IPCC rapport valt opnieuw door de mand/Sunday Telegraph

[Dr. Marc-Alexander Fluks]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Bron:  Sunday Telegraph
Datum: 31 januari 2010
URL:    
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html


UN climate change panel based claims on student dissertation and
magazine article
----------------------------------------------------------------

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about
ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's
dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

The revelation will cause fresh embarrassment for the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which had to issue a humiliating
apology earlier this month over inaccurate statements about global
warming.

The IPCC's remit is to provide an authoritative assessment of
scientific evidence on climate change.

In its most recent report, it stated that observed reductions in
mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and Africa was being caused by global
warming, citing two papers as the source of the information.

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a
feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was
based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they
were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying
for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne
in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the
Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh
questions about the quality of the information contained in the report,
which was published in 2007.

It comes after officials for the panel were forced earlier this month
to retract inaccurate claims in the IPCC's report about the melting of
Himalayan glaciers.

Sceptics have seized upon the mistakes to cast doubt over the validity
of the IPCC and have called for the panel to be disbanded.

This week scientists from around the world leapt to the defence of the
IPCC, insisting that despite the errors, which they describe as minor,
the majority of the science presented in the IPCC report is sound and
its conclusions are unaffected. But some researchers have expressed
exasperation at the IPCC's use of unsubstantiated claims and sources
outside of the scientific literature.

Professor Richard Tol, one of the report's authors who is based at the
Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, said:
"These are essentially a collection of anecdotes. Why did they do this?
It is quite astounding. Although there have probably been no policy
decisions made on the basis of this, it is illustrative of how sloppy
Working Group Two (the panel of experts within the IPCC responsible for
drawing up this section of the report) has been. There is no way
current climbers and mountain guides can give anecdotal evidence back
to the 1900s, so what they claim is complete nonsense."

The IPCC report, which is published every six years, is used by
government's worldwide to inform policy decisions that affect billions
of people. The claims about disappearing mountain ice were contained
within a table entitled "Selected observed effects due to changes in the
cryosphere produced by warming".

It states that reductions in mountain ice have been observed from the
loss of ice climbs in the Andes, Alps and in Africa between 1900 and
2000. The report also states that the section is intended to "assess
studies that have been published since the TAR (Third Assessment Report)
of observed changes and their effects".

But neither the dissertation or the magazine article cited as sources
for this information were ever subject to the rigorous scientific
review process that research published in scientific journals must
undergo.

The magazine article, which was written by Mark Bowen, a climber and
author of two books on climate change, appeared in Climbing magazine
in 2002. It quoted anecdotal evidence from climbers of retreating
glaciers and the loss of ice from climbs since the 1970s. Mr Bowen
said: "I am surprised that they have cited an article from a climbing
magazine, but there is no reason why anecdotal evidence from climbers
should be disregarded as they are spending a great deal of time in
places that other people rarely go and so notice the changes."

The dissertation paper, written by professional mountain guide and
climate change campaigner Dario-Andri Schworer while he was studying
for a geography degree, quotes observations from interviews with around
80 mountain guides in the Bernina region of the Swiss Alps. Experts
claim that loss of ice climbs are a poor indicator of a reduction in
mountain ice as climbers can knock ice down and damage ice falls with
their axes and crampons.

The IPCC has faced growing criticism over the sources it used in its
last report after it emerged the panel had used unsubstantiated figures
on glacial melting in the Himalayas that were contained within a World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) report. It can be revealed that the IPCC report
made use of 16 non-peer reviewed WWF reports.

One claim, which stated that coral reefs near mangrove forests contained
up to 25 times more fish numbers than those without mangroves nearby,
quoted a feature article on the WWF website. In fact the data contained
within the WWF article originated from a paper published in 2004 in the
respected journal Nature.

In another example a WWF paper on forest fires was used to illustrate
the impact of reduced rainfall in the Amazon rainforest, but the data
was from another Nature paper published in 1999.

When The Sunday Telegraph contacted the lead scientists behind the two
papers in Nature, they expressed surprise that their research was not
cited directly but said the IPCC had accurately represented their work.

The chair of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri has faced mounting pressure and
calls for his resignation amid the growing controversy over the error on
glacier melting and use of unreliable sources of information.

A survey of 400 authors and contributors to the IPCC report showed,
however, that the majority still support Mr Pachauri and the panel's
vice chairs. They also insisted the overall findings of the report are
robust despite the minor errors. But many expressed concern at the use
of non-peer reviewed information in the reports and called for a
tightening of the guidelines on how information can be used.

The Met Office, which has seven researchers who contributed to the
report including Professor Martin Parry who was co-chair of the
working group responsible for the part of the report that contained
the glacier errors, said: "The IPCC should continue to ensure that
its review process is as robust and transparent as possible, that
it draws only from the peer-reviewed literature, and that
uncertainties in the science and projections are clearly expressed."

Roger Sedjo, a senior research fellow at the US research
organisation Resources for the Future who also contributed to the
IPCC's latest report, added: "The IPCC is, unfortunately, a highly
political organisation with most of the secretariat bordering on
climate advocacy. It needs to develop a more balanced and indeed
scientifically sceptical behaviour pattern. The organisation tend
to select the most negative studies ignoring more positive
alternatives."

The IPCC failed to respond to questions about the inclusion of
unreliable sources in its report but it has insisted over the past
week that despite minor errors, the findings of the report are still
robust and consistent with the underlying science.

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(c) 2010 Telegraph Media Group Limited

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