I reported yesterday on Dr. Richard Norths findings on what he coined “amazongate” related to yet another WWF reference in the IPCC AR4.
Yesterday I sent him a comment from WUWT reader “Icarus” that made a very valid point. However that point drew back the curtain for an even larger problem now uncovered by Dr. North as he writes in:
“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.”
So says Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chairman of the IPCC – as retailed by the famous Louise Gray, purveyor extraordinare of WWF press releases – in The Daily Telegraph today. It was simply a “human mistake”, he adds. “Aren’t mistakes human? Even the IPCC is a human institution and I do not know of any human institution that does not make mistakes, so of course it is a regrettable incident that we published that wrong description of the Himalayan glacier,” he says.
So far though, the IPCC is sticking to its legend that this is only “one mistake”, burying its head firmly in the sand and ignoring the growing evidence that the IPCC report is riddled with “mistakes” – to apply that extremely charitable definition.
Another of those “mistakes” is the false claim highlighted in my earlier post on “Amazongate“, where the IPCC has grossly exaggerated the effect of climate change on Amazonian forests, stating “up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation” – on the basis of a non peer-reviewed WWF report whose lead author, Andy Rowell, is a free-lance journalist.
However, being “human” myself – although some would hotly dispute that assertion – I appear to have made a mistake in my analysis, charging that in the document referenced by the IPCC, there is no evidence of a statement to support the IPCC’s claim that “40 per cent” of the Amazon is threatened by climate change.”
Actually, that is the charge retailed by James Delingpole and by Watts up with that, whereas what I actually wrote was that the assertion attributed to the author of the WWF report, that “up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation” is nowhere to be found in the report.
The WUWT post, however, evoked a response from a commentator, “Icarus”, who noted that there was a reference to a 40% figure references in the WWF report, as follows:
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.
That is very much my mistake, having completely missed that passage, thus charging that the IPCC passage was “a fabrication, unsupported even by the reference it gives”.
With that, though, the story gets even more interesting, as the assertion made by Rowell and his co-author Peter Moore, is referenced to an article in the Nature magazine, viz:
@Maxwell
Unless of course that 5% are related to the bulk of the major catastrophic affects studied in the IPCC. So at this point, with the two references we can question “destruction of the Amazon rain forest” and “water shortages in basins fed by Himalayan glaciers”.
Now about the 5% assumption, you have to assume that the only quotes taken out of context are the ones from the WWF. Heres the problem, the citations of the IPCC of the WWF shows one of four things.
1. The scientists on the panel don’t know what peer reviewed literature is, and therefore would not know that they shouldn’t include a WWF citation.
2. The scientists on the panel do not ensure that the content they are releasing is consistent with the literature they are quoting.
3. The scientists on the panel know there is a possibility that they are wrong, but realize that nothing will be done about the problem (alledged) unless there are a few exageration made.
4. The scientists on the panel know there is a possibility that they are wrong, but refuse to make waves lest they jeapordize their own careers.
I’m not a scientist. I don’t play one on television. I do understand rudimentary logic, statistics and math and can tell you that if you read the original peer reviewed literature and then the IPCC statements, you should be able to easily pick up that they are not close in intent or meaning.
In a way, the IPCC process reminds me of why I quit the debate team in high school. No matter what we were debating (helping the homeless, space exploration, etc…) it always led to nuclear war or the prevention thereof. I can honestly say that I was never able to find that book or article that made the explicit link between helping battered women and nuclear war, but it was proven countless times on the debate field through daring leaps in logic, twisting of definitions and omission of relevant facts and circumstances. I see these same tactics going on with the IPCC report and it instantly throws the entire body of work in doubt.
If it were just one reference, section or particular author I might be able to let it go, but the fact is there are multiple author biases, reference inclusions and fact twisting/omissions that have already been demonstrated. And by multiple, I mean more than just the two being referenced now. Either way, a reboot of the process with greater transparency is the way to go at this point, at least if you want to have a document that is the least bit useful for policy making. If that is not the goal of the IPCC report, then it should just be disbanded because it is otherwise pointless.
DirkH (11:14:30) :
But Dirk, you forget that Gaia will be hurt!
I think this is a harsh assessement; more likely, they do not understand nor comprehend qualifying statements, units of measure and the maths for same.
Via SM’s & MM’s work we _know_ they do not understand statistics for instance …
Call it ‘comprehension difficulties’ under self-induced hysteria or stress.
.
.
“Richard Lawson (09:55:44) :
I think the collective of all the ‘gates’ recently should now be known as FloodGate!”
Well, as catchy as that is I think Reportgate is more descriptive.
Also, I don’t like how everyone says it is just one or two errors. By my count there have been at least 7 errors in the last few days. The lead author of the glacier section pointed out five major errors in the glacier section alone (I put them up on the IPCC section of wikipedia but they are gone now). Add those to the non-peer-reviewed and inaccurate statement about extreme weather events and now the amazon rain forests and we are talking about a real pattern here.
So someone went around and measured 40% of the Amazon forest for climate sensitivity. Bull.
A little math: 2000 scientists, 3000 pages. Low productivity.
Lord Monckton had a few words this morning on the breakfast show on New Zealand national radio, on the heels of his Aussie tour. Too bad he’s not coming to NZ
Of course they blown up the numbers from 1600 pages to 3000 pages in order to make the errors appear as only footnotes. What is amazing an “error” (if they want to call it like that) one one page or in 1600 pages still does not make it right. I find that strange that 2500 supposed scientists wrote only 1600 pages. Considering that there are many pages that talk about politics, it would appear that each of their 2500 scientists contributed for a few lines and maybe a paragraph each at most.
It seems to me that the IPCC will just continue to make excuses and stall for time until they can come up with new data and new studies that support the same conclusions. At worst, the UN may decide to disolve the IPCC and replace it with something new (like they did their Human Rights body) but the new entity will just have a different name with different positions, but the same core of people with the same agenda behind it (like what happened with the “new” Human Rights body).
If I may, the only way to slay this dragon is for climate models to be built using:
publicly available data;
public source code based on;
public scientific theory;
with publicly verifiable results.
Now if only we had some way for many many people to collaborate in this fashion. If only there were some way that thousands of people could contribute their data, knowledge, and software skills toward such a goal. Sort of like Linux for Climate Analysis. Open Source Climate Analysis and Research (Oscar for short). I’m sure there must be a way to organize something like that…
Mind you, a high performance compute cluster with terrabytes of storage would be needed to run the code. That might be harder to borrow.
Re: New Paper cited by Kip Hansen at 10:45
I looked at the ten temperature graphs from 1980 – 2008. In every case, the temperature at 2008 was not higher than that in 1980. Yet, that didn’t prevent the computer(?) from showing a 2-3 deg C temperature increase per century as being representative of the data. If I had been a peer reviewer of this data, I would have asked for a range of interpretations, not just the one extreme: favorable to “global warming”. Not mentioned, of course, is the data (GISS,
Fig D) which shows temperatures in the period of 1930-1940 were 0.5 deg C higher than that in 1980.
What an embarrassing retraction by Dr North. Yet many here are so blinded by their denial of AGW they would not care to admit it.
roger samson
This 40% figure never made sense to me. Now it all makes sense. I consider myself an environmentalist. I find all this very disconcerting how the IPCC and WWF hijacked the science process. Heads need to roll and it should first start with the heads of the IPCC and WWF.
A rote, groupist environmentalist thought he’d get me by saying that I couldn’t call myself an “environmentalist” and I agreed. Along with AGW and some other things, I objected to the Religion of the Pacific Northwet Salmon, where the real goal seems to be to tap into big funding and tear down big dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers while wailing on and on about “clean energy”.
The whole Environmental Movement is corrupted by self-serving Organizations, Lawyers, and Useful Idiots. I’m trying to restrain myself from going on and on about it just from my own experience. Environmentally, nothing makes any sense anymore.
Dr. Krishna Pillai (11:36:31)
3.4 Amazongate wherein a postulation that there is a linkage between the Brazilian forest and rainfall is morphed to become a linkage between the Amazon forests and global warming
The source document at the base connects logging and rainfall in Brazil to forest endangerment. Otherwise your list is quite good.
Not exactly on topic, interesting articles in the BBC:
“In his regular column, BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin looks at how the world’s leading authority on climate science has been rocked by allegations of serious faults in its key report.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8479972.stm
and
“If the case for tackling climate change is backed by science, why do so many green campaigners rely on the language of religion?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8468233.stm
What eventually brings down a political scam is the early denials. The more the IPCC denies a systemic fault the better in the long run for the destruction of the scam. And in the internet age each denial is gold.
“Extreme cold weather in Mongolia kills one million livestock”. Wonder if they’ve got a weather station.
A rather interesting archeological assessment of sea levels on the Israel coast
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-01/uoh-tsl012610.php
The article gives reasons why the changes there relate to water levels rather than other factors. It made the interesting observation that:
Another closet climate denier???
Vincent (10:15:15) :
… Although the alarmists will deny this is what they are doing, it is a fact that by making bogus claims, they have eclipsed real environmental issues. For in this example, forest destruction is made out to be a problem that will be solved by burning less fossil fuels, and has nothing to do with forestry management….
Very good point. I’ve seen people hacking down rainforests to provide firewood for cooking to be shipped to large cities like Managua. If they used more fossil fuels instead they would better preserve the rain forests and also have better air quality.
Several people have been sceptical about the 3000 pages often cited as the size of the IPCC AR4.
The report weighs in at around 1000 pages for WG1
840 pages for WG2
800 pages for WG3. There is also a synthesis report at 50 pages and a summary for policy makers included within the relevant report, so around 2700 pages, which includes addendum
There are vast numbers of references, guidance, errata, summaries, contents, index and contributors listed (as they should be)
In the paleo climate section this sort of material consisted of some 16 out of 50 pages. This was a high ratio but other Chapters are close to it, so around 25% appears to be non technical material (although essential for a report of this size so it has a proper structure).
The actual technical pages of AR4 therefore consists of around 2000 plus pages.
The number of scientists involved is rather more debatable, as WG2 and 3 have numerous non scientists, including representatives from Oxfam and Greenpeace, plus Insurance assessors, Bankers, Engineers etc. All relevant to their working group content, but certainly not scientists.
I read once that around 650 scientists were involved in AR4 in total, with key Chapters sometimes being relatively light on active working Scientists.
However, someone more closely involved with the process can tell me if this number is correct.
Tonyb
“MJK (11:53:23) :
What an embarrassing retraction by Dr North. Yet many here are so blinded by their denial of AGW they would not care to admit it.”
Though to his honour, it has to be stated that he didn’t accuse Icarus of Voodoo science or call him arrogant.
There is a serious risk that overuse of the suffix “-gate” will dilute and/or undermine the strategic importance of the event that was Climategate. If the average person becomes inundated with sensational news stories about “this-gate” and “that-gate” then it will seriously diminish the intrinsic value of the Climategate story. We should not underestimate the importance of limiting the “-gate” suffix to include only revelations of deception that are sufficiently massive to be truly game-changing. Climategate easily met that requirement but I fear these latest “-gates” fall short.
I am not questioning anyone’s ability to critique the report, but rather saying if one is going to critique it, use a criteria strong enough for the task. Not an unrepresentative one.
How about failure to follow their own rules. The ones in big print. Not the disclaimer, 200 pages printed in two point type.
There’s three gates in the East
There’s three gates in the West
There’s three gates in the North
There’s three gates in the South
That makes twelve gates to the city, hallelujah
Rev. Gary Davis
Q: Why does the amazon basin is a forest while the sahara is a desert? Both being neighbours of the atlantic ocean in the middle. That´s because of the LOD and not because of any IPCC anthropogenic phantasy,
Looks like Andrew Neil, the BBC’s political presenter is starting to have grumblings too.
— The Dam is Cracking —
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/dailypolitics/andrewneil/2010/01/the_dam_is_cracking.html?s_sync=1#comments