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:
KeithGuy (10:43:54) :
“It was simply a ‘human mistake’”
…which should have been picked up by the rigorous peer review process employed by the IPCC!
It was more like a mistake, compounded by an error and missed by an oversight.
Yeah right It was nore like a deliberate lie. As Chris Landsea stated in his letter:
“After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from
participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the
part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become
politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC
leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns…..
If the concerns of expert scientists are “dismissed” because the report has become “politicized” the correct word is the IPCC was knowingly lying and it was done for political reasons. Landsea is not the only one who claimed the report was politically skewed.
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.”
Dr. North is honest. The “retraction” was even MORE d@mning of IPCC than the original statement. I do not see how that is embarrassing or a problem for skeptics.
hswiseman (14:03:51) :
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….
Thank you for putting the Global Warming circus into perspective. The multinational corporations running the world through the World Trade Organization and the UN, are not really concerned about Global Warming, the environment or anything but power and wealth. Maurice Strong, father of Global Warming and the environmental movement claims he is a “socialist” yet his power company is the biggest CO2 producer in Canada. Now he is hiding in China to avoid sticky questions about his business ethics and the Oil for Food scandal. He now works for a engineering and construction corporation getting ready to use the money stolen from the west to build more polluting factories in China.
Richard Scott (16:23:05) :
Big error: “…due to completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil.” Most of the water that is used by plants is near the surface; the water at 2, 3 or 5 meters is irrelevant. And no amount of water in the soil will keep a green tree from burning given the right conditions….
You can add to that how fast cut over forests sprout regrowth. By the time the slash left from logging has dried out sufficiently to be a fire hazard, the stumps are sprouting with re-growth. As you said the dried out debris under the forest is the real hazard and that is where logging makes its biggest impact, by increasing the amount of dry material available for burning.
Quote: Gail Combs (10:54:03) :
“Thank you for putting the Global Warming circus into perspective. The multinational corporations running the world through the World Trade Organization and the UN, are not really concerned about Global Warming, the environment or anything but power and wealth. Maurice Strong, father of Global Warming and the environmental movement . . . ”
You are right, Gail. Beneath the Climategate scandal is the shadowy outline of an international alliance of politicians, scientists, news organizations and publishers that are using the AGW and Green movements to gain power and wealth.
This alliance uses public funds to manufacture consensus “scientific facts” and then uses well-known emotional propaganda techniques like fear and guilt to manipulate the public – the way that cowboys drive cattle to market.
If we avoid slaughter this time, we will still need to design ways to keep science from becoming a propaganda tool in the future.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Mistake my A. They knew the glacier information was bogus and published it anyway. They already admitted this.
Maybe the WWF should apologize to Vince McMahon. It seems that they are just as much show and theatrical tricks as is the former World Wrestling Federation, whom they fought for the right to the acronym. You can’t believe anything your eyes see with them either insofar as any connection to reality is concerned. At least with Vince & Co. everyone knows better.
…and so, on a Saturday, the BBC finds room to comment on IPCC
citations of WWF Amzonian “studies” being somehow inappropriate
when there’s “good science” floating around that weren’t used.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8488395.stm
The stuff not cited probably wasn’t peer-reviewed by the right sort
of people.