Excerpts from the Guardian:
Forests expert officially complains about ‘distorted’ Sunday Times article
Press Complaints Commission told that newspaper story gives impression that IPCC made false Amazon rainfall claim
A leading scientist has made an official complaint to the Press Complaints Commission over an “inaccurate, misleading and distorted” newspaper story about a supposed mistake made by the UN’s panel on global warming.
Simon Lewis, an expert on tropical forests at the University of Leeds, says the story, published by the Sunday Times in January, is wrong and should be corrected.
He says the story is misleading because it gives the impression that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made a false claim in its 2007 report that reduced rainfall could wipe out up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest. The Sunday Times story was widely followed up across the world, and, in the wake of the discovery of a high-profile blunder by the IPCC over the likely melting of Himalayan glaciers, helped fuel claims that the IPCC was flawed and its conclusions unreliable.
Lewis said: “There is currently a war of disinformation about climate change-related science, and my complaint can hopefully let journalists in the front line of this war know that there are potential repercussions if they publish misleading stories. The public deserve careful and accurate science reporting.”
The Sunday Times piece was originally headlined “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim”, though this was later changed on the website version. It said the 40% destruction figure was based on an “unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise”.
…
Lewis said he was contacted by the Sunday Times before the article was published and told them the IPCC’s statement was “poorly written and bizarrely referenced, but basically correct”. He added that “there is a wealth of scientific evidence suggesting that the Amazon is vulnerable to reductions in rainfall”. He also sent the newspaper several scientific papers that supported the claim, but were not cited by that section of the IPCC report.
…
Lewis also complains that the Sunday Times used several quotes from him in the piece to support the assertion that the IPCC report had made a false claim. “Despite repeatedly stating to the Sunday Times that there is no problem with the sentence in the IPCC report, except the reference.”
======================
Heh. This must be the first time Lewis has been interviewed by the press. From experience I can tell you that in matters of science, the message is often muddled by the time it gets to print. Sometimes this is intentional if the reporter has a specific agenda, but sometimes it simply is a combination of poor understanding of the subject and editorial considerations such as column space. Often a story as submitted will get cut down to size by the copy editor, changing the meaning by leaving out key details.
I don’t know if that is the case here, but it will be interesting to see what the PCC does.
Case in point. Two weeks ago I was interviewed by the Economist Energy and Environment Editor, Oliver Morton, for a story about the surface record. I completed four questions, and included details, but in bite sized form hoping they would get into the story because they were concise points. The reporter even asked if his assessment of my story about NCDC’s treatment of me, mentioned here was correct.
Here is the resulting story: The clouds of unknowing
What resulted for days of back and forth and carefully providing answers that I thought would be concise enough was this one sentence in response, even thought he reporter agreed in the email exchange that I had been “poorly treated” by NCDC.
A recent analysis by Matthew Menne and his colleagues at America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, argued that trends calculated from climate stations that surfacestation.org found to be poorly sited and from those it found well sited were more or less indistinguishable. Mr Watts has problems with that analysis, and promises a thorough study of the project’s findings later.
Heh. Such balance and accuracy in reporting by the Economist.
It was certainly not worth the effort I extended with the reporter, so I know how Mr. Lewis feels. Will I lodge a complaint with PCC for misrepresentation? No.
On that note, the rebuttal paper to Menne et al is looking better and better.
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All the biologists you know believe in AGW don’t they?
Brian G Valentine (10:07:50): “Amazon rain forest” exists because humans did – nothing. It developed as natural evolution of flora and fauna.
Except of course for the humans who have been living there for the last 10,000+ years, building cities, canals, causeways, and mounds, and impacting and altering the flora, fauna, and soils across the entire breadth of Amazonia. But not counting those humans, yeah the development has been purely “natural”.
Henry chance (12:43:22) : Or as Lord Monckton calls them: “Bed-wetters”, people who unvoluntarily pee on getting scared by the hideous prophet who came from the damned nether world, AL “baby” Gore, the wettest among wetters.
25 March: Times of India: Post-IPCC gaffe, govt seeks changes in panel ops
The note is bound to be seen as a veiled criticism of the panel that has been under attack for producing sub-standard reports..
Environment
minister Jairam Ramesh has written to the InterAcademy Council, the institution requested by the UNSG to carry out the evaluation and suggest substantive changes in the workings of IPCC, whose reports become the scientific basis for UN negotiations on the vexed issue.
While the government had backed Pachauri, who also heads The Energy and Resource Institute, there has always been disquiet in official circles about the process followed by the UN panel in churning out ‘assessment reports’. The government has now officially taken note of the internal criticism and asked for, besides other things, to put an end to the ‘inbreeding’ in IPCC with a single scientist or group of scientists hogging space in the document at the cost of alternate and sometimes contrasting science from authors with differing views….
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Post-IPCC-gaffe-govt-seeks-changes-in-panel-ops/articleshow/5720517.cms
Ah yes, the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect…..I do believe somewhere in the Great Beyond Crichton keeps pulling strings for his own bemusement….
https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=600&mode=2
24 March: Newsweek: Sharon Begley: The Real Climate Scandal
Imagine another IPCC mistake. Where’s the outrage when the agency lowballs the threat?
Before this turns into my own little Wellesian War of the Worlds, I have to stop this parody, for which I am indebted to physicist and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. In a post on the RealClimate blog, he makes a crucial point about the ongoing climate-change backlash: by putting all the focus on how mainstream climate science may have exaggerated the threat of global warming, we’re in real danger of ignoring how the threat has been lowballed.
So, just to set the record straight on sea-level rise. The IPCC’s worst-case scenario forecasts a sea-level rise of 26 to 59 centimeters (10 to 23 inches) by the end of this century. But that is based on a temperature rise of 5.2 degrees Celsius—whereas the IPCC itself said that temperatures might rise 6.4 degrees Celsius. By lowballing the possible temperature increase, the IPCC reduced the estimate of sea-level rise by six inches, Rahmstorf calculates.
Second, the IPCC chose a date of 2095, not 2100. Picking a date five years sooner reduced the projected sea rise by another two inches…
http://www.newsweek.com/id/235366
same sharon begley:
27 August: Newsweek: Sharon Begley: China and India will pay
Though others started global warming
The Himalayas have been warming three times as fast as the world average, with the result that their glaciers are shrinking more rapidly than anywhere else and could disappear by 2035…
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213967
25 March: The Hindu: India suggests RTI for climate change bodies
Introduce the “Right to Information” to the U.N.’s climate change system, India has suggested to the body (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) charged with bringing credibility and accountability to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the climate science panel which has been in the eye of a storm over the last few months.
India wants the IPCC to make greater efforts to enhance the participation of developing country scientists to improve the geographical balance of its reports. Every IPCC report should include a separate chapter including all divergent views. In fact, the entire draft report should be sent to all known “climate sceptics” during the review process, says the Indian note.
It also suggests an extra tier of scrutiny to review the “conclusions” emerging from the facts, in order to ensure objectivity, especially with regard to the influential Summary for Policymakers.
These are some of the suggestions contained in a note prepared by the Union Ministry for Environment and Forests, and sent to the co-chairs of the Inter Academy Council, a group of eminent scientists who have been asked to review the IPCC’s processes…
India called for complete transparency. Everything — from the CVs of the scientists selected and rejected as experts, to all the literature cited in the reports, to all data and assumptions used for running climate models and projections — should be made available in the public domain on the IPCC website….ETC
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/article303923.ece
Don’t you guys read WUWT? 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/11/another-wwf-assisted-ipcc-claim-debunked-amazon-more-drought-resistant-than-claimed/
peer reviewed and up to date
Please send to Lewis if you have his email addie
I’m waiting for some AGW shill/reporter to pick up on this story blaming human CO2 along the way: “Warming Trend Blamed for Tragic Deaths”.
If I understand this right the Lewis character is a true agw believer who thinks there’s a war raging, but not that he’s doing any kind of fighting, for anything but by fueling his own delusions by supplying obvious blanks to the supposed vanguard of anthropogenic journalist templars way way in front of himself.
So basically his just another climate bob.
Looney toons filter off.
But I think it’s not just me who finds it rather hilarious that these self proclaimed greenie heros always asks for proper detail at the same time they’re shelling out blank generalizations themselves.
After having served in an excellent Police Force for 28 years I retired knowing one one truism about reporters: you cannot trust them at all. They are vultures preying on any mishap which might befall any member of the public. Each and every vulture has some sort of agenda; being anti-Police is always a good one. Any remark or comment made by an Officer was warped, twisted and bent to prove that the Police lived to beat up on people, framed anyone who came their way and ate babies for dinner.
I rapidly learned that the only response to give any “reporter” was to urge said person to depart. I usually used Anglo-Saxon terminology in order to make my meaning clear.
The Third Estate? They and their atitude towards rectitude in their duties died many years ago.
You mean to say that climate isn’t static? It changes? Are you also trying to tell me that climate isn’t universally the same everywhere? That it may be linked to weather? That climate isn’t always benign and never was? OMG!
With BILLION$ of Carbon and other bank scam bucks riding on the necessity of the global continuation of the hoax of CCT or CLIMATE CHANGE TERRORI$M, the mean, lean, greenwashed WARMI$T$ are proving to be expedient, opportunistic, and ruthless. AT this point in light of a serious credibility problem that has been given internet wings, this gang are stuck deep in the quicksand of “the means justifies the ends” logic, and will continue to use and do whatever it takes to push back against this irreversible exposure and to hide the decline of this hoax:
Check this one out: Chris Horner writes:
A “tipping point” appears to be at hand for James Hansen, the longtime Al Gore adviser and godfather of the modern global warming movement.
Hansen now seems so disgusted with the conditions of his employment — on the taxpayer dime — that he no longer sees the conditions as acceptable.
James Hansen writes:
“Somehow we have to do a better job of communicating. The tricks being used by people supporting denial and business-as-usual are recognizably dirty, yet effective. We are continually burdened by sweeping FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, which reduce our ability to do science and write it up (perhaps this is their main objective), a waste of tax-payer money. Our analyses are freely available on the GISS web site as is the computer program used to carry out the analysis and the data sets that go into the program.
The material that we supplied to some recent FOIA requests was promptly posted on a website, and within minutes after that posting someone found that one of the e-mails included information about how to access Makiko Sato’s password-protected research directory on the GISS website (we had not noticed this due to the volume of material). Within 90 minutes, and before anyone else who saw this password information thought it worth reporting to GISS staff, most if not all of the material in Makiko’s directory was purloined by someone using automated “web harvesting” software and re-posted elsewhere on the web. The primary material consisted of numerous drafts of webpage graphics and article figures made in recent years.
It seems that a primary objective of the FOIA requestors and the “harvesters” is discussions that they can snip and quote out of context. On the long run, these distortions of the truth will not work and the public will realize that they have been bamboozled. Unfortunately, the delay in public understanding of the situation, in combination with the way the climate system works (inertia, tipping points) could be very detrimental for our children and grandchildren. The public will need to put more pressure on policymakers, enough to overcome the pressure from special financial interests, if the actions needed to stabilize climate are to be achieved.”
I urge all here interested in the real motivations behind the AGW fraud to visit the ‘EUREFERENDUM’ website.
See how the spiders web of mutually linked interests of dozens of groups control the AGW narrative and spread that narrative throughout the world.
The hydra has many heads.
johnnythelowery, here’s a quiz question for AGW biologists:
The greatest diversity of life, as exhibited by the greatest number of animal and plant species, can be found living in:
A. The Arctic and Antarctic.
B. The tropics.
AP (dpa): Winter’s end prediction for Hong Kong 60 years out, scientists say
Hong Kong scientists admitted Wednesday they were 60 years out when they predicted global warming and urbanization would bring an end to winter days by 2030..
Even if urbanization was frozen at 2006 levels, there would be no more winter days by 2050, scientists concluded, basing their findings on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In comments reported by RTHK, observatory director Lee Bun-Ying said the new projection of 2090 was based upon further research and “more detailed data.”
The IPCC, set up by the United Nations, has come under fire in recent months over alleged inaccuracies in its fourth assessment report, which was used as a basis for the Hong Kong projections…
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/international-27/126941902369020.xml&storylist=international
“pat (13:34:50) :
[…]
6.4 degrees Celsius. By lowballing the possible temperature increase, the IPCC reduced the estimate of sea-level rise by six inches, Rahmstorf calculates.”
Ah the good Mr Rahmstorf will be delighted to here about an uninhabitated speck of dirt at the delta of Bangladesh that is now underwater:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8584665.stm
For some reason they do’t have it in the sci/enviro section but in their “Also in the News” section, probably they want to spread the AGW scare across all pages if possible.
Well, for this tiny island sea level rise went too fast…
As others have done, this is a case of having to go back to first principles:
1. No argument: If there are prolonged drought conditions, parts of the Amazon forest will die.
2. When did this last happen?
3. Answer: During the repeated ice ages of the past two million years (the last one ended around 12,000 years ago). The tropical rain forests almost disappeared. Why? Because lower temperatures mean less evaporation and therefore less rain.
4. Higher temperatures – if they happen – mean more evaporation and therefore more rain in nearly all tropical regions.
5. This means – subject of course to MacDonalds’ farmers and/or peasants chopping the trees down – that the rain forests will expand.
Remember Simon Lewis comes from a minor UK university and has to state the official AGW line in order to keep his job. Any divergence from orthodox doctrine is instantly punishable – kind of like in a communist or fascist system.
For confirmation of the above, ask any geologist in the private sector.
Anthropopithecus Liberalis= Global Warming Church follower, lives exclusively from the work and/or taxes imposed on human beings.
Story tip:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/24/climategate_oxburgh_globe/
“Exclusive – The peer leading the second Climategate enquiry at the University of East Anglia serves as a director of one of the most powerful environmental networks in the world, according to Companies House documents – and has failed to declare it.”
Is man-made global warming to blame for this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7511235/Killer-icicles-terrorise-Russians.html
The island off Bangladesh that disappeared only emerged in 1970 after a cyclone, and was made from alluvial deposits.
Apparently small islands in that area come and go.
Lumo has some interesting things to say about the probability of errors in the climate “science” halls.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/proliferation-of-wrong-papers-at-95.html#more
This sounds like another salvo in the CAGW push-back to Climatgate. Levelling lawsuits at skeptics probably sounds like an excellent strategy to the alarmists, but I really hope it blows up in their faces.
Claiming that the facts are right but the citation is wrong is ridiculous. Why didn’t the IPCC use the proper, peer-reviewed citations in the first place? Why did they select an advocacy piece instead? This is looking curiouser and curiouser.
Look guys, our National Academy of Sciences here in the UK, the Royal Society, says that every single change to climate, no matter how small, no matter in which direction, whether warmer or cooler, whether more violent or less violent, whether higher precipitation or lower is ALWAYS dangerous. All natural variations to climate are by definition Dangerous Climate Change. They put out a policy statement before the Copenhagen Summit: ‘Preventing dangerous climate change’:
http://royalsociety.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294969323
The second sentence in the policy document says “There is no such thing as ‘safe’ climate change.”
So, by this definition ALL changes of climate, natural or otherwise are by ipso facto “Dangerous Climate Change”. This is affirmed later in the document: “Any level of climate change will be dangerous…”
So, next time you hear the Royal Society, or Ed Miliband, or any other climate scientist using the term ‘Dangerous Climate Change’ (which they are consciously doing more and more, as they are being coached to do), remember that, by the definition of the UK National Academy of Sciences, even the smallest natural variations are classed as ‘dangerous’.
That this is utterly fallacious or meaningless is obvious by considering that the climate 20, 50, 100 years ago was different from today, and will be different in the future whether man is on the planet or not, so by the definition of the Royal Society they must have been and must always be ‘dangerously’ different climates as well. In fact all climates at all times in all places must be classified as being in the throes of ‘dangerous’ change. There is no point in history when there has ever been anything other than ‘dangerous climate change’.
So, it doesn’t matter whether any changes in precipitation have any effect or not on the Amazon rainforest, or whether the cause of the change is anthropogenic or natural, it will always be Dangerous Climate Change, and that mantra will be impressed into the brains of this generation along with the deliberately fallacious connection to mankind. Such is brainwashing.
peter miller (14:31:11) said:
But we all know that private sector geologists are in the pay of Big Oil.