Another day, another case of bad science.

[VinnieKulick]

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog 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.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.

The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, 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.

This is the third time in as many weeks that serious doubts have been raised over the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. Two weeks ago, after reports in The Sunday Times, it was forced to retract a warning that climate change was likely to melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. That warning was also based on claims in a WWF report.

This weekend Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was fighting to keep his job after a barrage of criticism.

Scientists fear the controversies will be used by climate change sceptics to sway public opinion to ignore global warming — even though the fundamental science, that greenhouse gases can heat the world, remains strong.

The latest controversy originates in a report called A Global Review of Forest Fires, which WWF published in 2000. It was commissioned from Andrew Rowell, a freelance journalist and green campaigner who has worked for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and anti-smoking organisations. The second author was Peter Moore, a campaigner and policy analyst with WWF.

In their report they suggested that “up to 40% of Brazilian rainforest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall” but made clear that this was because drier forests were more likely to catch fire.

The IPCC report picked up this reference but expanded it to cover the whole Amazon. It also suggested that a slight reduction in rainfall would kill many trees directly, not just by contributing to more fires.

It said: “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. 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.”

Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at Leeds University who specialises in tropical forest ecology, described the section of Rowell and Moore’s report predicting the potential destruction of large swathes of rainforest as “a mess”.

“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,” he said.

“In my opinion the Rowell and Moore report should not have been cited; it contains no primary research data.”

WWF said it prided itself on the accuracy of its reports and was investigating the latest concerns. “We have a team of people looking at this internationally,” said Keith Allott, its climate change campaigner.

Scientists such as Lewis are demanding that the IPCC ban the use of reports from pressure groups. They fear that environmental campaign groups are bound to cherry-pick the scientific literature that confirms their beliefs and ignore the rest.

It was exactly this process that lay behind the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers were likely to melt by 2035 — a suggestion that got into another WWF report and was then used by the IPCC.

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.”

[slzrocker]

Now don't get me wrong, I think we need to do good environmental things like recycling, and not trashing everything, but what more does it take to convince people that man made climate change is just used for political leverage. Between Climategate, the false claims on the glaciers melting, and now this rain forest thing, I don't know what more people need. Climate change may be happening, but why does nobody stop to think that it could just be from the sun heating and cooling? The suns temperature naturally changes too, and thats where we get our temperature from. Was the ice age man made? I am guessing not.

[VinnieKulick]

Ah, toe the line with the "tricked data is not tricked data" routine.

[WhiteHouseSubsAC]

I agree with EYU in principle, but if you're going to make assertions on a controversial topic like global warming, you'd better make sure your data is a little more bulletproof than that. The fact that it's not the first incident and that people's jobs are on the line at the IPCC tells me that the problem runs deeper than a "messy study". Data is being spun to fit an agenda, which does nothing but impugn the credibility of any argument presented.

[vanitybinge]

I agree with EYU in principle, but if you're going to make assertions on a controversial topic like global warming, you'd better make sure your data is a little more bulletproof than that. The fact that it's not the first incident and that people's jobs are on the line at the IPCC tells me that the problem runs deeper than a "messy study". Data is being spun to fit an agenda, which does nothing but impugn the credibility of any argument presented.

I assume youre refering to the "emails intercepted" and quoted on CSPAN.

Look, there's thousands of scientists all over the world studying our impact on the Earth, and to think humans don't have an impact is just arrogant.

There;s no ONE right and wrong. Yes there are politicians and special interests who will find ways to take advantage financially, and yes the Earth has it's phases and abnormalities that we don't understand yet, and certainly the chemical and garbage output of the past two hundred years has made some places uninhabitable! Just look at the giant stream of trash in the pacific, or Silent Hill, etc.

I see what you're saying, but asking for bulletproof data from a scientist while taking the side of a politician sounds a bit off.

[slzrocker]

I agree with EYU in principle, but if you're going to make assertions on a controversial topic like global warming, you'd better make sure your data is a little more bulletproof than that. The fact that it's not the first incident and that people's jobs are on the line at the IPCC tells me that the problem runs deeper than a "messy study". Data is being spun to fit an agenda, which does nothing but impugn the credibility of any argument presented.

I assume youre refering to the "emails intercepted" and quoted on CSPAN.

Look, there's thousands of scientists all over the world studying our impact on the Earth, and to think humans don't have an impact is just arrogant.

There;s no ONE right and wrong. Yes there are politicians and special interests who will find ways to take advantage financially, and yes the Earth has it's phases and abnormalities that we don't understand yet, and certainly the chemical and garbage output of the past two hundred years has made some places uninhabitable! Just look at the giant stream of trash in the pacific, or Silent Hill, etc.

I see what you're saying, but asking for bulletproof data from a scientist while taking the side of a politician sounds a bit off.

I already said the trash is the problem, but the man made global warming is another issue. And to EYU, there are thousands of scientists who have said that the globe has been cooling the past 7 or 8 years. And december was the coolest month in the past 28 years. Also they are now saying that people have been manipulating the data since 1990.

[Ugmo]

And to EYU, there are thousands of scientists who have said that the globe has been cooling the past 7 or 8 years.

Not true. There is a concerted effort on the part of some to propogate the myth that the Earth has been cooling by distorting the figures, but it hasn't:

http://www.politifact.org/truth-o-meter ... h-cooling/

NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt recently told the Associated Press the same thing:

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," he said. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

If 1998 is the starting point, a year many climate skeptics tend to cite, everything looks cooler in comparison, said Raymond Bradley, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/factch ... -8-dec-14/

FactCheck.org responds: It’s true that there has been some leveling of the average temperatures in the last 10 years, following a large spike in 1998, the warmest year ever recorded. But the last decade is still on track to be the hottest on record. We’d note, too, that measuring trends in decades while disregarding trends unfolding over longer periods allows for the cherry-picking of data to fit a particular hypothesis. In this case, charts of temperatures over the last 10 years, like the one provided in the New York Times article, may show a plateau or a dip, but charts like this one from NASA’s Goddard Space Center put the decade in context.

Don't be fooled dude.

[slzrocker]

The hoax is being revealed at near record speed yet we are being cautioned not to be fooled.

haha I was thinking the same exact thing. The global cooling people faked data. Funny how that comes out after the global warming altered data.

[vanitybinge]

I still think the government is practicing weather control and storm manipulation, but that just makes me crazy.

[slzrocker]

I still think the government is practicing weather control and storm manipulation, but that just makes me crazy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZOt29NR0FY

[vanitybinge]

I still think the government is practicing weather control and storm manipulation, but that just makes me crazy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZOt29NR0FY

You've got to be shitting me. I'm supposed to be crazy for thinking this. I don't WANT to be right, get it?





idk anymore. The more I learn about this country the more it pisses me off.