Global Warming "Errors" Raise Credibility Questions

A recent article documents some very serious mistakes made by UN scientists in an important paper about global warming. The article comes after a wave of confusion and accusations at e-mails between groups of scientists working on studies of global warming. These emails were said to have contained hints that facts or results should be beefed up or made more scary. Global warming skeptics maintain that these scientists have been fudging the facts to get more power behind their cause. Indeed when science and politics mix, serious questions of credibility are raised and the balance between the two can often become blurred and messy. The scientists insist that these large mistakes were purely errors, yet the magnitude of these errors and the apparent carelessness that must have went into such an important paper is questionable. Some of the errors include:

"Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world." Cogley and Michael Zemp of the World Glacier Monitoring System said Himalayan glaciers are melting at about the same rate as other glaciers.

It says that if the Earth continues to warm, the "likelihood of them disappearing by the 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high." Nowhere in peer-reviewed science literature is 2035 mentioned. However, there is a study from Russia that says glaciers could come close to disappearing by 2350. Probably the numbers in the date were transposed, Cogley said.

The entire paragraph is attributed to the World Wildlife Fund, when only one sentence came from the WWF, Cogley said. And further, the IPCC likes to brag that it is based on peer-reviewed science, not advocacy group reports. Cogley said the WWF cited the popular science press as its source.

A table says that between 1845 and 1965, the Pindari Glacier shrank by 2,840 meters. Then comes a math mistake: It says that's a rate of 135.2 meters a year, when it really is only 23.5 meters a year.

These types of mistakes, all which lean towards making global warming more real, and fast and frightening are riddled throughout this paper. I can only hope that politics haven't corrupted the men and women of science, yet I am skeptical of their agenda and of these mistakes.

Any thoughts?