The Australian’s climate change attack full of holes: WWF
It is unfortunate that The Australian’s front page report sourced from the UK’s Sunday Times, ‘More flaws emerge in climate alarms’, (Monday, February 1), was not checked for the veracity of its claims.
In the first paragraph it claims the WWF report, Global Review of Forest Fires (2000) from which the IPCC sourced its information was written by "green campaigners who had no scientific expertise".
Author Dr Peter F Moore has a PhD in Fire Management and is an internationally recognised expert in the field.
Monday’s article states that the claims in the WWF report were based on a study from Nature that did not look at rainfall.
However the abstract for that article clearly states that it examined drought and the effects of the dry season, both related to rainfall. It is hard to imagine how someone could have missed this if they had read the abstract.
It should be noted that The Global Review of Forest Fires (2000) had more than 170 references with the great majority of these being to original scientific papers.
In addition, since the IPCC report was published in 2007, concerns about the impact of climate change on the Amazon have been borne out by at least two peer- reviewed scientific papers published in 2009.
The overwhelming majority of scientists from all relevant fields continue to stand by the basic conclusion of climate science that human-induced changes in the composition of the atmosphere are resulting in warming which is driving damaging and possibly catastrophic climate change.
It is a shame that the credibility of WWF and by extension the IPCC should be called into question by an article that was itself not thoroughly checked.
More information
Alvin Stone, WWF-Australia. Ph: 8202 1259. Mbl: 0410 221 068. Email: [email protected]