The extreme weather flavour of the moment is without doubt heavy rain and flooding. As I write, severe flooding has caused 132 deaths in southern China and 19 in Burma. The Var region in southern France is recovering from spectacular flash flooding that killed 25 people (watch the BBC video), Tennessee’s recovering from a 1000 year flood in May, and NZ hasn’t escaped. The Metservice blog reports that the flooding in Whakatane a few weeks ago was caused by rainfall of 89.8mm in one hour (with more heavy rain either side of that hour). As the blog notes, that’s tropical rain happening well outside the tropics. But what struck me at the time was a comment from a Whakatane resident included in the TV3 News coverage of that flooding. I can’t remember his precise words, but it was something along the lines of “should be a wake-up call for anyone who doesn’t think global warming’s an issue, because this is what global warming delivers…” Perceptive, I thought, because one of the more robust predictions of climate science is sometimes described as an intensification of the hydrological cycle.
Category: Climate science
Sunday Times apologises for “Amazongate” misinformation
Three months after Simon Lewis laid a complaint with the UK’s Press Complaints Commission, which I reported here, the Sunday Timeshas retracted Jonathan Leake’s disgraceful Amazongate article and apologised to Dr Lewis. The article has been removed from their website. Here’s the apology:
The article “UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim” (News, Jan 31) stated that the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report had included an “unsubstantiated claim” that up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall. The IPCC had referenced the claim to a report prepared for WWF by Andrew Rowell and Peter Moore, whom the article described as “green campaigners” with “little scientific expertise.” The article also stated that the authors’ research had been based on a scientific paper that dealt with the impact of human activity rather than climate change.
In fact, the IPCC’s Amazon statement is supported by peer-reviewed scientific evidence. In the case of the WWF report, the figure had, in error, not been referenced, but was based on research by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) which did relate to the impact of climate change. We also understand and accept that Mr Rowell is an experienced environmental journalist and that Dr Moore is an expert in forest management, and apologise for any suggestion to the contrary.
The article also quoted criticism of the IPCC’s use of the WWF report by Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds and leading specialist in tropical forest ecology. We accept that, in his quoted remarks, Dr Lewis was making the general point that both the IPCC and WWF should have cited the appropriate peer-reviewed scientific research literature. As he made clear to us at the time, including by sending us some of the research literature, Dr Lewis does not dispute the scientific basis for both the IPCC and the WWF reports’ statements on the potential vulnerability of the Amazon rainforest to droughts caused by climate change.
In addition, the article stated that Dr Lewis’ concern at the IPCC’s use of reports by environmental campaign groups related to the prospect of those reports being biased in their conclusions. We accept that Dr Lewis holds no such view – rather, he was concerned that the use of non-peer-reviewed sources risks creating the perception of bias and unnecessary controversy, which is unhelpful in advancing the public’s understanding of the science of climate change. A version of our article that had been checked with Dr Lewis underwent significant late editing and so did not give a fair or accurate account of his views on these points. We apologise for this.
Leake’s article was not only celebrated ad nauseam in the denialist community but also taken up by mainstream media in many countries. Here in New Zealand the Dominion Post used it in an editorial claiming that the ethics and integrity of climate scientists is being called into question. I wrote about that here. The editorial accepted that human activity is contributing to global warming, but drew this appalling conclusion about the IPCC:
“Why trust a panel that confuses opinion and fact, wrongly attributes that opinion, tries to shout down critics and displays a determination to make the facts fit the theory rather than the other way around.
“The IPCC should leave the spin to the politicians and get on with its real job – establishing the facts. By glossing over inconvenient truths and misrepresenting opinion as scientific fact, it has undermined its credibility.
“It now has a great deal of work to do if it is to persuade peoples and governments that its findings should be taken seriously.”
Jonathan Leake and the Sunday Times have a lot to answer for, but so do journalists in many places who allow themselves to be so easily misinformed. The credulity with which they have received accusations of malpractice by the East Anglia scientists, and alleged IPCC errors (beyond the acknowledged and regretted error relating to the Himalayan glaciers) is astonishing. Where on earth did the Dominion Post find the confidence to make such a declaration about the IPCC? Not by reading the science, that’s for sure. And that’s the nub of the matter: the media generally gives the impression that it has not ensured that enough of its journalists are informed about climate science. That’s why the mischief wrought by disinformers, especially when they’re backed by seemingly reputable papers, can reach global media proportions overnight.
Perhaps any of our readers who see the Dominion Post might consider writing to the editor and inviting them to retract their editorial, or at least to write another acknowledging that they have reason to reconsider their verdict on the IPCC.
The Sunday Times correction has been published on their website here, but be warned that you have to go through a full registration procedure to view it.
Still talkin’ (open thread #2)
Here’s another open thread, for discussion of anything not covered in recent posts. In response to a few requests, I have ditched the Intense Debate comment service, and reverted to the WordPress built-in system. I’ve installed a couple of plug-ins to allow comment editing and rating (which caused some weirdness with the blog theme and a late night for me until I worked out a temporary fix). I’ve also switched off comment nesting/threading, so your comments will appear in the order they’re posted. If you’re replying to a particular comment, please use the comment number or link to it (the link is under the number). As before, you’ll need to register and log-in to make a comment. If anyone has any problems with their log-ins contact me (gareth@ the site domain) and I’ll see what can be done.
A note on the comment rating scheme: four positive votes or three negative votes, or more than eight votes in total will give comments distinctive styles. Please try it out — I want to see what they look like! I could change this to make unpopular comments invisible, but only with tweaking. Let me know if it’s something you really want. Feedback on other aspects of the blog would also be welcome.
Don’t watch that, watch this!
If you’ve got any interest at all in the state of the Arctic Sea Ice, resist the temptation to watch the World Cup, or the start of the All Black’s winter season, and take a look at David Barber’s talk at the International Polar Year’s Oslo Science Conference. Go to the “Web TV” page, then scroll through the videos on offer until you see Barber’s talk — On Thin Ice: The Arctic and Climate Change (or use the direct link). Barber’s a good lecturer — he gave yesterday’s (Friday) morning plenary talk at the conference — and he delivers a fascinating overview of his work on the Circumpolar Flaw Project, one of the biggest components of the 2007-8 IPY. Most interesting of all is his description of the state of the sea ice last autumn, as the icebreaker Amundsen went in search of multi-year ice in the Beaufort Sea. He gives a graphic description (involving pyjamas) of the ice breaker discovering that what the Canadian Ice Service maps were suggesting was thick multi-year ice was nothing of the sort — the Amundsen was making a comfortable 13 knots through it, not far short of its top speed of 13.7 knots. That section of his talk starts at about 20 minutes in (by the timer on the player), but it’s worth watching the whole thing. The press release for Barber’s talk is here.
The bad news, and the good
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have an interesting article in Yale Environment developing ideas from their book Merchants of Doubt. Some of it summarises the findings of the book concerning the organised campaigns of denial of science, but there are some new expressions of anxiety which are deserving of notice.
They draw attention to the fostering of a public image of climate science as a criminal conspiracy by a group called Cooler Heads Coalition, a creation of the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI itself has accused NASA, the largest funder of climate science, of faking important climate data sets. And earlier this year Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, whose positions are frequently cited and promoted by CEI, called for a criminal investigation of 17 climate scientists from a variety of institutions for allegedly falsifying or distorting data used in taxpayer-funded research.
Continue reading “The bad news, and the good”