Talk:IPCC claims about Himalayan glaciers were not based on science

Slant?

 * There's a bit of a weird slant in this article -
 * A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which claimed that the glaciers in the Himalayas were likely to melt within thirty years, was at least in part not based on scientific data
 * ...if you hadn't seen the story before, you'd assume the IPCC published a now-discredited report entitled something like "Future Prospects for the Himalayas to 2050. It's not unless you follow through to the sources that it becomes clear it's a section of a larger document, the bulk of which is tangential to the story. The article refers to "the report" throughout, describing people as making general criticisms of it, but makes no distinction between the reporting of a single claim, and the report, a thousand-page document, as a whole.
 * As a result, I don't think we're accurately representing the people quoted, and the situation as a whole. For example, we say Ramesh originally "criticised the report"; according to the AP, he criticised "the panel's initial assessment of the Himalayan glaciers", and his position on the remainder of the report is unstated. The IPCC statement is particularly odd; they say:
 * a paragraph in the 938-page Working Group II contribution to the underlying assessment refers to poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.
 * and we quote two sections, missing out their caveats such as "the paragraph in question", and transferring a criticism of the source to a criticism of the report:
 * The IPCC, a United Nations panel, admitted that the report was "poorly substantiated" and that "well-established standards of evidence were not applied properly" in the preparation of the report.
 * I'm really not convinced we're presenting the facts of the case straightforwardly here. Shimgray (talk) 09:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I've made some alterations - emphasising "claim" over "report", to try to bring out the difference between the comment under debate and the report irself - but there's still a few worrying issues. Looking at the sources, it feels cherry-picked - we quote Zemp as being quite negative, for example, whilst the CNN story was careful to include him saying that he felt the glaciers were good indicators for change. Shimgray (talk) 09:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This, you might note, was the point I was trying to make above. The "story" is manufactured and manipulated by right-wing media and, I'm afraid, people here have fallen for it. The news - if you can call it that - is that one line on one page in a huge report was alarmist. Why do you think this sat unreviewed for so long? --Brian McNeil / talk 10:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Mmmm. I've made some more extensive changes, trying to replace direct-but-misleading quotes with a broader synthesis, and added context as to what the claim was. I haven't put anything in about the "it was originally a typo for 2350" suggestion, as I'm not sure how much that's just hypothesis. The remaining problem now, I think, is the title - it's not strictly speaking inaccurate, but it does seem a bit... pointed. Shimgray (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Share via Facebook
Hi There

the Share via facebook link gives a description for a completely different story with this headline...is this a bug?
 * Its picking a line out of the related articles. Facebook (not us) chooses what they take as an excerpt, so it is more a bug on their end (but the end result is bad for us). Bawolff ☺☻ 23:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unsighted edits
I have noticed that this article has been significantly altered from what I submitted for review ... that's perfectly fine, this is a collaborative site after all. I do find it weird that many of these edits have gone unsighted for many hours. The edits are so substantial that I question whether they were based on the listed sources, but I haven't the time to verify. But why no sighting? Was interest lost? --SVTCobra 03:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I saw it sitting waiting for a re-review, I avoided it because the items added were, I felt, something needing addressed by you. I tried to point out above that the crap about the emails was just that, crap; I tried to highlight that there was a certain media "spin" being put on this story. How much of a kerfuffle would there have been if I'd edited in and sighted what I thought were reasonable additions? Please, start looking a lot more critically at the sources you read; look beyond the headlines and you will see a lot more "Ministry of Disinformation" pronouncements telling you what to be afraid of, or what to be angry about. If I pop the tinfoil hat on, well, this is a missive from the people who, like Sarah Palin, want floodlit night jetskiing and steaks cooked over an electric grill on the patio, with the heaters on, in sub-zero temperatures.
 * Now, if there's nothing pressing demanding my attention, I'll get back to my more-than-twenty-year-old-mission to have the UK's first female Prime Minister burned at the stake. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)