Baby It’s Cold Outside

Academics and climatologists are on the defensive about the ClimateGate scandal and errors in UN-sponsored research, especially amid a public growing more skeptical of climate change news hype.

A recent Gallup Poll released March 11 finds that “a record-high 41%” of Americans believe that “the seriousness of global warming” is exaggerated in mainstream media coverage—a 10% increase since 1997. The majority of survey respondents still hold that news reports are “generally correct” about the issues, or underestimate the severity of global warming, down 4% from 1998 and 5% from 2008.
It is not surprising, then, that environmentalists are trying to buttress public support for the theory of anthropogenic global warming. For example, a February Center for American Progress (CAP) event titled “The Science of Climate Change” featured two speakers, Dr. Michael MacCracken and Stanford Professor Christopher Field, who both have helped author reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
During his presentation Professor Field said on February 3 that “it’s extremely unfortunate in the case of the Himalayan glaciers, for example, that there was wasn’t sufficient vetting to identify one poorly substantiated number” and that “our” goal in the IPCC is “that there be 100 percent error-free analysis…,” according to the CAP transcript.
The passage from the 2007 IPCC report asserts that:

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).”

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