane. These gases let sunlight into the lower atmosphere and onto the surface, the surface heats up, and tries to cool off, but the emitted infrared radiation is blocked by these gases. So the atmosphere heats up more than if these gases were absent and a little more than if these gases were present but not abundant. The physics is well understood. There are uncertainties in the models of future climate, definitely, such as how clouds form and disperse; such as how much gasoline and coal we're going to burn and whether controls are instituted or not. But the fact is, we are observing the effects of greenhouse gases, and those effects are steadily rising, sharply rising by the standards of climate variability over the whole course of human history. Yes, Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly (but few by 2035). Cultures have risen and fallen with climate shifts smaller than what we are now experiencing. We are now emerging from the envelope of all historical experience with changing climate. I am not a doomsdayer. I see plenty reason for hope. My optimism fast fades when I consider models where people look for fictional nails in coffins, and seek to confuse or give in to confusion and paralysis of intelligent thought and careful deed.


...the year 2350 instead of 2035 -- that's just outrageous!!
It's unfortunate that an international body charged with such an important task should be so sloppy with its numbers and reckless with the facts! Of course the number they should really be focusing on as a lodestar is the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere -- widely considered to be about 350 ppm... and rising. That baseline is indisputable while all the other "cause-and-effect" scenarios are just speculation -- sometimes solid, sometimes sensational.
However all of this may be a moot issue when the melting of the Greenland ice sheet causes the Gulfstream to turn around plunging the entire northern hemisphere into another Ice Age.

Jeremy X

Gee, did someone at the Economist awaken to the massive nonsense perpetrated on it and make a whimper?

Finally, the Economist is willing to concede the possibility that its ex cathedra pronouncements on the settled truth of global warming are not 100.0000% correct.

Zounds! There is still hope.

Perhaps it will, some day, do a slick "Special Report" on warmism and lay out all the gross nonsense and redeem itself.

Earth to Economist: The same people who cannot get the weather forecast for Uckfield seven days in the future straight with more than a 55% probability of its being correct tell us that they can predict long term weather 100 years in the future with "it is settled science" validity to motivate the world to spend $trillions to "fix the problem".

Is the Economist now beginning the process of redeeming itself and writing about warmism with merely a scintilla of skepticism? Stay tuned.


What satisfaction to observe that, finally, serious media are catching up with their appreciation of the "high" scientific level of both, the IPCC officials and the NGO WWF! The provider of the tainted figure 2035, the WWF, has been showing up in recent years at various opportunities with questionable science related to the Carbon Footprint ideology and to its promotion of taxation of harmless CO2 and Methane emissions by domestic livestock.


The generation of knowledge is not a perfect process. This article clearly illustrates the magnitude of the undertaking of the IPCC process, and some of the cracks through which errors can fall. Given the extensiveness of the IPCC effort, errors such as this could be expected in limited quantity and should not undermine the value and path-breaking effort of the larger program.

An error in a point estimate like this should not lead to dismissivness over the particluar issue or the larger import of global warming (read burning) for future generations. If the issue is simply when the glaciers will melt, or when existing water regimes in asia will change dramatically enough to extensively undermine local economies (some would say they already have), then the larger, apocalyptic issue remains. There is no substitute for the water regime of the himalyas--at least for the populations that depend on it (including humans!).

It does not really matter when it happens for the generations that will suffer. If the date is further out, that just adds more pressure to act now, when costs are less and probabilities for success are higher.

There is no alternative to a lightening-fast transition to a sustainble economy and society (non-carbon, renewable energy, organic agriculture, compact vibrant cities, etc.) that will produce durable economic prosperity and security at higher levels than our business-as-usual, 7+ degree global burning societal suicide scenario ever has or could--whether the date for himalya glacier melt is 2035 or 2350.

Even if we can orchestrate a soft landing on a 2-degree or less global warming scenario, reversing those effects is a 200-300 year mitigation program assuming peak CO2 by 2015-2020, dramatic decreases in CO2 levels ASAP, going negative with high-tech solutions out in 2050, and maintaining the lower levels for the 200-300 years it will take for the lagged effects to restore pre-1990 clmiate conditions of 350 ppm CO2 or less to the normal range of historical variation.

Whining about an error, even of this magnitude, or expecting perfect knowledge from path-breaking work on events at the frontier of human experience and history is a ridiculous unhelpful cheap shot. Identifying the error and fixing the process that generated it, as illuminated by the Economist article, is exceptionally important work, the role of the press, etc. Thank you for your work on this point.


Typographic errors (2035 vs. 2350) constitute conclusive proof that climate change is a socialist plot to raise taxes.

(from "The Climate Sceptic's Guide to Logic and Science")


It would be good to know that someone had read the possibly critical articles of Dr David Evans at on what he says is proof that CO2 emissions can't be either blamed for most of the current warming (possibly just a continuation of an uneven trend since some time in the Little Ice Age caused by whatever caused the end of that cold period) or, in particular, for any dangerously rapid warming.

About five .pdf articles (with titles like MissingSignature and NoEvidence) focus on his contention that all the IPCC models predict a hotspot (not actually hot but an area about 10k up in the troposphere which has, supposedly, been warming for decades) but that actual measurements from 1979 to 1999 show there is no hotspot and therefore no reason to believe the IPCC theory that CO2 starts off a little warming (as it does when adding to the total greenhouse effect of various components of the earth's atmosphere) and that the consequent increase in water vapour, the major greenhouse gas, then creates a positive feedback effect which multiplies the small initial amount of warming from increased CO2 into the disastrous warming we are threatened with by the warmists.

Evans, as the gold trading self-taught Austrian economist isn't as well worth reading, but he has undoubted qualifications to say what he offers on global warming. It is worth noting that Lindzen and Choi in the Auguest Geophysical Research Letters published empirical data on the radiation balance which supports the Evans thesis.

I've been struggling to get intelligent comment on Evans's potentially critical work. A couple of bloggers and warmist site moderators have falsely said he didn't understand what the hotspot was but a serious authority in the shape of Dr William Kininmonth supports the same view about the alleged positive water vapour feedback.


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