The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has apologized for a “poorly substantiated” claim in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The UN body was forced to review the claim after reports that it was based not on peer-reviewed studies but on a media interview with an Indian scientist. “In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of 
evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly,” IPCC leaders said in a statement. The latest controversy, which comes weeks after e-mails pirated from a UK climate institute stoked furor among climate change skeptics, has attracted more scrutiny to research into the human effects on climate. But Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, told reporters the controversy should not undermine the credibility of the IPCC report or cast doubt on the reality that the world’s glaciers are melting. From Alaska to the Alps to the Tibetan Plateau, Thompson said that 95 to 100 percent of glaciers under observance are retreating. Of the 800 Himalayan glaciers being monitored, 95 percent are in retreat, he said. “We’re good at what we do, but we’re still human beings, and some errors can always get through the cracks,” he said. “[But] these issues are very specific, and they do not detract from the overall findings.”
View from a Himalayan glacier