A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report. Read the full story

KATMANDU, Nepal — The world’s smallest deer, a flying frog and catfish that stick to rocks — as well as more than 350 other species — have been discovered over the past decade in the Himalayas, making it one of the world’s most biologically rich regions, an environmental group said Monday.

But researchers warn that the effects of climate change, as well as development, threaten the diverse habitat that supports these species.

“This enormous cultural and biological diversity underscores the fragile nature of an environment which risks being lost forever unless the impacts of climate change are reversed,” said Tariq Aziz, the leader of the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Himalayas Initiative, a regional conservation program that covers India, Nepal and Bhutan. Read the full story