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The link given is no longer active, but the report is on the IUCN website here. Furthermore, the IUCN along with WWF is another advocacy group and the report is not peer-reviewed.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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@kadaka – Obama is a sick puppy. He has grave NPD according to the DSM-IV standards. Vaknin discusses the disorder in depth (now out of print but available used for around $50). His description of Obama and his description of the events that lead to NPD are spot on in Obama’s case. Is Obama a louse? Not in the standard sense that we use about people. He suffers from a psychiatric illness (don’t we all in some degree), but his has been taken to the extreme and endangers everyone around him.
Yes I put the poem up to cover Obama and the IPCC. I do not think that Obama is as bad as the IPCC. He has a disease like St. Vitus dance in the political realm, but he is like Steward in “Steward, A Life Backwards” http://www.amazon.com/Stuart-Life-Backwards-Alexander-Masters/dp/0385340885/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1264495271&sr=8-1-fkmr0 He is the product of his up-bringing and is empty. This empty can never be filled.
23.23 update -same BBC programme.
0845 GMT: The new problem, folks, is ocean acidification! It’s 30 per cent up! Shellfish will be corroded! Cue wailing, gnashing of teeth, we’re all doomed, something must be done, etc, etc
Well I never!
. . . followed by a discussion of the IPCC (0856 GMT) involving Tony Juniper and Mike Hume and a mildly probing interviewer.
Drip, drip . . . ?
Mikael Lönnroth (22:24:27) :
“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”.
According to Wikipidea…..
“This basin encompasses seven million square kilometers (1.7 billion acres), of which five and a half million square kilometers (1.4 billion acres) are covered by the rainforest. This region includes territory belonging to nine nations. The majority of the forest is contained within Brazil, with 60% of the rainforest, followed by Peru with 13%, and with minor amounts in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana”.
40% of 5.5 million sqkm is 2.2 million sq km. (not 270,000 sqkm or 360,000 sq km) The report referred to is guesswork at best, rather like the IPCC’s own reports.
Also, IPCC refers to Amazonian forests whereas the cited report refers to Brazilian forest. Brazil occupies 60% of the Amazonian forest, so 40% of 60% is only 24%
Any which way you look at this saga, it is NOT what you’d expect from the most comprehensive, peer reviewed literature of our times.
People didn’t “invent” this scandal, it was created by the careless crooked procedures used to formulate the report.
Climategate, Glaciergate, Pachaurigate Amazoniagate etc etc
I thought I’d go to the only authoritative publishing there is regards climate science…….The IPCC AR4 (no really, not being funny)
WG1 Chap1 1.2 The Nature of Earth Science
“Science may be stimulated by argument and debate, but it
generally advances through formulating hypotheses clearly and
testing them objectively. This testing is the key to science. In
fact, one philosopher of science insisted that to be genuinely
scientific, a statement must be susceptible to testing that could
potentially show it to be false (Popper, 1934). In practice,
contemporary scientists usually submit their research findings to the scrutiny of their peers, which includes disclosing the
methods that they use, so their results can be checked through
replication by other scientists. The insights and research results
of individual scientists, even scientists of unquestioned genius,
are thus confirmed or rejected in the peer-reviewed literature
by the combined efforts of many other scientists. It is not the
belief or opinion of the scientists that is important, but rather
the results of this testing. Indeed, when Albert Einstein was
informed of the publication of a book entitled 100 Authors
Against Einstein, he is said to have remarked, ‘If I were wrong,
then one would have been enough!’ (Hawking, 1988); however,
that one opposing scientist would have needed proof in the form
of testable results.
Thus science is inherently self-correcting; incorrect or
incomplete scientific concepts ultimately do not survive repeated
testing against observations of nature”.
Chicken Littles are coming home to roost cluck cluck cluck
Vic
There is no need to limit the right to breed, which is an obnoxious thought anyway.
If women are educated and given a vision of a future where they could do more than breed, where they could live an autonomous life and not be the chattels of men, they will spontaneously choose to pursue some economic improvement for themselves and to have far fewer children. It happened in the west as soon as contraception, and information about contraception, was made available to the masses in the 1920s. That right-wing rag, “The Economist” had a piece about this a few weeks ago and says that this is happening all over the developing world. No doubt it needs to happen more, especially in Islamic communities. The other predictor of falling family sizes in any country is the availability of an old age pension. In other words, develop the developing world!
The Economist believes that we will begin to see a fall in human population numbers in about 30 years time, as I recall, although we should not get complacent. There is a lot of work on this still to do.
Greeg E.
No, the sun is going out. That’s the reason for all this cold weather we’ve been having.
ChapinEngland (23:23:00) :
I heard that as well – the arrogance of the IPCC is quite astonishing! And don’t even get me started on the BBC! It is pathetic!
There are some seriously warped minds out there and only a systematic purge of this corrupt cult and the instigators being brought to justice will suffice now. The green tentacles are everywhere.
The change in tone and language as this report changed from the source to the WWF and the IPCC is really quite worrying
Original Source
WWF
IPCC
AdderW (13:09:34) : The CAGW fuzzy, greeny crowd are disappearing at an alarming rate
TonyB drew my attention to Skeptical Science. This warmist blog is truly one of the best IMO – with its fifty-odd points against us skeptics – straw men the lot. Here I found Scott Mandia alive and well. Probably others too.
Now Skeptical Science is examining the recent paper On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record. Skeptical Science says
and
IWatch the movement of troops on the flanks! And yes, a reply would be very interesting.
Phillip Bratby (13:22:13) :
“Even the BBC is commenting on Pachauri’s woes”
And here’s an even greater shocker (from the Beeb, anyway) … they’ve actually reported on China’s climatic heresy:
China has ‘open mind’ on cause of climate change
China’s lead climate change negotiator has said he was keeping an “open attitude” as to whether global warming was man-made or due to natural cycles.
Xie Zhenhua said climate warming was a “solid fact” and that mainstream scientific opinion held it was due to emissions of gases such as CO2.
[…]
“There is one starkly different view, that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of nature itself.
“I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research.”
He said that it was important to include as many views as possible “to be more scientific and to be more consistent”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8478643.stm
Jandke (19:26:21) : It would seem that “denier,” “flat earther,” skeptic,” and “realist” are not quite appropriate terms for those of us whom are not believers.
In light of the “evidence” being uncovered and the “proof” being provided to debunk the AGW canard, we skeptics should be addressed by the term:
PROOFER. I am proud to be a PROOFER.
Like it.
James Sexton (21:28:10) :
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.
James, you used the expression “trust me”… h’mmm. 🙂 And actually, I like where freedomchimes is coming from, seems to be paying attention to what he can actually vouch for from personal witness. Good scientific practice, that.
Mikael Lönnroth (22:24:27) :
“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”.
That is irrelevant. The IPCC is passing off as peer reviewed scientific research, something that turns out to be an essay written by a policy analyst and a journalist.
You can tell when things are starting to get out of control by the way those responsible stop denying things and start blaming their predecessors, much as Pachauri has started to do.
The thing is, the grey men are all in deep cover and will be raking in money from this scam for a long time after it is over. The less clever, the ones who took the limelight roles realise now that they either take the rap and go down or they pass the buck.. to a previous limelighter.
Even if AGW is killed stone dead, he grey men and the money making will go on. It will be too late to cancel some contracts for wind farms etc. because they will discover some pretty expensive cancellation clauses, I expect there are a great many contracts out there that pretty much guarantee the money come what may.
The bill may be enormous.
What will we get for our money? the satisfaction of seeing Phil Jones and a few others playing sacrificial goat.
Slim pickings.
No chance of Al Gore following Madoff.
Some slight chance he will be embarassed. But not financially.
Baa Humbug:
Good points, but I humbly think your comment contains some guesswork (as mine) and jumping quite quickly to conclusions as well.
1)
It seems, like you say, that “Brazilian forest” was substituted with “Amazonian forests” in the IPCC report. Serious error if so, and should be corrected.
2)
The most relevant statement that can’t be traced back to one single statement in the Nature paper is this: “Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.”
I didn’t carefully read the whole Nature article, so I can’t say whether it actually contains conclusions/evidence for that statement, but the original claim (that this scandal was based on) didn’t check that either.
3)
What do the authors say themselves?
Thanks for your reply 🙂
From the London Telegraph in their green section.
The obvious typo here is 2,000 scientists instead of 2,000 activists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr van Ypersele said the panel made up of more than 2,000 scientists will do everything it can to ensure there are not mistakes in the new report, although he emphasised that no scientist can promise a perfect document.
“We are trying to do the best job we can in assessing the quality information about climate change issues in all its dimensions and some do not like the conclusions of our work. Now it is true we made a mistake around the glacier issue, it is one mistake on one issue in a 3,000 page report. We are going to reinforce the procedures to try this does not happen again.”
There are fears that the scandal has damaged confidence in the IPCC and ultimately in the science of global warming but Mr van Ypersele claimed it had in fact strengthened the case for tackling climate change.
“I would like to submit that this could increase the credibility of the IPCC not decrease it. Why is that? Would you trust someone who has admitted an error and is ready to learn from his or her mistake or someone who claims to be unassailable? The IPCC does not claim to be unassailable, when there is a good reason to admit a mistake we do it, but for the rest of IPCC conclusions we stand by it very strongly,” he said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7078089/IPCC-deputy-says-scientists-are-only-human.html
” Baa Humbug (01:49:29) :
Climategate, Glaciergate, Pachaurigate Amazoniagate etc etc
I thought I’d go to the only authoritative publishing there is regards climate science…….The IPCC AR4 (no really, not being funny)
WG1 Chap1 1.2 The Nature of Earth Science”
Someone needs to have a serious word with WG1. They can’t have something like this slip through in AR5. Was Popper even peer-reviewed?
Vincent (03:51:33) :
“That is irrelevant. The IPCC is passing off as peer reviewed scientific research, something that turns out to be an essay written by a policy analyst and a journalist.”
IPCC says that the assessment is produced through an open and peer reviewed process. They also say that the assessment is (partly) based on ‘gray’ non-peer reviewed documents.
Eve (20:24:05) :
“To Kum who must be a true believer:
The United Nations states that its charity programs can no longer afford to feed the starving peoples of the world because of the high cost of staple foods. Mr. Jean Ziegler, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, repeatedly denounced biofuels as “a crime against humanity.” ….”
You missed the rest of it. The IMF/World Bank loans with strings attached called SAPs, that remove third world countries “food sovereignty” and replace it with corporate export farming {see http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html and http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/Budhoo_IMF.html}
The 1995 World Trade Agreement on Agriculture that opened the borders of third world countries so the grain traders could sell grains at below the cost of growing them thanks to the USA and EU tax dollars. The 1996 US “freedom to farm act” that removed landbanking in the USA greatly increasing the acreage put into grain production. Both of these were were written by Dan Amstutz, VP of Cargill. The grain traders even created an award for Amstutz in recognition of his handing over international control of food to the Ag cartel.
“The Amstutz Award is given by the North American Export Grain Association in honor of Dan Amstutz and in recognition of his outstanding and extraordinary service to the export grain and oilseed trade from the United States. Appropriately, the first recipient of this distinguished service award was Mr. Amstutz.
Tribute to Dan Amstutz Throughout his very successful career Dan Amstutz represented and championed ideas and goals of NAEGA membership . As we reflect on the life of our friend and associate this tribute is intended to provide an opportunity to express thoughts in a memorial to Dan’s contribution to our industry.” http://www.naega.org/amstutz/index.shtml
{Also see http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/cafta/Agriculture.html}
The result of all the maneuvering and manipulating behind the scenes was people rioting over the increase in food costs while Cargill and Monsanto posted record breaking profits in 2008 as the rest of the world’s economy crashed and burned.
Carbon trading will do to energy what the WTO/FAO/OIE are doing to food: placing control AND record profits in the hands of a select few while driving more and more people into grinding poverty and death. Coincidence? I think not.
Good to see the folks at Realclimate are sticking withe IPCC
From their Start Here Page as of 1253 GMT on 26/01/10
“Informed, but in need of more detail:
Science: You can’t do better than the IPCC reports themselves (AR4 2007, TAR 2001).”
Lets see if they end up changing their minds
“I would like to submit that this could increase the credibility of the IPCC not decrease it. Why is that? Would you trust someone who has admitted an error and is ready to learn from his or her mistake or someone who claims to be unassailable?
That depends. If it is an isolated incident, then yes, but if there are LOTS of “mistakes”, then, no.
freedomchimes (20:26:55) :
“I live in Central America, I´m not a scientist but I do can tell you that clime has change in the last years…”
None of us who are called “deniers” are against treating the environment with loving care. We are against the selfish greedy people using scare tactics to steal money from the poor and middle class while making their lives that much harder. Global warming is just that a scare tactic used to rob the poor and middle class.
My other post shows how it is done for food. Global warming does the same for energy. Once you control food and energy you control people lives.
Q: What do you call a Pachauriderm with an AR4?
A: A Climate TERIrist with a hokey stick.
Gail Combs,
“None of us who are called “deniers” are against treating the environment with loving care.”
Well said, Gail. There is a myth, apparently perpetrated by alarmists, that folk who disagree with them are greedy capitalists who want to rip up the planet for personal gain. The irony is that most of these “greedy capitalists” have jumped aboard the global warming gravy train and that most of these policies aimed at reducing fossil fuel use, are in fact enviromentally destructive.
omnologos (15:04:49) has it right in my mind. The paper referred to is about drought induced problem with forests. A warmer climate should be a wetter climate as we all know. Therefore, rather than increasing the likelihood of this event, AGW should reduce it.
I see this as just as bad as the glaciergate. Total misrepresentation of the science. I too wonder what the authors would have to say about this use of their research.