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 Dr Pachauri has rapidly distanced himself from the IPCC's baseless claim about vanishing glaciers. But the scientist who made the claim now works for Pachauri, writes Christopher Booker

I can report a further dramatic twist to what has inevitably been dubbed "Glaciergate" – the international row surrounding the revelation that the latest report on global warming by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained a wildly alarmist, unfounded claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Last week, the IPCC, led by its increasingly controversial chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was forced to issue an unprecedented admission: the statement in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis, and its inclusion in the report reflected a "poor application" of IPCC procedures.

NZ Herald

by Brian Fallow

Wednesday 20th January

Prime Minister John Key says New Zealand will not be signing a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the post-2012 period under the Copenhagen Accord's deadline of February 1.

How much it amounts to will not be clear until early next month, when the annexes of the document are due to be populated with quantified offers to cut emissions, in the case of developed countries, and to curb the growth in emissions, in the case of the major developing ones.

But Key said yesterday that New Zealand's 2013-2020 emissions reduction target, of 10 to 20 per cent less than 1990 levels, remains conditional.

While some progress was made on securing acceptance of some of new Zealand's conditions at Copenhagen, the comprehensive United Nations negotiating process collapsed, leaving a weak agreement among leading emitter nations, the Copenhagen Accord.

NewsDaily

OSLO, Jan. 20, 2010 (Reuters) — The U.N. panel of climate scientists expressed regret on Wednesday for exaggerating how quickly Himalayan glaciers are melting in a report that wrongly projected that they could all vanish by 2035.

Leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance," they said in a statement on the flaw in a paragraph of a 938-page scientific report.

They noted that the projection of a thaw by 2035 did not make it to the final summary for policymakers in its latest report in 2007. The summary projected a faster thaw in the coming years for glaciers from the Andes to the Alps.

India and some climate researchers have criticized the IPCC in recent days for over-stating the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers, whose seasonal thaw helps to supply water to nations including China and India.

• This is the longest and most important article I’ve yet written for this blog and I make no apology for its 4600 words — more also than in any newspaper article. As a journalist, I believe the Climategate emails have exposed one of the most significant news stories of the decade. As the mainstream news media has so far barely gone beyond giving those who wrote them and their supporters time and space to deny their undeniable contents, I present here an extensive journalistic account of what they actually say in the context of the dates and events in which they were written, with full links to all the emails.

Having now read all the Climategate emails, I can conclusively say they demonstrate a level of scientific chicanery of the most appalling kind that deserves the widest possible public exposure.

The emails reveal that the entire global warming debate and the IPCC process is controlled by a small cabal of climate specialists in England and North America. This cabal, who call themselves “the Team,” bully and smear any critics. They control the “peer review” process for research in the field and use their power to prevent contrary research being published.

The UN's top climate change body has issued an unprecedented apology over its flawed prediction that Himalayan glaciers were likely to disappear by 2035.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said yesterday the prediction in its landmark 2007 report was "poorly substantiated" and resulted from a lapse in standards. "In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly," the panel said.

"The chair, vice-chair and co-chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of IPCC procedures in this instance."

The stunning admission is certain to embolden critics of the panel, which is already under fire over a separate scandal last year involving stolen emails that mentioned suppressing data to freeze out climate change sceptics.

From the Wall Street Journal December 9 2010

'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Is it not obvious that the vision of apocalypse as it was revealed to Saint John of Patmos was, in fact, global warming?

Here's a partial rundown of some of the ills seriously attributed to climate change: prostitution in the Philippines (along with greater rates of HIV infection); higher suicide rates in Italy; the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" battle in Somalia; an increase in strokes and heart disease in China; wars in the Middle East; a larger pool of potential recruits to terrorism; harm to indigenous peoples and "biocultural diversity."