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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Now I know why I met such drastic resistance over at Science Skeptic when I quoted 5 articles from respected news sources (one of which was national geographic which is literally the porn of the ACGW crowd) that stated the South American rain forests had faster than expected grow back due to higher than normal CO2 levels in the area and since the majority of the farms and ranches in the area had stopped clear cutting there was a larger and faster than normal growback.
I had that IPCC report crammed down my throat every which way but Sunday.
Now I just sit and laugh and want to smack it in their smug faces over there.
I also had to laugh this morning when I read an archived post in regards to Anthony’s visit to Perth. The contributor was talking about handing out literature to everyone that walked in (and they say they aren’t religious zealots).
It was after chuckling that I scrolled up and noticed the contributor. It was Anthony’s dear friend Annie Young. How the heck does this woman get around? Is she independantly wealthy? She seriously had nothing better to do than to follow Anythony around Australia and hand out pamphlets in opposition?
By the way, are we really so shocked at this outcome?
I mean Mann and Jones get a whitewash job on a gold platter, The IPCC pushes back their timing for chapter 6 well over the timeline, allows communication between the authors of a paper and the head author of chapter 6, they totally undermine the review process to get the paper written, and all in all it’s a paper using the same false information and bringing up the same false results, and then they tout it as justification of Mann’s work. Then continue the same sneaky tactics afterwards by destroying emails and data requested through legal means under the FOIA.
Are we really so surprised by this outcome? We shouldn’t be.
For GSH:
From the analysis of WGII by those buffoons at PBL – the Dutch Environment Agency:
We have a minor comment to make on this statement, which originates from
Section 13.4.1 of Chapter 13 (page 596). The statement was based on Rowell
and Moore (2000), which is a peer-reviewed report by the World Wide Fund for
Nature and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (WWF/IUCN) on
a global review of forest fires, and not a study on changes in vegetation due to
climate change. That report, in turn, was mainly based on Nepstad et al. (1999)
(in Nature). In our opinion, both documents were not the most obvious choice of
reference in this case, as their focus is on forest fires (and logging). More adequate
peer-reviewed, scientific journal literature would have been available to support
this statement, such as Cox et al. (2000; 2004) (C6). This minor comment has no
consequences for the IPCC conclusions in the various Summaries for Policymakers.
http://www.pbl.nl/images/500216002_tcm61-48119.pdf
The salient bits being ‘minor’ and ‘no consequences’. The poor referencing has been conceded by Napsted, by Simon Lewis and by the WWF. However the number quoted has widespread support in the literature. It really is that simple.
“…the number quoted has widespread support in the literature. It really is that simple.”
That sounds amazingly like “Fake but accurate.”
Phil
You don’t do science by saying something and then hunting for the evidence to back the claim. It is the other way around.
Cox et al is a modelling paper. Will you admit then, that the only ‘evidence’ for this Amazon claim is to be found in the models?
Shub,
Please describe a means of predicting the future that does not involve a model of some description.
thanks.
All Amazon alarmism appears to derive from Daniel C Nepstad. He is the Mann of the Amazon and works with the WWF to promote REDD (monetizing existing forests).
http://www.whrc.org/about/cvs/dnepstad.html
Shub,
You don’t do science by saying something and then hunting for the evidence to back the claim. It is the other way around.
Anyone who has followed the issue knows that is not what occurred. The paragraph at issue had and has ample evidence in support. Whoever wrote it made a hash of the citations, is all.
Cox et al is a modelling paper. Will you admit then, that the only ‘evidence’ for this Amazon claim is to be found in the models?
(Well, what else are you going to use to attempt to predict future events? Astrology?) But that’s an attempt to build up a straw man to knock down. The Dutch cited Cox as an example of one source the IPCC could have cited. There are many more, neatly summarised here:
http://www.ipam.org.br/download/livro/The-IPCC-s-AR4-statement-on-Amazon-forest-susceptibility-to-rainfall-reduction-is-correct/357
Phil Clarke,
I think your clearly desperate attempt to shore up the Amazongate big lie is getting you flustered. Check out your ‘neatly summarised’ link again.
Phil
Are we countering science claims with press releases now? That is just a Portuguese version of the Nepstad press release!
If anybody is really interested, you can actually get a link to the WWF report at the real climate web site.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/ipcc-errors-facts-and-spin/
(Yes, I know. It is hard to believe that a liberal biased web site is actually linking to the relevant documents and allowing people to read them for themselves instead of quoting small sections.)
Here’s the relevant portion:
“”Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall. In the 1998 dry season, some 270,000 sq. km of forest became vulnerable to fire, due to completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil. A further 360,000 sq. km of forest had only 250 mm of plant-available soil water left.46
Scientists from Woods Hole Research Centre (WHRC) and IPAM (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia) who have undertaken ground-breaking work on fires in the Amazon, conclude that “in a scenario of increasingly frequent El Niño events, Amazonia is poised to experience catastrophic forest fire events that dwarf the fires of Roraima in early 1998 and of deforestation activity in scale”47”
47 is the web site talked about here.
46 is one of the “other” papers that people have been pointing to as validiation of the information and is a 1999 paper published in Nature that says things like:
“ENSO-related drought can desiccate large areas of Amazonian forest, creating the potential for large-scale forest fires. Because of the severe drought of 1997 and 1998, we calculate that approximately 270,000 km2 of Amazonian forest had completely depleted plant-available water stored in the upper five metres of soil by the end of the 1998 dry season. In addition, 360,000 km2 of forest had less than 250 mm of plant-available soil water left by this time (Fig.1b). By comparison, only 28,000 km2 of forests in Roraima had depleted soil water to 5 m depth at the peak of the Roraima forest fires.”
But let’s pretend like reference 46 doesn’t exist and isn’t included in the original WWF report.
Alexander Vissers says:
July 11, 2010 at 4:33 am
[–snip for brevity–]
The lessons to be learned:
Beware when PR and science come together.
Beware even more when PR, politics and science get mixed up.
Be alarmed when the press joins in in the above alliance.
A few things:
[1] PR (public relations) is just another pretty word for the term ‘propaganda.’ Freud’s nephew E.L. Bernays came up with the term ‘Public Relations’ as a way of avoiding the truth of matters. If you go to YouTube or Google video, and plug his name into the search term, you’ll come up with several videos, many of which were made by the BBC.
[2] The MSM (MainStream Media) is owned. That much is well known by historians who’ve followed the ownership patterns of all the major dailies, the big magazines, and the broadcast media, both TV and Radio. That happened just prior to WWI, when the powers that be knew that in order to get Americans involved in a European war, they needed to control the media in order to influence public opinion.
If you think I’m kidding, then check out this quote from a few former media bigwigs:
“There is no such thing at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
“There is not one of you that dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my opinions out of the paper I am connected with.
“Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
“If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of journalists is to destroy truth; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
“You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff of the the New York Times, NY Press Club, 1953
Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news, stated:
“We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose.”
http://pymander.com/AETHEREAL/quotes.htm
Phil Clarke writes:
“Shub,
Please describe a means of predicting the future that does not involve a model of some description.
thanks.”
Here is the heart of the problem, though not all the problem. Models do not make predictions and cannot be used to make predictions. Models are systems of equations where variables are assigned specific values and the model is solved to see how those values change over time. The results have to be intrepreted. The results contain no descriptions so could not be found false or true. Someone has take the step of assigning real world significance to model solutions. They have none on their own. My patience was tried greatly when explaining these matters to engineers who were using models to make big time decisions about locations of plant capacity around the world. But, sir, aren’t you a scientist? And you do not know the difference between a model and a system of hypotheses and initial conditions. Hypotheses are universal generalizations that describe regularities in the world. Statements of initial conditions are descriptions factual statements about the world. Together, hypotheses and initial conditions can be used to predict descriptions of conditions occurring in the future or in the past. Those statements are clear and understandable on their face to anyone literate in English. Those statements are either true or false and the conditions in the environment that exist at the time predicted will determine whether they are true. Models cannot be used for prediction. Nothing that comes from a model is a description of anything and, for that reason, cannot be taken as evidence of anything.
I find this confusion between model and hypothesis throughout the work by climate scientists and the commentators that support them. All of them believe that models produce evidence. In principle, models cannot produce evidence. They can produce solved mathematical equations that then must be interpreted by someone who makes informed guesses about how the solution ties into the world.
Let me answer the original question. I am going to drop my pen and it will accelerate to the floor at the speed of gravity. Bam! It just hit the floor. It was accelerating. Notice that I used no model. I used the hypotheses vaguely outlined by Galileo and perfected by Newton. No model can do anything similar. A model is a system of mathematical equations. No mathematical equation can have in it something comparable to “the pen hit the floor.” Science consists of systems of hypotheses and carefully studied sets of factual conditions. Models are not science.
Phil Clarke says:
July 11, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Please describe a means of predicting the future that does not involve a model of some description.
Phil, it’s OK to predict the future with toy models as long as you recognize their limitations and NEVER, EVER publish anything as if it were real.
Not understanding models limitations is certainly an attribute of most AGW believers. It’s also a sign of naivety and a major reason why we are where we are today.
Peter Miller says:
July 10, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Gary Pearse is absolutely right when he says…..
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.
________________________________________________________________________
I agree. Only those sitting in city apartments, who have never fought weeds in a garden, would swallow this story.
I am not in the tropics, however I moved from temperate New Hampshire to the much warmer area of North Carolina. The growth rate and “robustness” of the vegetation in the “south” is amazing. It is like fighting a green monster trying to keep the trees out of the fields and fence-lines. Even if there were fires I would expect fast regrowth. In a clear 16 ac field that I stopped mowing six years ago the trees are 6-8″ in diameter and 20ft tall – despite the drought. “In 2008 North Carolina suffered from the worst drought in recorded history.”
Only a drastic reduction in rainfall over a long period could change a rain forest into savannah on a permanent basis.
The USA had the “dustbowl.” In the 1930s a drought covered virtually the entire Plains for almost a decade from 1933 to 1940. Do you know if the Rain forest area was similarly effected?
Note that the Great Plains and even Mt. St Helen have recover from past natural “catastrophe” quite nicely.
Phil, it’s OK to predict the future with toy models as long as you recognize their limitations and NEVER, EVER publish anything as if it were real. …. Here is the heart of the problem, though not all the problem. Models do not make predictions and cannot be used to make predictions.
Heh. All models are wrong, some models are useful. They cannot predict, but they can project. The models used by the IPCC projected that, for emissions scenario A1F1 the global temp would rise by 0.32C between 1990 and 2010, a linear trend of +0.16C. Using the satellite data from UAH, the linear trend 1990-2010 was indeed +0.16C. Just lucky I guess.
That is just a Portuguese version of the Nepstad press release!
Set the website language to English before you download, guys. http://www.ipam.org.br. It contains a summary of the science with citations. It also tells us that ‘(The authors of this report interviewed several researchers, including the author of this note, and had originally cited the IPAM website where the statement was made that 30 to 40% of the forests of the Amazon were susceptible to small changes in rainfall’).
So it didn’t exactly need Berstein and Woodward to find that out …..
Phil
Are you on some kind of a mission?
You are linking to a Nepstad press release, whether it be in Portuguese or English – this is old news. It may contain a summary of ‘the’ science, but the statement in question cannot be supported by any of the provided references. You are making the same mistake Monbiot made – assuming that the reference or the science lies somewhere – it is just a matter of searching.
Why dont you admit they goofed up? It is a big report – it was written referencing the WWF report to begin with, not unusual for the IPCC. The importance of this passage was not that evident to parties involved at the time in 2007 and no one really checked. Glaciergate and the WWF reference appeared and suddenly made everyone at the establishment ultra-defensive – including WWF, some scientists involved in Amazon research and especially those who believe in the validity of this statement otherwise.
Now, it became that, if corrections were issued by the IPCC, Amazongate’s status would be sealed in fate in the same way as Glaciergate. Under this false burden, the reaction to the criticism by covering up and obfuscating, and in fact attacking those who pointed out the error, has become huge, compared to the original error.
Once we believed the rainforest was worth not destroying for its own sake, now we believe the forest is worth saving – ‘for the sake of the planet’ , for its ‘climate function’. The entire Amazon forest has been stuffed into the meatgrinder of CAGW. Have fun.
Shub: but the statement in question cannot be supported by any of the provided references.
Your opinion is noted. No point in repeating mine again, first expressed here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/27/out-in-the-ama-zone/#comment-417993
‘Amazongate’ has been in a persistent vegetative state after it emerged that Dr North messed up a simple text search, and the Times issued its retraction. No doubt there will be further attempts at revival, such ‘scandals’ being a little thin on the ground, but really it would be kinder and more dignified to switch the machines off and let it slip away in peace.
TTFN!
Phil Clarke says:
July 12, 2010 at 12:16 am
Heh. All models are wrong, some models are useful. They cannot predict, but they can project. The models used by the IPCC projected that, for emissions scenario A1F1 the global temp would rise by 0.32C between 1990 and 2010, a linear trend of +0.16C. Using the satellite data from UAH, the linear trend 1990-2010 was indeed +0.16C. Just lucky I guess.
I’m sorry Phil but cherry picking is another example of the poor science practiced by AGW believers. If you want to end on a strong El Niño year than you have to start on one. How about 1998? What is the trend then?
What little credibility you previously had just totally evaporated.
Actually, Richard, if you look at the MEI index, the strong ENSOs 1990-1998 would tend to reduce the slope. A cherry-pick involves discarding data – I used all the data since 1990. But, if you like, calculating the slope to 2009, to remove the recent, rather moderate El Nino gives practically the same result.
So are anthropomorphic tree cartoons standard fare in these much ballyhooed “PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS”? (Emphasis added to intone the authority of Zeus) Kind of like the cartoon vampire in my 5th grade math book?
Phil Clarke writes:
“Heh. All models are wrong, some models are useful. They cannot predict, but they can project. The models used by the IPCC projected that, for emissions scenario A1F1 the global temp would rise by 0.32C between 1990 and 2010, a linear trend of +0.16C. Using the satellite data from UAH, the linear trend 1990-2010 was indeed +0.16C. Just lucky I guess.”
No, it was not even luck. It was total coinicidence. This should surprise no one. If I have been managing a particular model for some number of years and someone asks me to produce a run with a particular set of results, I can do that with no trouble at all. I can do it because I have a vast memory of model runs.
Let’s take an example. Suppose I am managing a model for a big project. Suppose Florida Power wants to build a new power generating plant and they ask me to make runs for several different locations for a new plant. To make things easy to understand, let’s say my model covers only high voltage lines. I make several runs. In each run, I change the variables in the model to accommodate a new power source and its necessary high voltage lines. The results of each run show a unique distribution of power over the existing and new high voltage lines. Does each of those results amount to a prediction? Have I predicted utilization for a particular high voltage line? Can the utilization assigned to a particular line by the model solution be found to be false? If so, what is falsified?
Let’s say that, on the basis of the model runs, a new power generating plant is constructed and we find, over a period of years, that it is under utilized. Can we say that our computer model is false? No, we can say that it proved inadequate to the task. We cannot say it is false because that would require identifying some statement or statements in the model that are false. But there are none. Does the existence of the under utilized power plant enable us to revise and improve our computer model. Well, knowing what I know now, I can revise the model so that its solution shows the under utilization, but such revision is obviously worthless. Here we have the crucial difference between models and science. In science, there is falsification and it does enable one to revise one or more hypotheses. And these hypotheses have some meaning independently of the model. The Climategaters have no set of physical hypotheses which describe the natural regularities that constitute the phenomenon known as El Nino or similar climate phenomena. If they did, we would have seen them long ago and this debate would never have occurred.
Am I saying that models are worthless? No. The team of program designer, model manager, and engineers can use models over a period of years for the study of a particular phenomenon and discover that various aspects of model solutions can serve as pointers that are useful to the experienced wisdom of the team. To think that models can provide more is sheer hubris. Models cannot meet the standards of science.
In science, the word prediction has a clear meaning. Outside of science, the meaning of the word prediction is pretty much what one wants to make of it. For example, someone could say “I predict that the average temperature at all locations in the USA will increase by one degree per year for the next ten years.” That statement is not a prediction; that is, it is not a scientific prediction. To qualify as a scientific prediction, a statement describing future factual circumstances must be deducible from the combination of one or more hypotheses describing natural regularities and some factual statements of initial conditions. For example, I can use Newton’s superior formulation of Kepler’s Laws to predict the next date on which Venus can be observed from Earth to be in quarter phase. In other words, a statement is a prediction because it is an instance of known natural regularities. If Climategaters want to use the word “prediction” differently, they should explain their meaning. (The statement above is not a scientific prediction because there is no set of physical hypothses which could be used to deduce the stated result.)
Hi Theo – The IPCC models
1. Are Physical models.
2. Were used to make projections (not predictions) independent of observations from 1990, ie ahead of time, see here.
As it was not known in 1990 how emissions would develop they were run against a series of diferent emissions scenarios, in the event since then the scenario that best fits the actual emissions is A1F1. The observed temperature rise 1990-2010 was 0.164C/decade, the IPCC projection for scenario A1F1 was for 0.16C/decade. The 3rd dp is probably spurious accuracy.
cheers,
Phil Clarke writes:
“‘Amazongate’ has been in a persistent vegetative state after it emerged that Dr North messed up a simple text search, and the Times issued its retraction. No doubt there will be further attempts at revival, such ‘scandals’ being a little thin on the ground, but really it would be kinder and more dignified to switch the machines off and let it slip away in peace.”
The best that can be said about Amazongaters and Climategaters is that they use the word “truth” as they use it among their colleagues, which is not at all the way it is used by the general public. Yet their words or their names are used by IPCC to make assertions that the individual did not make. Given the understanding of truth outside the academy, the fact that the person cited published another article that did make these claims is quite irrelevant. Let’s not foist upon the general public a pattern of speaking about truth that is peculiar to academia. That would qualify as the height of not only arrogance but assumed superiority.