Daisy chain
Mark Steyn reviews the history of the melting glaciers:
“We’re facing the risk of extreme runoff, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it. A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia — the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze — where three billion people live. That’s almost half the world’s population.” And NASA agrees, and so does the UN Environment Programme, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Wildlife Fund, and the respected magazine the New Scientist. The evidence is, like, way disproportionate.
But where did all these experts get the data from? Well, NASA’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers “may disappear altogether” by 2030 rests on one footnote, citing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.
In fact, the Fourth Assessment Report suggests 2035 as the likely arrival of Armageddon, but what’s half a decade between scaremongers? They rate the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing as “very high” — i.e., more than 90 per cent. And the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for that report, so it must be kosher, right? Well, yes, its Himalayan claims rest on a 2005 World Wildlife Fund report called “An Overview of Glaciers.”
WWF? Aren’t they something to do with pandas and the Duke of Edinburgh? True. But they wouldn’t be saying this stuff if they hadn’t got the science nailed down, would they? The WWF report relies on an article published in the New Scientist in 1999 by Fred Pearce.
That’s it? One article from 12 years ago in a pop-science mag? Oh, but don’t worry, back in 1999 Fred did a quickie telephone interview with a chap called Syed Hasnain of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. And this Syed Hasnain cove presumably knows a thing or two about glaciers.
Well, yes. But he now says he was just idly “speculating”; he didn’t do any research or anything like that.
But so what? His musings were wafted upwards through the New Scientist to the World Wildlife Fund to the IPCC to a global fait accompli: the glaciers are disappearing. Everyone knows that. You’re not a denier, are you? India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, says there was not “an iota of scientific evidence” to support the 2035 claim. Yet that proved no obstacle to its progress through the alarmist establishment. Dr. Murari Lal, the “scientist” who included the 2035 glacier apocalypse in the IPCC report, told Britain’s Mail on Sunday that he knew it wasn’t based on “peer-reviewed science” but “we thought we should put it in” — for political reasons.
But wait. AGW is an established fact — except for the facts that aren’t so well established.
February 8th, 2010 at 7:46 am
Your cause was never based on scientific principles. It rests, instead, on a bedrock of right-wing, libertarian politics. (Mark Steyn himself has filled in for Rush Limbaugh and been given a prize by Roger Ailes — no bias there!) Self-serving “skeptics” instinctively dislike suggestions that we need to curb our profligate lifestyles and so seek ways to discredit those who promote such action. Thus deniers nitpick at evidence and recoil in horror when a single mistake is uncovered in a huge IPCC report. A vast regiment of scientists, including dozens of Nobel prize winners have made it very clear they believe there is a real danger to our planet if humanity fails to limit its output of greenhouse gases. You accuse these scientists of cherry-picking evidence – that is rich coming from a member of the climate denial camp that does little else but carefully select minute discrepancies in reports but which has shown scant ability to muster a coherent scientific argument of its own. Are you really saying that if we develop new technologies, such as solar, wind, and tidal power plants, in order to wean ourselves from the use of fossil fuels, that we will directly harm ourselves? What utter nonsense. On political grounds alone, it is simple common sense to reduce our consumption of gas and oil supplies which are controlled, in many cases, by Russia, the Middle East and Venezuela.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:09 am
As for the glacier issue, here’s an eyewitness account:
The truth is such an interesting thing – where more often than not, it is a human tendency for a person to believe what they want to hear. I pose a question to all people who are jumping on the bandwagon of denying the Himalayan glacier melt due to an error made by the IPCC, and denying the existence of climate change. How many of you have been to the Himalayas? How many of you have spoken to the citizens in the mountains of India and Nepal who have spent their whole lives there?
I do not say this to accuse anyone of being a immoral or irresponsible, however before we make accusatory remarks and write articles of great consequence, we must get our facts straight. I am not a climate scientist, economist, business person or a politician. However I have been to the Himalayas and met some of its people.
I was up near Haridwar, at the foot of the Himalaya’s in northern India only weeks ago, speaking to friends and colleagues who have grown up in the mountains their entire lives. Every single person spoke with sadness at how quickly the glaciers have receded in their lifetime. Some mentioned to me how many of them have had to move homes in search of better soil, because the melting glaciers have meant changes in water access and there for loss of agricultural productivity. For those of you who are farmers, I’m sure you can understand how painful that process can be.
It’s not only a problem of ice disappearing in the mountains, and sea levels rising. For us in India our major rivers are dependent on the Himalayas, our monsoons are dependent on the Himalayas. Although it is great they won’t disappear by 2035, even the current rate of change is going to be problematic due to the imbalances it creates.
We all make mistakes – we are humans. And if we’re going to focus on the IPCC’s mistake of overestimating the speed of the glacier melt, then we should also focus on the major understimations made by the IPCC on the melting rate of Greenland and the Western Antartic ice shelfs.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Your religious fervor is very sad, Steve.
You have made a series of egregious mistakes in each of your posts. Each of them would be funny, hilarious, rolling on the floor, side-splitting funny, if not for the sadness of your Global Warming RELIGIOUS FERVOR.
The silliness about melting glaciers is only ONE of a very large number of “mistakes” in the politico-religious rag called the IPCC report.
You also make the usual, expected, attacks on the messenger that devout, global warming fanatics alway make.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Steve,
Then let’s do what we used to do as kids when we couldn’t agree on something: let’s call a do-over. Have your team bring out all the information they have to make their case. Since they’ve done it once, it shouldn’t take more than several months to lay out all the information including all the source material, all the formulations and the models. (In case someone thinks the credit for the models will be stolen or not given to the right people, all information and formulas will be atested to and witnessed by some independent third party.) All of the material will be available to anyone who wants to review the information. Then, we’ll give those reviewers the same amount of time to verify the findings and conclusions your team makes.
If these findings can be duplicated and if–as you and they believe–global warming exists and man is the cause, then your side wins. They get all the kudos and dollars fior research that they need to correct this problem.
On the other hand, if man is not the cause of global warming, then everyone who applied for federal funds and knowingly misrepresented the data to get or keep those funds, will be arrested for fraud and tried in federal court. Any who went for private funds will be required to pay it back.
Sound like a plan?
February 9th, 2010 at 3:55 am
Sorry, Steve. The burden of proof lies with the liars. I’m not willing to disrupt my life for something liars say might be happening. Boy, wolf, you know the story.
I’m sure you took a Windjammer to India and trekked to the Himalayan foothills. Or hitched a ride with Al Gore, because captain carbon was headed that way…
February 9th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Steve, C’mon fess up, your being sarcastic right. You have to be. Nobody really says stuff like that anymore, do they? I have to admit I fell for it in your earlier comments, but this is just obvious sarcasm. I have to admit , you had me though for a while. Funny guy.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trillion by 2050: report
Fri, Feb 5 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.
“Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs,” said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called “Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away.”
He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world’s great weather makers.
“The Arctic is the planet’s air conditioner and it’s starting to break down,” he said.
The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.
The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.
Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun’s energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels.
While much of Europe and the United States has suffered heavy snowstorms and unusually low temperatures this winter, evidence has built that the Arctic is at risk from warming.
Greenhouse gases generated by tailpipes and smokestacks have pushed Arctic temperatures in the last decade to the highest levels in at least 2,000 years, reversing a natural cooling trend, an international team of researchers reported in the journal Science in September.
Arctic emissions of methane have jumped 30 percent in recent years, scientists said last month.
Thin ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a powerful ice-melt next summer, a top U.S. climate scientist said this week.
And early findings from a major research project in Canada involving more than 370 scientists from 27 countries showed on Friday that climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice.
Goodstein’s study did not look at worst-case scenarios Arctic melting could have, such as warmer temperatures that trigger massive releases of crystallized methane formations in Arctic soils and ocean beds known as methane hydrates. It also did not look at sea ice erosion troubling people in the Arctic.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:22 am
You really have no idea how stupid you make yourself look on the is tread, Steve. But not just stupid, you look STONE COLD STUPID. Quoting garbage like you did on February 9th, 2010 at 5:37 pm, really makes you look STUPID.
But, then maybe you are being sarcastic right, as bagoh2o Says on February 9th, 2010 at 12:06 pm. That actually makes more sense – I have a hard time believing anyone would actually be as stupid as you make yourself look. You must be out to discredit warmists and show them as the fools they are. In that case, WELL DONE; GOOD JOB; you have made warmists look look like FOOLS!.