57 Comments

1. jr:

This why thw wole of the UN establishment is a criminal organization. They have evolved into an organization of extortion for their own benefit. If these guys were Bernie Ebbers they would be in prison for 25 years. Perhaps it is time to put these into prison.

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:08 am 2. johnt:

What’s three hundred years between liberals.
Also, every one makes mistakes.

And last, what a shame that Al Gore had the 2000 election stolen from him, look at all we have lost because of it.

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:08 am 3. Joe k:

Wow I was sweating a little thinking all my snow would be gone. We are experiencing great skiing and snowboarding out west, Must be that global warming doing it again. When will these wackos shut up and let us live our lives as the Free people we are ment to be!

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:34 am 4. Alex:

For reference, the sources are:

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001065/106523e.pdf (p 66)
http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/AR4/website/10.pdf (p 493)

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:36 am 5. anton:

So we are expected to rely upon the work of people so sloppy that they get one of their prominent claims wrong on the scale of a factor of twelve! Or are they just exercising a little “editorial prerogative” to make their point a little more emphatic? PostModern Science is about sculpting mankind into the shape the elite desire, facts be damned (or massaged).

The other bit I love is that they base the entire thing on a short article, not a research paper, or even one of their vaunted “computer models”. The paper assumed the validity of the “…expected climate warming..” which, as we all know now, is a figment of the imagination of a bunch of larcenous crackpots that do not deserve the title scientist.

Perhaps dear Rajendra Pachauri should check back with Kotlyakov and ask what his assumptions would be if the projected temps followed a different course.

That is if he is serious about the truth of the matter rather than just running the biggest con-game in history.

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:37 am 6. Matthew Weaver:

The whole matter of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is suspect as it has never been subject to review and criticism. Further, Rajendra Pachauri turns out to be the perfect spokesman for AGW, dismissing critics, defending the manipulation of data, and pushing the whole doomsaying of the religion while, from some reports racking up nearly 500,000 air miles going to dinners and cricket matches.

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:45 am 7. Theo Goodwin:

When you are hysterical, you read numbers that way.

These so-called scientists have not a leg to stand on. Their campaign to control the political world through UN control of the environment is crumbling faster than a house of cards.

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:51 am 8. Dana H.:

The entire AGW enterprise appears to be built on confirmation bias. Any alarming claim is not looked at too closely, while any claim that AGW is small to nonexistent is ruthlessly dissected for flaws. Genuine science means ruthlessly questioning *all* the evidence and trying to shoot holes in one’s own hypotheses before advancing them. By this standard, “climate science” (as currently practiced) is an oxymoron.

Dec 1, 2009 - 11:54 am 9. paul_unalaska:

Whomever the Climategate leak is, when will he or she be getting their Nobel?

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:02 pm 10. bgates:

Do you really want to condemn our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren to a life without the joy of knowing there’s a lot of snow and ice in the mountains on the other side of the planet?

Granted, neither you nor I have children. But I don’t think that diminishes the validity of my point.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:06 pm 11. ic:

C’mon, don’t tie yourself into knots with a stupid typo. Everyone who is not a denier has already known, for 1000%, that the globe is warming up, the glaciers are melting and it is all caused by humans.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:44 pm 12. ic:

9. paul_unalaska: When Gore gives back his, i.e. when hell freezes over.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:45 pm 13. Phil:

As hard as this is to believe, it’s worse than you report.

The IPCC quote is in the section about Asia, talking about glaciers in the Himalayas “receding faster than in any other
part of the world”. However, the Kotlyakov article is about glaciation in the entire world. The statement about the reduction by 2350 is about the entire world, but notes “Glaciers will survive
only in the mountains of inner Alaska, on some Arctic archipelagos, within Patagonian ice sheets, in the Karakoram Mountains, in the Himalayas, in some regions of Tibet and on the highest mountain peaks in the temperature latitudes.”

Not only is the concern off by 200 years, but the Himalayas are where the glaciers will survive.

It gets worse. The IPCC cites a WWF report as the source, but they actually quoted Kotlyakov (except for botching the year) without even crediting Kotlyakov in the references.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:47 pm 14. Anonymous:

The next time someone uses the defense that the critics are not “real climate scientists” just throw Rajendra Pachauri at them. As the head of the UN IPCC this clown is not only NOT a climate scientist, whatever that is, he also can’t read without transposing numbers, critical numbers at that. Rajendra Pachauri is a mechanical engineer and not a “climate scientist” and the western world’s economic future is being manipulated by this incompetent bozo.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:52 pm 15. Steve:

Maybe we need a name for this type of science: UNscientific.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:52 pm 16. A.M Mallett:

The next time someone uses the defense that the critics are not “real climate scientists” just throw Rajendra Pachauri at them. As the head of the UN IPCC this clown is not only NOT a climate scientist, whatever that is, he also can’t read without transposing numbers, critical numbers at that. Rajendra Pachauri is a mechanical engineer and not a “climate scientist” and the western world’s economic future is being manipulated by this incompetent bozo.

Dec 1, 2009 - 12:52 pm 17. Calvin Ball:

That’s not a simple transposition of digits. Three out of the four digits ended up in the wrong place. That’s hard for even a fool to do. If that’s indeed what happened.

Dec 1, 2009 - 1:12 pm 18. malclave:

So they got all the individual digits correct, jsut in the wrong order?

For liberals, that’s a high order of accuracy. I’m impressed.

Dec 1, 2009 - 1:21 pm 19. Bohemond:

This is how Harry Buttle got arrested and executed…..

Dec 1, 2009 - 1:25 pm 20. Exactly!:

Hello, Laywers !!!

Can we sue yet? There is plenty of plunder stolen from the people by Gore, et al.

Let the academics argue. We lawyers will get the job done. Can we assemble a list of the culpable?

Dec 1, 2009 - 1:27 pm 21. Charlie Martin:

C’mon, don’t tie yourself into knots with a stupid typo. Everyone who is not a denier has already known, for 1000%, that the globe is warming up, the glaciers are melting and it is all caused by humans.

Please tell me this was humor.

Dec 1, 2009 - 1:38 pm 22. eon:

If I’d written a report with a mistake like that in high school, I’d have gotten a D at best. In college, I’d have gotten a zero. And in the crime lab…. I don’t want to think about what my boss would have said, to say nothing of IA and Professional Review.

These are the elite’, the experts, the final arbiters of the fate of Western civilization (they hope)- and they are apparently incapable of proofreading their own reports.

Thomas Jefferson was right. It’s not necessary to assume malice when simple stupidity is all that’s required to screw things up.

Of course, this leads to the question “Why didn’t anybody else catch the mistake?” Was it because they were as incompetent as the authors?

Or because they so desperately wanted to believe it wasn’t a mistake- or wanted everyone else to believe it was the unvarnished (and oh-so-Convenient) “Truth”?

clear ether

eon

Dec 1, 2009 - 2:04 pm 23. TomF:

So how does one misplaced zero multiply in into many zeros placed somewhere after a dollar sign? And can that be repeated on my bank statement? This is better than alchemy. Or is it Algorechemy?

Dec 1, 2009 - 2:10 pm 24. Don Rodrigo:

This typo reminds me of the whole nonsense about “Atlantis.”

There has been a logical explanation of the origins of the Atlantis legend for 2500 years now: The Athenian statesman Solon visited Egypt back then, and his accompanying retinue of scholars transcribed the Egyptian scribes accounts of the demise of the Minoan civilization (centered on the island of Crete) some 900 years earlier. Problem is, the Greeks mixed up the Hieroglyphic symbols for papyrus (which stood for the number 100) and that of the lotus (for 1000), and ended up with a fable of a lost civilization of 9,000 years in the past, based on a ‘continent’ (the end result of magnifying the dimensions of Crete by an order of 10). So, the legend of the lost (but real) Minoan civilization was transformed into the fable of Atlantis.

Now we have the fable of catastrophic man-made global warming, complete with typos.

Dec 1, 2009 - 2:30 pm 25. Jim Treacher:

25 years or 350 years. Thousands of degrees or millions. Whatever. How can you wingnut deniers get so hung up on math when THE EARTH HANGS IN THE BALANCE???

Dec 1, 2009 - 3:26 pm 26. Tish:

how come the replies by #14 & 16 are exactly the same? Who’s sending down your talking points boys? You’ve just exposed your silly selves.

#25 – it seems there’s is nothing to be done for you. You’re caught up in the sky is falling dimentia. I wish there was hope for you.

Dec 1, 2009 - 5:35 pm 27. Bill Gannon:

15. Steve: Let’s go with the term “bozoscientific”. Its the most apt.

Dec 1, 2009 - 6:38 pm 28. Bill Gannon:

Er, 26. Tish:, I think 25. Jim Treacher: was pulling our legs. Check out his blog.

Dec 1, 2009 - 6:45 pm 29. Charlie Martin:

Thank God that was you, Treacher. At least I know you’re joking.

Dec 1, 2009 - 7:21 pm 30. Bear:

Thanks for pointing out the blog link…are you the Bill Gannon from Colorado that I once new a dozen years ago?

Dec 1, 2009 - 7:36 pm 31. Roger Bryan Van Pelt:

I wonder when the truth about homosexuals being “born that way” will come out. I still haven’t heard anything that remotely makes me think that is true.

Dec 1, 2009 - 7:39 pm 32. J.M. Heinrichs:

1. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070327113346.htm

2. http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4392

It is possible that not enough data have been collected on Himalayan glaciers to draw any conclusions.

Cheers

Dec 1, 2009 - 8:22 pm 33. justasimplepatriot:

Dr. Pachauri is perfect to head the IPCC. His PhD in Manufacturing Engineering is so germane to the AGW debate, how could anyone ever doubt what he says.

Dec 1, 2009 - 8:47 pm 34. Dave Surls:

“That’s not a simple transposition of digits.”

Hey, nobody said that fabricating or misrepresenting data was easy.

Dec 1, 2009 - 10:22 pm 35. Beaker:

This story doesn’t hold water.

Look at the page cited in the IPCC report. Their citation is a 2005 WWF report. If you look at the WWF report, their citation is a report from an ICSI working group report on Himalayan Glaciology. One of the scientists that authored that report, Syed Hasnain is quoted as saying “All the glaciers in the middle Himalayas are retreating, and they could disappear from the central and eastern Himalayas by 2035.”

Where this Kotlyakov reference comes in, I have no idea.

Dec 1, 2009 - 10:45 pm 36. LarryOldtimer:

I have had a good deal of scientific training, and am a professional civil engineer . . . and I know full well that there is no way to predict the future. Not even next weeks weather, let alone what the weather or “climate” will be like even a year from now. This AGW is nothing but a huge scam and fraud and depends on not very intelligent people with no knowledge of the basics of chemistry and physics who are easy to scare. “The Boogyman will get you if you don’t pay every cent you will ever make”. I don’t worry about what my great, great ever so great grandchildren will go through, as there is nothing I can do at all about it. I would much prefer that I don’t put my existing children and grandchildren in such great hock that they will spend the rest of their lives as no better than Middle Age serfs.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

Dec 1, 2009 - 10:59 pm 37. hdgreene:

If I’m not mistaken (and I’m not), this was a “mistake,” not a mistake. The mistakes all go one way with this crowd. The mistakes all help the cause, so it is reasonable to assume that “helping the cause” is the cause of the mistakes.

I read the NYT regularly until I noticed that they would make a mistake, correct the mistake, and then go on citing the original mistake in subsequent articles. All those mistakes reinforced some liberal superstition or other. So I decided I was misspending my money.

Dec 2, 2009 - 4:26 am 38. Charlie Martin:

#17 Calvin: That’s not a simple transposition of digits. Three out of the four digits ended up in the wrong place. That’s hard for even a fool to do. If that’s indeed what happened.

Oh, I could do it.

#31, Roger: I wonder when the truth about homosexuals being “born that way” will come out. I still haven’t heard anything that remotely makes me think that is true.

To be fair, I’m not aware of any studies indicating that heterosexuals are “born that way” either.

#37 hd: I think you’ve got a good point. It’s hard to imagine that if someone were making a similar mistake and saying, oh, that sea levels might rise 7 meters in 10,000 years, the corrections wouldn’t fly fast and furious. This one “sounds right.”

Dec 2, 2009 - 5:38 am 39. Dwight:

But there are two realities here:

1. The researchers and/or administrators can make stupid mistakes.

2. The glaciers ARE melting.

Dec 2, 2009 - 5:54 am 40. Dwight:

And somewere earlier someone asked, how come we have had no tipping points in 4.5 million years? I dunno, but the fact that things were once so warm and so cold show that something happens, call it a tipping point, call it God punishing us.

Now whether or not the AGW people can credibly find the needle in the haystack of all the past and possible tipping points does seem unlikely, but they argue that a tipping point is so potentially damaging that we should treat the possibility as if it were Nazi Germany or Al Quaida.

Nah, that’s not how we humans operate. First we have the disaster, then we consider doing something about it. Copenhagen-Obama may squeeze out a little tax-Carbon credit money, but unless we FEEL it getting hotter as Pat Robertson did several summers ago, but feel it year after year, we won’t agree to change our lifestyle in a major way. It would take a depression to do that.

Dec 2, 2009 - 6:03 am 41. Marc:

are you sure about this? looks to me like the source for the glaciers disappearing by 2035 figure is the 1999 report of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology of the International Commission for Snow and Ice, which is cited by WWF in 2005. p. 38 here http://assets.panda.org/downloads/himalayaglaciersreport2005.pdf. Can’t find that report online so not sure of their basis for it or what the last 10 years have done to the prediction but may not be as bad as it sounds, certainly not just a typo

Dec 2, 2009 - 8:09 am 42. nofreewind:

Glaciers have melting at about the same rate since 1850, long before man could have possibly had any effect on the climate. Any “scientist” who thinks melting glaciers NOW is a fingerprint of AGW is simply denying the facts or else just a moron.
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_4CE_Glaciers.htm

how do they keep getting away with this?

Dec 2, 2009 - 8:38 am 43. Charlie Martin:

#41 Marc: I don’t know; this is sort of second-hand, since I’m just reporting what Kandekhar wrote. That WWF paper cites a New Scientist article in 1999 that I can’t find online, and the “2350″ paper is dated 1996. It may be that 2035 became sort of “folk knowledge” and no one checked it. But I can’t find any original source that has the 2035 predictions.

Dec 2, 2009 - 9:03 am 44. Flan:

11. ic:

C’mon, don’t tie yourself into knots with a stupid typo. Everyone who is not a denier has already known, for 1000%, that the globe is warming up, the glaciers are melting and it is all caused by humans.

Dec 1, 2009 – 12:44 pm

I call Godwin’s law on “denier”. You lose.

Dec 2, 2009 - 10:32 am 45. Charlie Martin:

By the way, Tom Maguire at JOM and Brian at Back Seat Driving have both tried to run down the original source, with no more luck. And observe, the WWF white paper doesn’t actually cite the report they mention (nothing in parentheses) unlike the next paragraph, which does cite New Scientist and Sharma’s 2001 paper.

Dec 2, 2009 - 3:10 pm 46. M Btok:

Time is getting short and it is coming down to the fact, that soon ( December 7 to December 18 ) I will have to pray to the good Lord to maintain our freedoms and not allow our leaders to sign the Copenhagen Treaty, which will take away our liberties, let go and let God-this being a challenge to our Lord and Saviour? However, while there is still time to prevent the loss of a lifetime, perhaps loss of life it’s self – I will do what I am able to fight for our freedoms! The whole Climate Change agenda is a proven fraud and racketeering, but the United Nations and Globalist governments don’t care as that is just the excuse instrument they have used to ensnare us, they are going to try to push it through anyway! Has everybody out there become a tree hugger? The tree will be standing 100 years from now, but will you be looking at the tree, from inside the fence of a Concentration Camp? Anyone out there want to fight to maintain their freedom anymore? Please do all you can to preserve freedom in North America!

Check out what Government is doing behind your back at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU

Canadians: to request that PM Harper doesn’t sign the Copenhagen Treaty, thereby causing Canadians to lose
their Sovereignty and Freedom email the PM at: pm@pm.gc.ca

Any lawyers want to help out by filing this Copenhagen Treaty be classified as an illegal Treaty, in order to, help save Freedom in North America? ( Unlimited Promotion Opportunity Here For a Law firm to Gain a favorable high profile

Dec 2, 2009 - 3:32 pm 47. Gerry:

Note how anyone can read the PDF and see that the year is actually “2350″. No matter, the hoaxsters will insist that the “greater truth” of AGW must be even more forcefully foisted upon the public.

Dec 3, 2009 - 10:46 am 48. J.J.:

No one likes to talk about the fact that the Northern Ice Cap has lost so much mass that Shipping companies are planning on capitalizing on the new shipping routes that will be possible during the summer months. A scientific research vessel just reported that a lot of the thick, multi-year ice that was reported by microwaving the icepack via satellite was actually “rotten ice”, which is porus and weak, allowing the vessel to travel at almost top speed, 24 km/hr.

Dec 3, 2009 - 11:03 am 49. Charlie Martin:

#48 JJ: No one likes to talk about the fact that the Northern Ice Cap has lost so much mass that Shipping companies are planning on capitalizing on the new shipping routes that will be possible during the summer months.

They don’t like to talk about the northwest passage opening up in the 30’s either.

Dec 3, 2009 - 2:59 pm 50. Jeffrey Kargel:

My colleague, Graham Cogley, a glaciologist, tracked this “2035″ typo down; you should listen to more of what he has to say. I and several colleagues, led by Graham, have exposed this error in the IPCC. It was a stupid blunder by one working group of the IPCC. People do make errors, and this was indeed a bad one. The IPCC volumes (all WG’s) are almost entirely on target, something you should pay attention to. In our community, as in science in general, we correct these things when we find them and have an opportunity to make corrections. We go through painstaking review, and near continuous cross examination. If you want to swirl around like Bug’s Bunny’s Tasmanian Devil, just keep on swirling– you won’t go anywhere, and the dust you raise as a screen just annoys people. If you want information on what’s happening to glaciers in reality, there are plenty of sources, including my GLIMS project, WGMS sources, NSIDC, glaciologists all over the world. Or better, visit some easy-to-visit ones: Athabasca Glacier (Alberta), Worthington Glacier (Alaska), and many others. If you learn one thing about me, as one witness to the widespread retreat and wasting of glaciers through most of the world, know that I am not a doomsdayer; things are not hopeless; far from it. But things are indeed hopeless if we ignore reality.

Dec 3, 2009 - 4:58 pm 51. C. K.:

There are so many mistakes in the most recent IPCC report of the WG II! In WG I there are some of the worlds best heads in but I can hardly believe that in WG II are almost any trustable scientists in. It’s not just the error with the Himalaya, they also made errors with the forecast of the disappearance of Andean glaciers. There they took the Chacaltaya glacier as benchmark which is seriously not possible as this is a small valley glacier and NOT comparable with the Patagonian ice fields! Hopefully they deliver a better work in with the next IPCC report in about 2 years.
Without the help of Jeff Kargel and Graham Cogley this discussion wouldn’t be in this bright audience it is now! Guys keep on going, you are on the right way!!!

Dec 3, 2009 - 11:05 pm 52. mauri pelto:

Let us not confuse a typo with what scientists in the field have been saying, myself included. The glaciers are retreating significantly, but they are large and cannot disappear overnight in the Himalaya or Glacier National Park.
http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/zemu-glacier-sikkim-thinning-and-retreat/

Dec 4, 2009 - 5:11 am 53. Graham Cogley:

The examples of muddled-headed thinking in the first 30 comments above were too many to count, but I did find 14 typos and similar errors. John 8:7 (et seq.).

It is more important to look ahead than to look back. How can we make sure that waste of time due to careless slips, from whatever point on the spectrum of opinion, can be avoided in the future? For a start, I am reminded of the sign somebody once put up in our department office: “Do not disengage brain while mouth is in motion”. Rubbish about freedom has no place in a rational discussion of rubbish about Himalayan glaciers.

The mystery report of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology, now unearthed from the minutes of a meeting of the Bureau of the International Commission for Snow and Ice, has been posted at http://www.cryosphericsciences.org/docs.html#ICSI1999 . But don’t get excited – it doesn’t say what people have been saying it says.

For the benefit of C.K. (#51), perhaps I should explain a) that the Patagonian icefields are not in good shape either, though they are in better shape than Chacaltaya; and b) that the real reason why Chacaltaya Glacier is “seriously not possible” as a benchmark is that it ceased to exist last year, seven years earlier than in one prediction.

Dec 4, 2009 - 9:36 am 54. Marie Claude:

Dwight,

the glaciers are melting

since 1860 for the Alps,

so we can’t say that in this era, it was because populations were using oil !

Dec 4, 2009 - 9:38 am 55. Al:

the debate about global warming and whether anthropogenic forcing is really as significant as some people fear has become polluted. Science of this nature has been hijacked by hysteria which promotes greater public concern and therefore investment in research, benefitting those who conduct research involoving anything related to global warming. When will people realise that nature is adaptable.

Dec 4, 2009 - 11:06 am 56. Charlie Martin:

#52 Mauri: Thanks for that link, Mauri. It looks like that’s consistent to an order of magnitude with the 2350 date.

#53 Graham: I won’t complain about typos until we at least have a preview button. It’s probably not worth a whole post, but I found that 1999 paper as well. As you note, it doesn’t actually have any date for the eventual demise of the glaciers. I also discovered, curiously enough, that while the WWF apparently references that for the 2035 date, they don’t cite it, nor did they include complete bibliographic data for it. Curious, that.

Dec 4, 2009 - 2:10 pm 57. mauri pelto:

Glaciers in the Alps did begin to retreat in 1860, but more than 60% of those in Switzerland advanced at some point during the 1950-1980 period. The recent rapid retreat is not part of a long term retreat. Note Swiss glacier commission data
http://glaciology.ethz.ch/messnetz/lengthvariation.html
It cannot be ignored that there are glaciers disappearing, however, it is not a rapid process for large glaciers. For small glaciers like Milk Lake Glacier it is too late.
http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/milk-lake-glacier-loss/
The typo was also in a regional section, not in the section specifically on glaciers and ice sheets, which is why it was not caught by the glaciologic community in the draft, we would have corrected it.

Dec 5, 2009 - 4:33 am