Himalayan Glaciers ‘Safe From Warming’

Global warming will melt far less of the glaciers of Central Asia than of those in other mountain ranges, shielding the people who depend on them for water from the effects of climate change for several decades at least, scientists say. In the first comprehensive study of a part of what is called High Asia, scientists found that 96 percent of the water that flows down the mountains of Nepal into nine local river basins comes from snow and rain, and only 4 percent from summer glacier melt. Of that 4 percent, says Armstrong, the lead author, only a minuscule proportion comes from the melting away of the end points of the glaciers due to global warming. --Christopher Pala, IPS News, 15 December 2011

Richard Armstrong, a geographer at Colorado University's National Snow and Ice Center dispels the beliefs that core icebergs are endangered by the world's warmer climate. Armstrong said there is a lot of misinformation in the public arena regarding glaciers, including reports that glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than anywhere else in the world. "Those reports simply are not true," says Armstrong. The mountains in and around the Himalayas are so high, that unlike in the Andes, the Alps or the Rockies, temperatures remain below freezing point even in the summer. Most of the glaciers don't melt away at all. --Catholic Online, 15 December 2011 The Himalayan glaciers are melting after all, according to new research released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research was released in an effort to draw a line under the embarrassing mistakes made about the effects of global warming on the region in the past. The IPCC were forced to apologise for claiming that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The 2009 scandal, known as ‘Himalayagate’ led to criticism of the IPCC, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to warn governments around the world about the effects of climate change. In an effort to move on from the embarrassing episode, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, has now announced that the latest statistics show the glaciers are melting, according to the limited amount of science available. --The Daily Telegraph, 4 December 2011

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Funding cuts have brought a halt to one of the few on-the-ground projects monitoring receding ice in the western Himalayas. A reliable source at the New Delhi-based Energy and Research Institute (TERI) confirmed that [Rajandra Pachauri’s] organisation has been forced to stop monitoring the receding Kolahoi glacier in Kashmir in the western Himalayas after project funding was axed. It has recently emerged that funding was cut by a US-based foundation back in 2010, in the wake of “Glaciergate”, the controversy surrounding inaccurate claims that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2030. But TERI made no public announcement that the project had stopped. --Athar Parvaiz, China Dialogue, 13 December 2011 Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking. It challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035. Although the head of the panel Dr Rajendra Pachauri later admitted the claim was an error gleaned from unchecked research, he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at "a rapid rate", threatening floods throughout north India. --The Daily Telegraph, 27 January 2011 A carbon offset program operated by the UN is in jeopardy as a result of the expiration next year of greenhouse gas caps set by the Kyoto Protocol. A follow-up treaty to Kyoto won’t come into force until 2020 at the earliest. Japan, Russia, and Canada have refused to accept new limits in the meantime. The bottom line: Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and lack of progress in global climate talks are leading some investment banks to ax carbon trading. --Ben Sills, Business Week, 15 December 2011