The Himalayan glaciers are melting, that’s no long being debated, but the rate at which they’re melting is now being called into question. An oft repeated claim by environmentalists (and possibly by this website) that the glaciers could vanish completely by 2035, apparently has no grounding in science and is instead based on a 1999 magazine article in the ‘New Scientist’ which itself was based on a telephone interview with a little-known Indian scientist, Syed Hasnain.
Glaciologists however find the possibility to be far fetched, with Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, saying that the average Himalayan glacier is 300-metres thick and with the current average rate of decline below 1-metre per year, well you can do the math… Keep in mind the rate of decline would rise with global temperatures, but the rate of declining rising to eleven times its current rate isn’t likely.
Embarrassingly this claim managed to make its way into a 2007 report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). In defense of its report, the IPCC has said they do not read the New Scientist but instead were quoting from a 2005 WWF report (itself quoting the New Scientist), and that Professor Murari Lai, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the report, doesn’t know anything about glaciers. (I’m serious.)
The climate change movement is currently beset by claims of false science, vis-a-vie Climategate, and this is the last thing climate change advocates need. However before we’re quick write off the Himalayan glaciers as a disaster averted, it’s important to remember that there has been a lot of science on the issue not based on decade old magazines and that rising temperatures in the region are an important matter of discussion. The glaciers provide drinking water to over forty-percent of the world’s population and that makes them too important to be placed on the back burner.
