No money in that Yarmy! A key strategy for finding the motivation of anything . . . “follow the money”

Why would New Scientist allow Fred Pearce to write the new 21 January 2010 article about the Himalayan Glaciers disappearing?

Why does Fred Pearce neglect to mention in the new 21 January 2010 by Fred Pearce New Scientist article that it was Fred Pearce who who wrote the 1999 NS article?

Lots of other people got named by Fred Pearce, except Fred Pearce. I did a search for Pearce in the article in case my eye sight missed something.

Not sure if you have checked out the following:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-tangled-web-we-weave.html

“The Coming Population Crash”
That’s a relief. No need for David Attenburgh to worry then.

Seriously, that’s a lot of books. Barbara Cartland, eat your heart out. I’m eagerly awaiting “Nothing Much To Worry About On The Horizon”.

1) The controversy isn’t new. Jack D. Ives complained in print about the 2035 claim in 2004. (A rejigged version of the relevant chapter of his book, _Himalayan misconceptions and distortions: What are the facts?_, was published in 2005 with the glorious strapline, ‘Himalayan Delusions: Who’s kidding who and why — Science at the service of media, politics and the development agencies’.) Professor Ives is a holder of the Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, awarded in 2006 ‘For his role internationally in establishing the global importance of mountain regions’.

2) ‘Scientific’ echoes of the 1999 CSE/NS claim that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035 appeared in ‘scientific’ print long before the IPCC’s 2007 AR4 report. Chief culprit: Dr M. Monirul Q. Mirza, who repeated the ‘gone by 2035′ and ’500,000–>100,000 km2′ claims in articles or books published in 2002, 2005 and (pre-AR4) 2007. Dr Mirza was a co-ordinating lead author of TAR WG2′s Chapter 19 (Vulnerability), a contributing author to TAR WG2 Chapter 11 (Asia) and a drafting author of TAR WG2′s Summary for Policymakers; he was also a co-ordinating lead author of AR4 WG2′s Chapter 17 (Adaptation).

3) Himalayan glaciers: ’500,000–>100,000 km2′. The total area of Himalayan glaciers is about 35,000 km2 (Berthier, Shen etc.; and it’s mostly on the north slope). Drs Ahmad, Biswas, Mirza and all those echoing, clueless, hand-wringing NGOs – bak 2 skool. 500,000 km2 is an area 700 km by 700km. Geddit?

4) Dr Hasnain’s claim that he was misrepresented by New Scientist’s Dr Fred Pearce. If you are still reading this blog, Dr Fred, you might like to know that Hasnain was still writing scare stories in the Indian press about this as recently as January 2006: ‘At present the rivers have shown 3-4% surplus water due to a 10% increase in the melting of the glacier of the western Himalayas, and a 30% increase in the eastern Himalayan glaciers. But, after 40 years, most of these glaciers will be wiped out and then South Asia will have water problems.’

In early Dec. 2009, Time magazine ran an article titled “The Tragedy of the Himalayas.” The article is built around Dr. Hasnain.

In that piece, he implies that, regardless of what his data collection efforts reveal, his mind is already made up: “‘The debate is over,’ he says. ‘We know the science. We see the threat. The time for action is now.’”

I’ve written a lengthy blog post about the Time piece here, should anyone care to take a peek:

http://nofrakkingconsensus.blogspot.com/2010/01/time-magazines-controversial-glacier.html

Cheers!

at no point do we accuse you having a ‘hidden’ agenda. On the contrary, we say that your agenda is all too obvious, as is the New Scientist’s.

Some years later, I spoke to other glaciologists who seriously contested the claim and i did not repeat it after that, regarding it as at best unreliable.

Wasn’t that a story in itself: On the one hand, a scientist apparently claims that Himalayan glaciers will melt in decades, another says not? A scientific controversy worthy of reporting on, no?

Since your article, however, you wrote two books on water shortages, and the social catastrophe that they will cause.

The product description on the Amazon site for your book, When the Rivers Run Dry: What Happens When Our Water Runs Out? says that

That we face a world-wide crisis is no idle threat. Pearce’s 15-year research into water issues has taken him all over the world. His vivid reportage reveals the personal stories behind failing rivers, barren fields, desertification, floods and water wars. His book gives a clear and terrifying picture of the consequences if no remedial action is taken, but also a brilliantly challenging explanation of the steps we must take to ensure the ‘blue revolution’ the world desperately needs.

How can someone spend 15 years researching and writing about water, and not be aware of the status of the scientific claims relating to the water supply of possibly more than a billion Asians?

Then it turned up in the IPCC report. I presumed it must have been substantiated, and used it (attributed to IPCC) in a brief pre-Copenhagen roundup of climate science in the online Daily Telegraph.

So you did see the claim in the IPCC report, and yet you, a science journalist, and someone who had spent 15 years researching water security, didn’t think to investigate where the claim – that you had previously regarded as dubious, and controversial – had been substantiated, but decided to take at face value?

That is what we are criticising, Fred. If the science fits the political narrative, obviously there’s not point in scrutinising it. That doesn’t speak about a hidden political agenda; it speaks about the way in which politics is prior to the science, in the arguments made throughout the debate, leading to the array of apocalyptic fantasies that it consists of now.

On that Isabel Hilton CiF piece I noticed that the ability to comment got cutoff pretty quickly. Maybe because the MrEugenides response is devastating?

Although no lessons seem to be learned by her I notice, she even ends with a classic unsourced quote -

“Farmers in Nepal are already ­reporting new pests and diseases.”

Not long before that “pest and disease” increase fact is just fact right?
Is that how it works?

I remember seeing that very map in the Sun newspaper, so its been circulated in Britain among a far larger audience than the New Scientist readership.

While I’m not sure about your Antarctica point (global warming would be most intense near the poles), where’s the evidence that warming would lead to the cataclysmic desertification portrayed in that map?

The only place where deserts seem to spreading is the Sahel region, and there the culprit is probably not CO2 but deforestation. My solution — plant more trees in this area, and stop the locals cutting them down for firewood by giving them something else to burn…