Fun for the whole family

An article from the BBC on-line which may just leave you in stitches. First, the set-up:

In its 2007 report, the Nobel Prize-winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said: "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world 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 square kilometres by the year 2035," the report said.

It suggested three quarters of a billion people who depend on glacier melt for water supplies in Asia could be affected.

Some kill-joy had the unmitigated gall to actually look into the matter:

The UN panel on climate change warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035 is wildly inaccurate, an academic says.

J Graham Cogley, a professor at Ontario Trent University, says he believes the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

Naturally there is this:

He is astonished they "misread 2350 as 2035". The authors deny the claims.

And then this bit:

When asked how this "error" could have happened, RK Pachauri, the Indian scientist who heads the IPCC, said: "I don't have anything to add on glaciers."

Odd how this all happened anyway, the "2035" sources look like they are rock solid:

The IPCC relied on three documents to arrive at 2035 as the "outer year" for shrinkage of glaciers.

They are: a 2005 World Wide Fund for Nature report on glaciers; a 1996 Unesco document on hydrology; and a 1999 news report in New Scientist.

And just in case you were wondering:

Incidentally, none of these documents have been reviewed by peer professionals, which is what the IPCC is mandated to be doing.

Laughter is indeed a wonderful way to keep warm on these cold winter nights....