UN climate panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri today said the panel’s erroneous forecast that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 had not hurt its credibility and that he had no intention of resigning. The Intergovernmental Panel on climate change (IPCC) had earlier this week conceded that its fourth assessment report had without substantiation predicted that most of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 because of climate change. “It was...

Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain, whose research on the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, led to a major controversy, on Wednesday blamed “certain prejudicial forces” for mounting a campaign against his “diligent” research. Speaking out for the first time since the London-based The Times quoted him as saying that his findings on the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 in the impact of climate change were “speculative,” Professor Hasnain said “vested interests...

The government on Monday said its contention that there was no immediate and serious threat to the Himalayan glaciers was vindicated with the latest evidence suggesting that the Inter-governmental Panel on climate change (IPCC) claim on the glaciers disappearing by 2035 due to climate change, was not based on scientific evidence. Contested issue In 1999, glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain claimed that if the current pace of global warming continued unabated,...

Indian geologists who had two months ago accused a UN climate science agency of misleading the world with alarmist predictions about Himalayan glaciers have now said they stand vindicated. The Intergovernmental Panel on climate change has launched an exercise to find out how its fourth assessment report issued nearly three years ago contained a prediction that most of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. “We’re looking into it. We’re...

During the last three years, two subjects have been consuming the attention of the world community almost to the exclusion of other equally important subjects. One is the financial crisis, which had threatened to lead to a meltdown of the global economy, and the other is the threat to orderly climate changes in the world. As we step into the second decade of the 21st century, the global financial crisis...