The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged today that it had erred in projecting the rate and impacts of retreating Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 report. The faulty information appears in one paragraph of a 900-plus page Working Group II report. "In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly," the group explained in a prepared statement.

The paragraph in question had claimed that: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."