More Shaky Climate Data

Is there such a thing as proof of man-made global warming? Along with Climategate, it looks like all the dire things we've been hearing about the melting ice caps was so much political hay as well.

A warning that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035

Serious stuff indeed. How, pray tell, did these distinguished scientists come to this conclusion? By reading an eight-year-old article in Scientific American, of course:

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

Wait though, it gets better:

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research.

It's gotten to the point that any claims of impending climate doom have the distinct ring of a boy crying wolf. Baseless speculation is being wrapped in a veneer of truth and presented as settled scientific fact. The backlash against the climate change movement has been there almost from the start, but it's starting to gain steam. It's going to be a tsunami before it's done.


(Times Online link via The American Interest)