Glaciergate – still a long way from the truth

Evidence is building that IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers were going to melt by 2035 was not only a deliberate fraud, but efforts were made to cover it up when the figure was challenged.

Some of the pieces of the jigsaw are already there in the public domain, starting with Ben Webster's piece in The Times on Saturday – which we analysed in this post. This made it clear that Rajendra Pachauri was appraised of what he now claims was a "mistake" by an Indian science journalist, last November.

But the story is taken further by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times today, under the heading: "Panel ignored warnings on glacier error". There, he reports that the leaders of the IPCC had known for weeks and probably months about the "error" and had even convened private conferences to discuss it.

Although he refers to the last of such conferences, which was hosted by TERI in Delhi last month (28 December), there is no mention of the fact that this was organised by the United Nations Environment Programme, the sponsoring body for the IPCC itself.

Although it was a pre-planned meeting, it turned rapidly into a crisis "workshop" of international glaciologists, which decided that, "the IPCC conclusion that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 may have to be revised ... ", adding that: "there appears to be no scientific foundation for the IPCC's prediction for the year 2035."

Although Rajedra Pachauri is not listed as an attendee, his senior glaciologist, Syed Hasnain was there, and so was professor Murari Lal, one of the lead authors of the glaciers section of the IPCC report. In all, there were fifteen TERI personnel at the workshop, including Hasnain, and TERI University is cited as a collaborator in the production of the subsequent report (cover illustrated).

Given that the meeting was actually held in the TERI offices, with so many TERI personnel there, it is inconceivable that Pachauri – director general of TERI and chairman of the IPCC – was not appraised of its findings, especially given the importance of the issue.

Apart from the implications for the IPCC, what may of course have been preoccupying Pachauri was that, on 15 January, there was to be a high-profile launch of the collaborative programme on glacier research, funded by the Carnegie Corporation, at which the president of Iceland, Dr Ólafur Grímsson, was to be the star guest.

It takes little imagination to surmise that Pachauri would not want to be embroiled in a controversy over glaciers with such a prestigious event in the offing – especially, as we see from Carnegie grant statement that the research project was based on Hasnain's false claim that glaciers "will vanish within forty years as a result of global warming … resulting in widespread water shortages."

This brings us to Hansain himself, who was leader of the TERI glaciology team. Building on our work on the timeline of Hasnain's claims, Leake makes it abundantly clear that not only were Hasnain's claims false, but he knew them to be so.

In particular, as party to the Sagamatha study which was concluded in June 2004, Hasnain had signed up to the conclusions that suggestions the region's glaciers might soon melt "would seem unfounded".

That Hansain persisted in his false claims, right up until September 2009, and then sought to defend the IPCC claim in the face of Raina's report published in November 2009, is to say the very least, perverse – more so when the leader of the Sagarmatha survey, Gwyn Rees, had re-emphasised in May 2009 that, "It is unlikely that all glaciers will vanish by 2035!"

With Hasnain by then employed by Dr Pachauri's TERI, and reliant on grant-funded work from the Carnegie Corporation and the EU "High Noon" programme – which had been initiated on the basis of Hasnain's false 2035 claim – there is a very obvious motive for Dr Hasnain to keep the controversy out of the limelight.

Thus it was that only after the falsehood had been "outed" by Leake on 17 January, that Pachauri began to acknowledge that there was a problem, but then very grudgingly. Two days after the Leake report, all he would concede was: "Theoretically, let's say we slipped up on one number ...".

With Hasnain claiming he was "misquoted" – which was never the case - and Pachauri maintaining that the inclusion of the figure was a mistake, this has all the hallmarks of a clumsy cover-up which continues to this day.

Exposing the Pachauri lie is lead author professor Murari Lal who told the UNEP workshop back in December, "that it was wrong to assume, as has been done in sections of media that the year 2035 had crept in the report by mistake" (see inset, above right).

Yet even to this day, the IPCC is still talking about an "error", thus perpetrating the lie, and concealing from the public that false information was deliberately included in the IPCC report. "Glaciergate", it seems, still has a long way to go before we get to the truth.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

The Great Glacier Show – Part II

Continuing with the Pachauri-Hasnain "great glacier show", to which we introduced our avid readers yesterday, already we have seen significant developments which are set to make this a best selling saga.

In that first piece, we revealed that, to investigate fears of retreating glaciers in the Himalayas, raised largely by Syed Hasnain, the British government in 2001 funded a major field study code-named "Sagarmatha". We now learn that the sponsoring department, the Department For International Development (DFID), paid a cool (if you will forgive the use of that word) £315,277 of taxpayers' money for the work.

As we recall, that study, which reported in June 2004, found that the threat, that all of the region's glaciers may soon disappear, "would seem unfounded" and that "the catastrophic water shortages forecast by some experts are unlikely to happen for many decades, if at all." However, despite that, Syed Hasnain, continued to claim that the glaciers were shortly to disappear.

Not least, his claims appeared in the New Scientist on 8 May 2004, which stated thus:

THE great rivers of northern India and Pakistan will run strongly for the next 40 years and then die away, bringing flood followed by famine. That was the grim message last week from the first decade-by-decade forecast for the rivers that drain the huge glaciers of the Himalayas.

The problem is global warming, which has already increased glacier melting by up to 30 per cent. "But after 40 years, most of the glaciers will be wiped out and then we will have severe water problems," says Syed Iqbal Hasnain of Calicut University, Kerala, reporting the results of a three-year study by British, Indian and Nepalese researchers.

The study finds the biggest impact in Pakistan, where the Indus irrigates half the country's crops. Flows here could double before crashing to less than half current levels by the end of the century. But the declining flows predicted for the Ganges will also throw into disarray a vast Indian government scheme to avoid drought by diverting water from the country's glacier-fed northern rivers to the arid south.

What we now learn is that these wholly unsubstantiated claims were comprehensively rebutted by the lead scientist of the project, Gwyn Rees, in a letter to the New Scientist on 5 June 2004. Under the heading: "No floods, no famine," Rees wrote as follows:

As lead author of the report referred to in your article on glaciers in the Himalayas, I was shocked that the results of our three-year study could be so grossly misrepresented (8 May, p 7). As our report "An assessment of the potential impacts of deglaciation on the water resources of the Himalayas" concludes, the widespread perception that the region's glaciers will disappear within 40 years is ill-founded.

In many areas, water shortages are unlikely to happen for many decades - if at all. Some areas may benefit from increased water availability in the medium term. Catchments where glacial meltwater contributes significantly to the run-off, such as the upper Indus, appear to be most vulnerable to deglaciation. Eastern Himalayan catchments, benefiting from high summer monsoon precipitation, are less susceptible.

At no time did we suggest there would be a higher incidence of flooding, that famine would occur, or that an Indian government water-transfer scheme would be thrown "into disarray". The individual quoted in the article, though a member of our study team, clearly presented his personal view of the situation.

A clearer put-down of Hasnain's alarmism would be hard to find yet, as we record in our first piece, Hasnain continued making his baseless claims. And, in the next episode, we will see that he was still making the claims – or supporting them – into December 2009.

As it stands, therefore, the British government (i.e., British taxpayers) shelled out £315,277 to disprove Hasnain's claims. But, when WG II of the IPCC came to consider the issue of melting glaciers – funded by British taxpayers to the tune of £1,436,162 – it ignored the Sagarmatha report (which had also been written up in a per-reviewed journal) and went with Hasnain's not only baseless but also discredited claim.

The background to this, and subsequent developments, are now the subject of an ongoing investigation by The Sunday Times, the results of which will be published this weekend.

PACHAURI THREAD

The glacier show – a comedy in many parts

To investigate fears of retreating glaciers in the Himalayas, the British government in 2001 funded a major field study code-named "Sagarmatha". Reporting in June 2004, it found that the threat, that all of the region's glaciers may soon disappear, "would seem unfounded" and that "the catastrophic water shortages forecast by some experts are unlikely to happen for many decades, if at all."

Of the "experts" who were forecasting catastrophe, by far the most vocal was Dr Sayed Hasnain, the scientist currently at the centre of the "Galciergate" storm. Yet, days before the British government report was officially published, Hasnain was telling the media – including the New Scientist - that "... after 40 years, most of the glaciers will be wiped out and then we will have severe water problems."

This was despite the fact that Dr Hasnain had assisted the Sagarmatha team and was aware of its findings. And, when the IPCC Working Group II came to write up the section on Himalayan glaciers, it ignored the Sagarmatha report in preference to Dr Hasnain's alarmism – dating back to 1999 - despite it having been discredited by the more recent British study, which had been commissioned in response to that self-same alarmism.

Ironically, Working Group II was also funded by the British government (Defra) from a grant of £1,436,162, which included support for the chair of WGII, Professor Martin Parry, formerly a Met Office climate scientist and currently at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

A key figure in this drama, however, is Dr Syed Hasnain (pictured right) whose climate "activism" goes back to 1999 and the now infamous article in the Indian environmental magazine, Down to Earth which was published on 30 April 1999 and subsequently on the India environmental portal. Under the title "Glaciers beating retreat", it was here that there is the first public record of the claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

We know now that this was seen by environmental journalist Fred Pearce, who according to his own account telephoned Hasnain to check with him that he had not been misquoted and then incorporated the 2035 figure in his own article in the New Scientist on 5 June 1999. An abstract of the same report is to be found in the London Evening Standard on 3 June under the headline: "Glaciers to 'melt by 2035'."

That, though, was by no means the full extent of Dr Hasnain's contribution to climate alarmism that year. In August 1999, he was in Birmingham University, England, addressing an international meeting of the members of the World Meteorological Organisation's commission on snow and ice. His speech was trailed by The Times and, although this does not appear to be online, it is replicated elsewhere.

It is here that we have a claim that "Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years because of global warming, according to new research" and a report that: "One of the researchers involved, Syed Hasnain, of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, said that studies indicated that the glaciers in the region could be gone by 2035."

Even then, Hasnain has not finished. He pops up on 5 November 1999 in the Christian Science Monitor in a piece entitled: "Glaciers in the Himalayas melting at rapid rate." Under the by-line of Robert Marquand we read:

"Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world," according to a study by the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI). "If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high."

"Even if the waters dry up over 60 to 100 years, that is an eco-disaster of stunning proportions," says Syed Iqbal Hasnain, the head of ICSI, and a leading professor of environment at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

We find Hasnain again on 31 March 2000, this time in The Independent, in a piece headed: "Meltdown in the mountains". The name of the author is of some interest – it is Fred Pearce, who wrote the New Scientist piece in June 1999. This time, less than a year later, we are told:

Mankind has hit the defrost button. By 2035 huge glaciers high in the mountains may no longer exist. Thousands of local people live in fear of drowning in the melt water. Can science do anything to help?

Glaciers cover around one-sixth of the Himalayas. Taken together with Tibet to the north and the Karakorum to the west, this region contains most of the surviving snow and ice outside the polar regions - thousands of cubic kilometres of frozen water, much of it dating back to the last ice age.

But each summer now, more ice and snow melts than is replenished by the monsoons. The glaciers are shrinking. The story of the extent of their demise has been slow to get out. Up here, far from roads and power lines and science labs, much of the information on the state of these glaciers has been anecdotal. But, as scientists begin to collate data, a picture is emerging of meltdown on the roof of the world.

Syed Hasnain of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi presented the most detailed survey yet to a meeting of glaciologists in Birmingham last August. His four-year study for the UN's International Commission on Snow and Ice concluded: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world. If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by 2035 is very high."

It was a devastating and largely unexpected finding. Only five years ago, glaciologists on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that, even under pessimistic assumptions about global warming, the region's glaciers "should continue to exist into the 22nd century".

The melting of glaciers is emerging as one of the least ambiguous signs of climate change. Amid arcane arguments about the meaning of yearly fluctuations in the weather, it is hard to argue with the wholesale melting of some of the largest glaciers in the world. Mankind, it seems, has hit the defrost button. And while glaciers are thawing out from Peru to the Alps, from Kenya to New Guinea, nowhere is the meltdown faster than in the Himalayas.

For the next instalment, we have to wait until 13 April 2001, when Hasnain makes another guest appearance, this time in Frontline magazine, from The Hindu stable. There, we are told of the "Glacier meltdown", in a report which cites at length Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Then we get the "money quote":

It is not surprising, therefore, that a perceptible impact of global warming has been in evidence in the Himalayan glaciers over the last few decades. A 1999 report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI), constituted in 1995, 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 is very high."

At this point, the British government has taken a hand, having commissioning the Sagarmatha survey, headed by two British scientists, Gwyn Rees and David Collins. Later, Rees is to tell an interviewer that, "having heard alarming predictions of Himalayan glaciers disappearing within the next 40 years," he teamed up with eminent glaciologists "to develop new forecasting techniques which will give us a better understanding of how glaciers are likely to respond as the climate changes."

One of those "eminent glaciologists" was, of course, Dr Syed Hasnain, and in June 2004 Rees and Collins reported that the threat, that all of the region's glaciers may soon disappear, "would seem unfounded" and that "the catastrophic water shortages forecast by some experts are unlikely to happen for many decades, if at all."

There is evidently pre-release publicity because, on 27 April 2004, the Indian Express reports on, "The Great Melt & the Great Thirst", telling us of the survey results, which come "... amid speculation that Himalayan glaciers will disappear over the next 40 years." Says S I Hasnain, Vice Chancellor, University of Calicut, "This information will be vital for policy-makers ... ". No timescale for glacier melting is given.

A day later, however, on 28 April 2004, Hasnain is talking to the Indo-Asian News Service (published in multiple outlets – of which one is linked). Its story is headed: "Glaciers Feeding Indian Rivers May be Wiped Out".

"Glaciers feeding the Ganga, Yamuna, Indus and the Brahmaputra rivers may be wiped out in 40 years," it tells us, with Hasnain saying: "... after 40 years, most of these glaciers will be wiped out and then we will have severe water problems."

And, interestingly, this is followed on 8 May 2004 by a news article – this time without a by-line – in the New Scientist. This, without naming it, refers to the Sagarmatha survey, telling us that "the great rivers of northern India and Pakistan will run strongly for the next 40 years and then die away, bringing flood followed by famine."

The problem is global warming, which has already increased glacier melting by up to 30 percent, said the report, continuing with:

"But after 40 years, most of the glaciers will be wiped out and then we will have severe water problems," says Syed Iqbal Hasnain of Calicut University, Kerala, reporting the results of a three-year study by British, Indian and Nepalese researchers.

This is then followed by another media report on 4 June 2004. Once again we see a reference to Syed Iqbal Hasnain, this time of the International Commission for Snow and Ice: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world. If the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 is very high," he is cited as saying.

Things then seem to go quiet for a while, but the 2035 claim re-appears on 13 December 2006 in a piece headed: "Retreating Glaciers of the Himalayas - Global warming threatens life along the Ganges River".

Thus, we see in the report: The Working Group on Himalayas (WGHG) of the international commission for snow and ice, constituted in 1995, recently affirmed, "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if the present rate continues the likelihood of their disappearing by 2035 is very high." This is evidently recycled news.

Hasnain gets an outing though, two days later on 15 December 2006, yet again in Down to Earth magazine. In "Ice on a slide" we get the full works, the "likely to disappear by 2035.... ", glaciers wiped out in 40 years and a recycled Hasnain quote: "In about 40 years, most of these glaciers will be wiped out and then we will have severe water problems,' says, vice-chancellor of Calicut University, who now apparently led the Sagarmatha study.

By 15 July 2007 Hasnain is widening out his interests, arguing: "It is not just greenhouse gases which are leading to melting glaciers, but it is also increased human activity and development in the Himalayas." He develops this theme in the Financial Express on 9 June 2008. By that time, he is working for Dr Pachauri's TERI and he estimates "that Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 20-30 years."

He repeats that on 16 July 2008, predicting that "the Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 20-30 years because of climate change as well as the Asian Brown Cloud." And that would make many of the great rivers including the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Indus run dry by 2035.

Less than a month later, Hasnain is back in print, this time in a feature by ABC News on 8 August 2008. The river that rushes through the Lahaul-Spiti Valley is fed almost entirely by melt from the surrounding glaciers.

"I've never seen such a high water level in this river," says Syed Hasnain, a senior glaciologist at the Energy Resources Institute who has been visiting the Chhota Shigri glacier for 23 years. "This is 100 percent glacial melt," he adds, standing at the base of the glacier, yelling over the sound of the river. "After 40 years or 50 years, there won't be any flow in this river, and the entire valley will be dried up."

As the piece concludes, we get, in fine apocryphal style: "We are going to be doomed in the future," Hasnain says. The "entire global community will be affected. It's not only the region will be affected." A year later, on 15 April 2009, he is telling the New York Times that "Himalayan glaciers are expected to lose 75 percent of their ice by 2020."

By then, the Carnegie and EU grants are more or less in the bag and on 13-14 May 2009, Hasnain attends an EU-funded seminar. This is addressed by Gwyn Rees who tells his audience – Hasnain included – that it is "Unlikely that all glaciers will vanish by 2035!"

This is almost exactly ten years since Down to Earth published Hasnain's claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, the very claim that Rees was subsequently able to refute, but is now embedded in the IPPC report.

Neither Rees nor Hasnain, in the intervening period, had changed their views. In fact, in September 2009, Hasnain is in the Canadian Globe and Mail where, as "one of India's leading glaciologists", he is said to believe "the Himalayas may be denuded of all snow and ice in as little as 20 years."

On 9 November, however, V K Raina, ex deputy director general of the Geological Survey of India was to publish his report on glaciers, challenging Hasnain's alarmism, now enbodied in the IPCC report. Hasnain is quick to defend the 2035 figure, allowing himself to be styled as "author of the original IPCC report" in Indian NDTV.

Despite the Raina report having been commissioned by Jairam Ramesh, the Indian minister of state for environment & forests, Dr R K Pachauri joins the fray and condemns it as "totally unsubstantiated scientific opinion". Then, in December, he was incautious enough to brand it "voodoo science". Hasnian, meanwhile, in an interview with the BBC, was still supporting the 2035 claim.

Shortly though, the "Glaciergate" storm was about to break, proving Rees was right all along. But Hasnain then is to deny that he ever used the 2035 figure, or made any timed predictions, telling his interviewers that he was not an "astrologer". And, while his view had, at that time, prevailed, so had that irony of the British taxpayer funding the study to knock it down and then to build it back up again.

Even yesterday, though, Hasnain was unrepentant, telling the South Asia Times that it is "ridiculous" to assume that the glaciers are not melting. This was matched by a piece in the Times of India headlined, "Himalayan glaciers here to stay". It told us:

The prediction that glaciers would melt by 2035 by Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain may have landed the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chairman R K Pachauri in a tight spot, but data collected by glaciologists across the Himalayan region shows that such claims do not hold water, and the major rivers originating from the Himalayas would continue to flow for the years to come as the glaciers are going to stay.

Glaciologist Milap Chand Sharma from Jawaharlal Nehru University says after studying 27 glaciers in Lahaul-Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh, he has found that the melting taking place is normal. His conclusion is based on study of the behaviour of glaciers from 1975 to 2008.

The Miyar glacier in Lahaul region covers an area of 27 square km. Since 1971, it has receded by just 150 meters. If it continues to melt at this pace, it would take around 3,000 years for it to melt completely, he added.

You really, really could not make this up. But then, we don't need to when we have Hasnain and Pachauri and their glacier show – a comedy in many parts - to entertain us all.

PACHAURI THREAD

Contradicting themselves

"Rajendra Pachauri ... is, at best, one more blunder away from having to resign its (the IPCC's) chairmanship." That comes from the man we like to describe as the doyen of the warmists, Geoffrey Lean, writing in The Daily Telegraph.

No doubt, we can help Dr R K on his way to a peaceful retirement as, with reckless abandon, he told The Hindu yesterday that the chances of the IPCC having made more errors in its benchmark 2007 report were "minimal if not non-existent", even while admitting the "regrettable error" on the melting glaciers that has raised questions about its credibility.

Although retailed by the newspaper, the actual text comes from a press release, issued by TERI, offering in Q&A form the observations of R K Pachauri on the affair. This is helpfully reproduced, in full, on this website.

Not used by The Hindu are his comments on the funding obtained by TERI for its glaciology work, where this section is volunteered by Pachauri:

Q8) There have been views that your institute has gained from the alarmist situation created to rope in projects worth billions of dollars?

Research on Climate Change in TERI goes as far as back as 1987 – before the IPCC had been formed. Our work on glaciers started two years ago recognising the need for greater field based data generation and modelling. The IPCC report has also pointed out the need for more research in these areas.

Q9) What is TERI’s research on Glaciers?

The project on Himalayan glacier quoted by the media (Hi Noon) is an EU funded project under the FP7 programme. TERI participated in this competitive bid as one partner in a consortium of institutions led by a European institution and involves several other Indian institutions including IIT Delhi and Kharagpur. Each institute has a well defined role and TERI is addressing the issue of socio-economic impact assessment

Q10) What work is TERI doing with Government of Iceland?

The Global Centre, Iceland received support from Carnegie Foundation for glacier related work. Our collaboration with this Centre is for the purpose of training and teaching in glaciology.

The "billions of dollars" assertion is, of course, an invention, but we see an acknowledgement that TERI is receiving "support" both from the EU and (implied) from the Carnegie Corporation. Here the answer in Q10 is particularly interesting as it claims that the collaboration is "for the purpose of" – i.e., limited to "training and teaching in glaciology."

This makes quite a dramatic contrast with the statements made in a press release, again by TERI, on 15 January 2009 on the Global Centre collaboration, where it states that:

Under this collaboration, senior scientists from the respective countries will carry expeditions in the Himalayas. The collaboration, which is its early stage, will be funded primarily by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The press release goes on to say that:

TERI has initiated the establishment of Glacier Monitoring Observatories at Kolahoi Glacier, Jammu and Kashmir and another at East Rathong Glacier, Sikkim. These two glaciers are being monitored with the state-of-art scientific instruments on a regular basis for various parameters like Energy Balance, Mass Balance and Hydrological Balance for the glacierized region.

A certain Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain is also quoted freely in the press release, which records his presence at a meeting between Dr R K Pachauri and Iceland president, Dr Ólafur Grímsson, to celebrate the start of collaboration.

Yet, it will be recalled that Hasnain, in his TV debate with me claimed that all the funding for his glaciology work came from TERI and that there was no "outside funding". He rejected as a "wild allegation" my assertions that funding came from the EU and the Carnegie Corporation.

It seems to me that both Hasnain and RK Pachauri need to get their acts together and read their own press releases. At the moment, they are contradicting themselves – this is the blunder that could bring them both down.

PACHAURI THREAD