Kerry Sheridan Yahoo News 19 Jan 11;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A climate change study that projected a 2.4 degree Celsius increase in temperature and massive worldwide food shortages in the next decade was seriously flawed, scientists said Wednesday.
The study was posted Tuesday on EurekAlert, a independent service for reporters set up by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was written about by numerous international news agencies, including AFP.
But AAAS later retracted the study as experts cited numerous errors in its approach.
"A reporter with The Guardian alerted us yesterday to concerns about the news release submitted by Hoffman & Hoffman public relations," said AAAS spokeswoman Ginger Pinholster in an email to AFP.
"We immediately contacted a climate change expert, who confirmed that the information raised many questions in his mind, too. We swiftly removed the news release from our website and contacted the submitting organization."
Scientist Osvaldo Canziani, who was part of the 2007 Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was listed as the scientific advisor to the report.
The IPCC, whose figures were cited as the basis for the study's projections, and Al Gore jointly won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007 "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change," the prize committee said at the time.
Canziani's spokesman said Tuesday he was ill and was unavailable for interviews.
The study cited the UN group's figures for its projections, combined with "the business-as-usual path the world is currently following," said lead author Liliana Hisas of the Universal Ecological Fund (UEF), a non-profit group headquartered in Argentina.
But climate scientist Ray Weymann told AFP that the "study contains a significant error in that it confuses 'equilibrium' temperature rise with 'transient temperature rise.'"
He also noted that study author Hisas was told of the problems in advance of the report's release.
"The author of the study was told by several of us about this error but she said it was too late to change it," said Weymann.
Scientist Scott Mandia forwarded to AFP an email he said he sent to Hisas ahead of publication explaining why her figures did not add up, and noting that it would take "quite a few decades" to reach a warming level of 2.4 degrees Celsius.
"Even if we assume the higher end of the current warming rate, we should only be 0.2C warmer by 2020 than today," Mandia wrote.
"To get to +2.4C the current trend would have to immediately increase almost ten-fold."
Mandia described the mishap as an "honest and common mistake," but said the matter would certainly give fuel to skeptics of humans' role in climate change.
"More alarmism," said Mandia. "Don't get me wrong. We are headed to 2.4, it is just not going to happen in 2020."
Many people do not understand the cumulative effect of carbon emissions and how they impact climate change, Mandia said.
"This is something that people don't appreciate. We tied a record in 2010 (for temperature records) globally. That is primarily from the C02 we put in the atmosphere in the 70s and early 80s, and we have been ramping up since then," he said.
"So it is not good. We are seeing the response from a mistake we were making 20 years ago, and we are making bigger mistakes today."
Marshall Hoffman of the public relations firm that issued the report on the UEF's behalf said the group stands by the study.
"Earlier, NASA and NOAA estimated that the global temperature increased one degree from 2005-2010. If this stays on the same path, that will be two degrees by 2015. We see that path increasing more rapidly," Hoffman said, in part, in his explanation.
Asked for comment on Hoffman's response, Mandia told AFP: "He is still confused."
Online news service promotes false climate change study
EurekAlert! carried a study with unfounded global warming claims that the planet would warm by 2.4C by 2020
Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk 19 Jan 11;
An online news service sponsored by the world's premier scientific association unwittingly promoted a study making the false claim that catastrophic global warming would occur within nine years, the Guardian has learned.
The study, by an NGO based in Argentina, claimed the planet would warm by 2.4C by 2020 and projected dire consequences for global food supply. A press release for the Food Gap study was carried by EurekAlert!, the news service operated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) , and the story was picked up by a number of international news organisations on Tuesday.
"This is happening much faster than we expected," Liliana Hisas, executive director of the Universal Ecological Fund (UEF) and author of the study, said of her findings.
But, in an episode recalling criticism of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), when the UN climate science body wrongly claimed the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035• , the UEF claims about rising temperatures over the next decade were unfounded.
Climate change is happening much faster than previously thought. But warming at such a rapid rate over the next decade is impossible, climate scientists said.
In an email, Gavin Schmidt, a Nasa climatologist wrote: "2.4C by 2020 (which is 1.4C in the next 10 years – something like six to seven times the projected rate of warming) has no basis in fact."
The AAAS, which runs the EurekAlert! News service, removed reference to the study from its website on Tuesday afternoon.
"We primarily rely on the submitting organisation to ensure the veracity of the scientific content of the news release," Ginger Pinholster, director of the office of public programmes for AAAS said.
"In this case, we immediately contacted a climate-change expert after receiving your query. That expert has confirmed for us that the information indeed raises many questions in his mind, and therefore we have removed the news release from EurekAlert!"
But by then the study had been picked up by a number of international news organisations including the French news agency AFP, Spain's EFE news agency, the Canadian CTV television network and the Vancouver Sun, and the Press Trust of India.
For some climate scientists, the false claims made by the UEF paper recalled the highly damaging episode in which the IPCC, the UN's climate science body, included the false information about melting of the Himalayan glaciers in its 2007 report.
The mistake was a public relations disaster for the IPCC and led to calls for the resignation of its chair, Rajendra Pachauri.
It was also exploited by climate sceptics to undermine the science of climate change, and is seen by some as having set back efforts in the US for action on climate change.
In this instance, climate scientists said it appeared Hisas had overlooked the influence exerted by the oceans, which absorb heat, thus delaying the effects of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.
Ray Weymann, a founder of a volunteer rapid-response force aimed at countering misconceptions about climate science, said: "The author has a fundamental misunderstanding."
Hisas, for her part, said her findings had been endorsed by an Argentine scientist, Osvaldo Canziani, who had worked on the IPCC's fourth assessment report on the state of climate science, and was credited as an adviser to the UEF.
Hisas's main finding, that climate change would disrupt the supply of basic staples such as wheat and rice, was largely in line with other recent reports.
She said the UEF did not intend to withdraw the report. "We are just going to go ahead with it. I don't have a choice now," she said. "The scientist I have been working with checked everything and according to him it's not wrong."
Marshall Hoffman, owner of the PR agency which placed the notice on the AAAS website, argued the a number of recent studies had all shown warming at a much faster rate than predicted by the IPCC in its most recent report. "The thing is, we have already put it on the internet and we had already got a lot of calls on it," he said. "This study is going to be bantered around for months. It doesn't make any difference whether it is released now, or we try to pull it back."
Canziani did not immediately respond to email. Hisas and sources in Buenos Aires said he was ill.
Canziani was co-chair of the IPCC's working group 2, which looked at the effects of climate change. The erroneous claim on Himalayan glaciers in the 2007 report was in the section overseen by working group 2.
