In the news this week, lots of agitation over some questionable science from an NGO wrongly cited by the IPCC, and a newspaper that caved to pressure.
The two journalists who originally broke the story “Amazongate”, Booker and North, were covered on WUWT last January. See links here and here. Now with new developments and a retraction by The Sunday Times, the controversy erupts anew.
Richard North writes on his EU Referendum blog:
Booker has taken on board the “Amazongate” developments in this week’s column. Interestingly, rather than me, it was Booker who suggested “going big” on the issue this week, his motivation in part being the intervention by George Monbiot, who has been his usual charmless self, parading the ugly face of warmism in all its triumphant ghastliness.
It is indeed getting ugly these days. It will likely get uglier as November elections in the USA approach. There’s a sense of panic afoot as some people know their window of opportunity is closing. Copenhagen failed, Cap and Trade in the US looks to be failed, Australia’s ETS is put on hold, and many other political objectives that are the result of an oversold set of actions are also unraveling.
Yes, the panic driven ugliness will get worse before it gets better.
The warmist community has gone into serious overdrive this week following the apology and correction in last week’s Sunday Times over its reporting last January of the IPCC scandal known as Amazongate.
The reason for all this? WWF, (World Wildlife Fund) which all you need to know. WWF is not peer reviewed science, it’s a billion dollar business with an agenda. When that business and it’s opinionated agenda driven output gets used in place of peer reviewed science, then all hope is lost for the integrity of science everywhere.
Let me remind everyone of the WWF sponsored report that led to the major 2035 glacier melt blunder by the IPCC. Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon was the original finder of the error.
I covered the fallout here.
Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.
Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’
In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.
The WWF, in my view, is a poison pill for science. They should be avoided for any references in peer reviewed papers and in journalism.
In addition to the EuReferendum and Christopher Bookers column, we also have a fresh analysis by Willis Eschenbach on WUWT also well worth reading. This graph he produced sums up the entire issue succinctly: there’s no trend.
Booker at the Telegraph needs support now, more than ever before, please visit and comment on his article.
UPDATE: Shub Niggurath suggests that no peer reviewed science references existed in first and second order IPCC drafts:
More importantly, contrary to what many have suggested, it does not seem, that a statement was formulated assessing all available literature at the time. The sentence in question remained virtually unchanged through the drafts (except for the ‘drastic’ addition), it referred to the same WWF report through three different versions.
Well worth a visit to his site – Anthony
Phil Clarke
Come on, stop quoting press releases to support your view.
It is not just the 40% figure that’s problem here. It is the ‘entire 40%+drastic change+slight rainfall’ reduction story.
Please read what the release has to say:
“…-that Amazonian forests are very susceptible to reductions in rainfall -”
This type of sentence has not meaning whatsoever. All plants are very susceptible to reduction in the water supply – who doesn’t know that?
Pointing out that the experts in that press release work for Nepstad is ‘ad-hominem’? Since when did pointing out conflicts of interest become ad-hominem?
Dr. Richard North has just threatened to sue Monbiot and the Guardian unless the libellious parts of the article is withdrawn. The Guardian is likely to delete Dr. North’s letter from the comments page, but here it shall live forever.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jun/24/sunday-times-amazongate-ipcc?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:5c8ad707-5e71-4137-9aef-88a7d40d6902
Dear Mr Monbiot
Following the publication of your post here, I have written to your newspaper by e-mail, expressing my concerns about the piece, and inviting the newspaper to contact me to discuss it informally, to avoid the need to take expensive and (to you) potentially damaging action in order to protect my professional reputation.
Since your newspaper has not troubled itself to contact me, I am forced to take the step of contacting you and the newspaper more formally, which I am in the process of so doing.
In the meantime, however, I am writing here as the most direct means of contacting you, to ask you to remove from this post all references to myself, as being libellous and highly damaging – the precise details of which will be passed to your newspaper shortly.
You may, of course, leave this message visible or remove it, but you may wish to note that the addition of further comments arising as a result of references to me remaining in your post, and which are also of a libellous or denigratory nature, may form part of any subsequent action which I choose to take.
Commentators who choose to comment on this post may also wish to note that I would be happy to enjoin them in any legal action taken against Mr Monbiot or The Guardian newspaper if they too are of a libellous or denigratory nature. You have been warned.
Yours sincerely,
Richard North (Dr)
Phil Clarke, you stated:
‘Weak ad hominem argument. Unconvincing. a signature on a letter tells us a lot about someone’s views. ‘
So statements of fact equate to an ad hominem attack.
‘The absence of a signature tells us almost nothing.’
In respect of Nepstad’s recent claim in a 2007 WWF publication that 55% could Brazilian forests could be destroyed within 20 years without factoring in climate change I would say:
That an alarmist claim in gray literature tells us almost nothing. In a 2010 working paper Hector Maletta had this to say about the Nepstad claim:
“These dire predictions (mostly inspired by the Amazon 2005 drought and recent El Niño episodes) emerge not from a global or regional model, but as a possible result of the hypothetical persistence of then-recent events (up to the early 2000s) plus the purely theoretical hypothesis of a ‘tipping point’ to be hypothetically reached if deforestation advances past some unknown percentage of tree cover, thus possibly triggering an ‘abrupt change’ process of unknown duration. The critical percentage of tree cover that would trigger the dieback process, if it exists, is unknown, though hypothesized to be 30%.
These audacious predictions have little to offer in terms of evidence, and rely on hypothetical processes of abrupt change that are supposed to be triggered and completed within a very short time. Abrupt change dynamics, whereby systems undergo rapid change after passing a critical value of certain variables, do not always mean, however, that the ensuing change is either immediate, rapid, or catastrophic.”
If Nepstad makes alarming claims on behalf of the WWF outside of the peer review process he can expect criticism.
Care to offer the science to support his claim? If you find it let me know because I cannot find it and I have searched high and low. Nepstad has produced much good science and I am happy to acknowledge that fact but IMO this claim is blatant advocacy that deserves criticism.
It seems to me Sunday Times was correct in retracting misquotes and distortions attributed to Simon Lewis and offering an apology to him. In doing so, however the ST also said something not directly relevant to Lewis’s complaint. It said, ” In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence.” It is this gratuitous statement, incorrect at many levels, that suddenly got the CAGW cultists up in arms in triumph.
when you find yourself in contradiction to the authors, when performing an interpretation of his work, you will basically always be wrong.
… is not supported by the literature. If it is, Phil, paste a couple of quotes
Dave, the papers concerned add up to more than 100 pages of evidence, conclusions and discussions from the world’s foremost authorities. This was poorly and ambiguously summarised by the IPCC. So no – there is no ‘money quote’ – a fact which Eschenberg et al rely on – and no substitute for reading the science. You could start here:
http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/saleska/Ecol596L/Readings/Nepstad.07_Drought.mortality_Ecology.pdf
where a three-year old period of simulated low rainfall – equivalent to an ENSo event lasting that long – produced ‘precipitous’ tree mortality in year three, but only after a threshold in soil water levels was reached. A tipping point.
Or Philips et al 2009, discussed here http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090305141625.htm
“Visually, most of the forest appeared little affected, but our records prove tree death rates accelerated. Because the region is so vast, even small ecological effects can scale-up to a large impact on the planet’s carbon cycle,” explained Professor Phillips.” “But in 2005 this process was reversed. Tree death accelerated most where drought was strongest, and locations subject even to mild drying were affected. Because of the study, we now know the precise sensitivity of the Amazon to warming and drought.
Or grit your teeth and read RC: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/up-is-down-brown-is-green-with-apologies-to-orwell/
AGW, IPCC, WWF, et’al, are NOT “Save The Planet” oriented – this is all about “Make d’Money” & “Change d’World” & “World Socialism for All”. The key word in the title of WWF is F – Fund.
Phil Clarke says:
June 27, 2010 at 4:56 pm
…
And it’s Nepstad http://www.terrestrialcarbon.org/Who_we_are/Daniel_Nepstad.aspx
”
He has published more than 75 scientific papers and several books on the Amazon. His received his doctorate in forest ecology from Yale University and in 1994 was named a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment.”
And it seems, a considerable chunk of Nepstad’s scientific work and credibility -at least the most talked about bits- has been reduced to zilch thanks to a couple of fresh observations in the last three years.
The first, in 2007, claims that contrary to expectations, “drought-stricken regions of the Amazon forest grew particularly vigorously during the 2005 drought”.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070923193644.htm
However, the most recent study in March 2010 is probably even more accurate. It found that Amazon rain forests were “remarkably unaffected” by the once in a century drought that swept the region in 2005. Some choice quotes:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=43167
“We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought,” said Arindam Samanta, the study’s lead author from Boston University.
…
The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim – based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study — that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.
…
“The way that the WWF report calculated this 40% was totally wrong,…”
Of course, we now know that WWF and affiliated scientists like Nepstad did no such calculations. They just reduced their uneducated guesses, published somewhere sometime, of ‘half the Amazon (or was it Brazilian Amazon) being under threat from a reduction in precipitation’ to something more educated, more precise, persuasive, consistent and ‘conservative’, say, “up to 40%.” Well, it is a number. And numbers make things look more scientific than halves and quarters. And if it is good enough for WWF, then it is good enough for the IPCC, as well.
There is a lot to be said about the discrepancy between the GCM’s predictions for Amazon forests that was spruiked by Nepstad et al in 1994 and 2004, and the real world observations of the same region made by NASA in 2007 and 2010. But today I wish I could have the answer to these questions:
Did Nepstad make or feel any obligation to make an apology for how horribly wrong and alarmist he was? What goes through the mind of a scientist who finds out more than half (or ‘up to 40%’) of his scientific life has been spent to produce and propagate falsehoods, now that the same falsehoods has become the topic of conversations again? Any guilt or indignation on Nepstad’s part? What does he have to say now, this Yale educated author of more than 75 papers and two books?
There’s also poodle-gate.
@ur momisugly Phil
Me-“Phil, in what manner, or, how did you decide “they” got the science right?”
You-“I read the cited papers.”
Phil, I don’t know if you are willfully being a contrary or you really believe this garbage. I couldn’t help notice your very short reply to my query and totally ignored my paraphrase of their assertion and my points made after the paraphrasing. By your silence, I guess you agree with my interpretation of the assertions. I’ll repeat it for clarification.
‘Climate change may cause a slight decrease in rainfall in the Amazon and if that happens, a large portion of the Amazon jungle will cease to exist.’
Phil, reading your postings here, you seem to be an intelligent fellow. I’m awestruck in how someone as sharp as you appear to be can simply accept flawed logic simply because people making the assertion are supposedly know more than you about the topic. Did you bother asking yourself how they came to the conclusion we could see a decrease in rainfall in the Amazon? Then of course there are the 3 points I made earlier that you either wouldn’t or couldn’t respond to other than “I read the cited papers.” Nice, so did I. I’ll try to make this clear for you. It doesn’t matter whether the IPCC accurately transcribed the WWF’s claim and whether the WWF’s claim accurately reflected the groups paper.(both the WWF and the IPCC twisted the assertions), because all are wrong or to simplistic to even be including in a elementary biology text. That’s the first assertion. “If there is a decrease in rainfall…..” Brilliant! In the plains states of the U.S., if there is a decrease in rainfall for an extended period of time, we, too, run the risk of fires. We should alert the presses! Wait! Don’t we see that in California every year?!? Should it be different in the southern hemisphere? The rest of the assertion is simply clap-trap pulled out of someone’s posterior for which the only purpose is scare the population of the world. As if a decrease in a jungle is somehow catastrophic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating the Amazon to loss any of it “territory”, but on a global scale it won’t make one whit of difference in the way we live. Well, except for the alarmism and the subsequent blathering regarding it. You postings here remind me of an ad I used to see often on TV here in the states……..”A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
It doesn’t matter how many time one re-reads a posting before posting the comment, one always finds an error afterwords. “Amazon to loss” should read Amazon to lose.
And just as George Monbiot is reduced to regurgitating a Dirty Harry aphorism (“Go ahead, make my day”, he replied to Richard North), Dr Nepstad makes his entry to CiF. He is adamant that the science that made into the IPCC report is sound and the recent findings by NASA regarding Amazons (discussed above) are in error:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jun/24/sunday-times-amazongate-ipcc?showallcomments=true#CommentKey:b1e9bc2f-98c4-4ba2-af99-ac405be07817
George Monbiot’s article (on “Amazongate”) and the Sunday Times decision is an important victory for science and the public good. As the lead scientist on the research that underlies the IPCC statements about the sensitivity of the Amazon forest to reductions in rainfall, and after 25 years studying this question, I can say that the evidence has only grown stronger in support of this statement. I ran an enormous rainfall exclusion experiment in an Amazon forest that identified the rainfall threshold beyond which giant forest trees die quite suddenly (published in the journal Ecology in 2007). During the 2005 Amazon drought, tree mortality spiked up in permanent forest plots across the region (Philips et al. 2009 Science), providing further evidence of the drought threshold. The critics have latched onto two papers that seem to contradict our results, both using the same satellite sensor (MODIS). The forest canopy appears to get a bit greener in some Amazon regions during the dry season. Deeper analyses of the same data have found that these studies probably were seeing leaf-changing episodes and changes in cloudiness (which declines in the dry season) which are not evidence that the forests were not drought stressed. In a recent letter signed by 18 scientists including many of the world’s authorities on tropical forest response to climate change, we found the IPCC statement to be sound and the NASA study involving MODIS data to be irrelevent to the IPCC statement. I would be happy to explain the science behind the IPCC statement. Daniel Nepstad
I know that there is a certain etiquette regarding duplication of comments made elsewhere on the web, but I hope WUWT moderators won’t mind the copy & paste of Nepstad’s comments here. They are fresh, pertinent and, and since his research has been subject of some discussion in this thread, his comments deserves to be heard here also. It is a pity that he has neither clarified how he arrived at the figure of 40% nor remarked on the evolution of the specific statement regarding Amazons in the IPCC report.
So Phil, you say from the paper referenced that a simulated long El Nino lasting 3 years caused stress and strain on the Amazon. Interesting that the model study uses a natural event. El Nino’s are natural events, not caused by, prolonged by, nor caused to occur more frequently due to CO2 increase. If an El Nino were to last that long, we would indeed be under climate stress. File this one under duh. However, the chances of that occurring would be?
sHx – You will recall I wrote that the ‘scientists response’ was to a different challenge? Well, if you read it closely you will discover it was a response to the Samanta et al paper (or more accurately the inventive Press Release) that you are now championing. These scientists seem not to find it quite as devastating as you representation. See here for an explanation of why a study of a three-month period does not change the implications of long-term climate change for the region.
Now that Dan Nepstad has made his gracious offer over at the Guardian comments board, why not scoot over there and ask him in person?
The Amazongate story is included in the Peabody Energy Company petition to the EPA on reconsideration of its endangerment finding about CO2. See page VII – 18 of their petition here
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/Petition_for_Reconsideration_Peabody_Energy_Company.pdf
Steve McIntyre had linked to this petition
http://climateaudit.org/2010/06/21/climategate-and-the-epa-endangerment-finding/
The AGW edifice is crumbling thanks to Booker, North, Eschenbach, Watts, McIntyre and many others.
To those following “Amazongate”:
Let me add some more information to this exchange, based on a few decades spent trying to figure out the Amazon forest’s response to climate change and land use:
1. Was there a peer-review citation in support of the IPCC statement on the Amazon at the time it was published?
Yes. In a 1994 paper in the journal “Nature” (Nepstad et al. 1994), we reported that approximately half of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon were exposed to severe seasonal droughts, and that these forest were able to endure these droughts through deep root systems that absorb moisture stored in deep soil layers. These results were refined in Nepstad et al. in Global Change Biology (2004), where we found that, in 2001, half of the forests of the Amazon had depleted at least half of the moisture stored in the upper 10 meters of soil. We also presented evidence in this paper that 75% depletion of soil moisture (reached by 31% of the region’s forests in 2001) was a conservative threshold beyond which forest damage ensued. The 2004 paper, alone, provides plenty of support for the IPCC statement.
2. Is there experimental evidence to support this early finding?
Yes. The drought threshold is described in the 2004 GCB paper, before the IPCC fourth assessment, and was presented in full in Nepstad et al. Ecology, 2007.
3. Is there direct observational evidence to support this finding?
Yes. See Phillips et al. Science 2009, who found a spike of tree mortality following the 2005 drought in a few dozen permanent forest plots scattered across the region. (It is hard to think of more direct evidence than this. And, by the way, once a drought kills trees in a forest, its susceptibility to further disturbance through fire increases, as has been demonstrated experimentally (Ray et al 2005 Ecol Applic.) and observationally (Cochrane et al. 1999 Science)).
4. Is the estimate that 55% of the Amazon forest will be cleared or degraded (by logging, fire, or drought) by 2030 if current trends continue (and without invoking any future changes in rainfall or greater evaporation that may occur through climate change) published in the peer review literature? (WWF published my initial report on this topic.)
Yes. The peer-review article is Nepstad et al. 2008. Phil Transactions of the Royal Society.
5. Is there any evidence that climate change will provoke drying in the Amazon?
Yes. See Mali et al. 2007. Science. Most global circulation models predict a decline in rainfall in the eastern Amazon, which is where the forests are already most stressed.
Note: These climate model runs do not include the inhibitory effect of dense smoke on rainfall, and only a few include the inhibitory effect of deforestation itself on rainfall.
6. Do the findings, based on the MODIS satellite sensor, that the Amazon forest “greened up” during the 2005 drought contradict the evidence of forest vulnerability to drought?
No. It now appears that the “greening up” seen with the MODIS data was probably ephemeral forest tree leaf-changing and a decrease in cloud cover (which usually accompanies the beginning of the dry season). (The article that explains this is under review.) 18 scientists signed a statement, released March 20, that the Boston University study in no way “debunked” the IPCC statement on Amazon forest sensitivity to drought, as it was claimed at the time. (Please, look up the credentials of those who signed this statement if you have any doubts.)
7. A few closing comments.
When fires escape into the Amazon forest, they burn low to the ground and usually go out at night. The burn slowly, and kill trees with thin bark. Once burned, the forest is more susceptible to repeated burning. In 2007, it was so hot that our 50-hectare experimental forest fire (in southeastern Amazonia) burned through the night, killing more than half of the adult trees. The rainy season was delayed three months that year. Indigenous groups of the Xingu River headwaters had to plant their cassava fields three times, and a large swath of their forest reserve burned accidentally. These tribes have very detailed descriptions of the ways in which rainfall has been changing. And the farmers and ranchers of the region are planting their crops more than a month later than they did in the 1990s. The paper that describes this freak drought has not yet been published.
The point is, the Amazon forest is already changing in ways that we don’t understand. When the tropical north Atlantic heats up, the western Amazon is subjected to intense drought, as happened in 2005. When the tropical Pacific heats up (ENSO), the eastern Amazon heats up. Large-scale forest clearing and dense smoke also inhibit the rains. And high temperature, alone, can provoke drought by increasing evaporation.
The best news that I can point to is that deforestation rates in the Brazilian have declined 2/3’s in the last four years (see Nepstad et al. 2009, “The end of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon”). But, when I look hard at the evidence, I conclude that it will take more than slowing deforestation to prevent this ecosystem from widespread degradation through drought, fire, and logging–and the positive feedbacks between the three.
Phil Clarke
I read the Samanta bashing thread long back. Simon Lewis, in the comments section #27, offers two meanings for the IPCC statement.
He then contends he believes in the second interpretation which Eric Steig agrees with. He thinks the the IPCC is talking about a climatic regime change.
The Lewis RC comment is troublesome on many counts. How come he freely admits that many interpretations are possible of the IPCC statement and then goes on a tirade against Leake, saying that there is clear evidence for what the IPCC says? How do you explain that contradiction ?
Secondly, how does he say that the IPCC is talking about regime change when the IPCC clearly is talking about rapid shifts?
I quote the IPCC report, the very same paragraph:
“…this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state, not
necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and
the future situation .”
Observe his citation in his comment to Arindam Samanta (ellipsing out the “rapid shifts” part).
Quoting Lewis (verbatim):
“It seems clear to me that the sentence is about responses to a shift from one climate regime, the recent past and present day, to another, with less precipitation, in the future (it is the IPCC climate change impacts report after all, and they do say ‘… not necessarily producing gradual changes between the current and the future situation’). ”
Tell me: do you find this in any way convincing? In fact, it is misleading.
The IPCC states that the *Amazon system* could shift to another state in rapid fashion, set off by initial slightly reduced precipitation (and ensuing local feedback loops, one has to assume).
Lewis is claiming that the IPCC says the *Amazon forest* will respond (by savannization) to a climatic regime of reduced precipitation.
There is a world of difference between the two statements – there is a cause-effect switch. At the least, there is a dilution of the IPCC stance that the Amazon will respond to ‘even a slight reduction in precipitation’ by conflating that to mean that the Amazon will respond to a ‘climate regime change’.
If that is indeed the case, the IPCC statement should be rewritten accordingly, dont you think?
The Amazon fire scientists interpret Nepstad 2007 to mean that the Amazon was quite resistant to drought alone after all. See Barlow, 2008 paper in Phil Trans B
In any case, Phil, Lewis and Nepstad are experts in this area no doubt but they are not the IPCC. On what basis are we supposed to accept their letters and press releases over the IPCC report itself?
Sod,
Are you every going to present a reasoned and logical post, or will you stick to pedantic lightweight comments?
Dr Nepstad thank you for your response . I have a question relating to your comment:
4. Is the estimate that 55% of the Amazon forest will be cleared or degraded (by logging, fire, or drought) by 2030 if current trends continue (and without invoking any future changes in rainfall or greater evaporation that may occur through climate change) published in the peer review literature? (WWF published my initial report on this topic.)
Yes. The peer-review article is Nepstad et al. 2008. Phil Transactions of the Royal Society.
In the report that you prepared for the REDD scheme your assumed deforestation to continue based on the average of the 1997 -2004 period a rate of 20,000 sq.kms. continuing into the future. Is it not the case that deforestation peaked at 27,423 sq kms in 2004 and then declined – 18846 sq kms in 2005, 14,109 in 2006, 11,532 in 2007 and in 2009 the figure had reduced to 7008 sq kms by 2009. As the FAO official figures up to 2007 were available for consideration for your 2008 paper why did you choose not revise your deforestation baseline.
Given that the Brazilian government has reduced deforestation by more than 60% since it peaked in 2004, a fact you acknowledged in a 2009 press release, why do you still consider your projection for 2030 valid.
Dr Nepstad I have some further comments on the points that you raised earlier.
3. Is there direct observational evidence to support this finding?
Yes. See Phillips et al. Science 2009, who found a spike of tree mortality following the 2005 drought in a few dozen permanent forest plots scattered across the region. (It is hard to think of more direct evidence than this. And, by the way, once a drought kills trees in a forest, its susceptibility to further disturbance through fire increases, as has been demonstrated experimentally (Ray et al 2005 Ecol Applic.) and observationally (Cochrane et al. 1999 Science)).
The 2005 drought was described as a 100 year event, Zeng 2006, and this was undoubtedly a major factor in the spike in tree mortality. Under less extreme conditions over a variety of test plots, Phillips 2004, found that overall recruitment exceeded mortality.
5. Is there any evidence that climate change will provoke drying in the Amazon?
Yes. See Mali et al. 2007. Science. Most global circulation models predict a decline in rainfall in the eastern Amazon, which is where the forests are already most stressed.
Note: These climate model runs do not include the inhibitory effect of dense smoke on rainfall, and only a few include the inhibitory effect of deforestation itself on rainfall.
The IPCC in AR4 notes that while most GCMs predict a decrease in dry season rainfall they predict an increase in annual rainfall. AR4 also highlights that most models under-predict rainfall and the IPCC rightly regard this as an area of high uncertainty.
@Nepstad
Nice of you to drop by, it’s really appreciated. I’d really enjoy engaging in a conversation with regarding the various assertions in the IPCC and WWF regarding the Amazon jungle. Thanks for trying to clear some things up. However, as per usual, when someone tries to clear things up, I often have more questions than when I began on the journey. Here’s a couple for you.
When you say “we reported that approximately half of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon were exposed to severe seasonal droughts,…” does that imply the Amazon is unique? Aren’t all places on this earth subject to sever seasonal droughts in one time or another? Given the history of the rainfall (it hasn’t changed much) in the Amazon, wouldn’t one consider this ‘normal’? Is there another dynamic in place that makes this unique? For instance, I live in the plains of the U.S. When we experience prolonged droughts, we, too, are subject to fires and burn off of the local flora. Other than locality, how does your scenario differentiate from mine?
When you state, “once a drought kills trees in a forest, its susceptibility to further disturbance through fire increases, as has been demonstrated experimentally.”, isn’t this stating a rather obvious observation? Yes, dead trees tend to burn more readily than live ones. Dead trees no longer absorb moisture.
Another question, when you use the term “climate change”, are you referring to the climate change most of us understand to be perpetually occurring or the “climate change” that connotates the IPCC’s inference of CAGW? If you are tying the changes in the Amazon to the IPCC’s inference, how so? I only ask because your above statements don’t seem to tie into the CO2 debate other than the reference to Mali et al. 2007 that uses a computer generated model which is only subject to the opinion of the modeler. What evidence is there which shows why there will be a decrease in precipitation in the Amazon as opposed to other places on this earth? Where will it precipitate instead?
The above question were honest and forthright in an attempt to engage in a serious conversation regarding the assertions about the future of the Amazon jungle.
A few closing comments. When you state, “(Please, look up the credentials of those who signed this statement if you have any doubts.)”, it automatically raises my awareness to the appeal to authority. It is as if you were saying, ‘don’t just believe me, this is endorsed by the apostles and Moses!’ It holds less than a little meaning to me. Given the fact climate is always in a state of change, how do you assign the change in rain patterns to an increase in CO2? Is it not true that if and when the earth warms, the increase in available H2O would necessitate increased precipitation? Please correct me if you can show me where I’m wrong. Another assumption you can feel free to correct me on is that my sense is your concern is on the Amazon itself and not the global weather environment. Truly, I sympathize with your concern. The Amazon is a world treasure and should be kept. However, outside the computer model you referenced, I see no tie to anthropological CO2 emissions to your study regarding the Amazon. Being a computer scientist, I can say, computer models aren’t worth very much. This is because of random and human interaction. Once you throw in the inevitable bias of the modeler, one doesn’t end up with much. This isn’t shown only in regards to climate, but in almost every computer generated model known to man.(There are a few exceptions.) The fact is, we don’t know all the factors involved in our climate, much less how to accurately measure the factors that we do know. Further, human interaction is given to error, be it a bias or out of misunderstanding, error we do. My last five sentences aren’t really subject to opinion, these are time tested, commonly known assertions. Again, being a computer scientist, given the expanse of the globe and the variances of the wind currents, coupled with the unknown quantity of potential precipitation added with the uncertainty of ocean currents and conditions, I find it incredulous that anyone in their right mind would state it would rain more or less in a very specific area of the globe over a period of several years, much less model it via computer, regardless of the immense specifications necessary for a computer to factor in all of the variables. I’ve more to say on computers and models, but that’s probably for another thread.
Nepstad, I’m amusing you’re the Dr. Nepstad relevant to the Amazon study. I truly appreciate you taking the time to post here. A personal thanks. I understand some of my questions may appear pointed and even perhaps coarse, but the assertions beg the questions and stating a computer said so doesn’t cut it with me nor should it with anyone else. Thanks again, any response would be greatly welcomed.
James Sexton
Re Nepstad
Sir, you say “we reported that approximately half of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon were exposed to severe seasonal droughts,…” and then go on to desribe the damage observed. I fail to understand how that relates to the “A small reduction in rainfall could result in a 40 percent reduction in the Amazon” Thw words,
“Small reduction in rainfall” are neither scientific or harmonius with “severe drought”. So please explain to me how this supports the claim as backed by the literature.
Thanks in advance.
And so, with Dr Nepstad’s detailed exposition of the peer-reviewed evidence on which the IPCC report is based, AmazonGate comes to its natural conclusion.
Signing off, TTFN.
This really is the nub of the issue, isn’t it. I remarked in one of my own pieces that the warmists were coming on board, spraying citations like tom cats marking their territories, and here we have Nepstad doing it again.
“Was there a peer-review citation in support of the IPCC statement on the Amazon at the time it was published?” he asks rhetorically … and it is rhetorical, for he goes on to cite the Nepstad et al. 1994 which he knows full well does not support the IPCC. He knows that his 1994 paper refers to “severe seasonal droughts”, whereas the IPCC claims an effect from “slight reduction in precipitation”.
This is why, of course, his partner organisation, the WWF, cites Nepstad et al 1999 (IPAM/World Bank) – which interestingly Nepstad himself does not – presumably because it doesn’t support the IPCC either (neither in the English version nor in the Portuguese version), which is also, one assumes, why the English version is not published on the WHRC or IPAMs site.
And having tried his black arts over on Monbiot’s site, supporting in passing Monbiot’s egregious libelling of me (and a sustained attempt to trash my reputation), Nepstad crawls over here to practice his dishonesty on WUWT readers. He knows his works does not support the IPCC, we know his work does not support the IPCC, and he must know by now that we know he knows. Yet still he persists … the reason, of course, being REDD … follow the money.
Phil C
With your argument to authority by simply referring those of us asking sensible questions to Dr Nepstad, your argument comes to an end.
Dr Nepstad:
Thanks for your comments. Firstly, I would like to say that many of us do understand the situation the IPCC puts scientists in (IMO). As a general statement concerning the sensitivity of the Amazon system to precipitation, the IPCC statement appears to rightly conveys the message that the system can be quite sensitive. This is novel especially considering that the opposite was believed by many in the scientific community.
It appears therefore that you, and others have put the full weight of support behind this statement because calling it ‘unsubstantiated’ would have created the opposite impression – that the Amazon system is trouble-free and the scientists just made up stuff.
But, the IPCC report is a scientific document and given that the contentious statement makes specific quantitative assessments, it is but natural that people go looking for the references, which by now has rather multiplied in number. All these references put together certainly support the IPCC statement *if* read in a generalized (or superficial ) sort of fashion, but the specific quantitative claim are not present.
For example, what I take from the literature is 1) vast stretches of Amazon lose/deplete signficant quantities of moisture under drought conditions 2) At the end of a drought, there can be significant die-back which can come quite abruptly 3) this sensitivity added with fire and logging could set up a feedback loop.
What I do not see is anything supporting the overarching influence of the Amazon system to small change in precipitation alone. As Leake said, that may be true or it may not be true, but the references to date do not support it. The references available the the IPCC at the time of its drafting do not support it.
This leaves the experts defending a specific scientific claim for its general thrust. Since the experts closed ranks with a statement standing on weak legs, the conflict has since erupted in the journalist field. Jonathan Leake’s article has been withdrawn by the Times when the exact grounds for doing so is not clear.
It would be better to defuse this by requesting the IPCC to revise this key passage; then the issue would truly come to its natural end.
Regards