Posted on 01/26/2010 9:16:18 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The UNs team on climate change, the IPCC, has had a rather bad few months. First came the uncovered e-mails from the University of East Anglias Climate Research Unit, a key research organization for the IPCC, that showed deception and professional character assassination by so-called scientists attempting to block data and analyses that contradicted the CRU conclusions on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Next, a scandal hit closer to home when the IPCCs reliance on a theory of dissipating Himalyan glaciers turned out to be unscientific speculation that the IPCC badly misquoted anyway. Now the Telegraphs James Delingpole reports that another key claim by the IPCC also comes from non-peer-reviewed work by scientists operating out of their field of work:
Heres the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North and its a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCCs latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.
This is to be found in Chapter 13 of the Working Group II report, the same part of the IPCC fourth assessment report in which the Glaciergate claims are made. There, is the startling claim that:
Up to 40%of theAmazonian 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). 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.
At first sight, the reference looks kosher enough but, following it through, one sees:
Rowell, A. and P.F. Moore, 2000: Global Review of Forest Fires. WWF/IUCN,
Gland, Switzerland, 66 pp. http://www.iucn.org/themes/fcp/publications
/files/global_review_forest_fires.pdf.This, then appears to be another WWF report, carried out in conjunction with the IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The WWF is not a university or research center. It is the World Wildlife Fund, an environmentalist advocacy group, one best known here for having an agency that produced and distributed (without the WWFs permission) an ad that used 9/11 as a way to accuse people of committing terrorism against the planet. Dr. Rowell works on policy analysis, not research. PF Moore isnt a scientist at all; hes a green activist and a reporter for the Guardian newspaper. And not only is this work not peer-reviewed and not conducted by environmental scientists in a normal research model, Dr. North cant even find the claim that 40% of the rainforest is at risk over slightly reduced precipitation in any of WWFs own research.
How did the IPCC come to include this claim in its report to the UN? Supposedly, all of the underlying data is supposed to be peer-reviewed, legitimate research by professional scientists and not advocates. Yet within nine days we have seen two of its major claims turn out to be anecdotal speculation based on nothing at all. It goes right along with those Himalayan glaciers that were supposedly going to disappear within 25 years at best, speculation that the IPCC falsely presented as scientific research, and likely a large load of carbon-rich effluvium.
Speaking of the glaciers, I Hate The Media has twelve glaciers that havent gotten the IPCCs marching orders yet. Most interesting: the new glacier forming in the concave top of Mount St. Helens in Washington.
Ugh...I had to put this down for a second. I’ve been reading so many papers by the WWF lately my head is about to explode. Just a minute...going for more coffee...
--------------------------
Ahh... that "could" word again.
It seem to have a different meaniing when used in an IPCC/AWG report....:^)
Two important pieces of scientific evidence are emerging which should revolutionise the forest fire debate and move it from being seen as a peripheral environmental, social and economic issue into a central issue of concern for the international community.
Firstly, there is mounting evidence that forest fires will increase in number and size due to a link between climate change and the climate phenomenon called El Niño, which caused the drought that affected much of the forests which caught fire in 1997 and 98. The frequency and intensity of El Niño could be increasing1, which means the world faces warmer more violent weather, and more forest fires.
Second, while some experts believe that it is too early to say when the next El Niño will occur, others say it might be within eighteen months, it will likely be before the forests that burnt last time have had a chance to recover. New evidence from the Amazon has concluded that fire causes a positive feedback cycle in which the more tropical forests burn the more susceptible to future burning they become. This raises the possibility of large wildfire episodes happening more frequently and on such a scale that tropical forest ecosystems will not endure. The scientists believe the whole Amazon itself is threatened, which has global consequences for biodiversity and climate change2
1 K. E. Trenberth & T. J. Hoar, The 1990-1995 El Niño-Southern Oscillation Event: Longest on Record, Geophysical Research Letters, 1996, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp57-60; K. E. Trenberth, and T. J. Hoar. El Niño and Climate Change, Geophysics Research Letters, 1997, Vol. 24, no.23, pp.3057-3060
2 D. C. Nepstad, A. G. Moreira, & A. A. A l e n c a r, Flames in the Rain Forest: Origins, Impacts and Alternatives to Amazonian Fire, Pilot Program to Conserve the Brazilian Rain Forest. Ministry of Environment, Secretariat for the Co-ordination of the Amazon, 1999
Let's look up these two references. I already know that Trenberth is implicated in the climategate email scandal.
ROTFLMAO!!!!
#2 WAS WRITTEN BY WOODS HOLE RESEARCH CENTER!!!!
John Holdren...Obama’s Science Advisor used to run this group.
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/iffn/pub/pub_8.htm
ping to this one
"Never let a good crisis go to waste by not using it to raid and rob all the villages."
I would say all the criminals should be tried at the ICC, but that would take too long. We’re talking curriculum changed in schoolbooks, brainwashed kids, cars, lightbulbs, construction, huge money scammed on a global scale.
They should be shot, after they’re in jail for thirty years.
All of them.
Yet no one does nothing.
I bookmarked this post for closer readings as time permits.
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Tropical savannas:
http://www.runet.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/biomes/savanna/savanna.html
Plus, at least 18 more items that were not peer reviewed (as was required for all used research), yet quoted and attributed to extreme AGW advocates (WWF) or from the highly-esteemed journals, “Leisure” and “Event Management.”
Available here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/24/the-scandal-deepens-ipcc-ar4-riddled-with-non-peer-reviewed-wwf-papers/
Thanks Dr. J.P. Costella: the climate floodgates are opening
and this is an absolute must read:
This is just outstanding....chronological analysis and commentary on the emails ...and an excellent overview as to why this is so troubling to scientists....
Thanks Dr. J.P. Costella: the climate floodgates are opening
Nice post.
Reading part of it gave me an eery feeling.
Mann et al. whether intended or not were un-inventing
the use of energy to drive us backwards
into the dark ages.
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