Now the IPCC sexed up the Amazonian danger, too

First it was the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Then it was the false claim of rising damage costs allegedly caused by global warming, the myth of the vanishing water supplies and the largely unsupported assertion that African agriculture.faced decimation.

Now yet another scare claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report collapses on closer inspection.

This time ithe dodgy claim is this:

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.

In fact, as Richard North points out:

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The link given is no longer active, but the report is on the IUCN website here. Furthermore, the IUCN along with WWF is another advocacy group and the report is not peer-reviewed. According to IPCC rules, it should not have been used as a primary source.

In fact, neither of the authors is even a scientist, and one is a green campaigner and journalist. Nor can North find any support in the WWF document for the IPCC’s claim that 40 per cent of the Amazonian forest is threatened - or at least no legitimate support.

How closely was the IPCC’s 2007 really checked? Why did it include such wild scare-claims, many based on unchecked statements by activist groups? How corrupted by politics and cash is the IPCC?

UPDATE

On the other hand, the US National Climatic Data Center rejects claims that poor siting of its weather stations - many in areas grown more urban - caused a bias to higher temperatures over time. I’m hoping someone with expertise in this will check this paper’s claims, because this bit puzzles me:

Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative ("cool") bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive ("warm") bias in minimum temperatures.

It seems to say that poor siting hasn’t caused a warming bias, because other instrument changes caused a cooling one.