From an NPR story, Jeffrey Kargel on IPCC statements about Himalayan glaciers: "One page had the most egregious errors you could imagine, just one after another, including the claim that the glaciers would disappear by 2035"

Melt Or Grow? Fate Of Himalayan Glaciers Unknown | Minnesota Public Radio News

Just a few years ago, it seemed that the Himalayas were on the brink of disaster. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made alarming claims about the fate of all that ice. You can almost see Jeffrey Kargel at the University of Arizona cringe as he describes it.

"One page had the most egregious errors you could imagine, just one after another, including the claim that the glaciers would disappear by 2035," he says.

But the claim was dead wrong. The error put a lot of egg on the face of the IPCC. But it also sent glacier scientists scrambling. They knew very little about the state and the fate of those glaciers, even the basics.

For example, it is true that a billion people live downstream from those glaciers. But, Kargel says, don't leap to conclusions based on that statistic alone. "That sort of statement can be exaggerated to imply that somehow if the glaciers disappear, the taps are going to run dry for a billion people. And that's just patently not the case."

Various estimates suggest that the glaciers provide 1 or 4 or 10 percent of the water for people downstream.