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FRESH doubts were cast over controversial global warming theories yesterday after a major climate change argument was discredited.
The International Panel on Climate Change was forced to admit its key claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed up by research.
It was also revealed that the IPCC’s controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, described as “the world’s top climate scientist”, is a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics and no formal climate science qualifications...
In a new research, scientists in India and China have determined that glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world's people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot from diesel fumes and wood fires. According to a report in the Guardian, the results of the research, to be announced this month in Kashmir, show for the first time that clouds of soot - made up of tiny particles of "black carbon " emitted from old diesel engines and from cooking with wood, crop waste or cow dung - are "unequivocally having an impact on glacial melting" in the Himalayas.
Once the black carbon lands on glaciers, it absorbs sunlight that would otherwise be reflected by the snow, leading to melting. "This is a huge problem which we are ignoring," said Professor Syed Hasnain of the Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) in Delhi. "We are finding concentrations of black carbon in the Himalayas in what are supposed to be pristine, untouched environments," he added. The institute has set up two sensors in the Himalayas, one on the Kholai glacier that sits on the mountain range's western flank in Kashmir and the other flowing through the eastern reaches in Sikkim.
Glaciers in this region feed most of the major rivers in Asia. The short-term result of substantial melting is severe flooding downstream. Hasnain said that India and China produce about a third of the world's black carbon, and both countries have been slow to act. "India is the worst. At least in China, the state has moved to measure the problem. In Delhi. no government agency has put any sensors on the ground. Teri is doing it by ourselves," he said.
Decreasing black carbon emissions should be a relatively cheap way to significantly curb global warming. Black carbon falls from the atmosphere after just a couple of weeks, and replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could quickly end the problem. Controlling traffic in the Himalayan region should help ease the harm done by emissions from diesel engines.
Black carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature Geoscience. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan and University of Iowa chemical engineer Greg Carmichael, said that soot and other forms of black carbon could have as much as 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, more than that of any greenhouse gas besides CO2. The researchers also noted, however, that mitigation would have immediate societal benefits in addition to the long term effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"Observationally based studies such as ours are converging on the same large magnitude of black carbon heating as modeling studies from Stanford, Caltech and NASA," said Ramanathan. "We now have to examine if black carbon is also having a large role in the retreat of arctic sea ice and Himalayan glaciers as suggested by recent studies."
Originally posted by Essan
How relaiable is a newspaper that takes 6 weeks to report a breaking news story?
The BBC covered this on the 5th December.
It was also revealed that the IPCC’s controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, described as “the world’s top climate scientist”, is a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics and no formal climate science qualifications.
Before the weakness in the IPCC’s research was exposed, Dr Pachauri dismissed the Indian government report as “voodoo science”.
Originally posted by Essan
How relaiable is a newspaper that takes 6 weeks to report a breaking news story?
The BBC covered this on the 5th December.
Originally posted by Essan
How relaiable is a newspaper that takes 6 weeks to report a breaking news story?
The BBC covered this on the 5th December.
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.
The Inquistion is alive and well!
Originally posted by jimmyx
ok...all you anti-GW people should pick up your family and move right next to a coal-burning power plant. that would be the true way of proving that there is no problem with man-made pollution....put up or shut up.
do you think the CEO of Exxon lives right next to one of his refineries???
hell no, he knows how bad the air is....and that's my true test against global warming. put your money (or your life) where your mouth is.