The IPCC “Flavor of the day”-gate is now the Amazon Rain Forest. What will tomorrow’s flavor be?
James Delingpole of the Telegraph says this better than I ever could, so I’ll provide his summary here. Note that there are plenty more cases of unsubstantiated non peer reviewed references in the IPCC report, a list of which you can see here. For those wondering what “Load of porkies” means, see this.
Delingpole relays North’s analysis:
Here’s the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North – and it’s a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.
This is to be found in Chapter 13 of the Working Group II report, the same part of the IPCC fourth assessment report in which the “Glaciergate” claims are made. There, is the startling claim that:
At first sight, the reference looks kosher enough but, following it through, one sees:
This, then appears to be another WWF report, carried out in conjunction with the IUCN – The International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The link given is no longer active, but the report is on the IUCN website here. Furthermore, the IUCN along with WWF is another advocacy group and the report is not peer-reviewed. According to IPCC rules, it should not have been used as a primary source.
It gets even better. The two expert authors of the WWF report so casually cited by the IPCC as part of its, ahem, “robust” “peer-reviewed” process weren’t even Amazon specialists. One, Dr PF Moore, is a policy analyst:
My background and experience around the world has required and developed high-level policy and analytical skills. I have a strong understanding of government administration, legislative review, analysis and inquiries generated through involvement in or management of the Australian Regional Forest Agreement process, Parliamentary and Government inquiries, Coronial inquiries and public submissions on water pricing, access and use rights and native vegetation legislation in Australia and fire and natural resources laws, regulations and policies in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa and Malaysia.
And the lead author Andy Rowell is a freelance journalist (for the Guardian, natch) and green activist:
Andy Rowell is a freelance writer and Investigative journalist with over 12 years’ experience on environmental, food, health and globalization issues. Rowell has undertaken cutting-edge investigations for, amongst others, Action on Smoking and Health, The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, IFAW, the Pan American Health Organization, Project Underground, the World Health Organization, World in Action and WWF.
But the IPCC’s shamelessness did not end there. Dr North has searched the WWF’s reports high and low but can find no evidence of a statement to support the IPCC’s claim that “40 per cent” of the Amazon is threatened by climate change. (Logging and farm expansion are a much more plausible threat).
Read Delingpole’s blog here, North’s Blog here
I recommend adding them to your blog roll. I have.
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Follow the money…it will lead you to “their” motives everytime…
To complete the circle:
“New York, March 27, 2009- JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced today that it will support action against climate change by participating in Earth Hour 2009, a World Wildlife Fund global event to switch off all non-essential lighting for one hour on March 28.”
How much direct corporate financial support does JPMorgan chase & Co. provide the World Wildlife Federation?
Who are the rest of the WWF’s corporate financial supporters?
pat (15:57:47) wrote: “And JP Morgan, which paid a jaw-splitting $204m for carbon trader Ecosecurities last September, must be feeling a little sore. Perhaps it relied on the GHG Emissions Credit Trading report (yours for a mere $397), which predicts a $4.5 trillion carbon market by 2020.”
Now, things are starting to make sense…
How many other examples of this kind of self-dealing corruption are out there.
Let the disinfectant of sunshine put a spotlight (knowledge) on this kind of self-dealing corruption.
The dominos are starting to fall…
I live in Central America, I´m not a scientist but I do can tell you that clime has change in the last years. Some people say that this is cyclic, even when the rain season is shorter every year, and crops die because of dryness, and I can see rivers that become smallers every year. You can see too that we have more hurricanes and storms year by year. I agree that most of the activists just talk and ask for money and then do nothing. But I can tell you that we have to take care of our resources. God ask us to take care of earth in Genesis. We have to rule earth but we have to take care of it. Some people lie, others don´t. What to do? Help as much as you can. Recycle, save energy, save threes, don´t trash food. Help people with needs. Be better man and the world will be better.
RE: Junican (18:17:16) :
…does anyone know what the extent of sea ice around the North Pole is after the recent cold spell around the Northern Hemisphere? I would love to know.
Near realtime data is available at:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi?lang=e
and for year-to-year comparisons at:http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Total ice at any one time is not necessarily related to how cold it gets in the mid-latitudes. More often than not, the expansion of the circum-polar vortex which shifts the jet-stream southward brings colder temps to the mid-latitudes and also results in above normal temps at the higher latitudes. These shifts are defined by the Arctic Oscillation (AO).
Currently, as of Jan 25th, the Polar ice extent is 13,155,313 km² which is close to the mean of the past 8 years for this date.
freedomchimes,
Good words to live by, but it’s when the politicians come after my wallet is when I get skeptical.
freedomchimes I agree with your sentiments. However, your ideals will not be reached as long as the politicians and AGW fraudsters keep telling porkies about what’s causing climate change. As anyone with a brain knows, climate change started when the earth was formed (or created if you believe in God). The fact is the plans pushed by various Western governments to control the climate (LOL) will in fact do nothing in that regard, but will make the rich and powerful more rich and more powerful, while the rest of us get poorer.
A little bit more on Icarus (14:19:23).
Nepstad et al.’s Nature paper says “In the 1998 dry season, some 270,000 sq. km of forest became vulnerable to fire, due to completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil. A further 360,000 sq. km of forest had only 250 mm of plant-available soil water left.” These two sentencses were cited as reference No. 46 in the WWF/IUCN report. It’s OK for the time being.
But, the sentense “Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.” placed just before the two sentenses should be regarded as a thought of Rowell and Moore. They completely misunderstood (or misquoted) the paper; the depletion of precipitation due to 1998 El Nino is by no means “small reductions in the amount of rainfall.” This really was a drought.
Thus, the corresponding part of the IPCC report should be “The Brazilan forest is vulnerable against droughts caused by extensive reductions of rainfall.” This makes sense.
Another interesting point; the word “drastically” in the IPCC report seemingly was “sensibly” in an early version.
How soon we forget! Actually, after Nixon’s re-election, the media dropped it, including the NYT, and only the WaPo’s gutsy gamble to back its reporters kept the pursuit alive. Nixon and the insiders almost got away with it, just as insiders got away with deflecting other embarrassing inquiries. (E.g., the congressional investigation into Bobby Baker’s antics, which would have brought down LBJ, had JFK not been assassinated.)
Silly me, I had the nerve to ask PBS’ NewsHour for several years why they didn’t have AGW skeptic scientists on the program to debate the IPCC scientist guests, and I finally got a chance to report on that 12/29 here: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/12/the_lack_of_climate_skeptics_o.html
And tonight, I asked them again if they were going to report on the latest Glaciergate / Amazongate problem. Any bets on how long they will ignore this, too?
The Aussie ABC News Radio is reporting that the PM K Rudd has not issued a notice paper to re-introduce the ETS legistlation.
He had promised to re introduce it in February when the house sitting session resumed.
Back pedalling in a hurry or rats leaving the sinking ship?
freedomchimes (20:26:55) : Agreed, but none of that has anything to do with man’s consumption of CO2 producing energies. Instead, I believe, you and the rest of “central America” would be better off if you did consume more. Trust me, your countries would develop better economies if you guys did.
Aurbo
Cryosphere today is showing 12.1 million km2 not 13.1 which is a huge difference. Myabe its time people started having a look a Cryosphere Today “adjustments” which have been many. See here
http://mikelm.blogspot.com/2007/09/left-image-was-downloaded-from.html
Baa Humbug (21:17:57) :
“Back pedalling in a hurry or rats leaving the sinking ship?”
Either way, it’s a step forward.
some one’s having a go at you Anthony
http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/01/so_thats_why_surfacestationsor.php
care to answer them??
It seems to me that the people who invented this “scandal” didn’t really read the reports properly. The WWF report *does* include the 40% statement:
“Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall. In the 1998 dry season, some 270,000 sq. km of forest became vulnerable to fire, due to completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil. A further 360,000 sq. km of forest had only 250 mm of plant-available soil water left. 46”
… and it even comes with a source (46) pointing to something published in Nature 1999:
“46 D. C. Nepstad, A. Veríssimo, A. A l e n c a r, C. Nobre, E. Lima, P. Lefebvre, P. S c h l e s i n g e r, C. Potter, P. Mountinho, E. Mendoza, M. Cochrane, V. Brooks, Large – scale Impoverishment of Amazonian Forests by Logging and Fire, Nature, 1999, Vo l 398, 8 April, pp505”
… which says roughly (but not exactly) the same thing:
“ENSO-related drought can desiccate large areas of Amazonian
forest, creating the potential for large-scale forest ®res. Because of
the severe drought of 1997 and 1998, we calculate that approximately 270,000 km2 of Amazonian forest had completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper ®ve metres of soil by the end of the 1998 dry season. In addition, 360,000 km2 of forest had less than 250mm of plant-available soil water left by this time (Fig. 1b). By comparison, only 28,000 km2 of forests in Roraima had depleted soil water to 5m depth at the peak of the Roraima forest.
®res.”
Well the IPCC does have a defence. In their AR4 report they consistently state that they do not “predict” or “forecast” but they “project” or list “scenarios”.
Therefore, all that’s in the IPCC reports are no better than giving a fortune-teller $5 to have your future told.
Can’t you visualize Dr Pachauri in a tent at a fortune-tellers/ astrologers fair, wearing his traditional Indian regalia, sitting on the floor with legs crossed, a crystal ball in front of him?
Would you give this man $5 to have the climates future told?
NEWSFLASH – 0648 GMT
Breakthrough! BBC discusses IPCC, Pachauri, glaciers, etc etc on flagship morning news and current affairs radio programme ‘Today’.
sorry off topic
but i cannot resist
below is a comment from the rc blog headed the IPCC is not fallible
read and enjoy
# 27
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, all this fixation on get-it-right, got-it-wrong is obscuring the real issue: the truth is what we define it to be, and the truth is that mankind is a scourge on the planet. The sooner we can limit the right to breed, the sooner the planet will recover. If glacier data is a little incorrect but helps that effort, then the data is true in all but a very narrow and clinical scientific sense.
Common people don’t really understand science. But they understand not having enough to eat and not being able to sit down on a too-crowded subway. if we can educate people not to reproduce there will be many seats and the fewer people will be happier. Indeed, as the capitalist economies of scale are reduced, the atisfaction from making your own clothes and embracing a low-carbon vegan diet will be so intense, reproduction will come to be seen in the same category as child abuse.
I yearn for the day when i might not have been born!
Comment by rosie hughes — 19 January 2010 @ur momisugly 8:04 PM
I suggested to rosie that there are means by which she can take care of her existantialist angst
needless to say- i have zero expectaion that my comment will be posted there by gavin/ eric
Pete50 (19:10:51) :
It has more than once occurred to me that anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 is just as soluble in the oceans as is ‘natural’ CO2. The life of CO2 between its entry to the atmosphere and its dissolution in the surface of the oceans is about 5 years, acknowledged by the former IPCC chairman, Bert Bolin. The IPCC have modelled that atmospheric CO2 has a lifetime of 50-100 years [1].
I am unaware of their rationale for the figure they use, but the whole thrust of the AGW argument rests on it. Looks a whole lot like an arrow to me.
You have a positive feedback machine. It is called climate. Any small input above the tripping point is going to drive the climate to a rail. (Nonsense of course – except for going in and out of ice ages – but bear with me) How do you keep your model from railing which it will surely do in 20 e-foldings (time constants). You fudge the time constant so that your model only goes to 63% of the final value (1 e-folding) in 100 years. i.e. the results look “reasonable”)
I remember back a while there was a big discussion of this at Climate Audit and I did not get the significance. (I’m a little slow and the significance wasn’t explained) And about a month ago I started thinking about it and it came to me.
Sometimes the sceptics are no better at explaining themselves than the believers are. But like all good humans if we really care we improve with age.
If the explanation is unclear ask me questions.
Here is an explanation of e-folding in terms of capacitors:
http://www.play-hookey.com/dc_theory/rc_circuits.html
With a nice graph and calculator (and a little simpler:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/electric/capchg.html
Simpler yet:
http://www.tpub.com/neets/book2/3d.htm
Or search:
capacitor charging time equation
Or as I said. Ask me questions.
ChapinEngland: Unfortunately nothing there. A very poor defence of an organisation “going our best” and subject to human failure. No serious questioning from the wet beeb. The IPCC can get away with any lies it likes as far as auntie is concerned. The IPCC is strengthened by this isolated failing! What a load of *******s.
Re Newsflash (above)
Recordings of the programme can, I hope, in due course be accessed at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/radio/bbc_radio_four
48 minutes into programme and again at 1 hour 12 minutes into programme.
IPCC spokesman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele said that the furore would strengthen the IPCC’s credibility – yes, really!
Atmospherically speaking, Pachauri and the IPCC are now observing unprecedented man-made global heat, after finding themselves to be standing on very thin Himalayan ice, up an Amazon creek, and without a peer reviewed paddle.
Currently, the IPCC is desperately scrambling to close the Pachaurigate, however, the Pachauriderm has already bolted off with his trunk stuffed full of taxpayer grants.
Incidentally,
Q: Why did the Pachauriderm cross the road?
A: He thought he was Chicken Little
Q: How do you know there is a Pachauriderm under you bed?
A: You wake up with a TERIble headache
Q: How do you know there is a Pachauriderm in your bed?
A: From the way it lies.
Phillip:
Agreed, but, considering Auntie’s mindset, the fact that ‘Climategate’ etc was mentioned at all is startling.
Let me expand on the e-folding idea. The general term is time constant.
The final value after a number of time constants (for a charging – rising – situation) is:
1 – e-TC
Some values of e-TC
1/2 time constant – .607
1 time constant – .368
2 time constants – .135
3 time constants – .050
4 time constants – .018
5 time constants – .007
10 time constants – .000 as close as it matters
Now how about some values for 1 – e-TC
1/2 time constant – .393
1 time constant – .632
2 time constants – .865
3 time constants – .950
4 time constants – .982
5 time constants – .993
10 time constants – 1.000 as close as it matters
You figure time constant (TC – actually time periods) by
TC = (time period of interest)/(e-folding time)
Now I have gotten the terminology a little messed up – the e-folding time in electrical work is actually the time constant of the circuit. But no matter. The above is self consistent.
OK you cant do superscripts in comments.
The proper equation is: 1-e^(-TC)
And so: e^(-TC)
Baa Humbug (22:30:26)
We may not pay $5 to hear anything the man has to say, but Kevin Rudd appears to be happy to pay him 1 million dollars of taxpayer’s money to gaze into his crystal ball. However I’m not so sure the prediction of getting a major position in a UN global kleptocracy is going to work out for Kevin. The only string I can see Dr. Pachuari pulling in the near future is a ripcord…