Scientist says IPCC claims about African rainfall reductions due to global warming have no supporting data.
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban.
Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”
Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”
Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.
Read the entire article at The Times here
Has Global Warming increased the toll of disasters.
Debate, The Royal institution of Great Briton,
Panel: Prof Roger Pielke Jr, Bob Ward, Dr Robert Muir-Wood,
The audience came to the conclusion there is NO link.
I believe Dr Robert Muir-Wood ran his Ipcc cited study from 1970 and failed to allow for population growth in areas susceptible to hurricanes.
Roger Pielke jr ran his study from 1900 allowed for population growth and found NO link.
http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayEvent&id=1000
“The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”
The above was the last paragraph in the article. If the IPCC reports continue to be a collection of misrepresentations and inventions, they will indeed need a better means of explaining themselves.
Is it official yet?
The IPCC report – the “gold standard” – has now been shown to be fool’s gold.
Sad Science (14:25:44) :
I’m sure Pachuri will respond to this by calling it voodoo science or something…
I believe he has already played that card, or something very close to it.
Neither Pachuri or the IPCC can hear anything at this point.
Bubble wrapped and isolated.
The IPCC report – the “gold standard” – has now been shown to be fool’s gold.
I’d say more like lead. They have been exposed as the alchemists they really are.
Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”
He’s still saying after the fact.
How about just don’t lie and fabricate in the first place.
But there’s no fun in that, because then all they could say is we really don’t know.
AR5
begin:
We really don’t have a clue.
end:
Printing the whole report on a index card would save a ton of money too.
JohnWho (16:45:11) :
Is it official yet?
The IPCC report – the “gold standard” – has now been shown to be fool’s gold.
When pressed it was found to be ironed pyrites. ;>)
I agree that all these blunders and inaccuracies are gradually chipping away at fortress IPCC. Unfortunately, the warmist propaganda movement is still able cite these inaccurate doom and gloom scenarios, since the MSM stays silent for the most part.
Remember the Hockey stick is still cited and used regularly despite it’s thorough de-bunking. Nevertheless, it is good to see the “settled science” being challenged, when a few short months ago, hardly anyone would dare (except here of course!).
Well, Climate Progress is still quoting the IPDD stuff. I am sure several blind writers have no where to go. They attached their identity to the IPCC and now it craters. Now the skeptics are being called condescending.
I started out on my “climate change” journey by reading Will Alexander at climaterealists.
He is elderly and retired now, but worked faithfully for the So. African government his whole career. He has a great deal to say about the droughts in So. Africa. And he writes simply, so that the commoner can understand.
His work is archived at climaterealists under his name in pdf files.
Comment from Will Alexander:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=5051#post_comments
What I cannot understand is how no-one seems to have caught these lies and blunders before. I have only been reading this blog & related ones for the last 6 months, but it is several years since their original publication! I am not blaming anyone, but think we should prepare, collectively, to analyze the next major IPCC offering (AP5?) by scouring it’s contents and checking on it’s references; just let me know if this layman can help.
Dear Grumpy – I’ve had the same feeling. But there was massive cover-up.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/5749853/part_5/the-global-warming-guerrillas.thtml
13 Trillion dollars here:
This might also help to explain the position of the BBC, the Environment Agency, other Government and some Universities.
http://www.iigcc.org/index.aspx
“The group currently has over 50 members, including some of the largest pension funds and asset managers in Europe, and represents assets of around €4trillion. A full list of members is available on the membership page”.
And the IIGCC are not alone. On 14th January 2010 an association of similar groups published at statement calling for more action, quicker, ‘cos they’ve got investments to protect… I mean, to save the planet. And UNEP have their fingers in that as well. http://www.Unepfi.org
The world’s largest investors released a statement calling on the U.S. and other governments to quickly adopt strong national climate policies………
The Investor Statement on Catalyzing Investment in a Low-Carbon Economy calls for rapid action on carbon emission limits, energy efficiency, renewable energy, financing mechanisms and other policies. The statement was endorsed by four groups representing more than 190 investors with more than US$ 13 trillion of assets – Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI).
Fact:
The ancient Egyptians lived during a warmer period than today. They experienced longer rain seasons and the Sahara desert was smaller at the time. The famous Sphinx still bears grooves along its body formed by ancient rainfall.
Apart from the annual flooding of their lands, which they saw as a good thing and no longer happens because of the Aswan Dam, the Egyptians called their land k’mt, which means black fertile land. They called the dry red land far from the Nile ‘dsrt’, which is where we get the world desert from. In those days the Egyptians had to travel to out to the desert to see the parched landscape. Today, in a cooler world and because of the damming of the Nile, the desert has grown to swallow Egypt’s cities and meets the Nile.
TIMES ONLINE headline:
I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
Quote: “Jones believes that the unit was maliciously targeted with multiple FoI requests by climate change sceptics determined to disrupt its work.”
Sigh. The toll of paranoia.
REPLY: There is a second story by the same author, which gives a bit different picture;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017905.ece
– Anthony
There is a second story by the same author, which gives a bit different picture
Quote: “Since November last year he has been a prisoner of public opprobrium and a target of such vilification that was he was almost persuaded to comply with the wishes of those who wanted him dead.”
I am reminded of what Tim Ball, Patrick Michaels, Sallie Baliunas, and Willie Soon, etc. have had to put up with for years — thankfully with much greater resiliency.
It must be disheartening for Dr Tom Wigley, formerly of East Anglia University who went on to preside over the UCAR in the US, to witness the edifice of his vision crumble around him.
Has anyone been keeping track of how much this report is shrinking as each false claim is revealed? Pretty soon, all that will be left will be the covers.
Pachauri’s response will be…..
” She came to him. Her breath hot against his cheek. Outside a blizzard raged, but inside passion burned hot and unchecked….. ”
I kid you not! :-0
All that is left to support the IPCC hypothesis, is the model projections for the future.
The first and second of the Assessment Reports revealed the (impenetrable?) barriers to modeling the climate with fidelity over anything more than a decade, such issues were not revealed in the Fourth of the Assessment Reports, by design, because it was desired to make the Reports coherent with the Summaries (for Policymakers).
#Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (20:14:46)
Also
During the Holocene Optimum 6000-8000 years BP when the world was ≈ 2°C warmer than today, the Sahara had some of the largest freshwater lakes in the world and the biggest, Lake Megachad (of which the present Lake Chad is a miserable relic) was bigger than the Caspian Sea
http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndLandscapes.htm#Lake%20Chad
“….Observing climate changes is a paranormal gift some people have. Some talk to the dead, some see ghosts , others watch gletschers melting and deserts growing.”
And some see the global socialist party blowin’. Just wait till the Americans get wiff of this.
John Blake,
please teach us American squishy-faced people how to speak.
Still into distortion and self justification. If Phil J had been above board and freed CRU’s public date to Steve Mc when it wasinitially requested, he wouldn’t have been hit with an avalanche of requests. Just doesn’t get it does he?