Scientist says IPCC claims about African rainfall reductions due to global warming have no supporting data.
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.
Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”
Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”
Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.
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Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility
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I’m sure Pachuri will respond to this by calling it voodoo science or something…
Good grief. Bob Watson uttering a sceptical word… things are getting worse and worse for the IPCC. Delighted to hear that all these Africans are not going to starve after all. Especially as the Sahara is greening over.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html
Ah Bob Watson, I did enjoy watching him squirm on Channel 4 news up against Lord Lawson. You could see from his body language that he knew the game was up.
Now we see him throwing anything he can overboard to try and keep himself afloat and divert attention from the major part he has played.
Renault: I am shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here!
Croupier: Your winnings sir.
Renault: Oh. Thank you very much.
Renault: Everybody out at once!
Is someone collating these blunders for easy reference?
….Observing climate changes is a paranormal gift some people have. Some talk to the dead, some see ghosts , others watch gletschers melting and deserts growing.
When all is said and done, the only aspect of AGW that will remain credible is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Not one prediction of impending doom, the only justification for AGW inspired radical policies, holds up under scrutiny.
Robert Watson was on Sky news this morning (approx 10:30 GMT) making the following claims:
1. The only mistake the IPCC made was about Himalayan glaciers.
2. There is nothing wrong with the peer review system.
3. The emails do not show any data manipulation.
4. The IPCC report is based on peer reviewed literature so is solid.
5. etc
So I wonder what has happened since 10:30am.
After all too many instances of the IPCC’s publishing alarmist theses in bad faith, under self-evidently false pretenses, we are entitled to ask: Has no-one inside or out the “climate science community” (sic) ever actually read any of these ludicrously contentious, high-strung prognostications?
When we find that, first, projecting Himalayan glaciers’ disappearance in thirty years (2035) was based on an uncorrected typo; second, that no evidence supports the original figure (2350); third, that this datum’s garbled source was a years-old off-the-cuff press interview broadcasting pure advocacy-group propaganda– objective, rational observers are entitled to ask, What IPCC statement is NOT false-and-misleading hyperbole designed to promote Warmists’ hyper-partisan, extreme-radical collectivist Statist “New World Order” with such as Seigneur Rajendra Pachauri, railroad engineer extraordinaire, presiding o’er benighted private-sector peasants at its head?
For the record, Edward Lorenz’s Chaos Theory (1964) plus Ludwig Boltzman’s fundamental Second Law of Thermodynamics (1880s) prove that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) in Earth’s complex dynamic atmospheric system is both mathematically and physically impossible. (See Gerlich and Tschneuschner’s 125-page paper published by Germany’s Institut fur Mathematische Physik in January 2010.) Not only are linear extrapolations from Lorenz’s non-random but indeterminate processes invalid due to “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” (the Butterfly Effect), but denying Boltzman’s Second Law of Entropy that governs heat-exchanges (“work”) amounts to endorsing Perpetual Motion.
When fundamental math and physics make nonsense of one’s aggravated hypothetical house-of-cards, who needs to waffle and fuss in detail over conclusions rendered prima facie ignorant, mistaken from first principles?
“A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.”
The headline seems to imply this is a possiblity – I thought it had already lost pretty much all its credibility anyway. With yet another “gate” today there’s not a lot of credibility left to lose. Even the MSM are starting to sound almost unbiased (some of the time).
Bob Wats on: ” We’re in quicksand. We take one more step, and we’re still there, and there’s no way out. “
Okay so how does this not show bias in the IPCC report? The IPCC report is little more then conclusion with as much science as possible and then a healthy dose of speculation ( alarmism ) to spur people into action ( allowing the UN to tax them to ‘fix’ the problem )
Forget about that even if we were to go back to 1990 CO2 levels it would be meaningless if in fact Global Warming was occurring because of CO2 emissions.
Re: hunter (Feb 6 14:42),
Actually it may change to Celadonhouse Gas.
Celadon (pronounced /ˈsɛlədɒn/) is a color that is a pale tint of spring green.
And all paid for with our tax money. I wonder when the lawyers will get involved?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1DEG6BWgp0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]
TerryS (14:45:37) :
Robert Watson was on Sky news this morning (approx 10:30 GMT) making the following claims:
…
3. The emails do not show any data manipulation.
…
_____________
Ans:
Well, mostly. The damning part regarding data manipulation was what came WITH the emails (the emails just fretted about such minor things as disobeying FOIA, beating people up you disagree with, subverting the peer review process, tax evasion, deleting emails to CYA, lamenting that the earth was cooling down, etc. etc). It was the REST of the material (condolences to Harry the progammer, et al) that point to data manipulation.
Of course, without a BEFORE set of data, determining what was manipulated and exactly how it was manipulated will be rather difficult to ascertain, but I have a sneaky feeling it’s all stored in somebody’s basement or garage just waiting to be discovered.
the flood gates have opened.
the suppression of science is ending.
it was “a damn close run thing”.
glad i could watch it happen here, anthony!
It’s one thing for Bob Watson to talk about the IPCC losing it’s credibility – not that it has any – but I notice he doesn’t say anything about the IPCC Working Groups losing any of the considerable funding DEFRA and other UK government sources throw its way…
The day of the Blogger:
A Fifth Estate Comes into it’s Own, WUWT!
http://web.me.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2010/2/4_The_Day_of_the_Blogger%3A_the_Fifth_Estate_Comes_into_its_Own.html
John Blake,
People have been reading the IPCC reports from the beginning, finding the same flaws and trying to get the word out on what is actually going on. If they were in the ‘climate research science community’, they soon found themselves pariah. If they were in another branch of the atmospheric sciences, they were labeled ignorant or some other more demonstrable epitaph. The complaints and arguments against the AGW theory were never addressed directly. Instead, there would be some hand waving and then a pronouncement that the skeptical arguments were easily disposed of.
This has been going on for 20 years. It is good to see the house of cards falling down, but we will be paying for the consequences of this for a long time. A whole generation has been brainwashed.
I was in the Denver Airport yesterday and all the advertisements on the walls were for ‘green’ energy companies. These are companies trying to sell an inferior product at a higher price to the brainwashed masses, using the tax dollars of the masses just to stay in business. It is a lose/lose scenario at a time when the country needs some big wins.
We will be paying for the AGW falsehood for a long/long time.
It’s going to be along long winding crash landing.
How many IPCC lies does this make now? I call them lies because things like this don’t just happen with world quality peer reviewed science.
If that prediction was true then any steps that were taken by the west to cut CO2 emissions would have no affect, at least in the short term. The only solution would be massive transfers of wealth to Africa and other like affected locations.
Oh wait…
How ironic. The real reason the Africans might still starve to death is because of the AGW policy of denying them a cheap source of power generation – coal. Without that, they are possibly doomed but hope not. I won’t go as far as some who say this is a deliberate policy to cull the African population. I see no evidence of this. But the end result might still be the same thanks to the AGW extremists.
u.k.(us), don’t be so sure. They still have the vast majority of the media on the AGW side. I still fear they will win given all the lies still being reported. Sure many will be unconvinced thanks to the Internet but that doesn’t mean the western governments won’t rush in the appropriate legislations to tax us under the guise of saving the planet. It’s the early stage of the Orwellian society we may have to suffer, largely thanks to the large section of the public who are not interested and don’t want to use their brain matter to think things over before voting. That’s why the media are to blame in the end for not doing due diligence, and reporting both sides of the debate when in doubt rather than reporting almost all the time one side only.
“TerryS (14:45:37) :
Robert Watson was on Sky news this morning (approx 10:30 GMT) making the following claims:
1. The only mistake the IPCC made was about Himalayan glaciers.
2. There is nothing wrong with the peer review system.
3. The emails do not show any data manipulation.
4. The IPCC report is based on peer reviewed literature so is solid.
5. etc
So I wonder what has happened since 10:30am.”
Nothing. It’s still not true.