Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels are causing the Himalayan Mountains to melt

The IPCC has cited the shrinking of the Chorabari Glacier in the eastern Himalayan Mountains as evidence that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels is causing global warming and that global warming in turn is causing Himalayan glaciers to melt. Although the data are insufficient and conflicting, they project that in a hundred years, the glacial loss will affect water supply to a vast region whose rivers get their water from these glaciers. With respect to the absence of sufficient data to support this projection, they propose the odd logic that “the dearth of scientific knowledge only adds to the alarm”.

There a thousand glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains. Some of them are retreating. Some of them are expanding. Some are doing neither. We don’t have sufficient data to know what most of them are doing except that there has been an historical retreat of the glaciers since 1850.

The Himalayans are folded mountains and the folding is currently in process. It is a geologically active area. There is a lot of geothermal activity in these mountains particularly in Uttaranchal where Chorabari Glacier is located. Steamy hot springs there are a major tourist attraction.

Neither the geothermal nor volcanic activity is included in the global climate model used by the IPCC. This computer model is the source of all their scary predictions that the end is near. The end may very well be near but the prediction of its coming would be more credible if their computer model included volcanic and geothermal activity both on land and in the bottom of the ocean. A computer model based on the assumption that all surface anomalies of the planet are due to human activity is not the appropriate tool for the determination of the role of human activity in climate phenomena.

Cha-am Jamal
Thailand