They have been some explosive new revelations in the Leakegate scandal. Remember how Leake deliberately concealed the fact that Dan Nepstad, the author of the 1999 Nature paper cited as evidence for the IPCC statement about the vulnerability of the Amazon had replied to Leake’s query and informed him the claim was correct? Leake didn’t report what Nepstad told him. Instead he claimed that the IPCC statement was “bogus”, even though he knew it wasn’t.
Deltoid can now reveal that Leake’s reporting was far more dishonest than originally believed. This is how Leake quoted Simon Lewis:
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.
But Lewis, like Nepstad, told Leake that the IPCC was correct. When asked whether Leake had represented his views accurately he replied:
Absolutely not. Please see the BBC piece online, by Roger Harrabin. I sent them the same email with my comments. The scientific statement in the IPCC WG2 report is essentially correct, but has a referencing error. IPCC WG1 get it right. An outrageous piece of journalism.
Even the Sunday Times is backing away from Leake’s dishonest reporting by printing two letters refuting Leake’s claims. Andrew Rowell:
I am the co-author of the WWF report that you alleged included the bogus figure that “up to 40%” of the Amazon was sensitive to reduced rainfall.
Not only did you fail to contact me, but you ignored credible evidence that the figure was correct. You also ignored evidence that the figure had been backed up by peer-reviewed research both before and after our publication.
You spoke to Dr Dan Nepstad, one of the world’s leading authorities on fire in the Amazon. You ignored the fact he told you he had published an even higher figure in Nature in 1994 and that subsequent research validated our figure. What you published was demonstrably false and has seriously misled the debate on climate change.
WWF cannot speak for other institutions that have used our report, but we, and indeed leading scientists in the field, firmly stand by its conclusion that “up to 40% of the Brazilian forest is extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall”. The primary source for this statement is Fire in the Amazon, a 1999 overview by the respected Amazon Environmental Research Institute that states: “Probably 30-40% of the forests of the Brazilian Amazon are sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall.”
WWF acknowledges that a reference to Fire in the Amazon as the source of the 40% claim was omitted during the editing of the Global Review of Forest Fires. However, WWF informed your reporter of the source several hours before you went to press.
Your article rightly concludes that “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”. However, it is also the case that misleading coverage in respected media outlets can serve to undermine public confidence in the credibility of climate science.
If you are keeping count, that’s three separate sources who told Leake that the IPCC report was correct. And Leake dis not mention any of this, instead he simply lied and wrote that it was “bogus”.
I contacted Leake for comment, and while he replied, he demanded that it be kept confidential. I wonder if the reason was that he thinks everybody else operates like him, and I would have quote mined his response?