Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Monday there was no "conclusive scientific evidence" linking global warming to the melting of the glaciers and questioned work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC, a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than in any other part of the world and could "disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner".

Shresth Tayal, a glaciologist with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, rejected a new report from an Indian scientist presented by Ramesh that denied the link between rising temperatures and receding ice.

"This report is incomplete. It has been written with a biased approach," said Tayal, who labelled the findings "self-contradictory."

"Do you think any scientist needs to prove that warming causes melting of ice? If there is heat, ice is bound to melt."

Tayal criticised the Indian government for endorsing the report by geologist Vijay Kumar Raina, saying it should have analysed the results before making it public.

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri also blasted the research by Raina, calling it "unsubstantiated" and said Ramesh's support of it was "arrogant."

"I cannot see what the minister's motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Ramesh admitted some glaciers were receding but said the rate was not "historically alarming" as projected by the IPCC, the Hindustan Times daily reported.

"The health of the Himalayan glaciers is poor, but according to the (research) paper the doomsday prediction of the IPCC and Al Gore is also not correct," Ramesh said, referring to former US vice president and climate campaigner Al Gore.

Raina, who authored the research, echoed Ramesh, saying "nothing abnormal is happening to Indian glaciers."

"There's no evidence of climate change," said Raina, according to the Hindustan Times newspaper.

Pachauri likened the explanations to "climate change deniers and schoolboy science".

India's attitude to the IPCC and other international findings on Himalayan glaciers has been marked by nationalist sentiment, with Ramesh repeatedly stressing that most research on the subject is done by non-Indians.

Ramesh has expedited plans to establish indigenous environmental research institutes, such as a national Himalayan glaciology institute, to counter what he says are biased findings ahead of UN talks in Copenhagen in December.

The Copenhagen meeting aims to establish a post-2012 global accord to slash emissions from fossil fuels that trap solar heat and drive global warming.

The IPCC has warned that the rivers of the Gangetic Basin, which supply hundreds of millions in northern India, could run dry once glaciers high in the Himalayas disappear.

The research backed by Ramesh was called "Himalayan Glaciers, a state-of-art review of glacial studies, glacial retreat and climate change" which is based on 100 years of data on 25 glaciers from the Geological Survey of India.

Shakil Ramsoo, an associate professor of geology at Kashmir University who released a study last month on rising temperatures and shrinking glaciers, said there was "no doubt in the fact that global warming is affecting our glaciers."

The Kolahoi glacier -- the largest in Indian Kashmir -- has shrunk by 2.63 square kilometres (one square mile) in the past three decades to just over 11 square kilometres, said Ramsoo's report.

Ramsoo told AFP the glacier was shrinking at "an alarming speed".

But M.N. Koul, one of Indian Kashmir's leading glacier experts who contributed to Raina's report released Monday, accused scientists of sounding a "false alarm."

"Himalayan glaciers are retreating at a very slow rate contrary to what has been said," Koul told AFP.

Shyam Saran, the Indian prime minister's special envoy for climate change, told the India World Economic Forum on Tuesday that the government could not make policy based on inconclusive scientific evidence.

earlier related report
Antarctica's ice loss helps offset global warming: study
Paris (AFP) Nov 10, 2009 - Global warming has been blamed for the alarming loss of ice shelves in Antarctica, but a new study says newly-exposed areas of sea are now soaking up some of the carbon gas that causes the problem.

Scientists led by Lloyd Peck of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said that atmospheric and ocean carbon is being gobbled up by microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton, which float near the surface.

After absorbing the carbon through the natural process of photosynthesis, the phytoplankton are eaten, or otherwise die and sink to the ocean floor.

The phenomenon, known as a carbon sink, has been spotted in areas of open water exposed by the recent, rapid melting of several ice shelves -- vast floating plaques of ice attached to the shore of the Antarctic peninsula.

Over the last 50 years, around 24,000 square kilometres (9,200 square miles) of new open water have been created this way, and swathes of it are now colonised by phytoplankton, Peck's team reports in a specialist journal, Global Change Biology.

Their estimate, based on images of green algal blooms, is that the phytoplankton absorbs 3.5 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 12.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

To put it in perspective, this is equivalent to the CO2-storing capacity of between 6,000 and 17,000 hectares (15,000 and 42,500 acres) of tropical rainforest, according to the paper.

The tally is minute compared to the quantities of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation, which amounted to 8.7 billion tonnes of carbon in 2007.

But, said Peck, "it is nevertheless an important discovery. It shows nature's ability to thrive in the face of adversity.

"We need to factor this natural carbon absorption into our calculations and models to predict future climate change," he said in a BAS press release.

"So far, we don't know if we will see more events like this around the rest of Antarctica's coast, but it's something we'll be keeping an eye on."

The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts up towards South America -- has been hit by greater warming than almost any other region on Earth.

In the past 50 years, temperatures there have risen by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), around six times the global average.

Ice shelves are ledges of thick ice that float on the sea and are attached to the land. They are formed when ice is exuded from glaciers on the land.

In the past 20 years, Antarctica has lost seven ice shelves.

The process is marked by shrinkage and the breakaway of increasingly bigger chunks before the remainder of the shelf snaps away from the coast.

It then disintegrates into debris or into icebergs that eventually melt as they drift northwards.

The Antarctic ice shelves do not add to sea levels when they melt. Like the Arctic ice cap, they float on the sea and thus displace their own volume.

Ice that runs from land into the sea does add, though, to the ocean's volume, which is why some scientists are concerned for the future of the massive icesheets covering Antarctica and Greenland.

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