Good news: The Himalayan glaciers will probably endure past 2035. Bad news: If we don’t reverse our emissions trend soon, their disappearance is likely to become irreversible before then.

MEMO TO IPCC:  If you are going to review the apparently mistaken claim in your 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 — please review all of the latest scientific literature and observations on that subject AND please update your equally outdated sea level rise projections.

MEMO TO MEDIA:  It isn’t news that the 2007 projections by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are not accurate.  The real news is that the 99% of their “mistakes” are UNDERestimates of likely impacts.   Indeed, they lowballed the sea level rise projections so badly that even the Bush administration rejected them within a year (see “US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections).

Back to the news of the day.  Predictably, the anti-science crowd is crowing about what looks to be an inconsequential mistake in the 2007 IPCC report.  In a piece absurdly headlined, “World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown,” the UK’s Times online writes:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Note to Times Online, you might want to read your own story from two months ago, “Vanishing glaciers jolt smokestack China” (discussed below), the source of the above photo.

The UK Express screed, “The New Climate Change Scandal,” claims “FRESH doubts were cast over controversial global warming theories yesterday after a major climate change argument was discredited.”

It does look like the IPCC used some out-of-date projections for a pretty minor piece of the report, but of course the IPCC basically froze all scientific inputs to its Fourth Assessment Report around 2005, so they missed the dramatic acceleration in melting of the Arctic sea ice, the inland glaciers, and the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland.  Thus it is absolutely crucial that — if the IPCC re-examines the issue of glacial melt in the Himalayans — that it re-examine the entire issue based on the staggering new observational data in the scientific literature:

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I’m just saying (see “Paging Neil Cavuto: UAH global satellite data has record WARMEST day for January“).

Yes, the UAH satellite data just keeps going up (click to enlarge):

This shouldn’t be terribly surprising:  Long-term global warming trend + moderate El Ni±o = record temperatures, as predicted by NASA climate scientists, among others.

But it has the anti-science crowd scrambling for alternative explanations, since it just seemed so friggin’ cold out for a few days, which everybody knows is the best way to figure out climate trends.  Anyway, here’s everyone’s favorite Czech anti-science guy:

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Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is an opportunity to learn from his mastery of rhetoric.

Consider King’s powerful words about the civil rights struggle, which echo today in the climate battle:

We are faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’

Note how King repeatedly uses key figures of speech — alliteration, metaphor — and extends the metaphor of another master of rhetoric, Shakespeare (Julius Caeser), all of which are classic oratorical strategies (see “How to be as persuasive as Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare“).

I think science has mostly told us what it can about the fiercely urgent need to act swiftly to avoid adding the bleached bones and jumbled residues of our civilization to the pile.  Our urgent need now is for much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1 and Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”).  I have a dream that progressives will some day have the winning words to match their vital ideas.

King’s most famous speech illustrates the rhetorical principle of foreshadowing, as I discuss in my unpublished book on rhetoric, excerpted below:

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