http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_021110/content/01125114.guest.html
“There's no settled science on this. Are you people not aware of the hoax this has all become at East Anglia University, at the IPCC with the Himalayan glaciers? I'm going to tell you something, Dylan. What's happening with these snowstorms is exactly, according to my climate scientists -- I've got some, too, and it's settled as far as I'm concerned, Dylan. If these things continue, this is exactly what we're going to get with global cooling. Which, uh, shows you where we are. This equals global warming. Here is Morton Kondracke on Fox yesterday afternoon.”
I apologize for my continued Rush bashing. I seem to be suffering from Rush Obsession Disorder or R.O.D. I think I may be dealing with a rather serious R.O.D. problem. Anyway, Rush recently brought up the so called Himalayan glacier hoax. (Also let’s just ignore his insane claims about a state-run media, I doubt he’s serious at least I’d like to be optimistic about my fellow human.)
“In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are 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 and perhaps sooner 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 square kilometres by the year 2035," the report said. It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia could be affected. But Professor Cogley has found a 1996 document by a leading hydrologist, VM Kotlyakov,that mentions 2350 as the year by which there will be massive and precipitate melting of glaciers.”
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8387737.stm)
Alright, so on the surface this looks bad. It’s easy for the deniers to jump on this issue to say that claims were greatly exaggerated in order to push the climate agenda forward. Further reading of the BBC article suggests that this was a mistake in reporting and data collection, rather than an intentional cover up. On top of that, “the blunder was spotted by climate scientists who quickly made it public” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2). If this revelation could singlehandedly discredit their work do you think they would’ve been so quick to make it public? No, not likely. Of course, we still need to address the issue of what this actually means for climate change itself. The fact is that although there clearly has been an error in the rate at which the glaciers will melt, it does nothing to undermine the fact that the overall trend shows an increase in global temperatures.
The graph located in the link details this nicely,
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement
The deniers, like Rush, enjoy the opportunity to jump on any mistake made by the scientific community as proof that mountains of data is false. The IPCC has admitted to the mistake. I wouldn’t be opposed in seeing disciplinary action taken in order to avoid mistakes like this from being made again.
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