There’s been lots of whooping and celebrating by the warmist crowd lately over the retraction by the Sunday Times Jonathan Leake story about Amazongate.
The claim was that the sensitivity to rainfall reduction was based on peer reviewed literature. I’m here to tell you that claim is totally unsupportable, I’ll even go so far as to call the claim “bogus”, it is that bad. The proof lies in the screencap below:
Excerpts from what Christopher Booker writes in his latest Telegraph Column:
Last week, after six months of evasions, obfuscation, denials and retractions, a story which has preoccupied this column on and off since January came to a startling conclusion. It turns out that one of the most widely publicised statements in the 2007 report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a claim on which tens of billions of dollars could hang – was not based on peer-reviewed science, as repeatedly claimed, but originated solely from anonymous propaganda published on the website of a small Brazilian environmental advocacy group.
The ramifications of this discovery stretch in many directions. First, it seems to show that the IPCC – whose reports governments rely on to justify presenting mankind with the largest bill in history – has been in serious breach of its own rules.
…
The document cited by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), which it later described, after a full internal inquiry, as a “report”, proved remarkably difficult to track down. Since then, both the WWF and Dr Nepstad have cited other papers in support of their claim – but none of these provided any support for the specific claim about the impact of climate change made by the IPCC.
…
The original read: “Probably 30-40 per cent of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.” This was hyped up in the final drafting of the IPCC report, to claim that “up to 40 per cent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation”. “Brazilian Amazon” – only around half the total rainforest area – was changed to include the entire forest. The word “sensitive” was changed to “react drastically”. And the original IPAM note had made no mention at all of climate change.
Please visit Booker’s article, to read the full story and to show support.
The Sunday Times piece (now retracted) was originally headlined “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim”, though this headline 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”.
That headline and claim has been borne out by facts. The Sunday Times should put the story back up, and retract their retraction. Leake had it right and the editors simply caved to pressure without doing a thorough investigation to see if his claim was supportable. It took bloggers like Dr. Richard North to do the job the Sunday Times would not do, even to save their own credibility.
The screencap above showing the proof of source to the IPCC claim via the WWF report was located by Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum (with the help of commenter Gareth on that blog), thanks to the “Wayback Machine“, an archive of Internet web pages. I won’t provide the link here for the old IPAM web page, as I don’t want to overload the service, but you can see the IPAM web pages archived in the Wayback Machine search results page below:
North writes:
As it stands, this is the only known source of this sentence. There is no author identified, the provenance of the web page is not identified and not in any possible way could this be considered “peer reviewed”. It has no academic or scientific merit – yet it is this on which the WWF and IPCC apparently rely.
What is also particularly important is that the IPCC uses the sentence, which it modifies slightly, to argue: “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.”
Meanwhile, real peer reviewed literature, published just this week, supports the idea that the Amazon is not all that sensitive to rainfall reduction:
Press Release from the Max Planck Institute
“We were surprised to find that the primary production in the tropics is not so strongly dependent on the amount of rain,” says Markus Reichstein. “Here, too, we therefore need to critically scrutinize the forecasts of some climate models which predict the Amazon will die as the world gets drier.”
Read all about it here:
CO2 field experiment likely to cause “do-over” for climate models
As for the sorry state of incompetence at the IPCC and their claims using WWF literature, Shub Niggurath suggested last week that no peer reviewed science references on the issue 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.
The WWF, in my view, is a poison pill for respectable science. They should be avoided for any references in peer reviewed papers and in journalism.
This whole complaint forcing the Sunday Times into a retraction is a made up crisis, and it’s CYA bullshit of the highest order. Readers know that I don’t use that term in posts often, or lightly. In fact, I can’t recall the last time I used it in a story.
WUWT readers should make this IPCC folly known at other websites in comments. They wanted a debate, they wanted a retraction, well they got it. Now it is time for them to admit they supported a flawed premise based on shoddy activist driven “science”.
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What gets me about this affair more than anything else is that they thought they could get away with it. Its like they assumed the game had not changed – that the three panels’ verdicts have calmed the ruffled waters and, with old crew now restored, its time to get back to the same old narrative.
I hope they don’t succeed, but you’ve got to admit they got big, clangey brass ones.
Jud
It is Gareth, not Gerald. 😉
Phil Clarke
Why do you repeat the same claims over again?
Upper soil moisture depletion is not the same as ‘drastic’ changes. The Amazon deep root system will take care of that.
Nepstad et al in their drought simulation exercise – which has major caveats everyone always forgets, show that a multi-year drought (3-4 years) will take out the big trees and the top canopy.
If the IPCC wishes to cite this paper, they should withdraw the original unsubstantiated statement and issue a newer, better one.
The “evil” side of this sorry saga is the willingness of the spinners to create a “truth” and attack with vigor and have the satisfaction of the media doing a “we got it wrong” retraction – job well done and dusted, or so they thought.
That could have been the final result if it weren’t for some sceptical checking and research to reveal the “real truth” and one of the reasons that the liars and political spinners hate sceptical sites and the network of sites that is continually doing the world media’s work for the background research and instant spread of the real news.
No wonder that in the hidden agenda of many governments there are those that seek to cripple or disrupt the ability of the internet to convey the message so ordinary people can read, consider, and make up their own minds rather than submit to official propaganda.
To all volunteers who take the time, thanks for your diligence and kindness and Anthony keep up the good work in getting this information out there.!
No no, this was NOT an error by the IPCC. This was deliberate alarmism and not for the only time in the AR’s. It all started with Santers “discernable human influence” chapter 8 scandal in the late 90’s.
The 0,1,2 order draft reviews are worthless when alterations are made after the fact.
Phil as usual, you conflate issues. The issue here is that IPCC relied on an opinion written on an activist website, with no author, no references, no attribution…zero zilch nada. That issue is proven without a doubt,
In which case it is a non-issue, as Lewis, Nepstad and the WWF have conceded that the referencing was sloppily done. But conflating that issue with the reality of what the literature says is the real obfustication.
“I AM the co-author of the WWF report that you alleged included the bogus figure that “up to 40%” of the Amazon was sensitive to reduced rainfall.
Not only did you fail to contact me, but you ignored credible evidence that the figure was correct. You also ignored evidence that the figure had been backed up by peer-reviewed research both before and after our publication.
You spoke to Dr Dan Nepstad, one of the world’s leading authorities on fire in the Amazon. You ignored the fact he told you he had published an even higher figure in Nature in 1994 and that subsequent research validated our figure. What you published was demonstrably false and has seriously misled the debate on climate change.
Andy Rowell, href=”http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article7017878.ece”>letter to the Times.
“The IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced. It is very well known that in Amazonia, tropical forests exist when there is more than about 1.5 metres of rain a year, below that the system tends to ‘flip’ to savannah. Indeed, some leading models of future climate change impacts show a die-off of more than 40% Amazon forests, due to projected decreases in rainfall. The most extreme die-back model predicted that a new type of drought should begin to impact Amazonia, and in 2005 it happened for the first time: a drought associated with Atlantic, not Pacific sea surface temperatures.
The effect on the forest was massive tree mortality, and the remaining Amazon forests changed from absorbing nearly two billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere a year, to being a massive source of over three billion tonnes
Letter from Simon Lewis to the BBC
As Harrabin says: So, it appears that, unlike in the case of “Glaciergate”, the IPCC’s science may be right but its referencing wrong.
Amazongate proven?
In what can only be considered extremely poor timing, Media Matters has joined 12 other clean energy and progressive organizations to form a coalition to push for journalists and boards of directors at news companies to formally apologize for writing about Climategate. One of the 13 coalition members is the WWF which is the organization that obfuscated the attempt by North and Booker, to find the original reference material used by the IPCC for its 40% destruction claim for the Amazon. The WWF has seriously damaged any credibility that this bakers dozen thought it had and has reduced the coalition to half-baked hypocrites which will now surely be dismissed by journalists as politically driven kooks. The 13 seem to have successfully suppressed most of the Climategate news from being covered by US media, but no one trusts US media anymore on climate issues. The 13 are furious that the foreign press gave news coverage to Climategate and the 13 will only damage their credibility further if they attack the press IMO.
I know, german is hard to translate. But I rediscovered a 2001 story from the German magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ here, dealing with the issue:
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-18700469.html&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhjcuUOZ4DzHFfftrlZnm00xNyavQQ
German Original:
http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/image/show.html?did=18700469&aref=image024/E0110/SCSP200101101680182.pdf&thumb=false
“Bereits 1978 hatten Wissenschaftler des INPA-Instituts in Belém eine komplette
Vernichtung des brasilianischen Dschungels zum Jahre 2003 prognostiziert. Die Regenwaldmörder müssten allerdings enorm zulegen – noch immer stehen 87 Prozent
der Bäume.”
(“Already in 1978 scientits from the INPA in Belem predicted the complete extermination of the brazilian jungle until 2003. The murderers of the rain forest however would need to speed up tremendously – 87% of the trees are still standing.”)
Those are some strange trees they have in the Amazon. If there’s a drought, will they still be able to throw apples at Dorothy?
No one has mentioned what rainfall has occured since 1998 in the Amazon Basin. I would venture an ass-of-the-pants guess that it has been plentiful. It seems to me the statements regarding the vulnerability of the forest to no rain is a bit like stating that frost and heavy snowfall would probably harm a banana crop. Even if its been peer rubber stamped its a straw man that has more to do with me-too funding for agw research. Shame on te actual team that took a small tract of the forest and deprived it of water.
There is a 50% probability that the rainfall in the Amazon will be lower next year than this year! Oh, My! A catastrophe! /sarc
(Give Me A Break!)
They are like cockroaches in a dirty kitchen who run when the lights are switched on. Beware – they’re only looking for a dark place to hide until the lights go out again. KEEP THE LIGHTS ON!
The Goreacle seems a bit late out of the blocks.
He is just reporting the Sunday Times retraction:
http://blog.algore.com/2010/07/sunday_times_retracts_claim_ab.html
“…..as the world gets drier.”
Where are they saying the water will go? The earth is a closed system. The water isn’t going anywhere outside of the earth. As Roy Spencer has shown (among others) as the earth warms precipitation increases.
I would like to see the growing checklist of all the ‘-gates’ related to the new $cience of Lieingtology. What are we up to now – a half-dozen or so?
This is kind of off topic, but something in the amazon artical made me wonder what would cause the world to be drier?
Its assumed by the AGW crowd, that warm = bad = drier
and that colder = good = wetter?
Has there been any research done which investigates whether a warmer climate will actually cause drier weather? You know scientific method, actual field work, no computer models involved, researched facts, i.e. someone who poses a Theory, investigates in the real world, does traditional science and lets the facts talk for themselves, even if the facts disprove the theory.
If the climate is warmer, won’t there be more evaporation, more clouds, and more rain overall?
If it is colder won’t there be less rain (more water which is locked up as ice), less evaporation and drier conditions?
If you look at the historial record (i.e. human history as far back as it goes and geological research), you would find that the middle east was a vast producer of food, (the fertile green cresent) the Sahara was smaller, the tree lines around the Arctic were further north.
People see the middle east today and assume that its always had its present climate, but looking at the ancient civilisations which originate in that area, they would not have risen if they could not support themselves in local environment.
So what research has been done?
To put the no-rain stress on the ARF in perspective, the forest is 55 million yrs old. In a former incarnation Amazon R was the westward flowing extension of the Congo R before the Jurassic breakup of gondwanaland into the continents. Moreover, during the ice ages, the climate was drier in the region (take note all you rain forest specialists – cold and drier, warm and wetter- even the expert can learn something new) and savanna forest took over. The wetter conditions that followed melting of the glaciers, resulted in re-establishment of the rain forest. Now do you all still think a dry year or two or a little warm cold spell is going to wipe out this “robust” survivor?
Unless and until Railroad Bill Pachauri is excreted from his parakeet’s perch atop the scrofulous UN IPCC, the “state of sorry incompetence” resulting from “CYA BS” (Mr. Watts has finally let fly here) will not only persist but will prevail.
If the pathetic Ban Ki-moon, whose fatuous pronunciamento in mid-September 2009 (“earth will become a baking desert by New Year’s Day 2010 if … [the horrible, exploitative Western world] doesn’t contribute $10-trillion dollars [yes, trillion] NOW”) caused barely a frisson among the cognoscenti, can’t fire Pachauri, let’s put up somebody who can.
Then it’s out with Moon himself as Bumwad-in-Chief, followed in short order by dissolution of his vicious, violent, kleptocratic, endlessly dissembling organization. Nothing anyone can say does justice to the scope of these extraordinarily corrupt and malfeasant poseurs, whose extra-legal prerogatives blast democratic sovereignties at their very root.
Peter Walker UK says:
July 10, 2010 at 7:13 pm
If it is colder won’t there be less rain (more water which is locked up as ice), less evaporation and drier conditions?
=======================================
Spot on. And ice core samples from “ice age” times in Earth’s history yield more dust and particulates.
The planet as a whole is drier and windier during such times.
On a more recent timeline, when the PDO flips cold, there is less upward motion in the Pacific…and California dries out.
As Joe Bastardi likes to point out, the fires in Cali in recent years past were not because of “Global Warming” as Governor “Arnolt” was mistakenly saying.
They were because of drought because of cool water and sinking air (high pressure) in the means.
This ridiculously stupid myth about the “warming world” means drier conditions…is just getting old.
But when I look at the head of the IPCC, when I see Michael Mann with his half-sneer, behaving not like a scientist, but like a narcissist, then it becomes plainly obvious:
The fatal flaw in the whole CAGW activist movement (and it really is an activist movement) is that there is this witches brew of less than honourable individuals, political activist rhetoric, and sham science.
I say let them play themselves out into utter foolish oblivion.
Pass the popcorn….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Phil Clarke says:
July 10, 2010 at 5:44 pm
[–snip–]
Amazongate proven?
Why, yes, Phil, yes: It’s been proven, and painfully so.
It’s painful that you’re in denial.
You see? That we –the rest of us– should have to keep reminding you of the facts, is, well, a rather painful exercise in repetition.
Do tell: Where is YOUR proof to say that what was presented in the name of the WWF/IPCC, is in fact THE TRUTH of the matter?
More to the point: Is your opinion worth more than mere scientific fact?
And if so, just how would that be?
Clearly the IPCC was created to give legitimacy to the hypothesis that anthropogenic CO2 was causing the Earth to warm, and would lead to catastrophic conclusions if allowed to continue. The aim was not to investigate the hypothesis, in order to falsify or verify it, but to amass as much ‘evidence’ from the literature—any literature, as it turns out—as necessary to give government leaders the impression that the scientific ‘consensus’ was overwhelming and that immediate and drastic action was necessary.
That action was create a global regime that would ultimately control the energy and resources of the entire planet, a ‘global governance’, under the auspices of the UN or some successor entity. This was an essentially statist goal, disguised as a reaction to an ‘environmental’ crisis of mankind’s making.
The IPCC is just the handmaiden of a statist movement led by ideologues. Since its influence can now be felt in every capital of the world, in all the halls of government and academia, instigating and inspiring any number of policies and programs that further the aims of its founders, it must be accounted a remarkable—and frightening—success.
The IPCC must be stopped. The discovery of the shoddy nature of its documentation, ‘evidence’, and conclusions is a useful step toward discrediting this clearly unscientific, rogue organization. But the next step has to be to work for its total and complete elimination.
As elections in the USA grow closer, I suggest we let our candidates know that among the most important factors influencing our votes will be whether the Congress should continue to allow our tax monies to support the IPCC, dedicated as it is to ignoring science in favor of advocating a political agenda that is against human progress, against human freedom, and anti-human.
/Mr Lynn
Over 2,500 scientific expert reviewers chaired by the gentleman who urged: “People can have confidence in the IPCC conclusions… Given that it is all on the basis of peer-reviewed literature” _ Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chairman, June 2008
The facts, on the other hand, are that of 18,513 references in the 2007 IPCC report 5,587 are not peer-reveiwed. Those 2,500 scientific expert reviewers are frauds – every one of them.
Gary Pearse is absolutely right when he says.
Moreover, during the ice ages, the climate was drier in the region (take note all you rain forest specialists – cold and drier, warm and wetter- even the expert can learn something new) and savanna forest took over. The wetter conditions that followed melting of the glaciers, resulted in re-establishment of the rain forest.
The tropical rain forests shrank dramatically during the lce Ages, as a result of a combination of cooler (therefore less evaporation) and lower rainfall.
If the Earth’s temperature does rise a degree or two, there will be more evaporation, more water vapour in the atmosphere and therefore probably more rainfall in the tropical rainforest regions.
I don’t need a highly dubious computer model using GIGO data to come to that conclusion.
I have personal experience with only one area of rain forest and that was in Venezuela. Here the soils were incredibly thick – over 75 metres to bedrock. The soils were damp all the way down and although not a conventional aquifer, they were a huge source of water. There has recently been a severe drought in Venezuela, but no reports of the rain forest dying. Put another way, the depth of soil may be more important than rainfall variations for the fragility or otherwise of the rain forest – just one of many important factors not considered in the models.
This is all a stupid scare story designed to appeal the simple minded.
Over on CA, Roger Pielke Jr says:
” Roger Pielke, Jr.
Posted Jul 11, 2010 at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Reply
Shub et al., I think that you might want to track down this document:
Nobre, C.A., Assad, E.D. and Oyama, M.D., Mudança ambiental no Brasil: o impacto do aquecimento global nos ecossistemas da Amazônia e na agricultura, Scientific American (Brazilian Edition), Edição Especial n. 12.
I see that it is cited as follows:
http://www.switchurbanwater.eu/outputs/pdfs/CBEL_PAP_Uncertainties_and_risks_to_urban_waters_BH.pdf
“Nevertheless, according to Nobre et al. (2005), the existing studies suggest that an increase of 2 C to 3 C in average temperature may lead to a reduction of trees by up to 25% in the “cerrado” area (savannah) and by up to 40% in the Amazonian forest, before the end of the 21st century.”
This document — not online as far as I can tell and in Portuguese — is cited immediately before the relevant sentence in question in the IPCC WGII Ch. 13 and Nobre is also a lead author of that chapter, suggesting that he may have wrote that section.
Were I to be laying odds, I’d say that there is a good chance that the origins of the “forty percent of the Amazonian forests . . .” claim can be found in Nobre et al. rather than the WWF trail pursued by North (though there of course could be a common origin).
If anyone has access to Nobre et al. 2005, would be interesting to see what it actually says.”
Tallbloke,
I think this might be what you’re looking for, maybe:
http://eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/saleska/docs/Hutyra05_Var.Vuln_GRL.pdf
Peter Miller says:
July 10, 2010 at 10:56 pm
[–snip for brevity–] This is all a stupid scare story designed to appeal the simple minded.
Well, yes. Yes, that true!
Remember this well:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken