Another ‘Dodgy Dossier’?

With the Sunday papers full of the news that the IPCC has begrudgingly withdrawn another of its wilder claims – that of the disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 -the rumble of climate change ‘deniers’ grows louder by the minute.

The story here is that the 2035 claim was made originally in a paper by a Dr.Syed Hasnain who works for The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) of which IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri happens to be Director General. It now turns out, according to Dr Murari Lal, the co-ordinating lead author on the asian section of the IPCC 2007 report, that the authors were aware the statement was unsound, but kept it in because ‘We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action’.

Does anyone see a parallel with the 45 minutes scenario currently under discussion in the Iraq enquiry?

That aside, this is yet another own goal by the IPCC following the manipulated data scenario in the autumn. What is worrying is that the more these stories emerge, the more they will enflame public cynicism towards the whole environmental issue and that, in many minds, includes the very real issues of sustainability facing the world at large and the food industry in particular.