[Reader-list] Melting Himalayan Glaciers

[S. Jabbar]

Frontline Column: Beyond the Obvious
 
Praful Bidwai
 

Countering the deniers

 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should create a special
commission to scrupulously cross-check all the references in its report. Or
else, the climate change-denial lobby will try to exploit a handful of
errors to discredit climate science and delay remedial action.

** ** **

 
Barring a minuscule proportion, those who have even skimmed through parts of
the IPCC¹s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (FAR)‹such as the Synthesis Report
for policy-makers, the detailed reports of the three Working Groups, or
summaries for the media‹will not fail to be impressed by its overwhelmingly
sober and cautious tone, tendency to understate some aspects of the climate
crisis, and the careful differentiation it makes between varying emissions
scenarios and degrees of likelihood of global warming exceeding a certain
level. 
 
These degrees are defined with mathematical precision: ³likely² means a
probability of over 66 percent; ³very likely² over 90 percent; ³virtually
certain² 99 percent-plus; and ³very unlikely² under 10 percent. The 2° C
limit for global warming beyond which the IPCC says climate change could
become irreversible or dangerous is also probabilistically linked to certain
atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.
 

This is in keeping with the probabilistic notion of scientific truth, as
opposed to absolute certainty. Good, responsible science respects and
welcomes scepticism and is always aware of its limitations, including the
possibility that its conclusions may be falsified, and that its methods are
amenable to refinement. The 4,000 scientists drawn from scores of countries
who wrote the FAR were tasked to rely on solidly established science,
cross-check each major inference or forecast, and back up each number or
statement with citations from standard, professionally peer-reviewed science
journals.

 

So it is indeed disturbing that some inaccuracies and exaggerations crept
into the Working Groups¹ reports, which form the basis of the expert
assessments cited in climate change negotiations under the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The climate change-denial lobby has
used these to launch a full-scale assault on the IPCC, questioning its
integrity and demanding the resignation of its chairman RK Pachauri, who
also heads The Energy and Resources Institute. The lobby‹in which 770
companies have come together to hire over 2,300 agents in Washington alone,
in addition to hundreds of supporters in polluting corporations, powerful
think-tanks and the media‹is targeting climate science itself. Some British
newspapers have also accused Pachauri of abusing his position to secure
favours for himself and TERI.

 

It is vital to make a clear demarcation between the individual-centred
accusations (on which more below) and the claimed flaws in the FAR. The
latter include a statement in the Working Group-2 report that Himalayan
glaciers ³are receding faster than in any other part of the world, and if
the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year
2035 Š is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its
total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 sq km by Š
2035.² 
 
There are also accusations that the FAR linked recent natural disasters,
including hurricanes, floods and heat waves, to long-term climate processes,
based on an as-yet-unpublished paper which has since been revised. Another
charge is that the IPCC¹s assessment of reduced ice in the Andes and the
Alps was based not on a peer-reviewed journal, but on anecdotal accounts in
a magazine for mountaineers, and on a Swiss postgraduate student¹s
dissertation. Yet another accusation relates to rapid forest loss in the
Amazon. Earlier, the climate change-deniers¹ lobby hacked into the personal
emails of researchers at Britain¹s East Anglia University, and claimed that
that they deliberately manipulated or suppressed data to suit predetermined
conclusions about accelerated climate change.
 

Of all these charges, the first is the most important and best-documented,
and prompted the IPCC to express ³regret². The other accusations appear
weakly substantiated or based on certain interpretations (e.g. of the
colloquial term ³fix² in the hacked emails, which may mean accommodating
observed differences, not manipulating data). The statement about the
glaciers disappearing by 2035 was not based on a reference in a
peer-reviewed journal, but on a report by the advocacy group WWF. This in
turn was based on a 1999 report in the British popular science magazine New
Scientist, which quoted Syed Iqbal Hasnain, an Indian glaciologist, then
based at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and now with TERI.

 

However, Hasnain denies having told the New Scientist reporter that the
glaciers are likely to vanish by a specific year, only that they are
receding rapidly. Matters are complicated by the fact that Hasnain did not
contradict the report until recently and cited it without quoting himself in
some of his recent presentations. He says that predicting a year by which
the glaciers will disappear is ³speculation². Hasnain, who has published
some 30 scientific papers, has been chairman of the Working Group on
Himalayan Glaciology of the International Commission for Snow and Ice
(ICSI). But the ICSI¹s report, published in 1999, said nothing about
Himalayan glaciers.

 

It turns out that the source of the ³speculation² was a 1996 report by
Russian scientist VM Kotlyakov, which said Himalayan glaciers are likely to
disappear by 2350. The figure was transposed as 2035. The IPCC got it wrong
by 300 years and did not bother to check its source. It also allowed another
major error to creep in: a gross inflation of the area of the Himalayan
glaciers‹500,000 sq km, 16 times higher than the normally accepted figure.

 

These inaccuracies are egregious and unbecoming of good science based on
robust facts and observations. They must not be minimised, as Pachauri tried
to do when he claimed on January 23 that the IPCC¹s retraction has
³strengthened² its credibility. This claim is patently untenable. It also
turns out that Pachauri was wrong in telling The Times  (London) on January
22: ³I became aware of [the 2035 error] when it was reported in the media
about ten days ago. Before that, it was really not made known Š² But emails
on this issue have been circulating since early December.

 

Pallava Bagla, a correspondent of the journal Science, says he had asked
Pachauri about the 2035 claim last November, weeks before the Copenhagen
conference began. He was told: ³I don¹t have anything to add on glaciers.²
But last week, Bagla asked Pachauri: ³I pointed it out [the error] to you in
several e-mails, several discussions, yet you decided to overlook it. Was
that so that you did not want to destabilise what was happening in
Copenhagen?² 

 

Pachauri answered: ³Not at all Š. As it happens, we were all terribly
preoccupied with a lot of events. We were working round the clock with
several things that had to be done in Copenhagen. It was only when the story
broke, I think in December, we decided to, well, early this month‹as a
matter of fact, I can give you the exact dates‹early in January that we
decided to go into it Š. And within three or four days, we were able to come
up with a clear and a very honest and objective assessment Š.²

 

However, none of this detracts from the soundness of the assessment that the
Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly. This assessment is not based a few
studies, but on numerous independent lines of evidence established by scores
of scientists in India, China, Nepal, the U.S., Germany, and elsewhere. A
single slip of this kind cannot demolish a whole body of scientific
knowledge which has emerged after a quarter-century of serious international
effort at understanding the impact of human activity on the climate system.

 

Yet, scientists do not know nearly enough about the Himalayan glaciers¹
behaviour to say how rapidly they will retreat or disappear. The Himalayas
are not as well-studied or -photographed as, say, the Alps. Scientists use
various methods to study glacier behaviour‹visual imagery, remote-sensing,
measurement of glacier length, snout positions and discharge volumes, and
changes in mass. 

 

Mass balance, measured by new in situ techniques, is the most reliable
indicator. But very few Himalayan sites have been studied for mass balance
loss. So scientists cannot predict the precise behaviour of even some of the
Himalayas¹ 12,000-15,000 glaciers. Their disappearance by 2035, says an
international group of glaciologists, would require ³a 25-fold greater loss
rate from 1999 to 2035 than that estimated for 1960 to 1999².

 

However, there is compelling evidence that glaciers in the entire Greater
Himalayas, stretching from the Hindu Kush to the Central and Eastern
Himalayas to the Tibetan Plateau, barring the Karakoram range, are shrinking
at historically high rates. Studies published in peer-reviewed journals
document a significant loss of glacier area, mass balance and length since
the 1960s. For instance, a study of 1,317 glaciers in 11 different places
documents a 16 percent area loss since 1962.

 

Another study, which looks at important glaciers like Pindari, Gangotri,
Parbati, Dokriani, Sara Umanga, Chandra and Bhaga, finds retraction by 5 to
49 metres since observations began. The average annual loss of area between
1962 and 2001/2 was 0.39 percent. Similarly, mass balance studies show a
high loss of volume, decreasing depth, fragmentation and accelerating
recession. Report after annual report of the World Glacier Monitoring
Service confirms this.

 
Glaciers are shrinking the world over. As they shrink, black rock is
exposed. This reflects back only 5 percent of sunlight, compared to 80
percent for snow/ice. This accelerates melting, in turn leading to greater
warming. This iterative process is called ³positive feedback² and is similar
to what is happening to the polar ice-sheets.
 
There is one significant difference, however, as regards the Himalayas. That
is the effect of Black Carbon or soot generated from the incomplete
combustion of diesel, coal and biomass. Black Carbon, according to one
estimate, accounts for one-third to one-half of Himalayan glacier recession.
In South Asia, cookstoves burning fuelwood, twigs, vegetable residues and
cowdung are a major Black Carbon source, and cause respiratory problems
among women who use primitive chulhas in unventilated kitchens. Such indoor
pollution is estimated to kill 400,000 annually.
 
Critically relevant and material here are the likely consequences of
Himalayan glacier melting. The Himalayas are rightly called the world¹s
Third Pole and Asia¹s Water Tower. They feed seven great river systems,
including the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze and Mekong, on which some
1.3 billion people depend. Rapid glacier melting will have a horrifying
impact on water availability, threatening millions of livelihoods,
especially of the poor.
 
We must act urgently to prevent Himalayan glacier retreat. One site of
action is cookstoves. Four-fifths of India¹s rural households are compelled
to use biomass-based cookstoves with a thermal efficiency of 1-2 percent
because they are poor and have no access to clean fuel like liquefied
petroleum gas. There is an imperative need to help them shift to efficient
cookstoves burning LPG‹by redeploying the existing subsidy on kerosene (Rs
30,000 crores). Simultaneously, kerosene, largely burnt as lighting fuel,
must be replaced by solar home-lighting, which is cheaper than extending the
electricity grid to India¹s one-lakh-plus unelectrified villages (of a total
of 6 lakhs). 

 
The IPCC failed to apply well-established procedures and its own standards,
including ³thorough review of the quality and validity of each source² cited
in its report. It must rectify the error by revisiting the Himalayan glacier
issue. But it would best restore its credibility by appointing a special
commission to cross-check and verify all the references in its reports,
which identifies citations not based on robust facts. This will have a
salutary impact on the UNFCCC climate negotiations.

 

As for Pachauri, he faces several conflict-of-interest allegations. TERI
allegedly received Rs 56 lakhs from India¹s Ministry for Environment and
Forests (MoEF) for conducting IPCC meetings between 2004 and 2006. TERI has
also reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars from corporations like
Toyota Motor Company or businesses involved in emissions trading (Deutsche
Bank). Pachauri also holds posts in interested parties like Carbon Exchange
and the Pegasus Fund. Pachauri does not hide his corporate connections. His
just-published novel was released in Mumbai by Mukesh Ambani in the presence
of other industrialists and bankers.

 

This does not necessarily suggest that TERI¹s work or IPCC¹s integrity was
compromised. But it warrants full disclosure of the details of the grants
and fees TERI received from different sources‹in the interest of
transparency and the spirit of science, which the IPCC is meant to uphold.
To demand this is not to allege, as environment minister Jairam Ramesh did,
that the IPCC is ³alarmist² and that his own position that the Himalayan
glaciers present a ³mixed² picture‹both retreat and advance‹stands
vindicated. Even less does it justify the paranoid charge that the IPCC or
Western powers indulged in ³India-bashing² to extract major concessions at
from it the climate talks.

 

The official Indian position on Himalayan glaciers has oscillated between
outright denial and agnosticism. This is reflected in geologist VK Raina¹s
discussion paper put on the MoEF website, which is neither peer-reviewed nor
well-referenced and credible. Climate change denial is irrational and
dangerous. Indian leaders are right to deplore it in the West. But they
should stop practising their own form of semi-denial on the Himalayan issue
and move quickly towards remedial action on Black Carbon, and on mitigation
of and adaptation to changes in the Himalayan ecosystem. It is in too
precarious a state to be ignored.
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