Add another exposed doomsday mistake to IPCC’s failures

posted at 2:20 pm on April 22, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a month since the latest example of intellectual collapse at the IPCC.  Now added to the fraudulent claims about Amazon rain forests, African crop harvests, and Himalayan glaciers comes the exposure of a very large error in the UN body’s warnings about flooding in Bangladesh.  Turns out that the scientists screeching about the cataclysmic effects of sea-level rises forgot to consider sedimentary deposits (via Yid with Lid):

Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN’s top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body’s landmark 2007 report were overblown.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

The claim helped create a widespread consensus that the low-lying country was on the “front line” of climate change, but a new study argues the IPCC ignored the role sediment plays in countering sea level rises. …

But IPCC’s prediction did not take into account the one billion tonnes of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers into Bangladesh every year, which are crucial in countering rises in sea levels, the study funded by the Asian Development Bank said.

“Sediments have been shaping Bangladesh’s coast for thousands of years,” said Maminul Haque Sarker, director of the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), who led research for the study.

Even if the sea level rises that far — a claim which is itself greeted with increasing skepticism — most of the coastline for Bangladesh won’t be affected.  The study concludes that sedimentary deposits would rise in the same proportion as sea levels, providing protection for almost all of the coastline.

The IPCC’s response?  Chair Rajendra Pachauri claims that one mistake shouldn’t shake anyone’s confidence in the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Unfortunately, he’s not referring to this error, but one exposed previously:

According to Pachauri, the glacier mistakes should not be allowed to detract from the fact that the IPCC’s conclusions overall are “robust and they are reliable”.

“One single error doesn’t take anything away from the major findings of the report. The fact is that the glaciers are melting,” he said.

The glacier claim wasn’t an “error”; it was a claim based on nothing at all other than speculation in an interview, and it was even misquoted. That’s hardly the only error discovered in the IPCC’s claims and in the AGW industry over the last few months, either:

Pachauri continues to insist that the emperor wears clothes at the IPCC, when he’s been naked for months.

Blowback

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Comment pages: 1 2

Ed,

While your list of exaggerations, irrelevancies, and non-issues grows, the scientific evidence continues to mount.

oakland on April 22, 2010 at 5:42 PM

From that which Brave Sir Oakland mounted:

New study says oceans’ chemistry changing rapidly

The report noted that the federal government has taken initial steps with the development of the National Ocean Acidification Program.

It made the following recommendations:

• Create an ocean acidification observation network including new tools, methods and techniques to improve measurements.

• Research to fill critical information gaps.

• Set up a data management office to ensure data quality, access and archiving to assist managers, policymakers and the general public.

• Develop high-quality research and training of ocean acidification researchers.

• Set up an effective 10-year strategic plan for the program that will identify key goals, set priorities and allow for community input.

These last points lead me inexorably to one conclusion:

“Sherriff murdered? Innocent women and children blown to bits?? Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phony baloney jobs! We mush do something immediately!

ya2daup on April 23, 2010 at 7:17 AM

“One single error doesn’t take anything away from the major findings of the report. The fact is that the glaciers are melting,” he said.

Yes, ALL the glaciers are melting. Except for the stable ones. And the ones that are growing.

But still – the population bomb is going to kill us all, so who cares about “climate change”?

Squiggy on April 23, 2010 at 12:51 PM

Comment pages: 1 2