Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
4/22/2010
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a month since the latest example of intellectual collapse at the IPCC. Now added to the fraudulent claims about Amazon rain forests, African crop harvests, and Himalayan glaciers comes the exposure of a very large error in the UN body’s warnings about flooding in Bangladesh. Turns out that the scientists screeching about the cataclysmic effects of sea-level rises forgot to consider sedimentary deposits (via Yid with Lid):
Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN’s top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body’s landmark 2007 report were overblown.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.
The claim helped create a widespread consensus that the low-lying country was on the “front line” of climate change, but a new study argues the IPCC ignored the role sediment plays in countering sea level rises. …
But IPCC’s prediction did not take into account the one billion tonnes of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers into Bangladesh every year, which are crucial in countering rises in sea levels, the study funded by the Asian Development Bank said.
“Sediments have been shaping Bangladesh’s coast for thousands of years,” said Maminul Haque Sarker, director of the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), who led research for the study.
Even if the sea level rises that far — a claim which is itself greeted with increasing skepticism — most of the coastline for Bangladesh won’t be affected. The study concludes that sedimentary deposits would rise in the same proportion as sea levels, providing protection for almost all of the coastline.
The article continues at HotAir.com
