The Controversy over Global Warming, Climate Gate, Climate Change and Bangladesh: The True Lies

Author: A.T.M. Abdullahel Shafi

A.T.M.Abdullahel Shafi
Assistant Professor
Peace and Conflict Studies
University of Dhaka
Dhaka-1000
Bangladesh

link to original

Abstract

Bangladesh is likely to be one of the most vulnerable countries (*as declared by the IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri at the Copenhagen Conference on 8th December 2009) in the world to climate change. The first part of this paper discusses the Climate Gate issues and the hacked emails from the websites of the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom and the possible impacts of Climate Change in Bangladesh. The paper would also critically assess the Global warming controversy in response to climate change and global warming. The paper would also put more stresses on the politics of climate change by the donors and the government of Bangladesh. Finally, a few remarks would be made on the Climate change politics and the role of the government of Bangladesh in this regards in the event of climate change and policy responses of the government.

Introduction

On 8th December 2009, the president of IPCC Mr.Rajendra Pachauri declared with an emotional voice at the International Conference on Climate Change at Copenhagen, Denmark to save the lives of peoples like Bangladesh and Maldives who would be the worst victims of the so-called Climate Change and Global Warming. The emotional statements touched the hearts of the peoples attended in the COP-15 at Copenhagen, Denmark. As a participant I myself had also been attending the meeting and everyone whom I met and told I am from Bangladesh was scared to tell me about the sinking of my country for the ongoing effects of global warming and the Himalayans glaciers effects. As Bangladesh is one of the victims of Climate Change, I was also scared. After continuous searching over the internet, I had got each and every papers written by the national and international authors, I got the scaring results of climate change and the results of climate disasters happened during the last few years in my country like cyclones, floods, flash floods etc.The Centre for Trade and Development (CENTAD) in its Climate Brief-3 has depicted in Box -1, the following possible effects of climate change:

Possible impacts of climate change to Bangladesh

  1. Rise in sea level, predicted 88 and 89 cm along the coastline of Bangladesh.
  2. Roughly 25% of landmass is likely to be inundated permanently if sea level rises by 89 cm which might create 18 million climate refugees
  3. With rising sea surface temperature, it is very likely that the intensity and the frequency of the storm will increase
  4. Saltwater intrusion could further compound the problem by crippling the agriculture sector
  5. Loss of cultivable land and most of the land newly created coastline would be useless
  6. Riverbank erosion will increase
  7. The central and southern region are most prone to frequent flood, the north western regions are likely to experience a slow desertification
  8. The impact of climate change will drastically affect crop productivity, food security and livelihood
  9. It is likely to effect the prevalence of infectious diseases due to the effects of climate change
  10. Due to chronic malnutrition caused by shrinking food grain supply will create more vulnerable the health care and nutrition initiatives of Bangladesh

Now the question is whether it’s true or not or on what basis such speculation about Bangladesh is made by all these reports and why the IPCC president made Bangladesh one of the Victims in his declaration?

Methodology

The methodology adopted here is Content Analysis, historical data analysis and analysis of case studies. I have consulted data and analysis of previous reports by scientific experts on global warming, climate change and the controversial climate gate. The methodology is completely based on secondary data analysis and interpretation. In analyzing those data, I have carefully selected data which are related to our themes. I have also used analyzed the data and figures with a scientific explorations in mind.

The Global Climate Change Controversy and the True Lies

The fourth Assessment Report of the Inter Governmental panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.This is astonishing that the IPCC has taken into consideration the facts of Himalayan glaciers on the basis of a report of the “New Scientists”, a popular journal of science which was published 8 years before the 2007 IPCC reports.

It is now clear that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change (The Sunday Times, 17 January 2010).

The IPCC's reliance on Hasnain's 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: "Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.

"Since then I have obtained a copy and it does not say what Hasnain said. In other words it does not mention 2035 as a date by which any Himalayan glaciers will melt. However, he did make clear that his comments related only to part of the Himalayan glaciers, not the whole massif."

The New Scientist report had apparently a lesser impacts until 2005 when WWF cited it in a report called An Overview of Glaciers, Glacier Retreat, and Subsequent Impacts in Nepal, India and China. The report read: "Glaciers in the Himalaya 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."


Figure 1: WWF Graph on the changes in Himalayans Glaciers
(Source: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/himalayaglaciersreport2005.pdf, Page-54)

This figure of WWF shows the receding of Himalayan glaciers that has been based on the report of the “New Scientist” which has a greater impact on the IPCC fourth assessment report 2007.

When finally published, the IPCC report did give its source as the WWF study but went further; suggesting the likelihood of the glaciers melting was "very high". The IPCC defines this as having a probability of greater than 90%.

However, glaciologists find such figures inherently ludicrous, pointing out that most Himalayan glaciers are hundreds of feet thick and could not melt fast enough to vanish by 2035 unless there was a huge global temperature rise. The maximum rate of decline in thickness seen in glaciers at the moment is 2-3 feet a year and most are far lower.

Based upon the data and figures, things are at least clear that Interview of Dr.Hasnain has misquoted by the New Scientists and afterwards this has been requited by WWF report 2005 which has created a controversial IPCC fourth Assessments report 2007.Though this report has lesser implications too on the mind of peoples all over the world, but as I stated earlier it has created panic among peoples of Bangladesh and Maldives When Mr.Pachauri declared his historical speech at the Copenhagen Conference 2009 and at the same times a few of emails which contained this controversy has been hacked by the hackers. Though initially peoples all over were shocked to see the sufferings of the peoples of Bangladesh and Maldives and even Maldives statesman immediate before this conference has called on international attentions. Even this got a tremendous light when the President and the ministers of Maldives had a meeting under water.

 

Global Warming and the Controversy

 


Figure 2: The Changes in Global Warming
(Source: http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2010/02/climate-gates-phillip-jones-admits-no.html)

The controversy lies with this figure which shows red lines at the end near 2000.The IPCC fourth assessment report shows based on the speculations by the Indian Glaciorologosist Mr.Hasnain and afterwards on the basis of the report of WWF (World Wildlife Fund), IPCC has made speculations which is shown at figure-1. But this has got greater impact on the scientists who were working on global climate changes. Actually immediate after the Climate Gate, the Scientists Professor Jones admitted the truth.

After the resignations of Professor Jones this conspiracy theory got momentum and moral grounds that such claims are not at all authentic. Even what Professor Jones agreed is that after 1995, global warming has never shown the trends of increasing rather it’s always on the decrease.

He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not. He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory. Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.(Source: Daily Mail,14 February 2010,page-1)

Immediate after the publishing of the IPCC fourth Assessment Report 2007, several criticisms has been brought into air with the vague speculation of climate changes and scientists all over the world made specific comments and denied the speculations of the report. The controversy started in Poland before the UN global warming conference had been underway.

The Controversy started with the “1975 Endangered Atmosphere Conference” where Scientists spoke out broadly of “Global warming Hoax”. The Lyndon LaRouche organization claims that a scientific conference in 1975 was the origin of the "Global Warming Hoax".

The controversy got its foundation on In Naomi Oreskes's talk The American Denial of Global Warming. In 1995, the IPCC concluded that the human effect on climate is now discernible. The lead author of the key chapter on detection and attribution was Benjamin J. Santer, a scientist of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When the IPCC report came out, Seitz, Nierenberg, and S. Fred Singer—launched a highly personal attack on Santer. In an open letter to the IPCC, which they sent to numerous members of the US Congress, Singer, Seitz, and Nierenberg accused Santer of making "unauthorized" changes to the IPCC report.

On March 2, 2010, Naomi again lectured in the University of Rhode Island’s spring 2010 Vetlesen Lecture Series, People and Planet Global Environmental Change. Naomi Oreskes discusses the upcoming book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” (Bloomsbury USA), which she has coauthored with Erik Conway. According to the publisher’s spring catalog, the book tells “the troubling story of how cadres of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda.” It continues:

“For half a century, the tobacco industry, defenders of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and those skeptical of acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming strove to ‘maintain the controversy’ and ‘keep the debate alive’ by fostering claims that were contrary to the mainstream of scientific evidence and expert judgment. We have seen how they promoted claims that had already been refuted in the scientific literature, and how the media became complicit as they reported the controversy as if it was a legitimate debate. Often the media did so without informing readers, viewers, and listeners that the ‘experts’ being quoted had links to the tobacco industry, were affiliated with partisan think tanks funded by industries, or were simply habitual contrarians who perhaps enjoyed the attention garnered by outlier views.”

The Wall Street Journal on 12th June 1996, entitled "A Major Deception on Global Warming" written by Seitz, claimed that the effect of the alleged changes was "to deceive policy makers and the public".

On June 25, 1996 in a 3 pages letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Benjamin J. Santer and 40 others explained that he had made changes, but those changes were in response to the peer review process. In other words, totally normal scientific practice...This account was corroborated by the Chairman of the IPCC and by all of the other authors of the chapters. In fact, over 40 scientists were co-authors of this chapter. And Santer was also formally defended by the American Meteorological Society.

But neither Seitz nor Singer ever retracted the charges, which was then repeated—many times, over and over again—by industry groups and think-tanks. So it seems that Santer had fraudulently altered the IPCC report.

Timothy F. Ball a former Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg on November 4, 2004 at his speech to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy declared: "The world's climate warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it's been cooling down. The evidence for warming is because of distorted records. The satellite data, for example, shows cooling. Again on an interview with the Canada.com on May 18th, 2006 he stated, “there’s been warming, no question. I've never debated that; never disputed that. The dispute is what the cause is. And of course the argument that human CO2 being added to the atmosphere is the cause just simply doesn't hold up...The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." Again on February 5, 2007, Timothy Ball on his article-“Global Warming, The Cold, Hard Facts” straight forward denied the charges made by the IPCC report and claimed that -"Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. ... By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling."

The March 1, 2007 issue of Whistleblower magazine, a publication of WorldNet Daily, is titled "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming," and asserts that "all the main players –- from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations –- benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming".

The UN global warming conference in Poland faced a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. A newly updated 2007 U.S. Senate Minority Report of the United States United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (updated in 2009) features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have turned against the UN. The report added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists were more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

In a 20 November,2009, James Delingpole, a writer, journalist and broadcaster in his article-“Climategate: The Final Nail on the Coffin of the Anthropogenic Global Warming” on the Daily Telegraph ,UK wrote that "there is now a powerful and very extensive body of vested interests up against him: governments like President Obama’s, which intend to use ‘global warming’ as an excuse for greater taxation, regulation and protectionism; energy companies and investors who stand to make a fortune from scams like carbon trading; charitable bodies like Greenpeace which depend for their funding on public anxiety; environmental correspondents who need constantly to talk up the threat to justify their jobs."


Figure 3: (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming)

There were more scientists who opposed the IPCC projections on global climate warming and they do not conclude specifically that the current IPCC projections are either too high or too low, but that the projections are likely to be inaccurate due to inadequacies of current global climate modeling.

Professor Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences in his article-“Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus” Stated the facts: (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 °C higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But – and I cannot stress this enough – we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future.”

 

The Realities of Global Warming and Climate Change

Actually the realities of climate during the last few years does not support that global warming projections reported at the IPCC fourth assessment report and by thus this has become one of major concerns of the climate scientists. The NASA report tells us the fact:

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade -- due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean -- 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years -- 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 -- as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began.

Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York published another report on January21, 2009 shows that 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record. Throughout the last three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. Since 1880, the year that modern scientific instrumentation became available to monitor temperatures precisely, a clear warming trend is present, though there was a leveling off between the 1940s and 1970s.

In total, average global temperatures have increased by about 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880. “That’s the important number to keep in mind,” said Gavin Schmidt, another GISS climatologist. “In contrast, the difference between, say, the second and sixth warmest years is trivial since the known uncertainty -- or noise -- in the temperature measurement is larger than some of the differences between the warmest years."

Furthermore another report of NASA reveals more facts about global warming. According to the vast majority of climate scientists, the planet is heating up. Scientists have concluded that this appears to be the result of increased human emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, which trap heat near the surface of Earth. However, some information sources -- blogs, websites, media articles and other voices -- highlight that the planet has been cooling since a peak in global temperature in 1998. This cooling is only part of the picture, according to a recent study that has looked at the world's temperature record over the past century or more.

In their recently published research paper entitled "Is the climate warming or cooling?", David Easterling of the U.S. National Climate Data Center and Michael Wehner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory show that naturally occurring periods of no warming or even slight cooling can easily be part of a longer-term pattern of global warming.

This may sound counter-intuitive at first sight, so let's take a closer look at the data. Figure 1 shows the change in the world's air temperature averaged over all the land and ocean between 1975 and 2008. The warming is obvious -- about 0.5° C (0.9° F) during that time. However, there are plenty of periods -- 1997 to 1985 and 1981 to 1989 (see insets, Figure 1), and 1998 to 2008 -- when no warming is seen, the most recent of which some global warming skeptics say is evidence that the world is actually cooling.

Easterling and Wehner pored over global temperature records dating from 1901 to 2008 and also ran computer simulations of Earth's climate looking back into the past and forward into the future. They concluded that in a climate being warmed by man-made carbon emissions, "it is possible, and indeed likely, to have a period as long as a decade or two of 'cooling' or no warming superimposed on a longer-term warming trend."


Figure 4: The world's surface air temperature change ("anomaly"), relative to the world's mean temperature of 58° F or 14.5° C, averaged over land and oceans from 1975 to 2008. Insets are two periods of no warming or cooling within this overall warming trend. Copyright 2009 American Geophysical Union.
(Source: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/upsDownsGlobalWarming.html)

Though this NASA report shows 2009 as one of the warmest years over the last decades, the abnormal snowfall in the USA and Europe again shows cooling trends of nature. This is the record of snowfall in USA which is recorded at 27th December 2009 which tells us 877 new snowfall records set or tied in the last week.

 


Figure 5: (Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/27/877-new-snowfall-records-set-or-tied-in-the-usa-in-the-last-week/)

The daily count data from NOAA Satellite and Information Service shows 877 USA locations and shows the following trends of snowfall all over USA. The Climatologic data of snowfalls as recorded are as follows:

Dec 20th 124
Dec 21st 50
Dec 22nd 75
Dec 23rd 71
Dec 24th 170
Dec 25th 235
Dec 26th 152
Total 877 (CONUS and Alaska)

Many of the records have been bested significantly, and there were a number of all time records broken as well.

For example, December 24th and 25th all time records:


Figure 6: (Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/27/877-new-snowfall-records-set-or-tied-in-the-usa-in-the-last-week/)

This is the trends of snowfall records in the United States. If we look at Europe we would see the same records of trends of snowfall and even other parts of the world. In Europe the snowfall has been amidst and life has been halted for. This trend of worlds so called global warming trends does not support.


Figure 7: (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Snowfall_of_2009-2010_in_Europe)

This figure shows several countries and regions of Europe where snowfalls had been amidst during the winter and the blue lines shows several areas of Europe where temperature had been below -20 degree Celsius.

Chinese capital Beijing has faced the first snowfall and it has recorded the highest snowfall over the century. This is the heaviest snowfall in the last 60 years recorded, says Chinese Newspaper the China Daily.

Even the same records have been shown in the Mexico, South Africa, Chili, Argentina, Australia, Mongolia, Iran and even Iraq in its history for the first times recorded snowfalls.(Source: The Daily Ittefaq,17 February 2010)

 

The Climate Gate and Climate Change

The controversy started when a few hackers hacked the website of the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom on November 17,2009.Someone accessed the server and steal 160 MB of data from the server containing more than 1000 emails and 3000 other documents(The Guardian 20 November 2009).

The Guardian further reported that on 19 November an archive file containing the data was uploaded to a server in Tomsk, Russia before being copied to numerous locations across the Internet. An anonymous post from a Saudi Arabian IP address to the climate-skeptic blog The Air Vent described the material as "a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents" and defended the data breach on the grounds that climate science is "too important to be kept under wraps".

Afterwards, the hacked emails also showed that Climatic Research unit of the University East Anglia received over 1.7 million US Dollar from DOE for the forgery over the false speculation of climatic data.

This climatic email hacking incidence is afterwards termed as “Climate Gate”. After this controversy of hacked emails, the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, Professor Phil Jones resigned from his posts.

At an interview with Professor Phil Jones, the following truth about the climate changes had been revealed. Then there are the statements Jones made regarding relatively recent temperature trends which truly boggle the mind.

This man who has spent the better part of the past 25 years toiling to convince the world of CO2-forced 20th-century warming now admitting that the difference in warming rates for the periods 1860-1880, 1910-40 and 1975-2009 is statistically insignificant. Jones even acceded that there has been no statistically-significant global warming since 1995; that in fact, global temperatures have been trending to the downside since January of 2002, although he denied the statistical significance of the -0.12C per decade decline.

From among these hacked emails it’s also seen that Professor Jones intentionally wrote an email to one his colleagues to re-settle the graph (shown in the figure-2)to have shown the global warming is day by day increasing.On 16th November 1999,Professor in his email to one of his colleagues—
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim's got a diagram here we'll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
(Source: http://eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=154)

Immediate after this incident, the secretary of the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Copenhagen, Denmark, De Boer completely disagreed with this incidents and on 8th December as earlier stated the chairman of IPCC, Mr.Rajendra Pachauri declared Bangladesh as one of the worst victims of the climate change and emotionally blackmailed the hearts of all the peoples attending the conference from Bangladesh and the Maldives. Up to this point things were working very smoothly for them and immediate after the COP-15, the issue again got momentum for the activists of climate change.

Afterwards on February 18, 2010 Mr. Boer resigned from his posts. But before the resignation of Mr.Yvon De Boer, on 23rd January 2010 the Chairman of the IPCC Mr.Pachauri regretted for everything at a press conference and he disagreed to resign from his post. The Indian Daily newspaper “The Hindu” reported that the Chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) R.K. Pachauri on Saturday ruled out his resignation in the wake of the controversy over the inclusion of unsubstantiated data in the Fourth Assessment Report, which said the Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035, an error for which the IPCC had to express regret. He said he was elected by all countries in the world and had a task to complete. Admitting there were more mistakes in the section, Mr. Pachauri said the IPCC had expressed regret for that.Mr. Pachauri said no action could be taken against the lead authors as they were not IPCC employees.
(Source: http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article93922.ece)

Not only this climate gate, afterwards there were more incidence with this climate gate .In the words of Christopher Booker a climate activist and writer of the book “The Real Global Warming Disaster” wrote on 30th January 2010 at one of the blogs at the internet:

“It is now six weeks since I launched an investigation, with my colleague Richard North, into the affairs of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the hugely influential body which for 20 years has been the central driver of worldwide alarm about global warming. Since then the story has grown almost daily, leading to worldwide calls for Dr Pachauri’s resignation. But increasingly this has also widened out to question the authority of the IPCC itself. Contrary to the tendentious claim that its reports represent a”consensus of the world’s top 2,500 climate scientists” (most of its contributors are not climate experts at all), it has now emerged, for instance, that one of the more widely quoted scare stories from its 2007 report was drawn from the work of a British”green activist” who occasionally writes as a freelance for The Guardian and The Independent.

Last week I reported on ”Glaciergate”, the scandal which has forced the IPCC’s top officials, led by Dr Pachauri, to disown a claim originating from an Indian glaciologist, Dr Syed Husnain, that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035. What has made this reckless claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report even more embarrassing was the fact that Dr Husnain, as we revealed, was then employed by Dr Pachauri’s own Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (Teri). His baseless scaremongering about the Himalayas helped to win Teri a share in two lucrative research contracts, one funded by the EU.

The source the IPCC cited as its ”scientific” authority for this claim, however (as Dr North first reported on his EU Referendum blog), was a propagandist pamphlet published in 2005 by the WWF, the environmentalist pressure group, citing a magazine interview with Dr Husnain six years earlier.

Dr North next uncovered”Amazongate”. The IPCC made a prominent claim in its 2007 report, again citing the WWF as its authority, that climate change could endanger ”up to 40 per cent” of the Amazon rainforest – as iconic to warmists as those Himalayan glaciers and polar bears. This WWF report, it turned out, was co-authored by Andy Rowell, an anti-smoking and food safety campaigner who has worked for WWF and Greenpeace, and contributed pieces to Britain’s two most committed environmentalist newspapers. Rowell and his co-author claimed their findings were based on an article in Nature. But the focus of that piece, it emerges, was not global warming at all but the effects of logging.

A Canadian analyst has identified more than 20 passages in the IPCC’s report50 which cite similarly non-peer-reviewed WWF or Greenpeace reports as their authority, and other researchers have been uncovering a host of similarly dubious claims and attributions all through the report. These range from groundless allegations about the increased frequency of ”extreme weather events” such as hurricanes, droughts and heat waves, to a headline claim that global warming would put billions of people at the mercy of water shortages – when the study cited as its authority indicated exactly the opposite, that rising temperatures could increase the supply of water.

The book-“The Real Global Warming Disaster”, showed again that there is no greater misconception about the IPCC than that it was intended to be an impartial body, weighing scientific evidence for and against global warming. It was set up in 1988 by a small group of scientists all firmly committed to the theory of ”human-induced climate change”, and its chief purpose ever since has been to promote that belief.

Most disturbing of all are the glimpses the story gives of the inner workings of the IPCC, an institution now so discredited and scientifically corrupted that only those determined to shut their eyes could possibly defend it. This is now compounded by the recent revelations by Dr North and myself in these pages of how its chairman, Dr Pachauri, has built a worldwide network of business links which provide his Delhi institute with a sizeable income.

It is noticeable how many of those now calling for Dr Pachauri’s resignation, led by Professor Andrew Weaver, a senior IPCC insider, are passionate global warming believers. Fearing that Pachauri damages their cause, they want him thrown overboard in the hope of saving the IPCC itself. But it is not just Pachauri who has been holed below the waterline. So has the entire IPCC process. And beyond that – and despite the pleading of Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and the BBC that none of this detracts from the evidence for man-made global warming – so has the warmest cause itself. Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen may soon be nearing its end.
(Source: http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/climate-gate-–-all-the-manipulations-and-lies-revealed-261/)

After all the discussions, as a Bangladeshi the questions raised in my mind why Bangladesh is made such a victims and without a proof, why Bangladesh government officials who had been present at the COP-15 did not challenge the report of the IPCC and even not before on 2007,when the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC is published.

The answer lies with a few facts and ignorance of the politicians in power during that times and even the poor mentality of the government of Bangladesh.

Now I would like to reveal a few facts about the impacts of climate change as Mr.Pachauri declared and the real scenario. The real scenario is just the opposite of the facts declared by Mr.Pachauri.

 

The Myth of Climate Change and The Real Scenarios of Bangladesh


Figure 8: (Source: < href="http://geology.com/world/bangladesh-satellite-image.shtml" target="_blank">http://geology.com/world/bangladesh-satellite-image.shtml)

Actually the reason for showing this satellite image of Bangladesh is to show the readers that the so called global warming is really happening a few incidents in the country like floods, cyclones and other disasters, but in all these cases there are a few other initiators too.


Figure 9: (Source: http://www.cegisbd.com/maps.htm)

The two figures shown are clearly depicting that Bangladesh is gaining more lands due to the river bank erosion and sea rise levels. The landmass increasing just opposed the very declaration of Mr.Pachauri that Bangladesh is going to be under sea not only directly rejects but also clarify the notion of the Climate politics of third world countries like Bangladesh by the west. The scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometers (eight square miles) annually.

Experts and Scientists from (CEGIS) Bangladesh explained that sediment which travelled down the big Himalayan rivers -- the Ganges and the Brahmaputra -- had caused the landmass to increase. The rivers, which meet in the centre of Bangladesh, carry more than a billion tones of sediment every year and most of it comes to rest on the southern coastline of the country in the Bay of Bengal where new territory is forming(source: AFP, July 29th, 2008).

Another study by the CEGIS on the “Impact of Climate and Sea level change in part of the Indian Sub-Continent (CLASIC)” in 2003-2007 showed that climate change in the river flow predicted from the study indicated the possibility of substantial changes in the rivers flows in Bangladesh.


Figure 10: (Source: http://www.cegisbd.com/climate_div.htm#client5)

The fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 prediction and the Declaration by the IPCC chairman at Copenhagen afterwards had been changed with the controversy over the Climate gate which has been turned into a severe disaster for IPCC and afterwards the reports on the effects of sea level rise in Bangladesh had been significantly changed. The first scenario which showed Bangladesh would be sink has been changed into the changes which is not much significatory.the UNEP report 2010 showed the changes which says with an increase of 1.5 meter sea rise would cause a total affected population of 17 million which is about 15% of the whole22000 square kms of the total lands would be affected which is almost 16% of the total lands.


Figure 11: (Source: http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/climate/page/3086.aspx)

Another report by the UNEP in 2008(Figure Below) which clearly shows the data source as written Dacca University and Intergovernmental Climate Panel(IPCC) showed that 1.5 meter sea level rise would cost Bangladesh affected peoples of 18 million and 22000 square kms of land would be submerged. While at 2008 UNEP report showed the IPCC source it and at the same times in December 2009, the IPCC chairman spoke out the quite opposite.


Figure 12: (Source: http://www.unep.org/dewa/vitalwater/article146.html)

Even experts and scientists of Bangladesh have got different results form their own experiments which showed that while rising sea levels and river erosion were both claiming land in Bangladesh, many climate experts had failed to take into account new land being formed from the river sediment. The scientists from Bangladesh commented-"A rise in sea level will offset this and slow the gains made by new territories, but there will still be an increase in land. We think that in the next 50 years we may get another 1,000 square kilometers of land”.
(Source: http://carbon-based-ghg.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html)

Now we would discuss the other causes of natural disasters. Actually almost every years Bangladesh faces disasters like cyclones, floods, storm surges, coastal erosions and droughts. Though due to the reports of the fourth Assessment Reports, Bangladesh government in its Report-Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan2009 shows all these disasters are due to the climate changes happening all over the world and this report shows actions plans according to the climate report of IPCC.

But few other studies shows that natural disasters like floods, droughts, coastal erosions and even arsenic contamination which are most recent phenomena are not at all causes of global warming, rather it’s due to the curse of the Farakka barrage in India. Even due to this barrage, Bangladesh is anxious of future desertification.

The Pakistan Observer on October 30, 2009 reported that the water sharing issues between India and Bangladesh on equitable distribution of the waters of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Rivers have now emerged as a serious controversy in South-Asia. Unilateral withdrawal of Ganges water by the Farakka Barrage during the dry months had serious adverse effects on the Bangladeshi economy. Direct damage to Bangladesh in monetary terms amounted to more than $3 billion. Nevertheless, the worst effect of Farakka Barrage was that almost 70% of the groundwater in Bangladesh became poisonous.

Bangladesh's "White Paper on the Ganges Water Dispute" described a number of negative environmental consequences for the reduced flow of the Ganges as a result of the diversion of the Ganges waters through the Farakka barrage. Those consequences, according to this Paper, included negative hydraulic consequences on other rivers, reduction on groundwater levels, salinity intrusion and reduction in agriculture and forestry output in the affected area.

Due to this Bangladesh incurred massive losses many sectors like agriculture, fisheries, forestry, industrial, navigational, water supply etc. During the post Farakka years, the flow deduction had caused excessive silting resulting in the rise of river beds, reducing the conveyance capacity of the river channels, aggravating floods during the monsoon. During the post Farakka years the advancement of the saline front in Khulna became a major cause of concern as the salinity intrusion, concentration and duration in the region depended mainly upon the quantity and duration of upland flow received in the area. As a result the Gorai-Madhumati received a very low discharge in the dry months (Ibid, P-2).

M. Adel Mia, environmental scientists on his paper titled “Farakka Barrage: An Unprecedented Environmental Catastrophe in the Ganga Basin” highlighted the adverse effects of environments and ecology on the Ganga-Padma sub basin. Mr. Mia added that the adverse effect of the Farakka barrage is on the world’s largest mangrove area of the sunderbans of about 5697 square kms and about 45 million trees. Erosion of river banks and incidence of floods also increased and farm production substantially reduced. The largest irrigation scheme of the Ganges-Kobadakka Irrigation Project (G-K Project) with the rated capacity of 152.82 cusecs had to be shut down in 1993 due to the unavailability of water. The paper mill at paksey which needed 25000 metric tons of sweet water for its normal productions stood at the brinks of closure and had to be run by brining water in barges from a distance of 50 kilometers(Parua,2010:171).

For fisheries, the adverse effects has been tremendous and annual fish production decreased to 75% in 1975 to 34% in 1996 and in case of navigation, water transport infrastructure had been totally broken down due to the downstream water flow of the Ganges. With regards to irrigations, more than 0.4 million acres of lands were directly affected and more than 4000 low lift pumps were suffered. The sunderbans forest has been destroyed significantly and almost 45000 peoples were suffered who were living in forest products. The Bheramara power station for Electricity could not operate as the water level of the intake channel went below R.L.17 feet. Khulna newsprint mill is operating half of its capacity, as the chloride content of the water, used in the mill, increased by 20 percents. Roughly 5% of the tube wells are not working and level of water at the surface has been has been fallen drastically. (Ibid, P-172-176).


Figure 13: (Source: http://www.sos-arsenic.net/english/source/dam_as.html)

India's 23 years of unilateral diversion of water from the Ganges River has caused groundwater arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh.In 1995, Miah, M.A. in the article "Farakka the Death Trap"66 states that" India's continued diversion of 1,133 cum/sec out of 1728 cubic meter per second for about two decades during the dry season, has made serious impacts on the Ganges basin ecosystems. He further states “water level in ponds have dropped about 60 percent both in quantity and duration. During dry seasons agriculture has had to rely on underground water for irrigation". In 1996, Miah M.A. in the article-“The Water Crisis in Bangladesh A challenge to Integrated Water Management in Urban Areas” states that "Farakka is not only the name of the barrage on the Ganges; it has been a symbol of environmental havoc in the national life of Bangladesh.

Farakka has been a symbol of environmental havoc in the national life of Bangladesh. India has built barrages on 17 more rivers in the east and northeast border with Bangladesh. The Barak barrage to the northeast corner near 25 degree parallel is one of them. The construction of this barrage is built at Teepaimuch which is located between Assam and Manipur provinces. The barrage will be built at a height of 161 meters. The Barak barrage will also affect the east and northeast part of Bangladesh which fall under the Meghna basin.

In addition to the Farakka barrage, the 17 dam/barrages that India has constructed may have significant influence on the arsenic and other environmental disasters in Bangladesh.

There is a strong correlation between the post Farakka disasters and the Farakka barrage. The hydrograph shows the annual Pre Farakka discharge (1968-1974), the discharge under natural condition and the annual Post-Farakka discharge (1975-1996), the discharge because of India's unilateral diversion violating the natural as well as international river laws have caused many disasters both downstream and up stream. The construction and commission of Farakka barrage, India's 23 years of unilateral diversion of water, the construction of other dams/barrages in common rivers of Bangladesh and India the following disasters in Bangladesh are believed to have been caused by or aggravated by these projects.
(Source: Ibid, Page-1)

Now again the questions rises in the mind of the readers why Bangladesh had been one of the victims at the COP-15 declaration? The answer lies on the mentality of the rulers of the country. Yet we still believe there are certain consequences of climate change in Bangladesh which are worsening the situations too. But the fact as stated by Mr.Pachauri is not exactly the same as it is.

At key words I have used a newer terms “Climate Beggars” which would questioned the mind of the readers.

Actually this is harsh, but true. The political leaders of Bangladesh more specifically whoever is the ruler are always seeking funds with any crises to the country without assessing the real risks. In case climate change it has also happened. As Mr.Pachauri declared Bangladesh is one of the worst victims of climate the participants from Bangladesh, more specifically the government representatives without any assessment agreed with it and urged for a huge funding for it.

The astonishing fact is that an 88 member delegation of government of Bangladesh attended the COP-15 and the cost of this delegation is not mere. And the next important factor is that at the Press Conference immediate after the declaration of Mr.Pacahuri the attendee state minister for Environment and Forest Mr.Hasan Mahmood declared at a Press Conference-“We would urge for 45-60 thousand crore US dollars in proportion to our populations from the UN fund for Adaptation to climate change” (Source: The daily Prothom Alo, 08th December 2009).

Now the question is what would the state minister would say whenever he knew the whole fact is fake and intentionally Bangladesh had been made of one of the worst victims?

Even the next question is after 1971 several draughts, cyclones; floods had heated the country till today. How much government initiatives have we seen in terms of people’s welfare, i.e, in the welfare of the worst victims of cyclones and floods in Bangladesh? Another newspaper source in Bangladesh stated that Bangladesh government is still awaiting for the fund of the climate change.

As per the reports of the governments, Bangladesh has invested 10 million taka, the equivalent of about $150,000, to build cyclone shelters and create a storm early-warning system. Earlier this year, it allocated another $50 million to the country's agriculture and health budgets to help "climate-proof" certain development sectors. The nation's agricultural research centers are devising salinity-resistant strains of rice. And the South Asian nation was one of first to deliver to the United Nations a strategy outlining what it needs in order to cope with the worst effects of climate change.

Actually Bangladesh needs west help to minimize the problems and what is the best implication of best utilizing the funds are really absent in the country.

The real climate heroes are the peoples who are the worst victims of the natural disasters of climate change. Lisa Friendman, an E and E reporter have reported about these heroes of the country.

Lisa reported-"What I see is a country that has done spectacularly well in the face of very few advantages," Rahman said. "Bangladesh hasn't had a lot of things handed to it on a platter."

Added Rabab Fatima, South Asia representative for the International Organization for Migration, further added- "This country is quite a miracle, I must say. It's completely people-driven. Despite all natural odds, despite bad politics and bad governance, people don't starve here. The country is almost self-sufficient in rice production. And for the size of this country, this tiny country, to feed 150 million people -- that itself is a miracle".

Now the country's leaders are hoping to launch another miracle: survival of the greatest combinations of natural disasters that the heavens can rain down upon them.

During the cyclone AILA and Nargis we have seen these heroes to survive with or without aid from anyone, they have survived with every intentions of living without hope.

 

Concluding Remarks

The climate change is an issue by which everyone is affected, but the ways Bangladesh is made one of the worst victims is not still understandable. Even a few other third world countries are also made victims. At this article I have discussed every scenario from Climate Change controversy to Climate Gate. I have discussed the true lies along with the frontline scientists who had been unethical to make the innocent peoples of Bangladesh frightened. Furthermore they have initiated the process to make an alignment with the top class peoples of a few countries who are the real beneficiaries of the so called climate change. Such an unethical drama has shacked the whole world with unbelievable circumstances with the real climate scenario by which human kind would be real victims.

At the one hand such manmade games has created panic among peoples and on the other hand this has created confusions all over the world to believe any of the real certain impacts of climate change all over the world. In this paper I have tried to discuss the real scenario with Bangladesh where climate change certain worst impacts on peoples but not exactly the way Mr.Pachauri and associates has made one of the worst victims.

Still the questions arise to the mind of the readers why Bangladesh has been made such worst victims of climate change. I have also discussed this question with clarity with the worst mentality of the politicians who are the real beneficiaries of the foreign funds. The real heroism lies with the peoples who are the worst victims of natural disasters due to climate change and others in Bangladesh who are still surviving with their luck and heroic tasks accomplished. Furthermore peoples living under poverty are still suffering with natural and manmade disasters where governmental initiatives are still inadequate.

I have used one harsh term-“Climate Beggars” which has been clarified at the sections with the duties and responsibilities performed by those who are in power. Only peoples who know a bit about Bangladesh are all well aware of the facts.Even I have used the term-Climate Heroes which is more significant with the peoples of Bangladesh who knows better to survive without any help from any corners.

Though I have not explained and made any comments of my own, I have clarified all the facts discussing it from different sources which have made the whole things clear to the readers. The controversy which started at the COP-15 has revealed the facts that moral degradation at all aspects of life from the east to west and north to south has embedded us and we are still in play ground to victimize anyone whoever it is to cherish our own desires.

Such play would have made us learnt about the future consequences of the poltical, economic, social and scientific aspects of our life as well as of the world arena. If we can’t meet and understanding real crises of life than nothing, i.e no conferences or seminars would have yielded best results for the betterment of humankind.

 

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