GLACIOLOGISTS are in dispute over how a highly contentious claim
about the speed at which glaciers are melting came to be
included in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. A decade ago, New Scientist reported (5 June
1999, p 18) a comment by the leading Indian glaciologist Syed
Hasnain, who said in an email interview with this author that
all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could
disappear by 2035. Hasnain, of Jawaharlal Nehru University in
Delhi, has never repeated the prediction in a peer-reviewed
journal, and now says it was "speculative". The claim found its
way into the IPCC's fourth assessment report published in 2007.
Moreover, it was extrapolated to all glaciers in the Himalayas.
This has angered many glaciologists, who regard the claim as
unjustified. Vijay Raina, a leading ... To continue reading this
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