India environment minister under fire over glaciers

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India's environment minister came under fire Tuesday from scientists for denying climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt and disputing the work of the UN's top global warming body.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Monday there was no "conclusive scientific evidence" linking global warming to the melting of the glaciers and questioned work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC, a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and could "disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner".

Shresth Tayal, a glaciologist with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, rejected a new report from an Indian scientist presented by Ramesh that denied the link between rising temperatures and receding ice.

"This report is incomplete. It has been written with a biased approach," said Tayal, who labelled the findings "self-contradictory."

"Do you think any scientist needs to prove that warming causes melting of ice? If there is heat, ice is bound to melt."

Tayal criticised the Indian government for endorsing the report by geologist Vijay Kumar Raina, saying it should have analysed the results before making it public.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri also blasted the research by Raina, calling it "unsubstantiated" and said Ramesh's support of it was "arrogant."

"I cannot see what the minister's motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Ramesh admitted some glaciers were receding but said the rate was not "historically alarming" as projected by the IPCC, the Hindustan Times daily reported.

"The health of the Himalayan glaciers is poor, but according to the (research) paper the doomsday prediction of the IPCC and Al Gore is also not correct," Ramesh said, referring to former US vice president and climate campaigner Al Gore.

Raina, who authored the research, echoed Ramesh, saying "nothing abnormal is happening to Indian glaciers."

"There's no evidence of climate change," said Raina, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Pachauri likened the explanations to "climate change deniers and schoolboy science".

India's attitude to the IPCC and other international findings on Himalayan glaciers has been marked by nationalist sentiment, with Ramesh repeatedly stressing that most research on the subject is done by non-Indians.

Ramesh has expedited plans to establish indigenous environmental research institutes, such as a national Himalayan glaciology institute, to counter what he says are biased findings ahead of UN talks in Copenhagen in December.

The Copenhagen meeting aims to establish a post-2012 global accord to slash emissions from fossil fuels that trap solar heat and drive global warming.

The IPCC has warned that the rivers of the Gangetic Basin, which supply hundreds of millions in northern India, could run dry once glaciers high in the Himalayas disappear.

The research backed by Ramesh was called "Himalayan Glaciers, a state-of-art review of glacial studies, glacial retreat and climate change" which is based on 100 years of data on 25 glaciers from the Geological Survey of India.

Shakil Ramsoo, an associate professor of geology at Kashmir University who released a study last month on rising temperatures and shrinking glaciers, said there was "no doubt in the fact that global warming is affecting our glaciers."

The Kolahoi glacier -- the largest in Indian Kashmir -- has shrunk by 2.63 square kilometres (one square mile) in the past three decades to just over 11 square kilometres, said Ramsoo's report.

Ramsoo told AFP the glacier was shrinking at "an alarming speed".

But M.N. Koul, one of Indian Kashmir's leading glacier experts who contributed to Raina's report released Monday, accused scientists of sounding a "false alarm."

"Himalayan glaciers are retreating at a very slow rate contrary to what has been said," Koul told AFP.

Shyam Saran, the Indian prime minister's special envoy for climate change, told the India World Economic Forum on Tuesday that the government could not make policy based on inconclusive scientific evidence.