Posted on Feb 12, 2010 | by Staff

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)– Global activists promoting the “global warming” cause suffered a serious setback Feb. 4 when the government of India announced it would form its own panel to study the impact of climate change on the country.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is headed by an Indian scientist, R.K Pachauri, has faced growing criticism over the credibility of its work. Pachauri’s most recent climate change assessment falsely claimed most of India’s Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, the Telegraph newspaper reported. Other scientists, however, say that while some glaciers appear to be melting, others are advancing and at current rates it could take more than 300 years for India’s glaciers to disappear.

“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses … they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks,” said India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, according to the Telegraph. “I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment.”

The UN panel’s claim that glaciers would disappear by 2035 “was clearly out of place and didn’t have any scientific basis,” Ramesh added.

The day after India’s announcement, news services reported the Netherlands asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate 2007 claim that more than half the country was below sea level, when in fact only 26 percent of the country is below sea level. IPCC experts apparently reached that figure by adding the area below sea level — 26 percent — to the area threatened by river flooding — 29 percent, a spokesman for the Dutch environment ministry told reporters.

On the basis of that 938-page IPCC report, politicians around the world vowed to take dramatic action to reverse “global warming.” The false claim about India’s glaciers and labeling river flood plains as below sea level provide new ammunition for critics who contend the entire “global warming” campaign is a political ruse to enrich advocates of green technology, with devastating consequences for the world’s poor.

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Compiled by Baptist Press assistant editor Mark Kelly.

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