India turns up heat over 'Glaciergate'

India’s environment minister, having faced accusations of practicing “voodoo science”, has been vindicated with the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations climate body’s prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 being exposed as inaccurate speculation.

After suffering blows from the “Climategate” scandal and the tumultuous and essentially failed Copenhagen climate conference last year, the credibility of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is now being further questioned over revelations concerning a 2007 report in which it said the total area of the Himalayan glaciers would shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 square kilometers by 2035. The IPCC is the world’s

premier body for the study of climate change and its reports are the basis for formulating global policy.
On Sunday, the Times of London revealed that the claims of shrinkage were based solely on a speculative remark made by a little-known Indian scientist formerly at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Professor Dr Syed Iqbal Hasnain, in 1999 during an interview with New Scientist magazine. The Times quoted Hasnain as saying that the claim was “speculation” and not supported by any formal research.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the IPCC’s vice chairman, on Tuesday conceded that the claim was an error and would be reviewed. “Some people will attempt to use it to damage the credibility of the IPCC; but if we can uncover it, and explain it and change it, it should strengthen the IPCC’s credibility, showing that we are ready to learn from our mistakes,” van Ypersele told the BBC.

The IPCC claimed in 2007 that resulting water shortages and climate change from the retreat of the Himalayan glacier could affect up to a billion Asians across Bangladesh, China, India and Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet.

The Himalayan glaciers store more ice than anywhere on Earth except for the polar regions and Alaska and are the largest source of fresh water for northern India and provide more than half the water to Ganges River. Himalayan glacial runoff is also the source of the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Irrawady and the Yellow and Yangtse rivers.

The IPCC report claimed that for the Ganges, the loss of glacier meltdown would reduce July-September flows by two thirds, causing water shortages for 500 million people and 37% of India’s irrigated land. As a result of the glacial retreat, even in low-lying, flood-prone Bangladesh, the IPCC said rivers would run dry by the end of the century.

“If the present rate [of melting] continues,” said the IPCC’s fourth assessment report in 2007, “the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in 2007 appointed a panel of Indian scientists to study the Himalayan glacier melting. In one of the most exhaustive studies of the region, the ministry’s panel analyzed 150 years of data by the Geological Survey of India from 25 Himalayan glaciers. The body concluded that while Himalayan glaciers had long been retreating, there was no acceleration of the trend and nothing to suggest that the glaciers would vanish.

“The health of glaciers is a cause of grave concern but the IPCC’s alarmist position that they would melt by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence,” Ramesh said on Monday. He added that the rate of glacial melting was “today practically at a standstill” in the Himalayas.

Asia Times