New Scientist magazine asleep at the wheel?

New Scientist asleep at the wheel?

New Scientist magazine deserves credit for admitting an error from over 10 years ago. But the question is, what took so long?  Here’s their recent opinion piece: 

Sifting climate facts from speculation 

IT WAS a dramatic declaration: glaciers across much of the Himalayas may be gone by 2035. When New Scientist heard this comment from a leading Indian glaciologist, we reported it. That was in 1999. The claim later appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report – and it turns out that our article is the primary published source. 

The glaciologist has never submitted what he says was a speculative comment for peer review – and most of his peers strongly dispute it. So how could such speculation have become an IPCC “finding” which has, moreover, recently been defended by the panel’s chairman? We are entitled to an explanation, before rumour and doubt compound the damage to the image of climate science already inflicted by the leaked “climategate” emails.

One key fact they forgot to mention was that a typo, that no one on the IPPC caught, had transposed the year 2035 from 2350.  That’s only off by 300 years or so.

I wrote about this last December: 

IPCC: Could they be wrong?

The story ran on the BBC website during Copenhagen and Climategate.  New Scientist only notices it now?  Better late than never.

The story is finally being covered and discussed:

• Times Online UK:  World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown
• Roger Pielke Jr.:  New Scientist Wants an Explanation

So here we have shoddy work by New Scientist and worse by the IPCC (not catching the mistake and referencing research that was not peer reviewed).  Then the climate alarmists spread the word about how the Himalayan glaciers are going to melt in 30 years.  A search on Google show how wide this myth was spread:

Google: Results 1 – 10 of about 19,800 for himalayan glaciers may disappear by 2035

The alarmist goal has already been acheived.  How do you retract 10 years worth of scare stories? (On the other hand, who knows if Goole search results are accurate?)

Just to make sure New Scientist magazine doesn’t get off too easy, let’s have some fun at their expense. In December I posted about a great piece by Joanne Nova:

Joanne Nova: New Scientist becomes Non Scientist
Joanne had a fantastic spoof cover dubbed Non Scientist: 

Joanne Nova takes on Al Gore and New Scientist

Nude Scientist from TWAWKI

TWAWKI couldn’t leave well enough alone, and had to produce one more: 

Nude Scientist from TWAWKI

 Thanks to Joanne Nova and TWAWKI for keeping things light!