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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“A Lovell (15:16:16) :
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.”
I suspected that, thanks for the confirmation. But isn’t it nice how the words “global warming” pop up each time SOMETHING happens? 😉
Richard Sharpe
“But we all know that private sector geologists are in the pay of Big Oil”.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. If you aren’t, please accept the proverbial finger.
Speaking personally, I am not one and don’t know any oil/gas/energy geologists. I am with the good guys who understand that: If it can’t be grown, it’s gotta be mined.
I just find and develop base metal deposits (e.g. copper, lead, zinc, tin, nickel etc), which make your current standard of living possible.
Not having to subscribe to some goofy official party/government doctrine is part of my deal.
Climate Science is discipline akin to astronomy. The Coldist Gang of McIntyre, McKitrick, Watts, et al. relies on deceit, manipulation, outright fabrication because they have not done any experiments to replicate the science: Since “climatology” occurs in a scientific process with “peer review”, which the Black Gang have published almost nothing under, they become complicit in propagating abusive ideological fraud in bad faith, under false pretenses, for the purpose of riding a corrupt back room monies gravy train.
Coldists are sell-outs to hyper-partisan Big Industry and radical think tanks, whose corrupt owners and self-aggrandizing member apparatchiks call their tune. Would that disinterested researchers of integrity had more 1/3500th of Coldists’ financing from any source… but for decades Gresham’s Law has acted to drive “good science” into total disrepute.
Over time, of course, the truth will out. Nature in fact cares nothing for the fatuous McIntyre or credentialed poseurs assiduously blighting everything they touch. As Planet Earth enters on a 70-year “dead sun” Maunder Minimum presaging the overdue end of our current 12,250-year Holocene Interglacial Epoch, global populations will discover that Coldists’ true agenda is a Luddite sociopathic war on civilization in itself. The sooner scrabrous political elites default to zero in disgrace, the better for everyone concerned.
REPLY: Either this is satire, or you are one seriously deluded individual. – Anthony
Used to subscribe to the Economist but let it lapse when it became clear that it was increasingly written by fresh-faced innocents straight out of uni.
And it boggle the mind to think that this once great supporter of free markets and traditional liberalism has become such a grubby cheerleader for statism. For god sakes they even threw their weight behind Obama and the largest expansion of state control in history.
Wren (10:44:47) :
When I complained to my boss about the mistakes the reporter had made, he agreed the story was inaccurate, but thought it was more interesting than my article.
Could’ve been worse. About fifteen years ago, I had a helicopter decide that I needed some excitement in my life, and I had to make a pretty smoky emergency landing. The newspaper reported I *crashed*.
Took me almost ten minutes to convince my wife that I wasn’t calling from The Great Beyond.
The Economist lost me as a paying subscriber because of their position on the IPCC and global warming. Their loss.
Vincent touched on this,
But my reaction was, “Is he REALLY THREATENING the author?”
What? Is he going to not give peer review in the future?
Have they gotten to the point of out-and-out threats?
And does this suggest that non-public threats have been occurring in the past? Why would he threaten unless he thought he had some way of injuring AND some power with which to affect the injury and make it stick.
Shades of Jones et al. We’re gonna get you, Suckah!
D. C. Nepstad, A. Veríssimo, A. A l e n c a r, C. Nobre, E. Lima, P. Lefebvre, P.
S c h l e s i n g e r, C. Potter, P. Mountinho, E. Mendoza, M. Cochrane, V. Brooks, Large scale Impoverishment of Amazonian Forests by Logging and Fire, Nature, 1999, Vo l
398, 8 April, pp505
I spend 10 minutes following this through. The above where the original 40% claim came from because that’s what Rowell and Moore reference in their WWF document Global Review of Forest Fires.
But that’s about impacts of Logging not Climate Change and the 40% refers to logged areas. So IPCC’s 40% statement has no valid attribution.
I think we are somewhat inaccurate here at WUWT when we often note that, ‘You can’t make this stuff up.’
Apparently, Simon Lewis’ case, he ‘is just making stuff up’ in his complaint.
NOTE: I need a comical reprive, I have been spending a lot of serious study over on VS’s comment stream over at Bart Verheggen’s site. Boy, am I on a steep statistics learning curve. Pivotal issue being pursued . . .
OK, time to go back there and stretch my brain somemore.
Anthony – glad to hear your paper is progressing well.
John
@ur momisugly Mike D. (13:19:12) –
I would suggest people read 1491, the book about the Americas before Columbus arrived.
It completely shatters so many myths about the pristine quality of the Americas. Especially worth noting is the chapter about the Amazon.
People are still under the spell of Betty Meggers, the Smithsonian archeologist who wrote in 1971 what has become the Bible of thought about the Amazon. She jumped to all kinds of conclusions about the fragility of the Amazon – claims that are turning out to be quite untrue. The Amazon was vastly more inhabited in the past than anyone thought until recently. It was, until the European diseases started decimating the populace. And they had farmed it for centuries and centuries.
The best bit is that they had developed terra preta do Indio, an man-made soil that covered large areas and which is probably the closest thing to nuclear fission that biology has ever seen, excepting possibly Polychromase Chain Reaction. Terra preta is a man-made soil with a high percentage of pottery shards and charcoal in it, that allows soil “to retain its nutrients for as much as a millennium.” Some estimates are that “up to 10% of the Amazon basin, an area the size of France” is terra preta, though most think it is less than 1% – but still enough to feed a population as large as the Mayans had in Central America to the northwest. And, contrary to the common information about the shallowness of the Amazon soils, terra preta is often two feet thick of massively productive soil, in some places SIX feet thick. Even in the U.S.’ heartland two-foot thick soil is not very common.
“…instead of destroying the soil, they improved it, and that is something we don’t know how to do today.” [emphasis in the original] That was archeologist Bruno Glaser being quoted.
This is not some obscure knowledge these days, either. When I went to tell my son about this, he cut me off and described it to me. He had studied it in his urban planning classes.
The Amazon is MUCH less fragile than Betty Meggers’ jumped-to conclusions. Later researchers are proving her view to be just plain wrong. Our belief in its pristine-ness is simply another conclusion she and others in her time jumped to, and people have it stuck in their heads. Most of us will probably carry that idea to the grave. But that doesn’t make it true. It is, in fact, false.
Science News Cycle, in a comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174
@Stephen Fisher Brown
‘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.’
I’m sorry to have to spell it out, but your reasoning stems from projection. You’re actually using faulty logic to come to a conclusion. Figure that both you and the journalist asks for the truth from their respective “victim”. Add to that the pre-conceived notion of being right no matter what. Added the feeling of “deserving” an answer.
Sorry but poo-hoo, both police and journalists are vultures by your logic.
Stop believing, but start proving, if you claim to know.
“REPLY: We are finishing up the final analysis sections. It’s late becuase we had to scrap the first paper, and re-purpose towards a response to Menne et al thanks to their professional discourtesy. – A”
Anthony, can you not just ignore their paper and publish your own? Or is this the way the game is played?
REPLY: Oh I could ignore it, but the 1st paper would have no rebuttal to Menne, and thus would be heavily criticised. – A
A rain forest is vulnerable to reductions in rainfall. How about that for a scientific breakthrough! What is missing is the evidence that global warming causing a reduction in rainfall in this area. What’s that you say, there is no evidence so far?
But there might be if warming continues? Where are the studies that show this? The computer climate models of course. Hmm.
E-mail from Lewis:
Hi Jonathan,
I looked more closely – what a mess.
The 40% claim is not actually referenced in the Rowell & Moore 2000 report (they use Nepstad to reference the specific figures in the next sentence). The Nepstad Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire, and periodic droughts, all extremely important in understanding the vulnerability of Amazon forest to drought, but is not related to the vulnerability of these forests to reductions in rainfall. I don’t see how that can be the source of Rowell’s 40% claim. Its more likely an unreferenced statement by Rowell.
On your other query: in the near-term the fate of tropical forests will be largely determined by how much of it is destroyed to grow crops and biofuels, but the interactions between occasional droughts, warmer temperatures, and the remaining logged and fragmented forests will ultimately determine how much tropical rainforest is left by the end of this century.
My one line conclusion would be (unfortunately):
Both the IPCC paragraph and Rowell’s report are both sloppy when there is no need to be. The claim made can all be substantiated with reference to solid peer-reviewed papers.
Cheers,
Simon
It’s no satire. He’s serious. He thinks that he’s Eli Rabbett’s companion playing the role of Harvey, the Púca who shapeshifted in the form of a giant rabbit spirit. Playing the role of a Púca, he makes prophecies, advises, and warns of doom and catastrophe in an effort to terrify people and thereby frighten them away from meeting harm.
James F. Evans (09:55:34): how is deception, misrepresentation and blatant lies a worthy part of free speech? “Free speech” – you keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.
And more importantly, if someone does this, shouldn’t that be dealt with? And done so in the public awareness?
Lewis seems to be acting stupidly. (I borrow the expression from Obama)
31 pages to complain about a little article? He doesn’t get it. Lewis teaches at Leeds and really knows less about the Amazon than he acts like. I am sure the good newspaper can respond to him in great detail using 2-3 words or less.
If I recall correctly, the head of the PCC in the UK is also the chair of the Daily Mail, and they’ve cooled considerably on AGW in recent months, haven’t they? Normal procedure for the PCC is deny anything was wrong, sweep it under the carpet and carry on regardless.
There’s worse compaints ignored every day.
Is he as worried about Al Gore’s misleading movie?
Give them a 1 paragraph rebuttal on p71 in the want ad section. That’s what happens when the situation is reversed!
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.”
They deserve careful and accurate science too. Which on the whole, Lewis seems to be engaged in.
Wars have two sides. Repercussions can be caused by warmist propaganda as much as by the outing of it for what it is by ‘legitimate doubters’.
Lewis says other peer reviewed papers support the IPCC assertion that 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be lost due to decreased rainfall.
Very well, let’s see his references, so we can assess their validity or otherwise under open peer review.
I believe the question is how Leake may have mislead Lewis, here is the curcial paragraph from his complaint:
“…I spoke to Jonathan Leake on the afternoon of Saturday 30, a few hours before the article went to press, as he wanted to check the quotes he was using by me (checking quotes was agreed between ourselves on Friday 29 January). The entire article was read to me, and quotes by me agreed, including a statement that the science in the IPCC report was and is correct. The article was reasonable, and quotes were not out of context. Indeed I was happy enough that I agreed to assist in checking the facts for the graphic to accompany the article (I can supply the emails if necessary). Yet, following this telephone call the article was entirely and completely re-written with an entirely new focus, new quotes from me included and new (incorrect) assertions of my views. I ask the Sunday Times to disclose the version of article that was read out to me, and provide an explanation as to why the agreed correct, undistorted, un-misleading article, and specifically the quotes from me, was not published, and an entirely new version produced.”
So what happened here? After reading him one version, another completely different one is published with different conclusions? He spoke to him a few hours prior to press, and then changed the entire thrust of the story. This is not a case of poor jounalistic standards, it’s misleading.
Much confusion over at realclimate where a guest post by Simon Lewis is retracted (or maybe not?). Anyway, you’ll be relieved to hear that the IPCC’s statements “remain valid”:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/saleska-responds-green-is-green/
“Lewis showed why Samanta’s paper did not contradict the IPCC, even if it may have correctly identified an error in Saleska et al. Now Saleska has written to say that, actually, Samanta et al.’s results do not identify any error in their work: the results agree completely. With our apologies for the journalistic whiplash, Simon Lewis and I are convinced he’s right. The more general point though, is that the the balance of evidence shows that the Amazon is sensitive to drought, and the IPCC’s statements about it remain valid.”
The NYT is devoted to please it’s advertisers. I am sure they will make an adjustment to a paid Nieman Marcus advert with a misprint. They should. NM has a right to receive a correction.
Lewis is out of luck. Simon Lewis is like so irrelevant. News papers are sooo ambivalent to the emotional needs of the topics of their news. Get over it Simon.