World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

gizmo555

djpbarry wrote: »

You don’t think that’s blowing things out of proportion ever so slightly? If that were the case, wouldn’t their ‘Summary for Policy Makers’ be littered with exaggerations?

No. For example, the totally spurious claims regarding the risk of near term crop failures in North Africa were included in the synthesis report and were cited by Pachauri in a speech in 2008 and by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in a speech last year. In that light, it is I think disingenuous of you to imply as you do that exaggerations are only really significant if they are in the summary for policy makers.

I would refer you again to comments by past IPCC chairman Watson, who I would suggest is better qualified to judge than either of us:

Watson said such claims [about a claimed risk of a 50% reduction in rain-fed crop yields in North Africa] should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.

"The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact. That is worrying. The IPCC needs to look at this trend in the errors and ask why it happened."

Or to put in the vernacular, once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action . . .

“We should always be challenged by sceptics. The IPCC’s job is to weigh up the evidence. If it can’t be dismissed, it should be included in the report. Point out it’s in the minority and, if you can’t say why it’s wrong, just say it’s a different view.”

He [Watson] said that the next report should acknowledge that some scientists believed the planet was warming at a much slower rate than has been claimed by the majority of scientists.

(The implication here is that up to now the IPCC has not been duly acknowledging the full spectrum of reasoned expert opinions on AGW and climate change.)

djpbarry

gizmo555 wrote: »

No. For example, the totally spurious claims regarding the risk of near term crop failures in North Africa were included in the synthesis report and were cited by Pachauri in a speech in 2008 and by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in a speech last year. In that light, it is I think disingenuous of you to imply as you do that exaggerations are only really significant if they are in the summary for policy makers.

Maybe we should consider what the IPCC actually published with regard to this particular claim (emphasis mine):

In other countries, additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-2020 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003).

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter9.pdf

Compare this to what Jonathan Leake wrote in The Times:

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017907.ece

Not the same thing at all.

gizmo555 wrote: »

I would refer you again to comments by past IPCC chairman Watson, who I would suggest is better qualified to judge than either of us:

Watson said such claims [about a claimed risk of a 50% reduction in rain-fed crop yields in North Africa] should be based on hard evidence.

The very first paragraph of section 9.4 in AR4-WGII reads as follows (again, emphasis mine):

Having provided some background on existing sensitivities/vulnerabilities generated by a range of factors, including climate stress, some of the impacts and vulnerabilities that may arise under a changing climate in Africa, using the various scenarios and model projections as guides, are presented for various sectors. Note that several authors (e.g., Agoumi, 2003; Legesse et al., 2003; Conway, 2005, Thornton et al., 2006) warn against the over-interpretation of results, owing to the limitations of some of the projections and models used.

gizmo555 wrote: »

"The mistakes all appear to have gone in the direction of making it seem like climate change is more serious by overstating the impact. "

Now this is just being disingenuous – what sort of mistakes do you suppose Jonathan Leake is searching for?

gizmo555 wrote: »

He [Watson] said that the next report should acknowledge that some scientists believed the planet was warming at a much slower rate than has been claimed by the majority of scientists.

(The implication here is that up to now the IPCC has not been duly acknowledging the full spectrum of reasoned expert opinions on AGW and climate change.)

Yes, we’ve seen these sort of claims before, yet the evidence reflecting the ‘full spectrum’ of scientific opinion is not forthcoming – why is that?

Mahatma coat

heres another Glacier Story
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/giant-iceberg-could-change-weather-patterns/story-e6frfku0-1225834633227

AN iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said.

While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said.

The 2550 sq km block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160km spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne, researchers said.

Some 400m thick, the iceberg could fill Sydney Harbour more than 100 times over.

It could also disturb the area's exceptionally rich biodiversity, including a major colony of emperor penguins near Dumont d'Urville, site of a French scientific station, according to the scientists.

"The ice tongue was almost broken already. It was hanging like a loose tooth,'' French glaciologist Benoit Legresy said.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

Mr Legresy has been monitoring the Metz Glacier via satellite images and on the ground for a decade in cooperation with Australian scientists.

The billion-tonne mass was dislodged by another, older iceberg, known as B9B, which split off in 1987.

Jammed against the Antarctic continent for more than 20 years, B9B smashed into the Metz tongue like a slow-motion battering ram after it began to drift.

Both natural cycles and manmade climate change contribute to the collapse ice shelves and glaciers.

Tide and ocean currents constantly beat against exposed areas, while longer summers and rising temperatures also take a toll.

"Obviously when there is warmer water, these ice tongues will become more fragile,'' Mr Legresy said.

Since breaking off, the iceberg - along with the newly mobile B9B, which is about the same size - have moved into an ajoining area called a ploynya.

Distributed across the Southern Ocean, ploynyas are zones that produce dense water, super cold and rich in salt, that sinks to the bottom of the sea and drives the conveyor-belt like circulation around the globe.

If these icebergs move east and run aground, or drift north into warmer climes, they will have no impact on these currents.

"But if they stay in this area - which is likely - they could block the production of this dense water, essentially putting a lid on the polynya,'' Mr Legresy explained.

The Metz Glacier Polynya is particularly strong and accounts for 20 per cent of the "bottom water'' in the world, he added.

Eventually, the icebergs will die a natural death, but their lifespan depends on where they go.

Adrift, they could melt in a could of decades. If they remain lodged against the Antarctic landmass, they could persist far longer.

I think the style of 'reporting' in this article highlights the style of Bias towards worst case hypotethicals we have seen from so many of these Doom mongers.

Which is the most likely situation?

Which will sell the most papers/get the most research money?

bonkey

Mahatma coat wrote: »

I think the style of 'reporting' in this article highlights the style of Bias towards worst case hypotethicals we have seen from so many of these Doom mongers.

Which is the most likely situation?

Which will sell the most papers/get the most research money?

Researchers have been watching this for more than a decade as pointed out in the article you link to.

The newspaper, however, hasn't been constantly reporting it for a decade. It is only interested when something actually happens.There may have been articles in 1989 saying "if B9B does such-and-such, it could knock loose other mammoth icebergs", but since then there's probably been very little. I honestly can't see a news paper regularly reporting that "researchers are still monitoring B9B and the MGT, although nothing has changed since we last reported".

As for research grants....I don't see how a newspaper has any effect on that. The stuff was being researched, is being researched, and will continue to be researched.

mike65

bump

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains

The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern.

"Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year," said Prof John Wahr of the University of Colorado. "People should be just as worried about the melting of the world's ice as they were before."

djpbarry

I think this thread has run its course. Further discussion of climate change may take place in the appropriate mega-thread.