A mistaken claim about glaciers raises questions about the UN’s climate panel

THE idea that the Himalaya could lose its glaciers by 2035—glaciers which feed rivers across South and East Asia—is a dramatic and apocalyptic one. After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said such an outcome was very likely in the assessment of the state of climate science that it made in 2007, onlookers (including this newspaper) repeated the claim with alarm. In fact, there is no reason to believe it to be true. This is good news (within limits) for Indian farmers—and bad news for the IPCC.

The IPCC, like ancient Gaul, is divided into three parts. Working Group I looks at the physical science of climate change. Working Group II is concerned with impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. Working Group III deals with mitigation. The claims about Himalayan glaciers come from a short “case study” in a chapter on Asia in WG-II’s report from 2007. Like all of the IPCC’s work, this was meant to be an expert assessment of relevant research, resting mostly on peer-reviewed sources but also, at times, on the “grey literature”—reports by governments and other organisations that are not commercially or academically published. …