As the controversy over retreating Himalayan glaciers took a new turn, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday said, India stood vindicated with a UN body moving to retract its own “alarmist” warning that the glaciers would melt by 2035 due to climate change.
Ramesh slammed as ‘alarmist’ the warning by Rajendra Pachauri’s Nobel-prize winning Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the glaciers would vanish and said it was without any scientific basis.
Pachauri, who is the IPCC Chairman, washed his hands of the controversy saying he has “absolutely no responsibility”
“The health of the glaciers is a cause of grave concern but the IPCC’s alarmist position that the glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence,” Ramesh told reporters.
Ramesh’s comments came following a report the warning that most of the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 owing to climate change is likely to be retracted after the UN body that issued it admitted to a series of scientific blunders.
“Infact, we had issued a report (by scientist V.K. Raina) that the glaciers, have not retreated abnormally. That time we were dismissed saying that it was based on voodoo science. But the new report has clearly vindicated our position,” Ramesh said.
Taking a dig at the comments made by Pachauri, who had described the Environment Ministry’s report as “voodoo science,” Ramesh said “now one should know “whodunit.”
According to reports, the IPCC claim actually stemmed from a 1999 article in a scientific journal which relied on an estimate made by a glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain and was in no way verified by any members of the climate body.
Pachauri said the report of Husnain was published in 1999 when he was not working with him but in the Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU).
