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A London newspaper reports today that the unsubstantiated Himalayan-glacier melt figures contained in a supposedly authoritative 2007 report on climate warming were used intentionally, despite the report’s lead author knowing there were no data to back them up.
Until now, the organization that published the report – the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – had argued the exaggerated figures in that report were an accident: due to insufficient fact checking of the source material.
Uh, no. It now appears the incident wasn’t quite that innocent.
The Sunday Mail’s David Rose reached Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the 2007 IPCC report’s chapter on Asia. Lal told Rose that he knew there were no solid data to support the report’s claim that Himalayan glaciers – the source of drinking and irrigation water for downstream areas throughout Asia – could dry up by 2035. Said Lal: “We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.” In other words, Rose says, Lal “last night admitted [the scary figure] was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.”
A noble motive, perhaps, but totally inexcusable.
Science collects lots of tidbits – data, factoids, apparent correlations, syntheses of trends and more. The whole purpose of peer review is to limit the likelihood that biases, misinterpretations and outright errors of fact are sanctified as real. Peer review can’t eliminate errors and bias, but it works hard to minimize the chance that they will creep into the “knowledge base” that guides further research and political action.
The IPCC report was supposed to reflect only peer-reviewed science. Not the speculation of scientists, which the initial source of that 2035 figure (Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain) recently acknowledged it was. Nor should magazine articles or gray literature reports – like the World Wildlife Fund document that repeated the speculative 2035 figure – become the foundation for IPCC conclusions. Which is why IPCC specifically prohibits reliance on such documents.
If Lal knowingly perpetuated unsubstantiated speculation in a purportedly authoritative document, that would constitute what we in journalism refer to as a “hanging offense” – the kind of action that gets you fired or at least heavily sanctioned. Moreover, the new Rose story also charges that the “WWF article [from which the 2035 date was picked up] also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres.” Oops.
The Rose article also charges that Lal’s committee didn’t investigate challenges to glacier data in its chapter -- challenges made by climate scientists prior to the IPCC report's publication.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I don’t know for certain what Lal and his team did or didn’t do. Journalism is not peer review. But our reporting can help policy makers and scientists know where further investigation is warranted. And it’s warranted here.
If further investigation confirms that what Rose reported today is true, then Lal – and, through him, the IPCC – would have abrograted the public trust. And stupidly given ammunition to those who have made a sport of challenging solid climate science.
Glaciers globally are melting. In some cases, precipitously. And people living downstream are already not only seeing but also feeling the effects. How bad the situation is needs further study. Soon. Not the scoff of people who challenge the idea of global warming because it may be politically, intellectually or economically inconvenient.
At the United Nations Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen, last month, IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri noted that the next wholesale assessment of climate data and projections – a follow-up to IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment report – is now underway.
Let’s hope Pachauri and the rest of the IPCC respond to the Himalayan glacier fiasco and explain promptly how they plan to safeguard the new review from attempts by scientists to seed it with similar well-meaning but ill-conceived conclusions. Non-peer-reviewed conclusions that undermine – perhaps disastrously – the credibility of IPCC and climatology generally.
Found in: Climate Change, Environment and Science & Society
- Science & the Public : IPCC admits Himalayan glacier error
- Science & the Public : IPCC relied on unvetted Himalaya melt figure
- From Bad to Worse: Earth's warming to accelerate
- Wildfire, Walleyes, and Wine
- Science & the Public : Glacier melts are erasing climate record
- Science & the Public : Really Cool History
- Rose, D. 2010. Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified. Mail Online (Jan. 24). [Go to]
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007. 10.6.2 The Himalayan glaciers. IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. [Go to]
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2010. IPCC statement on the melting of Himalayan glaciers (Jan. 20). [Go to]
- Science & the Public : GNP’s glaciers: Going, going . . .
- Science & the Public : Insurance payouts point to climate change
- Science & the Public : Bush meat can be a viral feast
- On the Scene : Vying for the title of World's Fastest Cell
- Deleted Scenes : Moony shot
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I've seen these mistaken claims from the IPCC about the glaciers repeated in other peer-reviewed publications, written by scientists who it seems should have known better. It's annoying, since I'm a science journalist who covers climate change for publications like Science and Nature, and I'm trying to figure out what the actual facts are. It's hard, when the IPCC report is so widely referred to.
To try to help set the record straight, I started a site NotIn2035.com, where I'm collecting references to these mistakes in various peer-reviewed papers and other writings by scientists.
True believers, to your posts: to lie, deny, accuse, excuse, etc!
B. P. Gilstrap, retired scientist
This is not to say that all scientists in India are so free with mis-stating reality. However, in my personal sampling, more scientists from the developing world are problematic than from the first world nations. I have known flawless Indian scientists, and I have known others who got where they are and keep their positions by corruption.
In the long run this huge embarrassment will be a good thing. It will press India to cease promoting scientists based on their political and familial connections. Any effort to deal with this in India needs to get at this root problem, not simply fire the perpetrators. Firing them in India is not like firing people in the developed world. A family can fall into poverty so dire it is unimaginable to us. Indian people see this every day, they know it. And that limits their ability to act properly with their friends and family. Such things are survival matters for the families. But if India expects to be taken seriously, it must address this.
Practically, what is needed is a careful study to clarify the data in the Himalayas. This can be done within a year if the studies are authorized.
At this point I don't see how the IPCC can regain people's confidence as long as Pachauri remains its director. He seems to disagree, claiming in a press interview that the IPCC's credibility has been strengthened.
The article you link to also says:
Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures.
It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’
However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.
wattsupwiththat.com has several articles just today including one that lists all the WWF references in the most recent IPCC report. Just how many of these are wrong is unclear, just how many are peer reviewed is unclear, but the answer may be zero. The IPCC rules were to collect peer reviewed science for their reports, so there's a lot to be explained by Pachauri and Lal.
I imagine that a breakfast with "Mr. IPCC" today would have a very different feel than it did in Oct. 2008.
So while the IPCC was set up with a bias, that's no excuse for the scientists involved with it to bring their biases with them.
Oh - there's a good line at WUWT yesterday - "The Science is scuttled."
No one seems to be challenging him. It is simply bad math. If glaciers stop melting, the precipitation will accumulate and the river source will run dry as far as the next tributary. It will not, however, stop raining in SE Asia. The rivers in SE Asia are not 100% supplied by glacier meltwater.
No one seems to be doing the basic calculation as to whether the glacier retreat is because of reduced precipitation or warmer temperatures. With the Mount Kilimanjaro ice cap it is the former.
With the 'glaciers are melting' scare the basic claim is that if they melt away, there will be no water in the rivers of SE Asia. Were the glaciers to melt then the precipitation which creates them each year will pass into the rivers as rain rather than passing through the ice stage like it does in other countries. That is hardly a disaster!
If the argument is that the timing of the flow would be affected, fine. But the total flow would not change at all.
The worst is the claim that the rivers would 'dry up' without their 'source water'. That implies that the whole volume of the rivers comes from glaciers which is ridiculous.
The entire subject appears contaminated by ignorance and agendas.
I've spent a good deal of time on and around many Himalayan and other glaciers, and even with a lot to report and communicate about climate change I'm still kicking myself that I didn't more rigorously question this figure myself and alert my many IPCC Report Group Leader and Lead Author friends.
Did I want to believe this was true myself without thinking about it enough?
Taking a moment to really think about it, with the incredible mass of the largest Himalayan glaciers and their high altitudes that can mean increased snowfall due to warming (as cold places warm closer to freezing they can get more snow), often shaded and often covered with rocks and earth, there's no way Himalayan glaciers could melt into nothing by 2035 or any decadal time-frame.
Glaciers can be stubborn to completely disappear, retreating up to the steepest and most shaded headwalls where they begin. For sea level rise and many other factors I mention below glaciers completely disappearing is not as important as the percentage loss of mass balance of all glaciers in a region like the Himalayas or globally.
Crispin Pembertun-Pigott, you raise good points, but while the conclusions aren't as simple as those you rightly question, nor are they as simple as what you conclude. Glaciers aren't the be-all of hydrology as you state, but they provide an important baseline during late summer and fall when stream and river flows would otherwise reach lower states, quite possibly impacting irrigation, drinking water, hydro-power, fisheries and navigation.
Snowfall and snowpack are often more important than the rainfall you appropriately mention because they act as a reservoir for dry places including the American West and the massive drainages of the largest rivers flowing out of the Himalayas including the Yellow and Yangtze in China, the Mekong in Southeast Asia and the Ganges and Indus flowing through and along the borders of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Let's all encourage more study and science and the IPCC needs to jump on this immediately and completely, admitting the wrong-doing and finding any other wrong-doing themselves, thus taking the wind out of the sails of deniers and not providing them with accurate ammunition when they're often inaccurate. (And examining my sentence above, mixed metaphors might not be retreating on any time-scale.)
Joe Romm did, and has published a denial of this story.
I was bothered to see SN reporting a story with only David Rose, who does not have a record of good writing in climate science, as the source. He's written little and tripped much already.
I realize there is a lot of back-and-forth here (New Scientist also has been challenged on their quote attributed to Hasnan, and challenged back:
"This week Hasnain has claimed, for the first time, that he was misquoted by New Scientist in 1999.
New Scientist stands by its story and was not the only news outlet to publish Hasnain's claim."
newscientist.com/article/dn18420-climate-chief-admits-error-over-himalayan-glaciers.html
But Joe Romm says he did phone Lai and got a denial.
This needs to be cleared up fast.
> IPCC report was supposed to reflect only
> peer-reviewed science. Not
Bzzzzt! "what about the use of non-P-R material? This seems to have been one of those things that everyone knows that turns out to be false. The IPCC *is* allowed to use non-P-R literature. perhaps it shouldn't be; I don't much care, as long as the literature is of good quality. But the WWF report should not have been used...."
doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/ipcc_use_of_non-peer_reviewed.php
pointing to an original primary source:
doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf
Dang. Perhaps it's time for science writers to keep track of every fact or fact-like statement and have a citation to a source handy to support them?
Because what everyblogger knew was wrong, on this.
Please don't strip out the URLs, I've gutted them sufficiently they can't cause you any problem.
But I figure I owe it to you to cite _my_ sources.
Recently departed news commentator Paul Harvey was fond of dredging up some peer-reviewed monograph or other, such as a Minnesota grad student inferring through three years of obsessive owl-pellet collection and dissection, cocommittent data logging and exhaustive statistical dataset reduction that during the period 1976 to 1978 most northern Minnesotan barn owls ate mostly voles, as evidence that publicly-funded science is a scam. "Any farm boy could tell you that, and without that fancy grant," (he would purr into the satellite-linked microphone from his palatial country estate.)
Paul Harvey never really thought of himself as a scientist, even when he spent his journalistic career nailing down citation sources, revising conclusions to fit data, and conferring with fellow journalists to seek to disprove or else reproduce a report before taking it public.
That's because when persuading or educating, it's never sufficient to recite tables of data; the masses do not listen unless you hook them, pitch them and then deliver the payoff. It's all about storytelling. Paul Harvey was a topnotch storyteller and must have looked aghast at science's feeble, deliberately hesitant approach to applying narrative to fact; it would have struck him as terribly insincere. One established the facts, then one sold the story as boldly and assuredly as possible in Paul's world.
Somewhere between an Irish bard and a carnie barker stands the frontman of a modern informational enterprise, granted a period varying between the evening and the moment to deliver his message to a passing audience. Like Paul Harvey he has to be careful of his details, bold and assured, and always ready to field a question or an attack wherever his story happens to hang at the time.
Making up details does and doesn't work in a storytelling environment. If your audience knows the story as well as you do, every change stands out like an extra Magi at the Nativity. Yet if you win over the audience with sheer technique, Morty The Fourth Wiseman becomes a popular story all on its own.
We call this second successful approach "spinning a yarn" because that's what people used to do while listening to bards -- they spun yarn. Yarn starts as a few loose bits of fluff that align, twist on other bits and solidify into something too tough to break. The most skilled bards never told the story twice the same, yet no question or heckle could break that night's yarn.
From this standpoint the IPCC stands caught redhanded -- they spun a frazzled yarn. Morty The Galloping Glacier edged into their narrative and it broke under heckle, oops.
This is being forgiven because every bard trips up sometimes, especially one who got his job because he's somebody's cousin.
But there's another term for spinning a yarn, and I must warn you it upsets most people -- bullshitting. Let's shorten than to "BS". What the IPCC did was unload BS on the trusting public. If your culture leans more to punishing BS than forgiving frazzled yarns, you stand on the side of firing that BS-ing SOB PDQ, not copping him a bye.
So was this a crime against facts, a crime against trust, a mistake to improve on or an artifact of the human learning process? Somebody ought to do a three-year study....
Links aren't allowed here, but the title of the post is "EXCLUSIVE: UN scientist refutes Daily Mail claim he said Himalayan glacier error was politically motivated"
(And here's a link they probably won't strip out: j.mp/7yGvrK).
Also, for those who want to read more about the actual evidence on the Himalayan glaciers, go to my new site: Not in 2035 (notin2035.com).
I'm trying to collect the best data available, and also give examples of papers in the scientific literature that repeated the IPCC's mistakes, with the aim of helping the scientific community correct itself in some way.
1) journalism is NOT peer review. But could point to weaknesses in the use of data that deserve followup
2) IPCC acknowledges it did not rely exclusively on peer reviewed data for its climate assessments--as it also acknowledges it should have
3) we all need to be vigilant in proofing/truthing conclusions in supposedly authoritative documents on which we will be basing substantive national or global policy.
And yes, Science News tried unsuccessfully to reach Dr. Lal yesterday. But will keep trying.
The article here reported on Rose's newspaper story but the headline and text sounded like -- and it's being cited by major news outlets as
climateprogress.org/2010/01/25/un-scientist-refutes-daily-mail-claim-himalayan-glacier-2035-ipcc-mistake-not-politically-motivated/#more-17890
a claim about what Lai said, not a story about what Rose says Lai said.
That's burying the lede, and places like US News love being able to cite YOU -- a good known reliable source-- for this.
And -- this matters! ---> "should" from the IPCC is future tense -- they should start limiting their work to peer-reviewed sources, they said. Yes.
The IPCC did not say the WGII chapter 6 authors "should have" -- past tense, -- limited their work only to peer-reviewed sources, under the rules published.
BIG DIFFERENCE between "should" -- because they screwed up -- and "should have under the rules at the time -- for the FAR WGII, as cited above, the official statement documents how they can use sources other than peer-reviewed.
William Connolley is certainly right to say they should not use, and should not have used, that particular source -- because it was wrong.
But it was within the rules to use non-peer-reviewed sources; the WGII chapter 6 screwup was using an unreliable one.
I am a longtime fan, a subscriber to Sciencenews solely because of your writing, which I think is well above the standard both for the magazine and for science journalism in particular.
You've got to make the judgment call here. But if I were in your position I'd feel like standing up tall and proud and saying "I screwed up, and I want everyone to know it, so this doesn't go any farther -- I hold myself to a higher standard than my own editors do."
Well, I'll probably never get on your friends list. I've p'o'd quite a few science journalists over the years nitpicking, with the best intent possible, far smaller mistakes.
Please think of me as a friendly primate offering grooming, not a nasty pest trying to do you harm, by nitpicking. I'm not going to do a Joe Romm on you or anyone else-- but I'm asking, please, try to go way above the minimum here. Catch this story and fix it.
Sciencenews is not an "entertainment niche magazine" like New Scientist (that's what they told me anyhow, they don't do corrections or errata). Sciencenews is better than NS for that reason. I've said that many places.
And at Sciencenews, you're at a higher level. You've always been a very reliable source.
Part of being a reliable source is quickly showing the world how to deal with this kind of situation.
Citing Sciencenews as their source
guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/25/world-glacier-monitoring-service-figures
"Glaciers across the globe are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) said today...."
(hat tip to 'Joe Blow' over at Stoat)
excerpt follows:
Complex and shifting Himalayan glacier changes point to complex and shifting climate driving processes
Why this presentation was produced.
--A series of media and science errors has produced confusion about the actual state of Himalayan glaciers (slides 40-42).
--Some errors exaggerate the rate of melting, and others go the other way and errantly claim climatic insensitivity of glaciers.
--A planned NASA press conference (which occurred Dec. 14*) appeared likely to reproduce and reinforce some of those errors, and this had to be avoided.
--The lead author of this presentation was asked to join the press conference as a guest panelist (not part of the team whose work was to be featured).
--A nuanced perspective on Himalayan glaciers, and the effects of glacier changes on water resources and other matters, is necessary; reality is complex. Oversimplification, exaggeration, or ignoring serious matters can be consequential.
--An expert team has been assembled to build the case and buttress statements by Kargel that the glaciers will not disappear by 2035, but that they are melting rapidly in some areas and responding differently to climate change in other areas of the Himalaya/Hindu Kush (including some glacier advances).
--This effort has expanded now to present a more complete view for the benefit of scientists as well as the media and public.....
The headline refers to a "mistake" and claims this mistake was not made by accident.
What was the mistake and what is the basis for this headline claim? Your article is unclear on this.
To a reader somewhat familiar with some of the issues, your article seems to conflate the following, some of which are fairly innocuous and some of which are very grave:
1. knowing the WWF report was not peer-reviewed, but putting it in the report;
2. knowing WWF was not the source for the text as reproduced;
3. knowing "2035" could not be backed up by peer-reviewed literature;
4. knowing there were no solid data to back up the "2035";
5. knowing "2035" was an outright mistake or simply made up, but putting it in the report;
If you agree, please consider revising or retracting this article.
Yes, the short WG II case study on the Himalayan glaciers is very poorly written. I think this is a serious problem.
People are naturally inclined to speculate how this could slip between the cracks the way it did, as if noone ever remembered to come back to their "notes" and actually *write* the text.
Conspiracy theories seem to be all the rage these days, so some will be inclined to speculate that the "2035" error was put in on purpose, to overstate the glacier loss rate; some will be inclined to speculate that this overstatement was made to generate more alarm; some will speculate it was done to make the IPCC look bad.
We're all human, and it's all very understandable that we want to try to understand how mistakes happen, understand what they mean.
But, doesn't a science news magazine need to help organize this kind of thinking, on this issue, *somewhat*? Draw distinctions where these are needed (or at least call attention to the need), so as help identify the signal in all the noise threatening to deafen us?
First blurring the lines among the issues on the numbered list above and then calling for some kind of investigation seems somehow upside-down.
Thanks.
The problem SN faces is this: Rose said Lal admitted to politically-motivated reasons for including the 2035 date. JR contacted Lal, and Lal claimed that Rose invented those quotes, thus relegating them to the category of fiction or lying.
Mr. Lal's denial now stands opposed to Mr. Rose's claimed quotes. SN cannot go ahead and say "Oh, well, we made a mistake." SN is actually in a worse position, because with diametrically opposed fact claims, and with no evidence to support the fact claims of either Mr. Rose or Mr. Lal except their own statements, SN cannot make any judgment as to what is true or false in this case. Someone has to come forward either with independent evidence that Rose lied to his readership or that Lal lied to JR. Until then, SN is just stuck with the opposed facts and not much more.
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