Media Fact Check--Mongabay story

[kargel at hwr.arizona.edu]

FYI, Deborah Soltesz will implement a technical implementation for a permanent
discussion board soon, maybe in a few weeks. These Media checks
will stop coming in this manner once the website posting is possible.  This
additional news story just came to me, courtesy of Jim Torson.

Submitter: Jeffrey Kargel
Date: 9 Sep 2005
Subject: Media Fact Check: Mongabay story
See: http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0907-wwf.html

KARGEL: This report is long, detailed, and interesting, fact-rich, mostly
objective and acurate, well referenced, and tells the reader something in a
compelling way.  I take serious issue with one element of it, and it is one I
have some authority in disputing.  I note that while I was interviewed for this
article, and I susbmitted some graphics, I was not consulted on the Peru story,
which relies on a dredged-up but long-ago debunked NASA press release.

MONGABAY: In Peru, a chunk of glacier ice fell into Lake Palcacocha in 1941,
causing a flood that killed 7000 people; ...

KARGEL: This part is accurate, though as my Peru colleagues inform me, "Lake
Palcacocha" is redundant, like the mis-stated "Sierra Nevada Mountains."

MONGABAY: ... recent satellite photos reveal that another chunk of loose ice is
poised over this lake, threatening the lives of 100,000 people below (7).

KARGEL: The reference (7) relies on a recycled, inaccurate NASA/JPL press
release, which GLIMS had nothing to do with.  Yet that press release lives on
and on, because NASA refuses to retract it even in the face of widespread
recognition by experts that the press release made a faulty image
interpretation and exaggerated the imminency of the threat to the residents of
Huaraz (though the long-term threat remains and lingers over the people).  In
fact, the appearance of a crack and loose chunk of ice has been attributed to a
bedrock ledge that cuts through the wasted glacier, lending a false appearance
of a crack and scary chunk of ice.  A paper about this story is in the works,
but for now we can reply to one website with another:
http://geowww.uibk.ac.at/glacio/huaraz/

This story would rate an "A+" except that the faulty Peru press release again is
called on in an unquestioning way.  It would be difficult for the authors to
have traced that whole story, and so much other material is well reported, so I
will be lenient in my downgrading; but I can't let this pass, as peoples'
livelihoods, their economy, emotional well being, their trust in NASA as a
source of information, their sense of urgency to any further actual alarm call,
all is at risk in Huaraz.  Mongabay gets a B-.  But it's otherwise
consciencious/honest and is good reading.

--Jeff Kargel



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