horn haitus - by Richard... Wednesday, January 20, 2010

horn haitus - by Richard... Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Into battle again ... a live debate with Prof. Hasnain on Indian TV. It was supposed to be the great man himself, Dr Pachauri, but he has refused to debate with me. Off to Leeds to do the business. More later.

Meanwhile, even The Guardian is wobbling. Pachauri is fast running out of friends.

The former railway engineer, however, remains defiant (when talking to The Guardian). "They can't attack the science so they attack the chairman," he says. "But they won't sink me. I am the unsinkable Molly Brown. In fact, I will float much higher." 

Like a ....?

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An outbreak of reticence - by Richard...

Sayyed Iqbal Hasnain, the scientist at the centre of the melting glacier storm is now claiming he was misquoted when he toldThe New Scientist that the Himalyan glaciers were going to disappear within decades. 

Yet, not only did Hasnain allow this claim to be repeated in November 2008, Peter Foster in the Financial Post reports that claim was also repeated in September 2009in the Canadian Globe and Mail (link via Planetark). There we see the following:

Sayyed Iqbal Hasnain, one of India's leading glaciologists, who believes the Himalayas may be denuded of all snow and ice in as little as 20 years, despairs at the incompetent bureaucracy, the corruption and the short-sightedness of parliamentarians ...

Furthermore, Hasnain may be being economical with the truth when he attributes his statement to an interview with the New Scientist. As pointed out here, the IPCC claim bears a remarkable textual similarity with a piece published in April 1999 in the India Environment Portal. There we see:

"Glaciers in the Himalaya 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 is very high," says the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) in its recent study on Asian glaciers. "But if the Earth keeps getting warmer at the current rate, it might happen much sooner," says Syed Iqbal Hasnain of the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Hasnain is also the chairperson of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG), constituted in 1995 by the ICSI.

If looks very like the Hasnain was, therefore, simply repeating an assertion he had made very much earlier. But now the heat is on him personally – rather than the glaciers – this scientist is rather reluctant to stand by his previous claims.

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The full horror - by Richard...

The "North" interview for Indian television. You're sat in a tiny cubicle in a Leeds studio, looking at a black screen, behind which is concealed a camera, with brilliant lights directly in your eyes, a tinny, disembodied voice coming down a disposable earpiece which threatens to pop out at any second - with a 2-3 second delay over a satelite link - trying to make sense of something happening in a studio on the other side of the world. And then you have to look and sound intelligent.

Give me a laptop and a blog, any day.

view interview on www.eureferendum.blogspot.com

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A new peril - by Richard...

New Yorkers come to terms with a new peril but, never fear, Dr R K Pachauri is on the case.

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Not a happy bunny - by Richard...

What makes you think I'm not on his Christmas card list? But, I guess, come Sunday, he's going to be even less happy.

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"We got it wrong" - by Richard...

Note from the story that the admission of error was made by IPCC vice chairman Dr Jean-Pascal van Ypersel – not Dr R K Pachauri. 

As of yesterday, the former railway engineer was still in denial saying, "... even if there was an error, and I'm not saying there was ... ". He adds: "this is a very small issue".

One small issue for [a] man, one giant error for mankind?