GLIMS Update: Media: Fact Check

[kargel at hwr.arizona.edu]

Dear GLIMS colleagues,

Regarding:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/09/09/himalayan.glaciers.reut/ind
ex.html

I am initiating a discussion board on media accuracy when it pertains to GLIMS. 
It will be open to the GLIMS community, publicly viewable, with the record to be
posted on the GLIMS website.  Deborah, would you kindly introduce the mechanism
to enable postings of the discussion record and “publish” them via the website,
and then post this message and any replies/comments at the next GLIMS website
revision?  GLIMS: Until Deborah has the mechanism in place, please reply to me
(or initiate your own discussion threads) and to dsoltesz at usgs.gov.

The discussion board will have the subject line “Media: Fact Check.”  We have
seen a surge of media interest in glaciers in the last few years.  I am happy
that GLIMS has been along the forefront of media contacts within the glaciology
community.  As with any scientific issue, some of the media gets it right
without blemish, some are factually errant or in fantasy land, but usually it
is a mix of good facts and misunderstanding.  On the whole, we in the
glaciology community welcome the coverage, as the media is overall successful
in putting across the messages that the majority of the world’s glaciers are
melting or changing in some way.  Glaciers do address some of the major issues
facing society, so we have something important to say.

Of course we would like our statements to be well portrayed by the media.  Those
of us who have had media contacts over scientific issues have generally
experienced the failures of some in the media, the exaggerations, the
misattributed statements, the unattributed data, the overly simplistic
misinterpretations, and so on.  My sense is that most errors average out to
“noise” and are inconsequential, though annoying, and that the “signal” of fact
still comes through to the public.  We in GLIMS of course need to be attentive
to how we talk to the media and not lend discourse that may contribute to
exaggerations (to the extent that we can influence the media); the facts stand
up sufficiently to make the points we wish to make.  Hopefully, you have also
had insightful and truth-seeking interviewers and science reporters who have
done an amazing job of reporting your science to the general public.  It would
be nice to be able to dispute or clarify statements of fact, to add to the
record, and to give our kudos when warranted.  Well, we can.  There is the
Cryolist, which many of us use, but I’d like this GLIMS discussion board to
pertain strictly to "public" stories that involve GLIMS researchers, GLIMS
colleagues’ data, and so on.   This discussion board would have done a great
service back in April 2003 when there was a factually errant/exaggerated
NASA/JPL press release regarding glacier hazards in Peru; at the time, it
seemed hopeless for me to correct the misimpression that GLIMS was at the root
of it, when in fact GLIMS had no role at all in that press release, except
afterwards for helping to defuse an international crisis stemming from the
press release.

So the following pertains to one story from CNN, where they have a lot of it
right, but they have grossly exaggerated other points, in my assessment. BTW, I
had no role in this story, and although Rick Wessels’/GLIMS’ “Gangotri Glacier”
graphic (or a slight modification of it) is used, it is not cited that way; he
had no role in the news story text, either.  As Rick says, it’s amazing to see
how this figure gets around and is used in various ways.  We're happy for its
power, even though it is one glacier and even though Rick is hardly ever given
due attribution.  For the full story see:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/09/09/himalayan.glaciers.reut/ind
ex.html

--Jeff Kargel

CNN: NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) -- Imagine a world without drinking water.
It's a scary thought, but scientists say the 40 percent of humanity living in
South Asia and China could well be living with little drinking water within 50
years as global warming melts Himalayan glaciers, the region's main water
source.

JEFF KARGEL:  Scientists may have said this, and I would agree that something
like a billion people will be impacted (are being impacted) by melting
glaciers.  But population growth and economic development are by far the
biggest causes of fresh water shortages, past and present, followed by climate
change, followed by changing glaciers as a consequence of climate change.
Future reduction in water availability due to reduced glacier sizes will impact
the region’s overall annual water supplies at the percentage (maybe couple
percent) level, whereas at this time some areas are actually getting more water
than they would without glacier melting. However, that’s like drawing money out
of a checking account, and the balances become worse with time, and in fact
will turn into a “water debt” in the future.  The impact of melting and
disappearing glaciers on SEASONAL water flow is much greater, because melting
glaciers contribute more meltwater when the weather is hot and dry and sunny
(when water is most needed), and least water when it is wet and cloudy and cool
(when water is least needed).  Of course when the glaciers are gone, there will
still be snow melt and rainfall runoff from those areas, but those supplies of
water are delivered when the weather is wet or immediately after sunny, warm
weather hits.  Furthermore, there are valleys in western China and Pakistan
where glaciers ARE the main source of water, and when they are gone, the water
is basically gone, and those valleys may become uninhabitable.  But those
most-impacted valleys are where several millions of people live, not a couple
billion.  The couple billion people in the broader region will have to deal
with changing (mostly diminishing) water resources, but reduced population
growth in some affected countries would help considerably and would more than
offset the effects of diminished glaciers.  So I must conclude that the CNN
statement above is a slight exaggeration of the number of people impacted and a
gross exaggeration of the quantitative magnitude of impact, except locally,
where it really is that bad.

CNN: About 67 percent of the nearly 12,124 square miles of Himalayan glaciers
are receding and in the long run as the ice diminishes, glacial runoffs in
summer and river flows will also go down, leading to severe water shortages in
the region.

JEFF KARGEL: Sounds about right.  GLIMS will have better or newer numbers soon. 
 But my hunch is that even most of the remaining 33% are losing mass even if
their terminus is not retreating yet: they are getting thinner.  “
severe water
shortages in the region” has to be qualified as I have done above: severe LOCAL
shortages of annual water availability, severe REGIONAL impacts of seasonality
of water flow, and SMALL but SIGNIFICANT reductions in the total water resource
available to Central and South Asia and China.  I accept that the news media
will have to simplify and generalize the statement, but the difference between
what they say and the reality of it can be important for people living in those
countries.  The statement, if slightly further exaggerated, could be
misconstrued to mean that massive numbers of people will be dying of thirst. 
That is simply not the case.  But the region desperately needs to create a
long-term multinational water treaty that will solve the problems for the long
run; that goes beyond use of melting glaciers to include everything that makes
for a productive economy.

CNN: The Gangotri glacier, the source of the Ganga, India's holiest river, is
retreating 75 feet a year.

JEFF KARGEL: That’s about right.  Indian glaciologists have measured it on the
ground, and the graphic in the CNN figure also shows it over the long term.

CNN:  And the Khumbu Glacier in Nepal, where Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
began their ascent of Everest, has lost more than 3 miles since they climbed
the mountain in 1953.

JEFF KARGEL:  I would not dispute those who have climbed it, especially anybody
who climbed it in 1953, but as Figure 6C and 6D of an in-press article by me
and 16 others (Remote Sensing of Environment) shows, between 1958 and 1981 this
glacier’s terminus has been stable; field studies have shown that this glacier
is thinning, but the nature of its terminal moraine  and dammed-up ice is such
that mass loss by this type of glacier does not result in immediate retreat. 
Maybe much retreat occurred between 1953 and 1958, or from 2001 until now.  My
results are slightly dated, and I would defer any strong statement disputing
the CNN storyline until after I have spoken to the glaciologists who have been
there recently and in the 1950’s.  I can say definitively that the way this
type of glacier retreats is by a cycle of (1) thinning, (2) stagnation of flow,
(3) supraglacial lake formation, and then (4) runaway lake formation that
effectively kills the long valley segments of these glaciers. This cycle causes
sudden retreat of many miles in a period of a few years or a few decades.  Then
these glaciers restabilize at a retreated position, build up a high terminal
moraine, re-stagnate and repeat this cycle until the glacier is a small remnant
nested high in a  glacial cirque, which then takes a long time to disappear
completely.  The story for any one of these glaciers in the region during
de-glacial cycles (such as now) is long periods of monotonous thinning
interspersed with frightening retreat.  The glaciers in Nepal and Bhutan and
that part of the Himalaya are definitely well advanced into this repeating
cycle.  It seems to have started in the 1950’s in some cases but is happening
rapidly now.  Climate change almost certainly is the culprit (what else can
explain it?), and this does indeed pose a challenge to those trying to manage
the region’s water supplies.

CNN: "The cry in the mountains is that water has gone down and springs have
dried up," Jagdish Bahadur, an expert on Himalayan glaciers.
"Global climate change has had an effect, but water has also dried up because
agriculture in the mountains has increased," he said.

JEFF KARGEL:  Very good.  THAT'S the story!

CNN: In Nepal, there are more than 3,000 glaciers that work as reservoirs for
fresh water and another 2,000 glacial lakes.

JEFF KARGEL:  Very good points.  There is an evolving hazards aspect, too.  Many
of those lakes are very dangerous.

The rest of this article is very interesting and seems factual to the extent
that facts are used.  The anecdotal evidence seems to pertain primarily to
localities, not the whole region.  Had that distinction been made by CNN, I
would have given this article an “A” rating (A= excellent; B = good; C=
satisfactory; D = poor; E = failure).  That is a huge distinction to have
failed to make, and so the article has an “alarmist” flavor, especially where
it starts out; so I give this CNN article a “C” rating.



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