Amazongate goes serial - by Richard... Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Amazongate goes serial - by Richard... Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Infamy, they got it infamy, Pachauri might be saying. The Times of India is giving the Amazon an airing. Meanwhile, Liberty New Central reports on how I was "stitched up" on NDTV – the Indian equivalent of the BBC (in warmist ethos) while James Delingpole does his own update on the Amazon.

Andrew Neil, in a superbly robust piece, says send in the dambusters and Patrick Goodenough ofCNS News does an excellent job of pulling the bits together. Strangely, The Daily Telegraphdecides to use a piece on TERI and "Glaciergate". That was intended for the front page of The Sunday Telegraph, but it never appeared.

Nevertheless, the blogosphere is highly active on "Amazongate", with Watts up with that giving it good coverage. Witterings from Witney leads the way in the non-specialist blogs, with She wonk,Desso's blog, Earth Inc, Tarpon's swamp, Jamu blog, Penraker, No hidden magenta and others all diving in. As so often, the blogs are halfway round the world before the MSM has even got its boots on.

The highly-regarded Canadian blog Celestial Junk is running with the story, Grand Rants has a go (complete with pic of suicidal penguins), Truth is contagious is following the story closely,Rockport Conservatives make the obvious – but appropriate – comment, Mickey Maclean onWorldmag calls it "Rainforest gate" (I thought about calling it "Forest Gate", but thought it might be misunderstood), linking with Hot Air, the big hitter from the Michelle Malkin stable, and Tom Nelson is also giving us a link.

With hits coming in at the rate of one every 1.6 seconds (over 2,200 an hour), JoNova writes entertainingly about the "four gates", Newsvine runs it, Barcepundit goes for it, the French site Le Post declares: "Le coup de grâce?" and the NCTimes blog suggests that AGW has moved to a "gated community".

Marc Morano's invaluable Climate Depot is now also flagging it up, adding to worldwide coverage. Says Andrew Neil, "The bloggers, too easily dismissed in the past, have set the pace with some real scoops - and some of the mainstream media is now rushing to catch up."

Meanwhile, Blogger Jennifer Marohasy calls for Pachauri's resignation. She is joined by Diederik Samsom, the Dutch environmental spokesman for the Labour Party (which is also a government party) (Dutch language report only). The consensus is crumbling.

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The WUWT effect - by Richard...

With Watts up with that giving us a big plug, hits are soaring (thank you) and the country proportions are heavily tilted towards the USA. UK hits recently were down to 14 percent of the total.

That makes us truly an international blog, which we have been for some time anyway. UK hits rarely exceed 40 percent. Unsurprisingly, we are picking up a few hits from India these days, although the current interest from Zimbabwe is a little puzzling. Is this good or bad?

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The corruption of science - by Richard...

"We are trying to do the best job we can in assessing the quality information about climate change issues in all its dimensions and some do not like the conclusions of our work. Now it is true we made a mistake around the glacier issue, it is one mistake on one issue in a 3,000 page report. We are going to reinforce the procedures to try this does not happen again."

So says Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice chairman of the IPCC - as retailed by the famous Louise Gray, purveyor extraordinare of WWF press releases – in The Daily Telegraph today. It was simply a "human mistake", he adds. "Aren't mistakes human? Even the IPCC is a human institution and I do not know of any human institution that does not make mistakes, so of course it is a regrettable incident that we published that wrong description of the Himalayan glacier," he says.

So far though, the IPCC is sticking to its legend that this is only "one mistake", burying its head firmly in the sand and ignoring the growing evidence that the IPCC report is riddled with "mistakes" – to apply that extremely charitable definition.

Another of those "mistakes" is the false claim highlighted in my earlier post on "Amazongate", where the IPCC has grossly exaggerated the effect of climate change on Amazonian forests, stating "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation" – on the basis of a non peer-reviewed WWF report whose lead author, Andy Rowell, is a free-lance journalist.

However, being "human" myself – although some would hotly dispute that assertion – I appear to have made a mistake in my analysis, charging that in the document referenced by the IPCC, there is no evidence of a statement to support the IPCC’s claim that "40 per cent" of the Amazon is threatened by climate change."

Actually, that is the charge retailed by James Delingpole and by Watts up with that, whereas what I actually wrote was that the assertion attributed to the author of the WWF report, that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation" is nowhere to be found in the report.

The WUWT post, however, evoked a response from a commentator, "Icarus", who noted that there was a reference to a 40% figure references in the WWF report, as follows:

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.

That is very much my mistake, having completely missed that passage, thus charging that the IPCC passage was "a fabrication, unsupported even by the reference it gives".

With that, though, the story gets even more interesting, as the assertion made by Rowell and his co-author Peter Moore, is referenced to an article in the Nature magazine, viz:

D. C. Nepstad, A. Veríssimo, A. Alencar, C. Nobre, E. Lima, P. Lefebvre, P. Schlesinger, C. Potter, P. Mountinho, E. Mendoza, M. Cochrane, V. Brooks, Large-scale Impoverishment of Amazonian Forests by Logging and Fire, Nature, 1999, Vo l 398, 8 April, pp505.

Although the article is protected by a pay wall, I have tracked down a free version of the paper here. The paper is published in the "letters to Nature" which, in this magazine, is peer-reviewed (this is not the case with all journals) so the question immediately arises as to why the IPPC authors did not cite the Nature article rather than the secondary reference.

The clue, perhaps, lies in the title of the article, which is, "Large-scale Impoverishment of Amazonian Forests by Logging and Fire" – i.e., it is not about climate change. Delving into the text, we looked for sections of the text which would support the assertion made by Rowell & Moore and then by the IPCC. To remind us of what was written, we reproduced their texts here.

Firstly, there is the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II – Chapter 13, which states:

Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; 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 (Rowell and Moore, 2000).

That is referenced to Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN, Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp – with two links found, here and here. The relevant passage states:

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.

Now, looking for support for that assertion, we go to the Nature paper, where the relevant sections appear to be:

Although logging and forest surface fires usually do not kill all trees, they severely damage forests. Logging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40% of the living biomass of forests through the harvest process. Logging also increases forest flammability by reducing forest leaf canopy coverage by 14-50%, allowing sunlight to penetrate to the forest floor, where it dries out the organic debris created by the logging.

and ...

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 250mm 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 5m depth at the peak of the Roraima forest fires.

Thus, from an assertion (IPCC) that "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation", we see this relying on a statement (Rowell & Moore) that "up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." But that seems to rely solely on the assertion that: "Logging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40% of the living biomass of forests through the harvest process."

Turning this round and starting at the Nature end, we have "Logging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40% of the living biomass of forests through the harvest process," turn into, "up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall," which then becomes "up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation".

And that is what Jean-Pascal van Ypersele calls, "assessing the quality information about climate change issues in all its dimensions."

Answering our own question as to why the IPCC authors did not use the peer-reviewedNature reference rather than the secondary source, the reason now becomes clear. The paper simply did not support the assertion they wished to make.

Here, context is everything. In the Nature paper, the authors are writing about the effects of logging on the rain forest. They describe how selective harvesting (as for mahogany, which is specifically identified) damages the forests so harvested, rendering the remaining trees more prone to effects of drought. Thus, increased sensitivity to reduced precipitation – should it occur – is a secondary effect, applicable only to already damaged forests.

In that context, the 40 percent on which Rowell & Moore and then the IPCC rely relates not to an area of the Amazon rain forests but to the proportion of trees damaged in individual forest tracts, which have been harvested (and the top range of the estimate at that). It cannot be taken to refer to the totality of the Amazonian forest area.

For an indication of the scale of the damage, we have only the estimates in the Naturepaper 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," with an additional 360,000 km2 suffering reduced water availability – thereby rendering those trees more susceptible to drought.

Three points emerge from this. Firstly, these combined areas relate to a total forest area of between 4-6 million square kilometres, and thus represent perhaps as little as ten percent of the total area. Secondly, the effects are observed in relation to severedrought effects arising from an unusually strong El Nino episode, unrelated to climate change. And thirdly, the drought effect is localised. In other areas of the forest, the El Nino brings increased rainfall.

By any measure, and by any possible construction, the Nature paper cannot be taken to support the assertions made either by Rowell & Moore or the IPCC. As with the assertion on the Himalayan glaciers, the IPCC passage should be withdrawn.

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Rose-tinted spectacles - by Richard...

Having barely covered the ebb and flow of the controversy over "Glaciergate",The Daily Telegraph today weighs in with a lead editorial demanding: "Climate change: give us science we can trust".

Nonetheless, the trigger for this sudden concern is indeed the Himalayan glacier story, on the back of which we are blithely informed that: "The IPCC quickly admitted the error ... ".

The temptation, at this point is to stop reading. This is not information – it is disinformation. Followers of the saga know well that, through the whole process of constructing the passage on melting glaciers, the IPCC ignored reviewers' comments and we are all aware of Pachauri's arrogant dismissal of Raina's contrary view last December as "voodoo science".

Only after the "mistake" had been comprehensively outed by Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times did the IPCC finally react, and then grudgingly, dismissing it – as the DT leader records - " ... as an aberration carried on just one page of a report thousands of pages long."

The leader, however, then notes that the weekend brought further disclosures that claims in the report blaming rising temperatures for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods had not been properly reviewed by other scientists.

But then we get a bizarre assertion, that: "It is true that the first people to apologise for these errors and to promise to rectify them were the IPCC scientists themselves ... ". Last I heard (on a live link with NDTV to New Delhi) was Pachauri dismissing this report – as he so often does – as "lies", declaring that the IPCC would make a statement on it later this week, which it has yet to do. Currently, though it is denying any error.

Nevertheless, the Daily Telegraph – through rose-tinted glasses so dense that vision can hardly be possible – tells us that these scientists "... understand how important it is for the credibility of their case that the evidence on which it is based is copper-bottomed," then telling us: "it becomes difficult to resist the blandishments of the sceptics if a purportedly scientific document cannot be wholly relied on."

There betrayed is a curious mindset. If the IPCC documents could be "wholly relied on", then the sceptics would melt away. But it is the increasing evidence that the IPCC it itself a political organisation relying on junk science that sustains the sceptic movement. Desperately, theTelegraph seems to want to cling to its belief in global warming, and wants the IPCC to produce the documents to support that belief.

It thus offers the view that: "The most charitable interpretation is that the drafters were sloppy" - an extremely charitable view - then offering its recipe for improvements.

First, when the fifth IPCC report is prepared for publication, it says, any errors must be fully acknowledged and others removed. In addition, the report should contain contrarian evidence produced by scientists to demonstrate that this is a serious document, not a holy writ.

Second, it says. the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, should step down. This will please environmentalists since he was appointed after the uber-sceptic George W Bush objected to his predecessor, Dr Robert Watson; but Dr Pachauri no longer carries the credibility that is required to take this hugely important debate forward.

We could not disagree with the idea of removing Pachauri, but what the paper evades is the idea that the IPCC itself – like its chairman – is fundamentally corrupt and completely beyond redemption. What is startling is the belief that any body spawned by the UN – of "food for oil fame" - could be anything other than corrupt.

However, so closely identified with the IPCC is Pachauri that his enforced departure would not only confirm his lack of credibility but fatally damage the IPCC itself. In a sense, the "environmentalists" are engaging in damage limitation. But the damage is already too severe. The whole edifice must go, and with it Pachauri and his begging bowl.