Willis Eschenbach recently posted about “Baked Alaska“, as well as Out in the Ama-zone now from Dr. Richard North we have “Amazon Alibi in Flames” and the research of the document trail used to push the Sunday Times into a retraction about the so called “Amazongate” issue is interesting and telling. I posted a few thoughts on it here previously. Since this new revelation about the issue needs a wider audience, I’ve reposted Dr. North’s essay below. However, I suggest that readers put his website in your bookmarks as there will likely be more to come. Upon further research by North, it seems that evidence of the citation is missing, and even George Monbiot now has admitted that the IPCC made a mistake. He’s changed his tune from just a short time ago. – Anthony
==================================
By Dr. Richard North –
Returning to The Sunday Times retraction of its “Amazongate” article, readers will recall that the paper declared that the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence.
In the case of the WWF report, it said, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), which did relate to the impact of climate change.
This statement mirrored an earlier statement directly by the WWF, where the organisation claimed that the source for its statement was “Fire in the Amazon, a 1999 overview of Amazon fire issues from the respected Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM – Amazon Environmental Research Institute).”
The source quotation from “Fire in the Amazon,” we are told, reads “Probably 30 to 40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.”
Well, we have now ascertained that there are three versions of this document. It starts off life as: “Flames in the rain forest: Origins, impacts, and alternatives to Amazonian fires”, published in English at 161 pages.
We then get the Portuguese version at 172 pages, entitled: “A Floresta em Chamas: Origens, Impactos e Prevencao de Fogo na Amazonia.”
In both cases, they are published by the “Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest” in 1999, with the support of the World Bank and the Ministry of Environment Secretariat for the Coordination of Amazon.
Then it reappears as an IPAM publication, in a revised version 204 pages long, in Portuguese only, with the same title as the shorter version.
English and Portuguese versions are in electronic searchable form and, as far as we can ascertain, the claim: “Probably 30 to 40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall,” is not present in any version. Nor can we find any variation or close approximation, nor any form with a similar meaning.
In The Sunday Times, it is averred that this document does “relate to the impact of climate change.” And so it does … sort of. It describes how “fires may be affecting climate patterns” (above) and indeed, precipitation. But there is absolutely nothing about climate change affecting rainfall, or the forest being destroyed by small (or any) reductions in rainfall.
In its anxiety to cover its back, and prove “Amazongate” false, the WWF may have been party to the promulgation of a provable lie. Or maybe, this is just another of Nepstad’s little “misinterpretations”. Either way, though, the IPCC is in a little difficulty. Not only is its claim unsupported by its original report, newly offered reference doesn’t support it either.
And they thought that The Sunday Times retraction was the end of the matter. It is only starting.
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Mann seems to get by with fudging numbers.
The WWF. What do they claim? At some point their endeavor to shake down donors for millions will come undone.
The WWF says the end justifies deception?
Algore is in trouble. One by one the light shines on the corruption.
“Smokey says:
July 3, 2010 at 2:53 pm
MarkB says:
“You grossly misrepresent what Monbiot has said.”
Monbiot grossly misrepresents just about everything he writes.”
Yeah. Either he has not looked at the paper or he willfully misrepresents it.
The conclusion on page 154 of the paper : “Amazonian forest dieback under climate-carbon cycle projections for the 21st century”
states.
The modelled Amazonian dieback phenomenon
is therefore qualitatively understood, but
we are still a long way from being able to estimate
the probability of such an ecological
catastrophy occurring in the real Earth system.
ah – back to earth.
Romm is demanding apologies from all the media and the planet on July 1. http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/01/media-retracted-attack-on-ipcc/#comment-283487
Looks like he fell for it also. Tells me they don’t do the homework on the George Soros media site.
Equatorial rain forests are a phenomenon that live only during interglacial periods. During glacial periods, climate is too dry at the equator to support them and the area becomes grassy savanna. Some rain forest will form in bands around the tropics to the North and South of the equator, though, during glacial periods.
The rain forests that today are deemed so “vital” to the environment are, like today’s great coral reefs, relatively short lived phenomena that are the oddity rather than the norm over the past few million years. Both will die “soon” as we slide into the next glaciation.
They also get climate backwards. Warmer climates are wetter climates. Cold climate is dry climate. A cooling of the climate would result in greater drought threat to the rain forests than a warming would.
http://bit.ly/cNOEQB
Apr. 15, 2008
San Francisco, CA — The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (www.moore.org) today announced the appointment of Daniel C. Nepstad, Ph.D. as the new chief program officer for its environmental conservation programs.
Is this a rerun of old news, or is there a retraction of the retraction on the initial assertion
at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/corruption-of-science.html ? I also think you may have misrepresented old GB a little, but good for a laugh!
Oops… should have been “only hope ‘for the children.”
Monbiot claims by one of his peer-reviewed sources “the entire Amazon basin as desert by the 2080s”.
Really? Has it already started? I mean, this takes some time …
I refer you and Monbiot to my comments and references 1 funded by the alarmists NASA and a scathing comment from a member of the IPCC:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/03/flaming-the-amazon/#comment-422481
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/03/flaming-the-amazon/#comment-422472
The IPCC got it wrong! Get over it!
We’re with Jorge Kafkazar! No doubt the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF) has a meticulously wrought, long-term plan to “manage” first the Amazon Basin, then Brazil and contiguous State entities, eventually South America as a whole and finally, voila! all geopolitical landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere.
Gordon and Betty Moore will of course “manage” Gaia’s interests only after ridding Mother Earth of polluting humanity, “swarming maggots” as John Holdren, Obama Banana’s death-eating “science advisor” (sic) is wont to put it. Facts? Objective, rational argument? Nihilistic Luddite sociopaths infesting GBMF, and others of their ilk, don’t need no stinkin’ Science.
Being outrageously wrong (or outrageously anything- the key word is outrageous) is how one tricks the unwary in to taking him seriously and is a perfectly reliable method of keeping an opponent distracted while a partner burgles his house.
I rather like the Moonbat. His reluctance to contemplate defeat in spite of overwhelming logic to the contrary is commendable. Granted he been found to be a sandwich short of a picnic but just gotta admire his truculence to admit defeat. He’s a bloke, make no Nemistake, irrespective of his employers inability to make other than a massive loss he, as Winston famously said, keeps Buggering on!
N’ere let the scorn o’ Foes defeat ye,
When you alone hae Powers tae beat ya’
Keep digging George, keep digging!
Dundee deserves a new hero…
Thanks for the geological perspective. I do believe that 90% of the last million years, the normal state of the Earth’s climate has been an ice age and all the AGWers are worried about is the Earth getting warmer!!! We at WUWT know what they should really be worrying about!!!
The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute admits it has received “lots of private foundation money” from billion-dollar funds such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust to help fight British Columbia fish farms and pressure stores and restaurants to boycott their products.
More: http://www.financialpost.com/Salmon+farm+battle+about+competition/3169217/story.html#ixzz0sfNFKBVP
Bias statement: my interest leans far more to the science than the politics. In general my reading suggests many large scale biological responses to a warming world are “unsettled” areas of research. In the case of the Amazon, one study cordoned off an area of pristine forest with a representative population of trees and shielded the canopy to prevent rain reaching the trees in question. In the early years the trees seemed little affected. At around year 5 a disproportionate amount of tree mortality and ill-health presented. The researchers concluded it was because the soil moisture content the trees tapped into took that long to deplete. Based on this, conclusions from a single year of drought (either way) would seem premature.
Could the quote be a weird extrapolation like being the reverse of 60-70 percent is not sensitive to small changes.
It doesn’t really take much once something goes viral, whether it’s a news story or a “fact”, to keep it going long enough for to become a myth or urban legend. When it comes to “fact” all that is needed is to take away the time stamp, then the “fact” just keeps on getting repeated for ages and as it gets repeated it also warps slightly by every repeat.
Some people actually use statistics from the 60s like it still applies today. Or the 90s lol.
Jimbo’s post of June 27, 2010 at 5:53 pm is worth another look.
Jimbo says
Just for fun here is how the Amazon reacts to the dry season – it goes greener!!!
Amazon Rainforest Greens Up in the Dry Season
Defying Dry: Amazon Greener in Dry Season than Wet
Large seasonal swings in leaf area of Amazon rainforests
[Oops… should have been “only hope ‘for the children.”]
Works as originally written too. You know how incoherent these people get once they get wound up.
The reason that Warmists lie, and then lie again to cover up their first lie, is because they have a deep and irrational emotional need to be right, whereas ‘skeptics’ find intellectual satisfaction from doing the detective work needed to get at the truth.
Does Monbiot ever do the kind of patient digging that we see on this site, or that North has just demonstrated?
No. Nor do the rest of them; they just run around in circles recycling each other’s comments and, all too frequently, vulgar abuse. (On that note, let’s call him Monbiot, shall we….?)
MikeA says:
July 3, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Is this a rerun of old news, or is there a retraction of the retraction on the initial assertion
at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/corruption-of-science.html ? I also think you may have misrepresented old GB a little, but good for a laugh!
Same author, later dates, in the original links, really just shows how hard it is for the average reader/voter to work their way through the WWF nonsense science and art of lying defences, and the art of the IPCC in spinning issues to avoid exposing holes in their (formerly) much vaunted adherance to pure scientific research backed up by impeccable peer reviewed referencing (Myth).
Pauchuri’s lofty stance has crumbled and become tarnished by simple, but much more in depth peer review – no one now, accepts the mob cry, (propaganda) on the beautiful appearance of the emperor’s clothes, without checking and believing their own observations.
Shub Niggurath says: July 3, 2010 at 2:34 pm
“Do you know why the 40% figure is important? [….]”
I can think of at least 60 Billion reasons …. (hey … it’s the new green economy – money doesn’t grow on trees you know)
As we spend more of our time examining ” Mammoth flatulence causes …” claims and pulling apart Playstation fantasies of Amazon rainfall the scammers head to the Bank with the swag. They are like those Hollywood bank bandits, throwing [peer reviewed of course] $100 bills from the back of the getaway truck. The bag ‘o’ loot is long secure in its new home while the idiots are still brawling over bills fluttering in the street.
Climate Science – 5% more leaf fall this year? Consider those leaves already fallen and coloured dark red. Give me a week or so and I can “iteratively homogenize” the leaf count data and re-base this years “leaf anomaly” using spring as the base line…
REDD is becoming synonymous with corruption, yet the most powerful players in the game are the World Bank, with partners WWF and Woods Hole Research Center (Nepstad’s employer).
The financial motivations behind concern for the rainforests cannot be overstated … the racket is worth billions and is the other half of cap and trade … there is no money in “cap” unless you have a ready supply of carbon credits to “trade”. The plan is that rainforests are the carbon credit “production machine” – putting new life into the phrase money grows on trees.
Richard North says:
July 3, 2010 at 11:11 pm
“REDD is becoming synonymous with corruption, […]”
Headline, from your link: “United Nations warned that corruption is undermining grants to stop logging”.
The UN warns against corruption? So they’re worried that somebody else steals the money they had already earmarked for themselves.
Is it significant that comments on George Monbiot’s latest article were closed after just 6 hours and 71 comments? Normally even the most rabid commetatorsin that paper get at least 24hrs to be slagged off by the public (and defended by their few remaining chums). And about 300 comments.
The Guardian debate in London on Climategate next week should be very interesting. George Monbiot is chairing, Doug Keenan is speaking and Steve McIntyre has said that he will be in London that day..whether as a member of the audience or on the panel has yet to be decided. I suspect that George may come in for some awkward questions about this topic too.
@ur momisuglyMods@ur momisugly Please delete this link if you feel that it is not WUWT’s job to advertise another journal’s event, but it might be useful for European based readers to know about it and possibly to attend
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/30/guardian-debate-climate-science-emails