IPCC Amazon Scare Based Solely on WWF Report

Claims by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that Amazon rainforests could suddenly and dramatically deteriorate due to even slight climate change were not based on a single peer-reviewed scientific study, and were instead taken from an advocacy paper published by two environmental activist groups, the London Telegraph reports.

IPCC’s most recent (2007) report claims, “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 ….”

A close look at the references, however, reveals only a single one; a paper co-authored by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) environmental activist groups. Still more astonishingly, the WWF/IUCN paper was not even written by qualified scientists. One author is a policy analyst whose main job experience is studying forest fires in places other than the Amazon, and the other is a freelance journalist whose primary focus is fighting tobacco and cheerleading for environmental activist groups.

But that is not all. The “40%” claim appears to be entirely made up by IPCC, as even the flimsy WWF/IUCN activist paper does not make such a claim.

IPCC’s credibility has taken well-deserved hits recently with the Climategate email scandal in which IPCC gatekeepers distorted, hid, and destroyed scientific data that contradicts alarmist global warming theory; the Glaciergate scandal in which IPCC deliberately misrepresented the status of Himalayan glaciers; and the Pachaurigate scandal in which the IPCC chair was exposed for having blatant financial conflicts of interest by which he could make millions if global governments implement carbon dioxide restrictions. If IPCC had any credibility left after these recent scandals, does any credibility at all survive Amazongate?