By Jane Luscombe
Dire warnings that climate change will make Himalayan glaciers disappear within 25 years are now sounding like an embarrassing meltdown by United Nations scientists.
They have admitted it will take hundreds of years to destroy the glaciers and the mistake is being blamed on a simple typing error and Chinese whispers.
The panel had said that Himalayan glaciers could vanish in 25 years - now it's being forced to re-examine its own findings and is likely to retract the claim.
Scientist and climate change skeptic Gerrit van der Lingen says the oversight has had global consequences.
“They have put something in their report which is used by many governments around the world as being the true state of science. It's not,” he says.
The problem is partly down to Chinese whispers. Way back in 1996 UNESCO produced a report predicting that glaciers would shrink catastrophically by 2350.
Somewhere along the way someone picked up that figure and mistakenly read it as 2035 – 300 years sooner.
The figure then popped up in a news story eight years ago, quoting a little-known Indian scientist.
It is that article, rather than a proper scientific study, that seems to have been taken as fact by the UN panel.
Mr Vanderlingen says the article is “not solid science at all”.
While it is an embarrassing mistake for the climate change panel, Kiwi scientist Andrew Mackintosh says it doesn't change the fact that glaciers are melting and we should be alarmed.
“This is the only error of its type in a report that has 100s of authors, 100s of pages,” he says.
He says the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers is happening and is echoed here: Tasman Glacier has shrunk by a third in 100 years.
Climate change supporters are now scrabbling to regain the public's confidence. In their favour, they are the ones who discovered and revealed the mistake and say they are doing all they can to correct it.
3 News