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:
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Correct if I am wrong , the deal of Mr Pachauri cs is working like this :
First you tell like big Al the science is settled .
Second you claim you are publishing a peer-reviewed study.
Third you insert all bullshit serving your goals like the Himalaya story .
Then you cry this deserves studying.
Then the generally leftist politicians free a pool of money , because they are the ones that really care and make it available , how good of them !
In the meantime you install your own institute lined up to cash this money .
Again they write a report giving more questions than answers with highly disturbing prophecies .
In the meantime you cash the maximum in subsidies possible . And the game is not over now , it starts again and if you are able to stonewall your critics you have created the perfect money machine, a kind of perpetuum mobile stealing from the rich governments and licensed by politicians more interested in profile than in truth finding . Are you a modern Robin Hood or a macchiavellian crook or are you considered smarter than the rest ?
It understandeable that George Bush made this man to the head of IPCC , given his attitude trying to make the maximum amount of bucks . Madoff tried to do the same as an independent businessman . Pachauri should be asked to represent himself only and not the rest of the world , so he cannot make excuses any longer and his fellowmen could really ask for some kind of reckoning .
Thinking back to my undergraduate schooling, had I turned in an essay with these types of errors and references I would have received an F. And, speaking of those days (which were not that long ago), I was constantly amazed to see how many fourth year university students could not even write a paper, let alone properly cite references. Sadly, the ability think critically is not the norm in academia. Our institutions of higher learning emphasize comformity more than creativity. And, unfortunately, the cream doesn’t always rise to the top.
“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.”
Yes instead of the IPCC paraphrasing activist propaganda with no scientific backing, the IPCC paraphrased activist propaganda that distorted and twisted a journal letter that was totally unrelated to AGW. Within 24 hours Dr. North had corrected the record and the conclusions are just as damning. Hardly an embarrassing retraction.
You can do better than that, MJK.
JustPassing (12:37:30) : From the link you gave:
it is now clear that the majority of those involved in the IPCC process are not scientists at all but politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs and green activists.
…..Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman often wrongly described in the media as the world’s leading climate scientist (he’s actually a railway engineer (*)
(*)Railway engineer: A train driver, a train chauffer.
“NATURE463, 269 (21 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/463269a; Published online 20 January 2010
Climate of suspicion
Top of page
Abstract
With climate-change sceptics waiting to pounce on any scientific uncertainties, researchers need a sophisticated strategy for communication.”
What a bunch of crock!
As if the IPCC, the MSM and all the governments’ sponsored science conferences, brochures, TV, kid’s pressure, astroturfing foundation such as Suzuki’s, Hoggan etc… stuff was not enough…
What’s next? Forced indoctrination?
“Nature” on the climate change issue as a scientific journal keeps discrediting itself to the point of non-return. Shame on them and on the publishing group that backs such blattant bias.
maxwell (10:18:59) :
John H,
I think the point of referencing the size of the report is that an argument is being made that these types of mistakes are representative of the entire report both here and by Dr. North. By Ms. Laframboise’s count, there are about 20 citations of WWF papers. That’s likely fewer than 5% of the report’s cited sources. So these sources are not representative. If they are not, the mistakes they involved are not representative either.
It is not the number but the weight that matters. If I get 5 hits on a battle ship with three inch guns it will make hardly any difference. If I get 5 hits with sixteen inch guns it is going to hurt.
There are more than two mistakes: Every WWF reference is a mistake. Every could/might caveat is a mistake, of the 3000 pages, does that include the references and pretty pictures? How much of the document is actual, readable text?
If this was someone’s thesis, they’d be out on their ear!
Okay, I figured it out, George Bush appointed Pachauri in an attempt to embarrass the IPCC. It is all his fault!
Because, despite being the dumbest president ever, he is also a criminal mastermind!
I’ll bet money that some blog or newspaper advocates such a crazy theory.
@JohnH
“Thats the second ref to 3000 pages I have seen, first was in the Today program this morning by a Green activist. All previous refs were that the IPCC report is 1600 pages long. The bigger it gets the lower the error rate I suppose.”
I once had the pleasure of directing an animated tv show. A scriptwriter asked me how many pages of script I needed for each five minute episode. I said it worked out about a minute of screen time for a page of script so five pages. She said she’d only written four pages for the episode she was working on.
I told her to use a larger font.
The list of “mistakes” by the IPCC is far too long to be long to be excused as just a small issue. I like to see two lists, one that shows the findings that have been shown to be false, and one that shows the remainder of the their findings. I bet the first list is much longer. The disparity between the two lists must now be so large that it’s clear the IPCC could be proven to be corrupt in a court of law.
MJK (11:53:23)
You’re right. Very embarrassing. He should have just deleted it and then come up with something like ” If something is wrong, it gets fixed. You should be happy.” It’s much more embarrassing to admit your mistake and explain how it occurred rather than just getting uppity about it. No?
I know which approach I prefer, well done Dr. North.
Denialist? No, I accept global warming is happening (partly because “it’s an inter-glacial, get over it”). But, if you want to waste my hard-earned, and the lives and the futures of all those I hold dear you had better prove it is “man-made” (rather than “Mann-made”), that it will be “catastrophic” and that I need to change my behaviour (and also that changing *will* make a difference, otherwise…).
The standard I require for such a shift in my thinking is “beyond all reasonable doubt”. Fair enough? No more spin. No more distortion. Everything out in the open and fairly debated and tested. I’m not someone who accepts that science needs “consensus”. Testable truth or falsehood will do. Any else is just “don’t know” in my book.
Too hard for you? Thought so.
Dave
________________
According to Alfredo R. Huete of The University of Arizona in Tucson, sponsored by NASA.
Reported by NASA in 2006 – Huete had been sponsored by NASA to develop techniques for mapping global vegetation…
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=29754
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/AmazonEVI/
I write this from the middle of the eastern China coastal Plain where particulate air pollution is out of control, water pollution is out of control, solid waste management is out of control, industrial conversation of Ag land is out of control, all of which is reduced to side show by fixation on the trivial warming effects of a trace gas. The legitimates causes of pollution control and conservation have been hijacked by a scientific freak show, demanding that the entire world fiddle while substantial portions of the planet burn. Those forces (political and industrial) that have no interest in addressing reality will happily spar forever in the fantasy shadow game of carbon control.
CHILIBRE, Panama –
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/science/earth/30forest.html?_r=2
maxwell (10:18:59) :
John H,
I think the point of referencing the size of the report is that an argument is being made that these types of mistakes are representative of the entire report both here and by Dr. North. By Ms. Laframboise’s count, there are about 20 citations of WWF papers. That’s likely fewer than 5% of the report’s cited sources. So these sources are not representative. If they are not, the mistakes they involved are not representative either.
maxwell (11:06:06) :
But this pandering to the idea that a handful of non peer-reviewed citations in an overwhelming sea of peer-reviewed ones somehow marks the report as suspect is really neither here nor there.
You seem to believe that because these instances are small in number they should not be granted much significance, but the justifications for the draconian public policies looming like the Sword of Damocles over our heads to counter CAGW don’t really relate to the GW, or even that much to the A. The locomotive hauling our collective destinies toward the precipice is the C. Absent the hype and propaganda of catastrophe AGW would in all likelihood remained an academic curiosity and “climate science” an impoverished backwater in the research community.
The reason these instances have significance far beyond their number is because they comprise, if not the heart and soul at least the liver and lungs, of the body evidence of the supposed catastrophe that awaits us.
Although if you did a Google search today on “disappearing glaciers” or “disappearing Amazon rainforest” you’d likely get mostly hits relating to this evolving scandal, if you had done a similar search only a month or two ago you’d have found a mountain hits that would have had their genesis in these bogus citations.
Also, since you seem to think the peer-reviewed portions of the IPCC’s work is unassailable, I would suggest you take time to review Mr, Goklany’s post from yesterday, which shows that their efforts to hype the negative consequences was not limited using numbers the WWF extracted from its anal orifice.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/25/the-ipcc-more-sins-of-omission-–-telling-the-truth-but-not-the-whole-truth/
Interesting.
Following the link to the EUreferendum site it seems to track to this passage here:
QUOTE
Although logging and forest surface fires usually do not kill all trees, they severely damage forests. Logging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40% of the living biomass of forests through the harvest process. Logging also increases forest flammability by reducing forest leaf canopy coverage by 14-50%, allowing sunlight to penetrate to the forest floor, where it dries out the organic debris created by the logging.
END QUOTE
This refers to the impact of logging.
One presumes that the affected areas are thus those that are logged.
The question that must follow is: What proportion of Amazonia has been logged? That is because these percentages must refer only to that portion that has been logged. It says nothing about the rest of Amazonia.
So, any one got any ideas about just how much of Amazonia has been affected?
Interesting how the IPCC have morphed this into 40% of the entire Amazon forest.
As commentators have pointed out, the Internet makes these
sort of long-running scams harder to sustain.
I am peripherally involved in the debunking process of two
other rather large scams involving the same general cast.
WWF, UN, various parts of the State of California, and others.
FOIA requests, software to do analysis of linkage of documents,
satellite photographs, and occasional DNA analysis are beating
the crap out of cozy grant-funding and peer-review circles.
The -gates will keep flowing.
Elizabeth (12:59:36) :
“…And, unfortunately, the cream doesn’t always rise to the top.”
In this situation the gold settled down and was refined, and it was the slag that rose to the top.
If the lunatics have taken over the asylum who is left to put it right? It seems as if idealists have worked their way up in several organisations and hijacked them. I just can not see where any ‘correction’ can come from.
Also, they believe their own lies : Greenpeace’s executive director, Gerd Leipold –
http://www.businessinsider.com/greenpeaces-director-is-busted-for-lying-about-the-effects-of-global-warming-2009-8
“On July 15th, Greenpeace put out a press release saying the arctic ice caps would melt by 2030, a claim that Leipold now admits is false. Rather than own up, and say it was a mistake and he’d never let it happen again, he says Greenpeace is “a pressure group” that has to “emotionalize issues, and we’re not ashamed” of it.”
This ’emotionalising’ [a good spin word for propaganda] is passed off to their members and the rest of the world as truth. This in turn stiffens the backbone of other members and organisations who in turn feel they are justified in doing their own ’emotionalising’. As they have no reason to doubt each others lies, they believe them, and so become even more committed to the ’cause’.
In the end the illusory edifice arises, built on half-lies and fantasy, with all the inhabitants firmly believing their own creation is built on solid foundations and impregnable.
Coming back to my original point : who is in a position of power, and intellectually competent enough, to actually pull this edifice down? I can’t see anyone at the moment, and that worries me.
Is it possible to create an anti-IPCC? An organisation which can be a central focus for all non-AGW research and modelling, saving all untainted raw data, taking readings from trusted meteorological stations, etc.
I keep thinking of Fahrenheit 451 – there are a lot of people around with their own ‘books’, but we need to build a library. Governments can dismiss individuals but organisations are more difficult to ignore. I am sure that many people who follow this website would become members and help to support such an organisation.
“Large seasonal swings in leaf area of Amazon rainforests
Seasonality in LAI Time Series.
Leaf area data for the Amazon rainforests exhibit notable seasonality, with an amplitude (peak-to-trough difference) that is 25% of the average annual LAI of 4.7 (Fig. 1 A). This average amplitude of 1.2 LAI is about twice the error of a single estimate of MODIS LAI, and thus is not an artifact of remote observation or data processing (see SI Materials and Methods). The aggregate phenological cycle appears timed to the seasonality of solar radiation in a manner that is suggestive of anticipatory and opportunistic patterns of leaf flushing and abscission. These patterns result in leaf area leading solar radiation during the entire seasonal cycle, with higher leaf area during the shorter dry season when solar radiation loads are high and lower leaf area during the longer wet season when radiation loads decline significantly. This seasonality is roughly consistent with the hypothesis that in moist tropical forests, where rainfall is abundant and herbivore pressures are modest, seasonal increase in solar radiation during the dry season might act as a proximate cue for leaf production (1, 2, 4). ”
[National Academy of Sciences] 2006
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/12/4820.full
great input as usual.
andrew neil blog at http://www.bbc.co.uk just gets better. well worth a read.
one contributer to andrews blog is Jack Hughes. a real comedian
he says ”there are 2 WWF’s the World Wildlife Foundation and the World Wrestling Federation (name since changed i believe)
one is a blatantly commercial organisation – money making by staging over-hyped unbalanced events containing plenty ad-libbing, with a pre arranged conclusion.
the other other one runs wrestling events.”
it is often said that the real downfall of the old USSR started with satirical humour.
maxwell (11:06:06), the bogus reference issue is really no different from the other shortcomings I mentioned (and one I didn’t, i.e. the deliberately omitted “good news about global warming” that Indur Goklany just pointed out at WUWT). All these (and revelations yet to come) are symptomatic of the incredibly sloppy “science” of the IPCC. No single issue “disproves” the IPCC’s conclusions, but the growing list of blunders (and lies) is collectively devastating. The alarmists would like to pretend the unreferences are an isolated issue; they shouldn’t get away with that.
Mike D. (11:39:31) & Jimbo (13:59:18), (14:34:09), thanks for pointing out even more things the IPCC somehow “forgot” to tell us.
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.”
Are you serious? Did you go read Dr. North’s “retraction” on his web page? Contrary to your implication, Dr. North explains that what the IPCC did in this case is much worse than we thought. Sheesh.
I don’t understand where the 40% figure came from. The figures cited are 270,000 and 360,000 km^2 and the area of the Amazon rainforest is 5,500,000km^2 which gives
(270000+360000)/5500000 = 11.45%
Was there an extra fudge factor added or did I miss something?