Amazongate: Round two

Extended negotiations with The Guardian on the matter of George Monbiot, detailed in my previous post, have got nowhere beyond the stiff apology offered on the offending blog post and a promise of "right of reply".

The newspaper has decided that the comments made fall within the defence of "fair comment" and have thus refused any further remedy – which may explain the Moonbat's cockiness.

However, the Moonbat (pictured) is a tad premature in heralding what he states is my threat to sue. This is for a piece he says: "I wrote criticising his stance on global warming." In fact, the lad did a trifle more than that, accusing me of "peddling inaccuracy, misrepresentation and falsehood". That is a leeetle bit more than just straight criticism. But then the Moonbat's grasp of reality was always slight, which may account for him being a warmist.

What I had always stated, and made very clear to the paper, was that I wanted to attempt an informal resolution, failing which I would then take it to the next stage, with a submission to the Press Complaints Commission. Only then, if need be, would I consider a legal case, keeping my options open all the way through. To take a newspaper to the High Court is the last resort and, in any event, the Courts expect plaintiffs to have sought all possible avenues of remedy before going to law – which is precisely what I am doing.

However, there is another issue here which, when you think it through, is at the heart of the problem. That is the unnecessary and wrongful retraction of its original "Amazongate" story by The Sunday Times. Bizarrely, the paper has retracted a correct assertion, that the IPCC's claim on the Amazon was unsubstantiated, and replaced it with a statement that the claim is supported by peer-reviewed scientific literature, which it is not.

There can be few occasions where a correct statement published by a newspaper has been removed and subject to an apology, and replaced by an inaccurate statement. And, in being inaccurate, it breaches the Press Complaints Commission code.

Thus, the most logical step at the moment is to make not one but two complaints to the PCC, one against The Sunday Times and one against The Guardian. This is what I have done. The complaint went in this morning, and the text is accessible here (42 pages PDF).

We are now in the unusual position of making a complaint to the PCC about the action of a newspaper, which was, as will be recalled, taken ostensibly in response to a PCC complaint by Dr Simon Lewis.

In fact, the newspaper took the action without there being a formal adjudication, and seems to have acted rather precipitately. One wonders whether it consulted the original journalist. It certainly did not contact me. Yet there is a growing awaremess that the IPCC/WWF source is not peer-reviewed, original material.

Whether the PCC can step round its original involvement remains to be seem but, as can be seen from my submission, I have asked for a preliminary ruling as to what it considers is necessary for a scientific assertion to be considered "substantiated".

Nearly three months elapsed between Simon Lewis's complaint and The Sunday Times taking action, and we may see the same timescale here. But, however long it takes, readers can be assured that "Amazongate" is very far from over. It is only just beginning.

COMMENT THREAD

Amazongate: why it matters

Says Delingpole:

The IPCC made a false claim in its most recent assessment report, passing off the propaganda of environmental activists as peer-reviewed science. Instead of admitting the truth and retracting its false claim, the IPCC and its sympathisers went into entirely characteristic cover-up mode. Activist scientists like Daniel Nepstad obfuscated; other activist scientists like Dr Simon Lewis of Leeds University exploited the ignorance and pro-Warmist bias of the Press Complaints Commission to bully an entirely unnecessary retraction of a true story on the subject by the Sunday Times; activist journalists like George Monbiot then boasted that they had been vindicated – a claim that was excitedly repeated throughout the ecotard blogosphere and among ecotard cheerleaders like the BBC. All of this energy in defence of a great, stinking lie.

Modesty prohibits reproduction of the next paragraph, very welcome though it is as an antidote to the unpleasantness over on the Moonbat site.

COMMENT THREAD

Amazongate: the smoking gun

More than five months after the IPCC was accused of making assertions on the fate of the Amazon forest on the basis of a non-peer reviewed WWF report, it now appears that the original source of the IPPC's claim is a Brazilian educational website which was taken down in 2003 (pictured - click to enlarge).

Furthermore, it appears that this is the only source of the IPCC's claim that made up the basis of "Amazongate" – that the IPCC was, once again, using unsubstantiated material which exaggerated the threat. This website, therefore, is the "smoking gun", the latest evidence to suggest that the IPCC is breaking its own rules.

Interestingly, when the "Amazongate" story was broken on this blog on 25/26 January, we had no way of knowing that the trail would eventually lead to a defunct Brazilian website. It was the official denials of our story that gave the clue, and they did not really get underway until 31 January when The Sunday Times published its report headed: "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim,"

Then the paper had charged that the IPCC warning that global warming "might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest" was based on an unsubstantiated claim made in a WWF report.

This evoked from the WWF a press statement standing by "the credibility of its report", a Global Review of Forest Fires (2000).

Starting with the IPCC claim that: "Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation," this had been referenced to the WWF report which asserted: "Up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall."

Now, the WWF was claiming that the source for this statement was "Fire in the Amazon, a 1999 overview of Amazon fire issues from the respected Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM – Amazon Environmental Research Institute)." The source quotation read: "Probably 30 to 40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall."

The claim was repeated on 7 February in a Sunday Times letter from David Nussbaum, the chief executive of WWF-UK, who then used a curious form of words. "This," he asserted – referring to the Fire in the Amazon statement - "is fully supported by peer-reviewed literature." Contrary to the Sunday Times's "suggestion," it was not a "bogus" claim.

Nussbaum did acknowledge, however, that a reference to Fire in the Amazon as the source of the 40% claim was omitted during the editing of the Global Review of Forest Fires.

The lead author of the report, Andrew Rowell, also pitched in, again using a curious form of words for his contribution. The paper, he claimed, had "ignored credible evidence" that the 40% figure was correct and "also ignored evidence that the figure had been backed up by peer-reviewed research both before and after our publication."

Even then, careful textual deconstruction indicated that no one was actually asserting that the source of the 40%, Fire in the Amazon, was actually peer reviewed – merely that it was "supported" or "backed up" by peer-reviewed work, the exact nature of which was always somewhat vague.

We were thus able to charge that Fire in the Amazon was not itself peer reviewed, thus arguing that the IPCC was relying on a WWF report which was not peer reviewed, which in turn was relying on another document which was also not peer reviewed.

The emphasis, however, was on a document and there was nothing to indicate otherwise, even though – also in early February – Daniel Nepstad claimed that the IPCC statement on the Amazon was "correct", but the citations listed in Global Review of Forest Fires were incomplete. He added that the authors of this report "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."

Therefore, the assumption was that the WWF's claimed source was the only significant IPAM publication of 1999, a document entitled: "Burning Forest: Origins, Impact and Prevention of Fire in the Amazon". This, though, presented problems in that the claim apparently attributed to it by the WWF did not appear in any of the three versions.


Now, however, the website to which Nepstad referred has been recovered. This is the real "Fire in the Amazon" (pictured top left). It seems to have been posted on the IPAM website in February 1999 and left unchanged until early in 2003s, when it was removed. See publication log via the link (illustrated above - click to enlarge).

Here, at last, we find the exact sentence "Probably 30 to 40% of the forests of the brazilian (sic) Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." This is the source of the WWF claim and, ultimately, the source of the IPCC claim.

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."

By contrast, this very specific claim about reduced rainfall is not used on the IPAM site to argue that the forest will undergo a rapid change from one state to another, per se. The context is in the title: "Why are the forests in the Amazon burning?" It explains why forest flammability has increased. Thus, not only is the primary IPCC claim unsupported, so it its interpretation.

Yet, despite this, The Sunday Times has been prevailed upon to retract its report, removing an article which was essentially correct in alleging that the IPCC claim is "unsubstantiated". In its place, it has substituted what amounts to a lie, asserting that "the IPCC's Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence."

It would appear now that the WWF must explain why it is relying on data culled from the IPAM website to support its report. It must also explain why it is using material which has no academic or scientific value, while giving the impression that the material is fully supported. Similarly, the IPCC must tell us how it can justify the claims it has made, in breach of its own rules.

Moonbat thread

Where is the evidence?

Booker has taken on board the "Amazongate" developments in this week's column. Interestingly, rather than me, it was Booker who suggested "going big" on the issue this week, his motivation in part being the intervention by George Monbiot, who has been his usual charmless self, parading the ugly face of warmism in all its triumphant ghastliness.

Monbiot, however, is but one of the warmist community who has leapt upon the strange action by The Sunday Times in disowning its own report and wrongly conceeding that there is peer-reviewed science that supports the IPCC claim on the Amazon in the fourth assessment report. Headed by the WWF, which is crowing that Amazongate has "evaporated", the group triumphalism served to emphasise the importance of the issues involved.

Returning to Monbiot, if he is bad (and he is), his warmist commentators are truly awful. They are aggressive and display a sneering attitude and an absolute determination to ignore any argument but their own or to concede any points of substance. Thus, despite the clear evidence, and the absence of evidence, the warmists will allow only a "referencing error" in the WWF report used by the IPCC, as the whole basis of "Amazongate".

Having entertained myself briefly on the Monbiot comment section (username: "spacedout") one finds a predictable pathway where patient exposition is ignored, distorted and mocked, the discourse eventually descending to the ad hominem with nothing whatsoever resolved. It is not possible to engage in a rational discussion with the warmist fraternity and I have withdrawn, simply because it is a complete waste of time. It is worse than that, in fact. One feels soiled by the experience.

With the aggressiveness displayed by the warmists, it would take little imagination to work out that The Sunday Telegraph would be more than a little nervous about entertaining the Booker theme. This is an issue where those who feel slighted are keen litigants, and where they have frequent recourse to the PCC – which has a recent history of favouring the warmists.

Thus, as one might also imagine, the newspaper would be cautious about imputing motives to those who are so keen to challenge "Amazongate", or allowing speculation as to the reasons why they are putting quite so much energy into damage control.

However, the reason for the sharp reaction is also not hard to work out. As we have previously indicated, this is about money. Saving the forests, and in particular the Amazon, is how climate change concern is "monetized", with potentially billions of dollars to be made from generating carbon credits from the rainforests.

This is one of the other things the Monbiot commentators do not seem to be able to deal with – the fact that the key players in the drama, the WWF and Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center, are far from disinterested players. They have strong connections and massive financial interests in talking up climatic Armageddon in the Amazon basin.

But what is disturbing is the narrowness of the arguments offered by the IPCC, which demonstrates how this aspect of climate science has fallen into the grip of a limited, self-interested clique of advocates (dominated by WWF). A broader view of the science - ignored by the IPCC - completely refutes the Armageddon scenario posited by Nepstad and his allies.

With such huge sums of money involved, though, it is unsurprising that the clique are devoting so much energy to trying to ensure that their view prevails. Booker today has recognised the importance of this attempt, and is standing firm. The clique now have a problem. Having bullied The Sunday Times into submission, they have to try the same with The Sunday Telegraph, or duck the challenge and pretend that their writ still holds.

Already, with Monbiot's intemperate views on record, they have made a series of tactical errors. If they now try it on again, they will find sterner stuff than the patsy Sunday Times. Whatever the WWF might say, and however much Monbiot might crow, Amazongate is alive and kicking. It most certainly has not "evaporated".

UPDATE: Willis Eschenbach writes a guest post in Watts up with that? Newsweek has a little crow.

Comment: Moonbat/Corporate cowardice thread

Dishonesty multiplied

Coincidentally, following on from my review of the first part of the Woods Hole letter yesterday, Bishop Hill follows the scent, looking at the underlying evidence cited in support of the IPCC claim of 40 percent of the Amazon forest being at risk from a slight reduction in rainfall.

This impacts directly on the second part of the letter, which I was planning to review today and forms the substance of this post. It is there, in that second part, that we see William Y Brown, president and CEO of the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), assert that:

Mr Booker's criticism of the IPCC's claim that 40 percent of the Amazonian forest is threatened by global warming, on the grounds that it was based on a WWF claim, misses the fact that the WWF's statement was supported by several peer-reviewed science articles, including four published by the WHRC.

Bishop Hill does a tolerable job of tracking down some of this "support", but the point that would elude most readers is the very close connections between the WWF and WHRC. They share a common agenda and work closely together. Daniel Nepstad, the "senior scientist" on the staff of WHRC specialising in the Amazon, has worked for WWF. Some of his studies, notably this one, were part-funded by the WWF.

This highlights the difficulty anyone has in following the various claims and counter-claims on this issue. Many of the papers produced purport to be scientific explorations but they are in fact disguised advocacy directed at pursing a wholly political agenda.

That applies to WHRC and especially Daniel Nepstad. Nothing he writes or is associated with can be taken at face value. To ignore the political dimension is to afford advocacy the same status as genuine science. Nepstad is an advocate, using the guise of science to make his case, his medium the "peer reviewed" paper, giving his work entirely spurious authority.

Part of the strategy is to place such papers and then use them as a basis for self-citation and campaigning, locking in the arguments without reference to the wider issues and other views. By keeping focused on the very narrow issues, the agenda is thus set.

The classic example is precisely the paper linked immediately above, which is entitled: "Interactions among Amazon land use, forests and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point". The lead author is Nepstad. Appearing in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in May 2008, it offers this dire prediction:

If sea surface temperature anomalies (such as El Nino episodes) and associated Amazon droughts of the last decade continue into the future, approximately 55 percent of the forests of the Amazon will be cleared, logged, damaged by drought or burned over the next 20 years ...

This is one of the papers published post-IPCC which supposedly supports the IPCC claim (which also originated from Nepstad), so we thus have a situation where the WHRC is citing Nepstad of the WHRC ... supporting Nepstad.

Even on its own merits, the paper (or this statement) can be dismissed. Firstly, it offers outrageous non-sequiturs - linking clearance and logging with "sea surface temperature anomalies". All three are entirely independent variables. Either clearance or logging could account for substantial loss of the forest, entirely unrelated to temperatures.

Secondly, the prediction relies on the presumption that "sea surface temperature anomalies (such as El Nino episodes) and associated Amazon droughts of the last decade continue into the future". Yet there is no observational evidence that either will continue into the future. Since the once-in-a-hundred-years drought of 2005, there has been – as we have reported elsewhere - above-average rainfall in large parts of the Amazon basin.

This is where it gets really interesting, and we have to follow several parallel themes to get to the bottom of Brown's assertion. Firstly, one of the papers on which Brown apparently relies is one to which Nepstad himself draws attention in arguing that the IPCC statement is "correct".

This is published in 1994 in Nature, where the authors (including Nepstad) estimate that half of the closed forests of Brazilian Amazonia depend on deep root systems to maintain green canopies during the dry season. The finding is based on work in northeastern Pará, itself a northeastern state of Brazil, outside the equatorial zone where there is a defined dry season.

Therein lies a singular problem. It is by no means clear how that helps in supporting a claim that slight reductions in rainfall could flip 40 percent of the entire Amazonian forest into savannah (especially when the Brazilian forest is less than half of the total area). But that is the measure of dealing with Nepstad. He sprays out citations like a tomcat marking his territory, but trying to pin down exact numbers in them is like trying to bottle smoke.

At the heart of it all though - as we see from Huntingford et al (2003) - the likes of Nepstad rely on Cox et al. (2000, 2001). They are using a Hadley Centre "coupled climate model" for their predictions.

The Huntingford paper, currently, is particularly relied upon by Simon Lewis, who is complaining against Jonathon Leake's rendition of "Amazongate", claiming that the IPCC statement was "scientifically defensible and correct".

What neither Nepstad nor Lewis admit to though is the fallibility of their model. That models generally are fallible is startlingly demonstrated by Oyama and Nobre (2003), who ran different versions of an atmospheric general circulation model. In one, they found no change from the current situation. In other, savannahs replaced eastern Amazonian forests and a semi-desert area appeared in the driest portion of Northeast Brazil.

Thus, the results are entirely dependent on the input, something admirably illustrated by Merengo 2006, who draws attention to the major uncertainties in modelling Amazonian climate, and the substantial errors and divergences in datasets.

Any serious student of the situation, however, should be aware that some of the uncertainly was resolved in a paper published by Malhi et al on 13 February 2009 (online) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Entitled, "Exploring the likelihood and mechanism of a climate-change-induced dieback of the Amazon rainforest", this revisited the models on which Nepstad and Lewis rely, finding that "most tend to underestimate current rainfall."

Taking into account the differences between model-simulated and observed rainfall regimes in the 20th century, the authors concluded that dry-season water stress was likely to increase in eastern Amazonia over the 21st century. But, they found, the region still "tends toward a climate more appropriate to seasonal forest than to savannah."

Eastern Amazonia is one of the more vulnerable areas, where there is a defined dry season – as opposed to the equatorial areas where rainfall is more or less constant throughout the year, and it is there that problems will be particularly acute. The finding directly contradicts the second Oyama and Nobre model and the Nepstad/Lewis Armageddon scenario. It definitely contradicts the IPCC's 40 percent claim. If eastern Amazonia survives, so does most of the rest of the forest.

Despite that, Lewis - in his complaint to the Press Complaints Commission – still asserts that: "It is very well known that in Amazonia tropical forests exist when there is more than about 1.5 meters of rain a year, below that the system tends to 'flip' to savanna (sic), so reductions in rainfall towards this threshold could lead to rapid shifts in vegetation."

This, though, is not based on observation but on the very climate modelling that Malhi et al have essentially discredited. Amongst other findings, they suggest that there are no sharp vegetation thresholds in areas of different rainfall.

Some savannah is found in predominantly forest climates, and some evergreen forests are found in dry climates. Other factors, such as local surface hydrology and soil properties, e.g., seasonal flooding, can favour savannah in dry forest climates. Shallow water tables can allow gallery or riverine forest to persist in dry savannah climates, or more fertile soil may favour trees over grasses.

Crucially, what makes an important difference is the length of the dry season and the amount of water retained on the soil and, if this falls below a broad transition zone, there is "a gradual shift in the relative abundance of savannah relative to forest."

Furthermore, and of vital importance to the whole argument, they see evidence of what they call "demographic inertia" - inertia caused by long lifespans and slow community turnover. In the forest system, they assert, this may delay any forest dieback.

Moreover, they say, the presence of forest may modify local microclimate (evapotranspiration, rainfall generation, exclusion of invading grasses, shading of soil surface, and seedlings) sufficiently to favour the persistence of forest ("microclimatic inertia"). Once established, closed-canopy, deep-rooted forest may persist even if the local climate has shifted to savannah conditions

In other words, here is a reasoned argument which suggests that any transition, far from being rapid, may be gradual and in many cases will not happen at all.

This though, is only one strand of the wider argument. Alongside Nepstad's paper which appeared in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in May 2008 (cited earlier), were 26 others in an edition dedicated to the Amazon. One was a paper by Mayle and Power which explored the "Impact of a drier Early–Mid-Holocene climate upon Amazonian forests".

Their paper used a palaeoecological approach to examine the impact of drier climatic conditions of the Early–Mid-Holocene (ca 8000–4000 years ago) upon Amazonia's forests and their fire regimes. During the Early–Mid-Holocene, Andean cloud forest taxa were replaced by lowland tree taxa as the cloud base rose while lowland ecotonal (i.e., transitional) areas, which are presently covered by evergreen rainforest, were instead dominated by savannahs and/or semideciduous dry forests.

Elsewhere in the Amazon basin, though, they found "considerable spatial and temporal variation in patterns of vegetation disturbance and fire," which probably reflected "the complex heterogeneous patterns in precipitation and seasonality across the basin, and the interactions between climate change, drought- and fire susceptibility of the forests - and Palaeo-Indian land use."

Their analysis thus showed that the forest biome in most parts of Amazonia appeared to have been "remarkably resilient to climatic conditions significantly drier than those of today, despite widespread evidence of forest burning." Only in ecotonal areas was there evidence of biome replacement in the Holocene. From this palaeoecological perspective, therefore, Mayle and Power argued against the Amazon forest "dieback" scenario simulated for the future.

So far, then, we have two papers – variously suggesting only gradual and limited dieback, greater forest resilience and encroachment of savannah in transitional areas. But there is more.

Lewis makes great play of the claim that the: "most extreme die-back model predicted that a new type of drought should begin to impact Amazonia". He asserts that, in 2005, it happened for the first time: "a drought associated with Atlantic, not Pacific sea-surface temperatures." And it is this 2005 drought which underpins many of the alarmist claims.

Needless to say, Lewis is wrong. This was not the first time, by any means, the Amazon had experienced such a drought. This is evident from a paper by Marengo (2009) which looks at: "Long-term trends and cycles in the hydrometeorology of the Amazon basin since the late 1920". It reports (relying on an earlier paper by the same author) that the drought of 1963–1964, like the drought of 2005, occurred during non El Nino years.

In a fascinating paper, Marengo offers detailed evidence of significant climate variability in the Amazon basin, of differences in rainfall patterns between north and south, and of a "succession of relatively wet and dry periods (cycles) of approximately 20–30 years, suggesting indicators of long-term variability on multi-decadal time scales."

Furthermore, the cyclical variations are different, north and south, and climatic changes affect the two regions in different ways – while one area can get drier, the other can become wetter (which is exactly what happened in the 2005 drought, ruling out any idea that conditions observed in any one area can be used to predict what might happen across the entire basin).

Marengo offers several papers on this "cyclical variation" theme, one from 2006 where he refers to inter-annual variability and also to the paucity of data. But in this and his later paper, reference is made to decadal changes in climate being "more due to natural climate variability". And particularly damning for the Nepstad/Lewis axis is this observation:

From a statistical analysis of the hydrometeorological series, it is concluded that no systematic unidirectional long-term trends towards drier or wetter conditions have been identified since the 1920s. The rainfall and river series showing variability at inter-annual scales linked to El Niño Southern Oscillation was detected in rainfall in the northern Amazon. It has a low-frequency variability with a peak at - 30 years identified in both rainfall and river series in the Amazon. The presence of cycles rather than a trend is characteristic of rainfall in the Amazon.

Similar observations are found in Zeng et al (2006) and Coe et al (2002), all leading inexorably to the conclusion that Nepstad and his fellow climate activists are over-interpreting short-term phenomena, superimposing a trend when longer-term data suggest climate variability.

Thus, addressing William Y Brown and his assertion that there is support for the IPPC claim, not only does that seem not to exist – as Bishop Hill adequately demonstrates – the protestations of support (Brown included) come from a very limited band of activists who cross-refer to each other. Outside that clique, the wider scientific community suggests a different and variable picture, one which is largely at odds with that suggested by climate activists.

As it stands, therefore, the IPCC statement is an orphan – entirely unsupported. Brown is throwing up a smokescreen which, like his assertion that Woods Hole Research Institute is a "scientific institution", is thoroughly dishonest.

COMMENT THREAD

Death by press release

Given the huge amount of money at stake in the Amazon forest, it is entirely unsurprising that the warmists have been more than usually strident in defending their turf, as I noted in a recent post.

Such is their desperation though that they have now fronted Simon Lewis, the scientist cited by Jonathan Leake in his "Amazongate" article in The Sunday Times of 31 January, to make a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.

The complaint is very publicly aired in The Guardian and more fully in a warmist blog, setting out the casus belli.

As readers will recall, the essence of the story was that the IPCC made the unsubstantiated claim that up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to "even a slight reduction in precipitation" and had thereby overstated the threat of climate change to the rainforest.

Bizarrely, Lewis is not complaining about the fact that the claim is unsubstantiated in the IPCC report. Rather, he asserts that, despite the lack of a supporting reference, the claim is still correct, something he drew to Leake's attention prior to the publication of the article. And it is Leake's failure to inform the readers of that assertion that forms the substance of the complaint.

Lewis thus says in his PCC complaint that "the IPCC statement itself was scientifically defensible and correct, merely that [it used] the incorrect reference... To state otherwise is to materially mislead the reader." Leake is being censured not for what he did write, but what he didn't.

The sin is compounded, according to Lewis, by Leake's failure to acknowledge a pre-publication claim by WWF that their report, on which the IPCC had based its claim, was missing an essential reference – left out by error. Had that been included, the claim would have been supported.

And here we begin to descend into low farce. As it turns out, the missing WWF reference - they tell us is to a publication called Fire in the Amazon, itself not peer-reviewed and produced by another advocacy group, the Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia (IPAM).

Thus, there are a series of errors here. First, the IPCC cited a study by an advocacy group (WWF) to support its claim. Second, it failed to notice that the claim in the study was unreferenced. Thirdly, the actual reference, had it been used, was to a non-peer-reviewed source.

As to Lewis's claim that the IPCC statement itself was "scientifically defensible and correct", if that is the case, then he seems to be having extraordinary difficulty in proving it.

For sure, as he says, "there is a wealth of scientific evidence suggesting that the Amazon is vulnerable to reductions in rainfall". There are also numerous papers which suggest all manner of figures as to the areas of forest at risk, from diverse causes. But nowhere is there a peer-reviewed paper, or any combination of papers, that supports the very specific IPCC claim, in its entirety.

Without a definitive paper, therefore, all that is left for Lewis to do is point us to a press release or ... a press release. "As a professional scientist I have to clear this mess up, it's important to protect my reputation in terms of providing accurate scientific information to the public," he adds.

And that is what it has come to - death by press release, the arbiter of choice becoming the press complaints commission.

COMMENT THREAD - CLIMATE CHANGE

The games they play

The WWF, in the form of chief executive David Nussbaum, came storming into The Sunday Times letter column yesterday, defending their report on the Amazon rain forests.

This was cited the previous week in the context that the IPCC claim that global warming might wipe out 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest was based "on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise."

What is interesting is that Nussbaum takes pains to distance himself from the IPCC, stating: "WWF cannot speak for other institutions that have used our report."

Then, in a remarkable feat of intellectual convolution, he argues that the charge that the IPCC's assertion was "based on an unsubstantiated claim" in WWF's Global Review of Forest Fires report "is not correct". He then goes on to state that the "primary source" for the claim was "Fire in the Amazon, a 1999 overview by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute" but this reference was "omitted during the editing" of the WWF report.

In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph Andy Rowell – the lead author of the report - chips in. He tells us that the reference had: "inadvertently been omitted in a lengthy editing process between two individuals and two organisations over a long period of time."

Thus, as it stands, the claim made, as published in the WWF report (inadvertently or otherwise) was unsubstantiated. The charge is correct, as laid – admitted by the WWF, albeit buried in an avalanche of weasel words.

For the IPCC, this is devastating. Not only did it rely on a report from an advocacy group, the central claim made is now acknowledged to have been unsubstantiated in the report cited. Yet despite the dedicated scientists and the review process, this was not picked up.

However, Nussbaum also takes issue with the headline, which declares "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim". The WWF, says Nussbaum, firmly stands by its conclusion that "up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall", citing the aforesaid "Fire in the Amazon" which states: "Probably 30-40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall." This, he then tells us is "fully supported by peer-reviewed literature."

We have to go elsewhere to get to the full implications of the WWF's view - to its press release on the issue, where it hastens to tell us that: "Our report does NOT say that 40% of the Amazon forest is at risk from climate change."

Then, from a press report on the "Fire in the Amazon" (the original report does not seem to be online), we find that the Amazon Environmental Research Institute estimated that for every acre that shows up as cleared and burned in satellite images, another partly burned or logged acre goes undetected beneath the forest canopy.

Then we get a quote from Daniel C. Nepstad (pictured), president of the Institute, who says that such "burning and logging make the forest more vulnerable to fire and means a 50 percent greater likelihood of deforestation." Once again, therefore, we are back in exactly the territory discussed in the Nature paper, the lead author of which is also Daniel C. Nepstad.
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Returning to the WWF press release, this organisation then prays in aid "a more detailed report that looks at this subject in further depth". This is: Nepstad, Daniel C, The Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire in the Greenhouse - Ecological and Climatic Tipping Points of the World's Largest Tropical Rainforest, and Practical Preventive Measures, (WWF 2007).

We actually referred to this report in our first piece on the Amazon, remarking on how this did not seem to support the contention that 40 percent of the rainforest was as risk from "even small reductions in rainfall".

The WWF stresses that the "essential point" made in the report (and referred to by the IPCC) is that reduced rainfall increases fire risk and that a drying of the "normally fire-resistant Amazon forest" could impact the hydrologic cycle with implications for regional and global climate.

It also asserts that: "What is not in contention is that the Amazon is at risk from factors which include and are complicated by climate change. Climate change is widely predicted to pose a significant risk to Amazon forest cover and type. A number of recent peer-reviewed studies support this."

With this, we could not disagree in principle, but the claim made by the IPCC is quite specific. To remind ourselves, this 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).

For all the hyperventilating by the WWF, it can offer nothing which supports that very specific assertion.

Another commentator pitching into the debate relies on yet more research by Nepstad, which he asserts states: "approximately half of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon were periodically exposed to severe drought and soil moisture depletion" and 31 percent reached a "critical level of drought."

Once again, though, the reference is to "severe drought" and, once again, the maths does not support the IPCC. If we take half the half the (Brazilian) forests as read, 31 percent at risk amounts to around 15 percent – well below the 40 percent cited by the IPCC.

The same commentator, incidentally, cites another Nepstad report: "Interactions among Amazon land use, forests and climate: prospects for a near-term forest tipping point," published in February 2008.

Assuming, in particular, that Amazon climatic conditions of the January 1996 through December 2005 continue (when there was a period of exceptionally severe drought), it says, "31% of the Amazon closed-canopy forest formation will be deforested and 24% will be damaged by drought or logging by the year 2030. If we assume that rainfall declines 10% in the future, then an additional 4% of the forests will be damaged by drought."

Once again, we get the composite effects of logging and severe drought and, in this case, the effects of the two in respect of the deforestation, are not differentiated.

Now, however, we come to another "killer point". Stated either explicitly, or implied from the context of Nepstad's papers, all his work applies to the Brazilian forests. Yet, as we are reliably informed, the Brazilian forest covers 3.4 million sq km (1.3 million sq miles) compared with a total area of 8,235,430 sq km (3,179,715 sq miles), which includes parts of eight South American countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and Suriname, as well as French Guiana.

In other words, Nepstad's assertions apply to less than half the total area of the Amazon rainforest. Yet the IPCC refers generically to the Amazon rainforest in its entirety.

Thus, while one can readily accept that the Amazon forest is at risk from a variety of threats, quantification of the effects of those threats remains uncertain and the effect of climate change more so – and then invariably expressed in the context of "severe drought". There is nothing in the literature that can support an assertion that 40 percent of the entire rainforest is as risk from "even small reductions in rainfall".

The IPCC claim is not only unsubstantiated. It is also bogus.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Amazongate lives

Despite the attempted sabotage of "Amazongate" by The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, the Daily Express does it big. The Guardian also mentions it and so does The Daily Mail.

The Daily Telegraph, on the ball as always, lifts the story done by The Times last Saturday on "Glaciergate", disguising its source with the formulaic "it has emerged".

The Independent, meanwhile, has completely lost it, claiming that the "Climategate" e-mail "hacking" was "probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency," citing as their "expert" source, the government's former chief scientist and surface chemist,. Sir David King.

But the paper also has Britain officially expressing its concern to the IPCC about lax scientific procedures used by the body which supplies the world with the facts about global warming. Alongside The Guardian, this paper also mentions "the destruction of the Amazon rainforest," as one of the problem areas.

Against that, I measure well over 2,000 references to "Amazongate" on the blogosphere, leaving the MSM trailing. When it comes to the heavy lifting, the MSM is making itself redundant.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Amazongate in The Sunday Times

From Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times we get an article headed: "UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim," - one of several on climate change in today's edition

It tells us that a "startling report" in the IPCC report claiming that that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise."

This is "Amazongate" writ large, where the IPCC launched the scare story that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland – and the source turns out to be a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists.

They had based their "research" (Leake's quotations) on a study published in Nature which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.

The detail is familiar to readers of this blog, and some might note a small addition at the end of the piece which says: "Research by Richard North", in what has been a fruitful partnership.

Crucially, Leake brings to the table the substance of an exchange with Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at Leeds University who specialises in tropical forest ecology. This is the same Simon Lewis cited by the BBC's Roger Harrabin, who has him say: "The IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced."

Leake, who had extensive communications with the man, however, presents a completely different picture. Lewis describes the section of Rowell and Moore's report predicting the potential destruction of large swathes of rainforest as "a mess".

In a direct quote, Lewis goes on to say: "The Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire and periodic droughts, all extremely important in understanding the vulnerability of Amazon forest to drought, but is not related to the vulnerability of these forests to reductions in rainfall." Then we get Lewis saying: "In my opinion the Rowell and Moore report should not have been cited; it contains no primary research data."

Compare and contrast this with The Sunday Telegraph view that the IPCC had "accurately represented" the Nature paper.

Leake is clearly unconvinced, reporting that this is the third time in as many weeks that serious doubts have been raised over the IPCC's conclusions on climate change. And this weekend Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was fighting to keep his job after a barrage of criticism – which is why The Sunday Telegraph writes a 750-word piece about his new novel.

Even the WWF takes it more seriously, saying it prided itself on the accuracy of its reports, but is investigating the latest concerns. "We have a team of people looking at this internationally," says Keith Allott, its climate change campaigner.

Scientists such as Lewis are demanding that the IPCC ban the use of reports from pressure groups. Georg Kaser, a glaciologist who was a lead author on the last IPCC report, said: "Groups like WWF are not scientists and they are not professionally trained to manage data. They may have good intentions but it opens the way to mistakes."

And, in its own leader, headed, "Bad science needs good scrutiny", The Sunday Times makes a comparison between Dr Wakefield, who has recently been savaged by the GMC, and Dr Pachauri who "is still head of the IPCC, although he presided over the use of dodgy science in its reports and ignored legitimate criticism of that science."

"He should go," says the paper.

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD

Amazongate: the final phase

The Booker column is up, with the headline: "Amazongate: new evidence of the IPCC's failures". This is the start of the final phase of the IPCC's meltdown.

Actually, the Amazon story only occupies one paragraph of the column, with the newspaper reacting to the building publicity by hyping it up in the headline. Booker actually addresses the wide-ranging failures of the IPCC, including a reference to Montford (of Bishop Hill fame) and his brilliant book The Hockey Stick Illusion. Buy it.

Booker concludes, of the IPCC that: "Bereft of scientific or moral authority, the most expensive show the world has ever seen may soon be nearing its end."

However, the BBC's Roger Harrabin is already swinging into damage-limitation mode on "Amazongate", quoting "Euro-sceptic blogger Richard North".

The hapless Harrabin is driven to play down the importance of this latest development, claiming that the inclusion of the WWF reference "is a blunder perhaps, but maybe of a different kind, because there is indeed plenty of published science warning about drought in the Amazon."

In so doing, he distorts the thrust of the Rowell Moore argument, which claims that "40% of Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation."

First of all, the figure is entirely unsubstantiated and secondly, although there is plenty of evidence that severe or prolonged drought can damage tracts of forest, there is no good (or any) evidence that a "slight reduction in precipitation" could have the drastic effect predicted.

Of special note, though, is Harrabin's choice of expert to back up his argument. He cites Dr Simon Lewis from Leeds University, who told him: "The IPCC statement is basically correct but poorly written, and bizarrely referenced." The full significance of this will not become apparent until my next post, so this is just a marker ... we will see Lewis in a different light.

Harrabin, though, is forced to concede that there are problems, stating: "It all points to the need for much greater transparency, though that will throw up issues of its own for a body striving to offer a coherent view to policymakers of an issue dominated by risk, uncertainty and values, rather that unambiguous science."

That this is the main problem is wishful thinking on his part. The IPCC is holed below the waterline, and our little BBC man is trying to stem the leaks with a paper tissue.

(Note – I'm starting a new forum thread, as below, and will shut down the others tomorrow, to give us all a fresh start.)

CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD