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
Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility
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Rereading a Related Post by Bob Carter cited by Anthony, (25?10/09.) Nothing like a bit of hindsight to add dramatic irony. Comment by Anna V, responding to David Corcoran comment, ‘A long way to go until AGW is completely discredited.’ Her reply, ‘Well maybe the hubris is so large that the ice gods will take over.’
Several lively comments also by the soon to be famous/ infamous Bulldust!
The count down to Climategate was about to begin. :-]
I agree that a comprehensive list of the errors with the IPCC 4 report should be written up and released as a systematic critique. I’m not qualified to do it except as a proof editor, which I am willing to do. We need to get a complete rebuttal out there. Rather than saying “somebody should”… perhaps WE should.
I’ve asked IPCC for a list of the “participating organisations” who are entitled to nominate experts and working group members for the fifth report. So far no reply, I will let you know if I hear anything.
Dear IPCC-
Don’t worry about the greening of the sahara- and the crops growing just fine.
It’s only “rotten” rain.
DR asked:
Is someone collating these blunders for easy reference?
Here’s a start:
“Lawrence Solomon: IPCC: Beyond the Himalayas – Climategate is one of many known IPCC failings”:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/02/06/lawrence-solomon-ipcc-beyond-the-himalayas.aspx
So where have all these “leading” scientists been during the past and why are they just noticing these egregious errors now, after they were pointed out by others. Did no one think to check the legitimacy of the sources?
Articles on Phil Jones
It’s hard not to feel compassionate for other humans when they are under stress and that goes for Jones too. But, how are your feelings for the other people who may have lost their jobs and earnings due to bad science or carbon baloney and treachery and conspiracy ? If all this about the IPCC and the other groups are true, I will have a hard time feeling anything for them except disgust.
I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones.
Read the comments, all of them.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
John Blake (14:59:31) :
(…)
When we find that, first, projecting Himalayan glaciers’ disappearance in thirty years (2035) was based on an uncorrected typo; second, that no evidence supports the original figure (2350); third, that this datum’s garbled source was a years-old off-the-cuff press interview broadcasting pure advocacy-group propaganda– …
It’s worse than we thought.
Activism was behind the glacier info. Putting it down as bad sourcing is actually letting them off easy.
Major IPCC participants work/consult more or less interchangeably it seems between their official jobs, the IPCC, and advocacy groups like the WWF and Pew as examples (see link below)
However there has been a great sensitivity to maintain an illusion that IPCC is other than an advocacy group itself, as seen in email thread below. Wigley explains to Hulme some (of Watson’s) political sensitivities about this
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=152&filename=941483736.txt
However Wigley, Hulme and Watson’s position misses the larger point , that it is inherently a conflict of interest IMO to triangulate so many positions at once, whether or not it is based on IPCC’s offical rubber stamped spin, or preliminary IPCC spin.
Let’s give Pauchari some credits. He was just doing his job, a job he was trained to do. When the politicians wanted the issue railroaded, they have to get a railroad engineer.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was specifically designed by Maurice Strong as a political vehicle to further his objective of crippling the industrial nations
IPCC Science Designed For Propaganda
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/19702
here’s the end result of the IPCC ponzi scheme scam
“A distinguished professor from the local university (specialty semi conductor materials), asks question of German dude who just presented some info on his solar panel company. ‘My calculations have always shown that the energy to manufacture a solar panel is greater than the expected total output from the finished panel up to their predicted mean time to fail. Has new technology changed this fact?’ Answer from German dude. ‘The Ontario government pays between 70 – 80 cents per KWhr for power from solar installations supplying the grid. The current rate for all power is 12 cents. This is what matters.'”
’nuff said. That kind of tax payer ripoff to give out subsidies will attract every eco-grifter rent seeking con artist this side of Pluto.
Phil Jones interview:
‘Then, he believes, at the age of 57 he will be ready to resume his career and get on quietly and invisibly with what he does best. His hope for the future? “I wish people would read my scientific papers rather than my emails.”’
from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017905.ece
If anyone does remember Jones in 50 years’ time, it will be *precisely because of the emails and the route they provided into the flawed and subverted science of those papers.
Would the UK and other European pension funds that are heavily loaded with green technology investments have anything to do with private companies being encouraged to build solar panels, regardless of whether or not this makes fiscal sense? Set up what kind of money you want to make, then get companies to follow suit, then buy investment stock. The last time I checked, this kind of insider trading information got a very famous TV personality in trouble here in the U.S. of A.. Apparently the folks involved in this under the table sleazy relationship from across the Northern border and those across the pond consider this kinky kind of being in bed together good enough fair for the family hour.
For me, this makes me want to avoid public government bonds of any kind, including those used to build schools and infrastructure. While the idea of building schools and bridges is a good one, the bonds may end up in the junk pile. Know from whence the bond gets its investment income from folks.
“EuroFooFighter (06:49:35) :
[…]
’nuff said. That kind of tax payer ripoff to give out subsidies will attract every eco-grifter rent seeking con artist this side of Pluto.”
While you are right that at present solar and wind power are de facto subsidy-pumping machines, here’s a number from makers of thin-film solar cells. They have an efficiency of 11% -that gives you about 100 Watt/m^2 on a sunny day- and a cost of 1.50 EUR – 2 USD – per watt. The price is not subsidized, the use is. So this kind of cell would need to run for about 30,000 hours at peak performance to get the money back if we assume a price of 5 eurocent per kWh. Multiply that by four to average out cloudy and wintry days, makes 120,000 hours of day time. We end up at 10,000 days or about 30 years.
While they are specified to withstand 20 years of operation, they actually can do 30 years in practice.
I would say not quite competitive but getting there slowly – of course we should be fair and add cost for inverter and battery storage (without battery storage it’s all pretty pointless).
“DirkH (08:30:46) :
[…]
30,000 hours at peak performance to get the money back if we assume a price of 5 eurocent per kWh.”
I should add that we pay 20cent per kWh as end consumers here but the bulk price of energy is about 5 cent.
Just read this description by the BBC about a radio programme ‘File on Four’ (investigative journalism, so called):
“Ayisha Yahya explores warnings from some scientists and meteorologists that some deserts, including the Sahara, could turn greener and experience more rainfall.”
OK so now we must preserve deserts from rain and vegetation???
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0015j3s
“Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change.”
I’m really starting to think that these people just don’t get science and the need for emperical content of hypotheses.
Yesterday I made a post to the BBC website on the comments section following Robert Black’s piece on Phil Jones,w hcih together with most of the comments is like entering a parallel universe).
The post was redacted for ‘defamation’.
I presume that’s because I referred to Jones as ‘dishonest’.
They should read the now 244+ comments following the The Sunday Times interview with Jones. 220+ of the comments call him or at least imply him to be dishonest, and several call him a murderer. Many suggest they would shed no tears for his suicide (I don’t condone the more bloodthirsty comments btw).
I also suggested that to compare himself to Dr David Kelly was contemptible.
The BBC is in deep denial, still
Well if the IPCC thinks that it is possible to control, just where on earth, rainfall decides to happen; as if certain places have some absolute right to have rainfall, while others don’t, they are surely barking up the wrong tree.
The sort of climate shifts that seem most unpredictable, and uncontrollable, are where rain will happen; well precipitation in general. yes I am sure there are some patterns, and you Meteorologists are well up on that subject (I’m not) but the precip will happen somewhere if it warms up.
According to Frank Wentz (et al) at RSS in Santa Rosa Ca., in his “How Much More Rain Will Global Warming Bring ?” see, SCIENCE for July-7 2007, a one deg C rise in mean global surface temperature will result in a 7% increase, in evaporation, precip[itation, and total atmospheric water content. The GCMs on the other hand agree with the 7% increase in total atmospheric water content; but cvlaim that evap/precip is only 1-3% per deg C.
That is a factor of as much as 7 different from what Wentz et al actually observed with satellite data.
Now they did NOT see anything like a whole 1 deg C temperature rise during their experiment; just a fraction of a degree; but that was the rate.
So this is another one of those climate observations that waves that “Ohms Law” caution flag.
Wentz may have observed a rate of 7% per deg C for some small temperature change, about the current supposed mean global surface temp of about 15 deg C (288 K); but how well does that rate hold up over a wider temperature range ?
It is interesting to consider a simpler case, of a cylindrical tank into which water flows at some rate that is dependent on temperature, and to imagine an outflow from the tank, that is proportional to the total amount of water in the tank. Since it is a cylindrical tank, the total water content is simply proportional to the water depth in the tank (the head) and it is not difficult to imagine an output flow pipe that has a constant “resistance”, whereby the output flow rate is directly proportional to the head, and hence to the total water content. Such a model agrees with Wentz’s observations that the precipitation rate, and the total water content are the same; and evidently over a range from zero water content up to the maximum.
If the water input rate, which we have also presumed to be proportional to temperature, is constant slope also, then one has a solution that would be linear all the way down to zero temperature, and total water content.
Well of course that can’t be true if the temp scale is Kelvins; because the physical properties of water preclude any water flow at zero K. It might work quite well down to say zero C where the saturated vapor pressure is quite small (but not zero) so maybe zero F would work, but you aren’t likely to get much evaporation there.
So it is not clear that Wentz’s observation really applies over wide temperature range.
Here proxies may come to the rescue, since they suggest, that the mean global surface temperature on earth is constrained between the limits of +12 deg C, and +22 deg C. based of course on only the last 600 million years of proxy data.
But now how does that sit, with the GCM predictions (excuse me; projections) that even though the total atmospheric water content increases 7% per deg C, the evaporation/precipitation (which must match) is only 1% to 3% per deg C.
Clearly you cannot have a constant rate of evap increase of 1% per deg C, yet have the atmospheric total increase at 7% per deg C; and have that rate remain constant over the whole temperature range; how do explain getting all that water up there at such a slow rate.
In any case; I don’t see any way, in any of the proposed climate or global temperature control prcedures being proposed; that would in any way lead to assurance of water supply at any particular place on the planet.
And what if people wnat to move to a different place, and have their water follow them there.
Not too likel;y to happen in my book.
Peter of Sydney (16:05:53) :
“How ironic. The real reason the Africans might still starve to death is because of the AGW policy of denying them a cheap source of power generation – coal. Without that, they are possibly doomed but hope not. I won’t go as far as some who say this is a deliberate policy to cull the African population….”
ERRrr, let me put my tin foil hat on for a minute.
This site has a lot of information on covert sterilization of third world populations. http://www.whale.to/m/sterile.html
Here is separate collaboration of the decline in birth rate from the book Demographic Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (1993)
“….Barney Cohen reviews levels, differentials, and trends in fertility for more than 30 countries from 1960 to 1992. He finds evidence of fertility decline in Botswana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, confirming the basic results of the DHS. What is new here though is his finding that the fertility decline appears to have occurred across cohorts of women at all parities, rather than just among women at middle and higher parities, as might have been expected on the basis of experience in other parts of the world. He also presents evidence that fertility may have begun to fall in parts of Nigeria and possibly in Senegal…. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2207&page=4
Remember the “population explosion” is another scare story and Obama’s Science Czar
Holdren wrote in his 1977 book ECOSCIENCE
“… Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock….”
Well the USDA decided to actively pursue the issue with a spermicidal corn
http://noblelie.com/2009/03/10/gmo-population-control-spermicidal-corn/
There are some very scary people out there and unfortunately some have the wealth to implement their crazier ideas.
Peter of Sydney (16:16:01) :
“… That’s why the media are to blame in the end for not doing due diligence, and reporting both sides of the debate when in doubt rather than reporting almost all the time one side only.”
Peter, the Media is bought and paid for by the special interest groups and has been for a long time. Unbiased reporting is a complete illusion. Our “western” media is just as much a propaganda machine as Pravda was.
This is based on my real life experience. My father-in-law owns a newspaper. He stated very bluntly years ago that the Wall Street Journal here in the USA is the only reasonably unbiased paper.