Comments 1 to 23:

1. mspelto at 22:25 PM on 17 September, 2010
   Himalayan glaciers draining south into India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan are increasingly being utilized for hydropower. One key point is that for the southern facing main Himalayan Range of India-Nepal-Bhutan the wet season is also the melt season. The summer monsoon leads to most of the melting low on a glacier and the accumulation high on a glacier. thus, unlike other areas low flow is not during the summer melt season and meltwater is not as critical to streamflow. The retreat is ongoing and substantial for almost all of the glaciers outside the Karokoram Range.Zemu Glacier, Gangotri Glacier and Satonpanth Glacier for example both of which feed hydropower.
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2. Kooiti Masuda at 22:26 PM on 17 September, 2010
   The issue of "500 million people" should perhaps be put off. It is confusing to conflate the Himalayas in the proper sense in the issue of the mistaken outlook of the glaciers on one hand, and the catchments of various rivers originating in the central Asian highlands including, but not limited to, the Himalayas, in the issue of vulnerable population, on the other hand. Also, if the broken link "Kehrwald 2008" refers to the paper of Kehrwald et al. 2008 in Geophysical Research Letters 35, L22503, the reference to the paper in this context is inappropriate. Kehrwald et al.'s expertise is in scientific estimates of mass balance of glaciers. Remarks about human population in its "implication" section were just drawn from the (questioned) Asian chapter of the IPCC AR4 WG2 (together with the mistaken outlook of the Himalayan glaciers), and also from the paper by Barnett et al. 2005 (Nature 438, 303-309) which was the main source of the information used by AR4 about the issue of population. The numbers in Barnett 2005 are often communicated as the numbers of people who depend on glacier melt water, but it is not. In one context, it is the number of people who depend on snowmelt water and glacier melt water together, and it is likely that snowmelt is more important in the majority. In another context (northwestern China), a large number is the total population of a region which has parts where glacier melt water is important. A much better estimate of the vulnerable population has been made by Immerzeel et al. 2010 Science 328, 1382-1385. I think that this paper should be cited instead of Kehlwald 2008 and Barnett 2005. But note that the target of this paper was 5 large river basins. It did not contain analyses of small inland river basins where glacier meltwater is likely to be crucial, though population is not as large there as in large river basins.
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3. cruzn246 at 22:45 PM on 17 September, 2010
   are retreating All you have to do is read the abstract of this and wonder about all this. It states ice loss was rapid in the 60s. It also states that precip rates are down. then it says summer temps are warmer. Question class. if you decrease ice mass in an area what would you expect the temperature to do? Yes it would go up. that is exactly why the most extreme temperature changes are seen on the margins of ice areas. It doesn't take a scientist to figure that out.
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4. Kooiti Masuda at 22:50 PM on 17 September, 2010
   As mspelto said, most of glaciers to the south of the Himalayas accumulate snow in the summer monsoon season. But perhaps the word "summer" is ambiguous. In the tropical monsoon Asia, the maximum in the annual cycle of air temperature often occurs in the pre-monsoon season (April to May in India, still dry until the onset of monsoon rain in June). I think that glacier melt water takes the largest fraction of streamflow in the pre-monsoon season (though I do not have appropriate data ready to assert this). This is a story about the seasonal cycle and not about climate change.
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5. Kooiti Masuda at 23:25 PM on 17 September, 2010
   The paper by Immerzeel (2010) was already discussed here in the article "Return to the Himalayas" on 29 June 2010 by Doug Bostrom. I wrote some comments about IPCC AR4 and Barnett (2005) there. Some earlier discussions about the paper by Barnett (2005) was made as comments to the blog article "The IPCC's 2035 prediction about Himalayan glaciers" posted on 21 January 2010.
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6. beam me up scotty at 00:50 AM on 18 September, 2010
   How seriously should we argue with people who would pick a single event (cold winter, IPCC error etc.) to refute the undeniable(!) and observable warming and ocean acidification?
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7. barry1487 at 01:40 AM on 18 September, 2010
   It might be worth pointing out that rhe mistake wasn't spotted by some steely-eyed skeptic auditor, but by one of the IPCC AR4 authors, J. Graham Cogley. List of AR4 authors J. Graham Cogley's view on the mistake:

   This was a bad error. It was a really bad paragraph, and poses a legitimate question about how to improve IPCC’s review process. It was not a conspiracy. The error does not compromise the IPCC Fourth Assessment, which for the most part was well reviewed and is highly accurate.

   http://web.hwr.arizona.edu/~gleonard/2009Dec-FallAGU-Soot-PressConference-Backgrounder-Kargel.pdf [p. 74] Cogley backs the IPCC AR4, despite this error.
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8. thingadonta at 02:07 AM on 18 September, 2010
   "the likelihood of global warming disappearing by 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the earth keeps stabilising at the present rate".
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9. Daniel Bailey at 02:15 AM on 18 September, 2010
   Re: thingadonta (8) Got a source for your apparent quote? Or did you just make that up? The Yooper
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10. Albatross at 02:30 AM on 18 September, 2010
    Barry @7, You just beat me to it! There is now a version 4.1 of the same incredibly informative talk available here is to vers. 4.1, but I see that there is now a version 4.2 out.
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11. actually thoughtful at 03:40 AM on 18 September, 2010
    So what is the correct (estimated date)? What is the correct (estimated) number of people affected by the loss of the glaciers? Are we fresh out of new science, to be going back over this very well-worked ground?
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12. archiesteel at 04:09 AM on 18 September, 2010
    I think it's clear thingadonta is a "hit and run" troll. He barges it to post his half-baked anti-science drivel, then runs off, never responding to counter-arguments. Isn't this ground enough for bannination?
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13. thingadonta at 09:18 AM on 18 September, 2010
    re #12 The statement was made to show how stupid the glacier statement was. There is an interesting quote by Dr Lal, co ordinating author of the chapter, who desipuite knowing it was dubious, states "It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action" Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html#ixzz0zpcSb8EC. To any normal thinking person, this mean exagerating for political purposes, a clear and admitted breach of IPCC prinicples. "IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy". Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html#ixzz0zpcmLu7g I would like to use my dubious statement above, for political purposes. I am concerned about Asias energy supplies in the next few decades, and the rising threat to these from climate science, so I am going to leave it in my report to "impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action". Dr Lal should be releaved of duties and sent back to 1
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14. thingadonta at 09:19 AM on 18 September, 2010
    ....that is sent back to 1st year science class.
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15. archiesteel at 09:44 AM on 18 September, 2010
    "To any normal thinking person, this mean exagerating for political purposes, a clear and admitted breach of IPCC prinicples." 1) Learn to type ("prinicples," "should be releaved of duties", etc). Reading your posts hurts my brain. 2) Snark comments about the science and scientists are not what this site is about. Try WUWT instead. 3) This is tempest in a tea pot, quit adding your own farts to the winds. 4) Your attempt at satire failed miserably. I suggest you leave it to those with a talen for it. Your comment adds *nothing* to the scientific discussion, and neither does this one. So I'll ask you to please cease your hit-and-run, poorly-worded, scientifically-deficient posts, as this isn't an advocacy or debate site. Thanks, and have a nice day!
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16. kdkd at 09:53 AM on 18 September, 2010
    thingadonta #13 A good way to have yourself not taken seriously in any discussion of climate change is to use the British Daily Mail as a primary source to justify your point of view. Example here.
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17. Daniel Bailey at 10:27 AM on 18 September, 2010
    Re: thingadonta (8, 13, 14) An example of making a positive contribution to this thread might have looked like this:

    "There was indeed an error in Section 10.6.2 of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in that the attribution of the Himalayan Glaciers disappearing by the year 2035 was incorrect. However, a closer look into the tale reveals that the date cited, 2035, most likely crept into various reports from an original 1996 International Hydrological Programme (IHP) report by Kotlyakov, published by UNESCO, which gave a rough estimate of shrinkage of the world's total area of glaciers and ice caps by 2350. J. Graham Cogley, of Trent University (Ontario), suggested that the 2035 figure in the second sentence of the WGII paragraph was apparently a typographic error, and should have instead read 2350. Summational source here."

    See? That wasn't so hard. Unless all you seek is to generate controversy and to waste others' time. Then carry on, my wayward son. The Yooper
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18. barry1487 at 11:27 AM on 18 September, 2010
    When Lal countered that he never said what David Rose in The Daily Mail attributed to him, Rose's journalism was investigated, and it was found he was a serial abuser. Even Roger Pielke Jr, a 'skeptic', wrote to Rose asking him to correct the record. The headline for Rose's article on Murari Lal is, "Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn’t been verified." So the spin starts with the headline. Murari Lal is not a glaciologist.
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19. Albatross at 13:46 PM on 18 September, 2010
    Daniel @17, That was an awesome Kansas video that you linked to! Had Thingadonta actually read something useful like glacier backgrounder by Kargel rather than linking to spam from a UK tabloid paper, then he would know that the glaciers of the eastern Himalaya in particular are not doing well. The typo was an unfortunate mistake and should not have been made. It does not change the fact that "Total Himalayan mass balance is distinctly negative” (Kargel et al. 2010). Anyhow, the issue had been addressed (ad nauseum) and it is time for everyone to move on.
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20. SoundOff at 17:52 PM on 18 September, 2010
    A fairly detailed analysis of the 2035 typo is provided at the link below. It suggests that the typo was actually caught during the expert review stage but some kind of glitch occurred, perhaps due to multiple changes being requested, and the requested correction was either not applied or the original text was accidentally restored. Anatomy of IPCC’s Mistake on Himalayan Glaciers and Year 2035
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21. Phila at 09:56 AM on 19 September, 2010
    #12 archiesteel Isn't this ground enough for bannination? Most other "skeptics" who post here have their blind spots, like all of us, but they do seem to make an effort to stay on the right side of the signal/noise ratio. Thingadonta, not so much. To put it very politely indeed.
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22. jyyh at 11:15 AM on 19 September, 2010
    SoundOff, if I recall correctly, there were some demands to include an estimate of this w/o the science being ready to answer as there was only one (Kotlyakov) paper present at the time that made this bold an extrapolation...
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23. Kooiti Masuda at 00:03 AM on 20 September, 2010
    In the WG1 report of IPCC AR4, Chapter 4 "Observations: Changes in snow, ice and frozen ground" included a review of the state of glaciers (Cogley was a contributing author there), but not their future outlook. The global summary of future outlook of glaciers is included in Chapter 10 "Global climate projections", in particular section 10.6.3, in the context of sea level change. Glaciers were not discussed in Chapter 11 "Regional climate projections."
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