Contrary to its mission to provide “reliable scientific information,” the United States Geological Survey is perpetrating a climate science fraud, with a little assist from USA Today.
On August 25, the USGS issued a press release titled, “Glaciers Retreating in Asia.” The subheading was even more frightening: “Could Impact Water Supplies for Millions and Cause Flood Conditions.” The subject of the USGS press release was “a report on the status of glaciers throughout all of Asia.”
What it failed to note, however, is that the report is decades old. Six of the seven chapters are based on manuscripts from the early 1980s. And the claim that glaciers are “retreating” in all of Asia is based almost exclusively on information collected from 1963 to 1993 regarding the tiny nation of Bhutan.
In no way does this old and limited data support the alarmist claims in the press release. That didn’t stop the USA Today website from running a story on the USGS study titled, “Asia’s Glaciers in Retreat, Could Signal Crop Failure, Floods in the Future.” Note the similarity of the USA Today title to the erroneous title of the USGS press release. This is the definition of a media echo chamber.
For whatever reason, Asian glaciers seem to be magnets for misleading science. Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a.k.a. the “scientific consensus,” was humiliated after it came to light that there was no basis whatsoever for the IPCC’s assertion that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2030. Isn’t it amazing how these slip-ups always seem to make climate change sound more, and not less, alarming?
Unfortunately, these fake facts and misleading headlines inform our elected officials. Consider Senator John Kerry, one of the leading proponents of cap-and-trade in the Congress. In May, he wrote that, “Scientists now warn the Himalayan glaciers, which provide fresh water to a billion people in India and Pakistan, will face severe impacts from climate change.” Where’d he get that idea? According to recent research in the Annals of Glaciology, the Karakoram glaciers–those in the western Himalayas that feed into the Indus River shared by India and Pakistan–are surging.
Some glaciers, like the Karakoram, are advancing, while others, like Bhutan’s, are retreating. The truth is that scientists don’t know why, and there is much research that needs to be performed. As the USGS report notes, with respect to Pakistani glaciers, “Information is limited or non-existent regarding: (1) enumeration and distribution of glaciers,” and, “(2) glacier mass-balance gradients and regional trends.” In 2001, Ravi Shanker, Director General of the Geological Survey of India, wrote that knowledge of Indian glaciers is in its infancy.
To recap, the USGS this week issued a report that summarizes Asian glacier science from the 1970s. Nonetheless, a USGS civil servant wrote an alarming press release in the present tense, and titled it, “Asian Glaciers Retreating.” A reporter at USA Today then parroted the press release, evidently without reading the underlying report. This shoddy media, in turn, informs leading politicians like John Kerry, who use fake facts to try to scare people into voting for energy rationing. Thus is climate alarmism manufactured.
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