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The Year that Was: R.K.Pachauri's Himalayan Blunder

An account of how a retired geologist took apart the alarmist climate claims of a Nobel Prize winning organisation

By Ashish K Mishra
Published: May 31, 2010 08:32:34 AM IST
Updated: Feb 27, 2014 01:45:57 PM IST
The Year that Was: R.K.Pachauri's Himalayan Blunder
Image: Ranjan kattyal for Forbes India
Myth Buster Raina says glacier changes are independent of climate change

Vijay Kumar Raina is amused. The 76-year-old retired geologist has been blitzkrieged by the media, government, world scientist community and the average citizen since December 2009.

Why? Because he blew the lid off the claimes of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), headed by the charismatic R.K. Pachauri, that the Himalayan glaciers will be extinct by 2035.

On July 10, 2009, Raina went to the Paryavaran Bhawan, headquarters of the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) in Delhi. There were around 40 other scientists at the meeting. The Space Application Centre (SAC) had prepared a report on a few Himalayan glaciers based on satellite imagery which had been funded by the MoEF. Environment minister Jairam Ramesh wanted to know the view of all the scientists gathered in the room on the findings of SAC.

The dissenting lot believes that while the Survey of India has prepared accurate maps for the rest of the country, its maps for Himalayan glaciers are incorrect. Raina recalls the time he was the director general of the glaciology division at Geological Survey of India (GSI) in the 1980s. The maps were based on aerial photography done in November because of clear skies. Now measurements are taken during September but because of monsoon clouds aerial photography is not possible.

By November, the first snowfall has already taken place because of which it was very difficult to identify the outline of the glaciers. That’s why many glaciers outlined in the maps show much larger outlines than actually present. So, when the SAC compared the current size of glaciers using satellite imagery with the 1962 maps they obviously found a lot of shrinkage.

Ramesh asked Raina if he would prepare a ‘white paper on the status of work done on Himalayan glaciers’. On August 4, 2009, Raina submitted his report. It said that the Himalayan glaciers and glaciers in the rest of the world have retreated and advanced irregularly with no direct link to warming or cooling of the earth’s climate.

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On November 9, 2009, Jairam Ramesh released the Himalayan glacier document at a press conference in New Delhi.

IPCC Chairman Pachauri came down strongly on the report. In December, 2009, however, Dr. Murari Lal, a scientist and one of the authors of the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, said that he had cited the ‘Himalayan-glaciers-to-disappear-by-2035’ claim from a 2005 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report.The implication was serious. Lal was saying his data was from a secondary source.
The World Wildlife Fund quickly responded and said it had, in turn, taken the information from a quote in the New Science Journal given by Dr. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who was then at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and who later became the head of glaciology at The Energy and Resources Institute.
Hasnain, on his part, denied making any such statement. The source of the claim in IPCC’s report thus entered a blackhole.

The moment this story made headlines, scientists and policy makers across the world started questioning IPCC’s credibility.

In reply to an email questionnaire from Forbes India, IPCC said “there was regrettably a poor application of the IPCC Rules and Procedures” in drafting the paragraph on Himalayan Glaciers.


- This article was earlier published in Forbes India magazine dated March 5, 2010

WHY DID WE DO THE STORY?
When details of how Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had got its facts wrong on Himalayan glaciers came, a media frenzy followed. Its claims that the glaciers would recede by 2035 were shown to be alarmist and not based on facts.

IPCC chief Pachauri initially dismissed all criticism. Claims and counterclaims flew thick and fast. However, in all this melee, the man who exposed the untruths in the IPCC claims, retired scientist V.K Raina, was not listened to fully.

It was Dr. L.M.S. Palni, director of G. B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, who first told us about him. He said Raina had spent more than five decades visiting the Himalayan glaciers and studying even minute movement up close year after year. We lost no time in making contact with Raina to understand the story behind the controversy.

WHERE DOES THE STORY STAND?
Earlier this year, IPCC admitted that it had made a mistake with the Himalayan glacier retreat data. The confidence that policy makers had in the body, which had a God-like status in matters concerning global warming, stands diminished.

A committee of 12 experts led by Harold T. Shapiro, a former president of Princeton University and the University of Michigan, has been formed at the behest of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to review the management, policies and practices of IPCC after the “Glaciergate” incident.
As for Dr. Raina, he is back to leading a quiet, retired life and working on his book on Himalayan glaciers.

(This story appears in the 04 June, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)

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