A half-hearted war - by Richard... Sunday, July 11, 2010

A half-hearted war - by Richard... Sunday, July 11, 2010

Readers might notice something familiar here. I'm actually quite pleased with the piece, and the paper has given it good exposure as the "editor's choice" ... even though there is a typo. I've written "Vixen" instead of "Viking".

I have to say though that it is incredibly difficult focusing on such widely divergent subjects as climate change and the Afghan War, drilling down to look at the issues behind the headlines. It would be nice, sometimes, just to concentrate on one issue ... the trouble is, which one?

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The source of Amazongate - by Richard...

STOP PRESS: Detailed coverage in Watts up with that?



Well, we've got there officially, to the very source of "Amazongate", a controversy which started with two posts, on 25 January and the following day. We can now demonstrate unequivocally that the IPCC did get it wrong on the Amazon. As significantly, the WWF - which was partly responsible for the false claims - has conceded the game. Booker devotes his whole column to the story and, to come, is a news story based on the column.

The column covers the ground but I want to set out on this post the full story, with all the necessary links, making it a "one stop shop" for future reference. This will this become the "index" piece - it will probably take a few days to complete, so any suggestions will be very welcome. This is interactive writing.

Before we start in detail though, the crux of the matter is that the story has been nailed through the work carried out on this blog, with the active assistance of forum members. Without it and the help of others, all working alongside the MSM, we would not have got there.

As a result, the WWF has been forced to admit that its source of information about the Amazon, on which the IPCC relied, was an anonymous tract called Fire in the Amazon, formerly published on the webpage of an obscure Brazilian advocacy group. This webpage is not based on any known or identified research and is not peer reviewed.

If anyone wants to assert that the Amazon is at risk from climate change, we will not disagree. If anyone wants to assert that the Amazon is at risk from severe and prolonged drought - if or when it happens - we will not disagree. Heck, we will not even disgree if anyone wants to assert that, if we get a severe and prolonged drought which brings moisture levels to just above survival level for the forest, a further "slight reduction" in rainfall could have a drastic effect. But none of those things is what the IPCC claimed.

As we now know, purely on the basis of an unreferenced and unsupported assertion on a website (which was removed four years before publication), the IPCC actually claimed:

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).

The IPCC the goes on to say that: "It is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannas."

Right from the very start, we had said that these claims were "unsubstantiated" and with the trail ending in the website, this proves it. But, even as of last Thursday night, the WWF was not prepared to concede the point. Benjamin Ward, head of press and media relations for WWF-UK, sent us a long list of further references, arguing:

The WWF/IUCN Global Review is now ten years old but peer‐reviewed "good evidence" published since 2000 has reinforced its conclusions as sound. We stand by the Global Review as accurately depicting the risk to the Amazon from reductions in rainfall and being in line with a broader body of peer-reviewed, scientific evidence.

But, when we asked Mr Ward to identify the papers, the references to which he had sent us, that replicated or directly supported the IPCC claim, he was unable to do so. Merely, he said, they "support and reinforce the risks to the Amazon from climate change". And that is all he can manage, six months down the line since we first raised our "Amazongate" charges.

As it stands, therefore, the IPCC claims are a train wreck. The "Rowell and Moore 2000" paper, on which the IPCC relies, refers to a non-peer-reviewed report called: Global Review of Forest Fires. As "gray" literature, jointly published by the WWF and the IUCN, it should not have been used by the IPCC, without rigorous checking. This was never done.

Nevertheless, the IPCC not only accepted the Rowell and Moore claims, it actually embellished them. The WWF/IUCN report claims: "Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." Yet the "Amazonian forests" in the IPCC report is not the "Brazilian forest" of Rowell and Moore. The "react drastically" of the IPCC is not the "extremely sensitive" of Rowell and Moore.

This notwithstanding, the Rowell and Moore claim is actually unreferenced in their report. The WWF tell us that a reference to a paper in Nature (Nepstad 1999) only applies to the second sentence of the relevant paragraph. Just for reference, this is:

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.

However, we only have the word of the WWF that the actual reference intended was omitted accidentally. That claim comes from a press statement on 31 January and from a letter in The Sunday Times on 7 February by David Nussbaum, Chief Executive of WWF-UK.

At this point, we should really not need to go any further as regards the IPCC. It has cited as its source a non-peer-reviewed report which lacks any further reference to support its claim. The IPCC authors did not notice and this was missed throughout the review process. That is already enough to support the charge that the IPCC claim was unsubstantiated, which is actually different from saying it was wrong.

If we are terribly kind and tolerant, though, and allow them the missing reference, we have Rowell and Moore and thus the IPCC relying on Fire in the Amazon. That is the source on which everything depends.

On 31 January, this was described as: "a 1999 overview of Amazon fire issues from the respected Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM – Amazon Environmental Research Institute)." Then we were told that the source quotation reads: "Probably 30 to 40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." Incidentally, we are also told that, "Our [WWF] report does NOT say that 40% of the Amazon forest is at risk from climate change."

In Nussbaum's letter of 7 February, Fire in the Amazon is still "a 1999 overview" by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute that states. In an "update" of 10 February, however, it becomes "a 1999 report titled Fire in the Amazon by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM)". And on the following day, on the blog of WWF communications chief Nick Sundt, it remains a "report".

That it is a "report" (implying a degree of formality) seems to be confirmed by Daniel Nepstad, director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute and senior researcher at the Woods Hole Research Center. In an unsolicited statement made in February, he declared that Rowell and Moore "had originally cited the IPAM website where the [40%] statement was made". This definitely conveys the impression that the current citation referred to another source - and by the same token seems to rule out the website as a source.

Interestingly thouygh, Nepstad does not provide a citation for that "new" source. He merely states that Rowell and Moore 2000 "omitted some citations in support of the 40% value statement," but if you look carefully, he does not state what they should have been.

On 18 March, however, Nepstad (with others) makes another statement. This time, he tells us that:

The passage in the IPCC that refers to the susceptibility of the Amazon forest to drought cites a World Wildlife Fund review report which, in turn, cites an article in the journal Nature. Ideally, the IPCC should have cited the Nature article as well as several other existing articles in support of its statement, and not a WWF report.

Bizarrely though, in his February statement, Nepstad has already dismissed the 1999 article - that is Nepstad 1999. And it is not just that it refers only to forests which are "severely drought stressed in 1998" (which should invalidate it as a source) but also that this forest area affected is only 15% of the total area of forest in the Brazilian Amazon (and an even smaller fraction of the total forest area).

In that February statement though, he also refers to another article published in Nature. This is a 1994 paper, in which his team estimated that approximately half of the forests of the Amazon depleted large portions of their available soil moisture during seasonal or episodic drought (Nepstad et al. 1994). Then, after the Rowell and Moore report was released in 2000, and prior to the publication of the IPCC AR4, Nepstad claimed that new evidence of the full extent of "severe drought" in the Amazon was available.

In 2004, he had declared, "we estimated that half of the forest area of the Amazon Basin had either fallen below, or was very close to, the critical level of soil moisture below which trees begin to die in 1998."

That was where he had stood in the February of this year, but a month later he does not repeat his references to the 1994 paper, relying on the 1999 paper which he has already ruled out. Then, he avers, "The point is, however, that the statement made by the IPCC about the sensitivity of Amazon forests drought was consistent with our knowledge at that time, and has been reinforced by new studies."

So, at this stage, while the WWF (which had produced the paper on which the IPCC had relied) was citing a 1999 "overview" produced by IPAM, of which Daniel Nepstad was head, Nepstad himself had variously dismissed his own paper of 1999 and argued that his earlier 1994 paper applied, only for him to "reinstate" his 1999 paper, airily declaring that the IPCC statement was "consistent with our knowledge at that time".

But this is what has been bugging us all along. Nepstad didn't write the 1999 paper on which the IPCC relied. This was written by Rowell and Moore. They, alongside the WWF (the IUCN has been silent on this issue) have then said that the source document is Fire in the Forest - which just happens to be produced by IPAM, prop. D Nepstad – although that is irrelevant. Nepstad's institute only produced it – it didn't try to pass it off as an authoritative paper. That was down to the WWF.

And now it really does not matter what they say. They have been caught out - the IPCC has been caught out. There is nothing they can say - apart from promise they will try to get the IPCC claims removed.

to be completed ...

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She'll be coming down the mountain when she comes ... - by Richard... Saturday, July 10, 2010

That's Katla ... not if but when, according to the latest report on Watts up with that. In other words, it ain't gone away. Get those emergency food stocks in. If it is a false alarm (and it could very well be), you got some extra food to eat. If it isn't, it may well save you from going hungry.

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It started today - by Richard...

...exactly 70 years ago ... the Battle of Britain. The day was characterised by convoy raids off North Foreland and Dover. During the night, the east coast, home counties and western Scotland were attacked. The weather was showery in the southeast and Channel, with continuous rain elsewhere.

The fight that day cost the Luftwaffe four fighters. Three Hurricanes were lost, one of them from 111 Squadron, which lost a wing after hitting a bomber. Only one small ship was sunk. A train near Newhaven was attacked – the driver was killed and the guard injured.

It did not so much end in October as peter out as the Luftwaffe withdrew from daylight bombing and the winter set in. This was the battle of which Churchill declared: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few". He was not wrong.

To commemorate this unique event, I propose to do a short post and pic (where possible) to chart the course of the battle, day by day.

Pic: a Messerschmitt Bf 110 taking a bath in the Channel, after an unfortunate encounter with the RAF. Details from The Narrow Margin by Derek Wood with Derek Dempster. Arrow Books (Revised edition, August 1969).

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Even stupid people deserve better - by Richard...

"We have this old adage," says Captain Anthony Harris of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (pictured): "70% skills and drills, 20% equipment, 10% luck". He goes on to say, "Unfortunately that's quite a large percentage for luck. You can overplay blame. We just happened to take the patrol on that path on that day."

This is after the man has been blown up in Helmand while riding in the commander's seat in a Jackal – as recorded by The Guardian. But the point is that it isn't an "old adage" – it is the sort of crap they are taught in soldier school by people who should know better.

What is more, some officers seem to believe what they are told, without complaint – this one still believing it after the trauma of amputation. That's why they get blown up in the first place, and keep getting blown up - yet they keep repeating the mantras ... skills 'n' drills, skills 'n' drills, skills 'n' drills ... BAMMMMMMMMM!

Compare and contrast with this - Lt-Col Roly Walker's experience of getting blown up. He is riding in a Mastiff and survives uninjured. "I always thought it was a case of 'when' not 'if' we drove over an IED," he says afterwards.

No doubt, Col Walker has his own "old adage": "100% equipment", as long as it's called a Mastiff. If you want to live, fly Mastiff. The problem is that, after the event, even after they have been blown up, some of our less intellectual people are still not putting two and two together: "I am sat over the wheel," Harris says. "The blast goes off underneath the wheel, the shockwave goes through the metal ...". Doh!

You do wonder what it takes to get the message through when, as here in September 2007, we have the Jackal being paraded, alongside Gen Dannatt telling us: "the mounting death toll in the country should not overshadow the success forces were having on the ground." The troops, he then said, "are winning the tactical battle".

Well, three years later, they're still winning the tactical battle, the ones that are still alive and in one piece - and Dannatt is collecting his pension. But his troops, after winning that tactical battle (again and again and again ...), are also pulling out of Sangin with more than 100 dead, mostly to IEDs, with three times that number very badly injured.

And that's why the MoD under the new Cleggeron adminstration are spending £45 million on another 140 Jackals. That's so we can have another batch of young men (and the occasional women) to sit over the wheels of these insane vehicles - and they too can lose their legs, or even their lives. But hey! Skills 'n' drills, skills 'n' drills ... keep taking the mantras. These prosthetics are really good when you get used to them.

But you do also wonder why newspapers, instead of doing soft-focus, human interest stories, don't point out that so many of these deaths and injuries are entirely unnecessary, brought about by enhanced stupidity, bolstered by bad tactics, misleading training, blind faith - and duff equipment.

Even stupid people and Army officers (where there is a difference) deserve better than that.

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Thanks for the traffic - by Richard... Friday, July 09, 2010

Little Moonbat has linked to the blog. As is customary, one tries to return the favour – although I am not sure he necessarily wants traffic from rabid, right-wing, foaming-at-the mouth, head-banging, swivel-eyed, loonie zealots.

Still, you take what you can get, I spose - he must need the hits.

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Here we go again - by Richard...

We sort of did it yesterday, and I was rather touched by the e-mails from readers who mistook the title – taken from the famous, if rather ribald rugby song – as a statement of fact. Anyhow,The Daily Mail has returned to the story today, with a long comment piece by Harry Phibbs.

This is sterling stuff as he rails against "Our masters in the European Union", who are apparently fed up with our insolence and ingratitude. They are fining us £150 million for failing to display the EU flag with sufficient regularity, prominence and enthusiasm, he writes, all under the title: "The more flags the EU run up their flag poles, the fewer salutes they get."

However, The Daily Telegraph also picks up the story (pictured), reporting: "Several schemes that received European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) money were also penalised for failing to use the EU flag on letterheads."

So far so good, except for one minor detail. The EU, this paper says, "completely denied the report." So, here we go again, with shades of the egg story. And in this case, both newspapers can't be right. The story is either true or it isn't ... or what?

I spose we ought to leave it to the professionals. I have a serious blog to write here, and when they've sorted it out, I might return to it.