Experts claim 2006 climate report plagiarized

A pivotal 2006 congressional report that raised questions about the validity of global warming research was partly based on material copied from textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report, plagiarism experts say.

A report by George Mason University statistician Edward Wegman (right)criticized earlier research led by scientist Michael Mann that said global temperatures were highest in the last century than the previous 1,000 years.

But according to plagiarism experts, 'significant' sections of the 91-page report were lifted from 'textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report'.

The Wegman report called into question Michael Mann's so-called 'hockey stick' graph which suggested a rapid rise in recent global temperatures.

The study was lauded as 'independent, impartial, expert' work and helped shape the US's policy on climate change but its credibility has now been called into question.

The allegations come as some in Congress call for more investigations of climate scientists like the one that produced the Wegman report.
"It kind of undermines the credibility of your work criticizing others' integrity when you don't conform to the basic rules of scholarship," Virginia Tech plagiarism expert Skip Garner said.

"The report was integral to congressional hearings about climate scientists," says Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. "And it preceded a lot of conspiratorial thinking polluting the public debate today about climate scientists."

But in March, climate scientist Raymond Bradley (right) of the University of Massachusetts asked GMU, based in Fairfax, Va., to investigate "clear plagiarism" of one of his textbooks.

Bradley says he learned of the copying on the Deep Climate website and through a year-long analysis of the Wegman report made by retired computer scientist John Mashey of Portola Valley, Calif. Mashey's analysis concludes that 35 of the report's 91 pages "are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning." Copying others' text or ideas without crediting them violates universities' standards, according to Liz Wager of the London-based Committee on Publication Ethics.

Allegations under review

"The matter is under investigation," says GMU spokesman Dan Walsch by e-mail. In a phone interview, Wegman said he could not comment at the university's request. In an earlier e-mail Wegman sent to Joseph Kunc of the University of Southern California, however, he called the plagiarism charges "wild conclusions that have nothing to do with reality."

The plagiarism experts queried by USA TODAY disagree after viewing the Wegman report:

• "Actually fairly shocking," says Cornell physicist Paul Ginsparg by e-mail. "My own preliminary appraisal would be 'guilty as charged.'
  
  
• "If I was a peer reviewer of this report and I was to observe the paragraphs they have taken, then I would be obligated to report them," says Garner of Virginia Tech, who heads a copying detection effort. "There are a lot of things in the report that rise to the level of inappropriate."
  


• "The plagiarism is fairly obvious when you compare things side-by-side," says Ohio State's Robert Coleman, who chairs OSU's misconduct committee.
  

As an example, one section of the Wegman report reads: 'The average width of a tree ring is a function of many variables including the tree species, tree age, stored carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in the soil, and climatic factors.'

A book by Prof Bradley, meanwhile, states: 'The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a function of many variables, including the tree species, tree age, availability of stored food within the tree and of important nutrients in the soil, and a whole complex of climatic factors.'

The report was requested in 2005 by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas (left), then the head of the House energy committee. Barton cited the report in an October letter to The Washington Post when he wrote that Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann's work was "rooted in fundamental errors of methodology that had been cemented in place as 'consensus' by a closed network of friends."

The Wegman report criticized 1998 and 1999 reports led by Michael Mann (Bradley was a co-author) that calculated global temperatures over the last millennium. It also contained an analysis of Mann's co-authors that appears partly cribbed from Wikipedia, Garner says.

Lisa Miller, a spokeswoman for Barton, reiterated the congressman's support of the Wegman report on Monday, saying it "found significant statistical issues" with climate studies.

A 2006 report by the National Research Council (NRC), which examines scientific disputes under a congressional charter, largely validated Mann, Bradley and the other climate scientists, according to Texas A&M's Gerald North, the panel's head. The NRC report found that Wegman report-style criticisms of the type of statistics used in 1998 and 1999 papers were reasonable but beside the point, as many subsequent studies had reproduced their finding that the 20th century was likely the warmest one in centuries.

In a 2007 presentation at the university, report co-author Yasmin Said of GMU said that a Barton committee staffer, Peter Spencer, provided the background material for the report. "Although Dr. Said's presentation seemed to imply that we were being coached by the Republicans by being given only their selected materials to look at, this was not true," Wegman said in response to a USA TODAY freedom-of-information act request.

In an updated response that he authorized on Monday, Wegman said, "In fact, when we had our initial interview with Peter Spencer, he made it very clear that the Committee wanted our opinion as statisticians as to the correctness of the mathematics used to develop the Hockey Stick (the 1999 and 1998 papers), and he explicitly told us that they wanted the truth as we saw it."

Wegman added, "I will say that there is a lot of speculation and conspiracy theory in John Mashey's analysis which is simply not true... These attacks are unprecendented in my 42 years as an academic and scholar. We are not the bad guys and we have never intended that our Congressional testimony was intended to take intellectual credit for any aspect of paleoclimate reconstruction science or for any original research aspect of social network analysis."

Information not forthcoming

The Wegman report called for improved "sharing of research materials, data and results" from scientists. But in response to a request for materials related to the report, GMU said it "does not have access to the information." Separately in that response, Wegman said his "email was downloaded to my notebook computer and was erased from the GMU mail server," and he would not disclose any report communications or materials because the "work was done off-site," aside from one meeting with Spencer.

"It's nothing personal. I don't want these guys fired or anything," Bradley says. "They should just retract or withdraw the report as you would any scientific publication that has these sort of problems."

Source:
USA Today, "Experts claim 2006 climate report plagiarized", by Dan Vergano, accessed November 25, 2010
DailyMail, "Influential climate change report 'was copied from Wikipedia'" , accessed November 25, 2010

Warning over desertification

Forestry experts warned degraded grasslands are likely to speed up the processes of soil erosion and desertification, feeding the sandstorms that usually sweep North China in the spring.

"Overgrazing causes about 90 percent of grassland erosion, extending from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the arid reaches of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region," Zhang Xinshi (right), professor of the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on Friday at the Sino-German expert consultation on climate change and combating desertification project in Beijing.

"Erratic rainfall coupled with serious desertification; these may both be the 'root cause' of the problem," added Dr Zhang Qianggong, research assistant at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Institute of the China Academy of Sciences. He expressed that as the Qinghai-Tibet plateau is situated in the middle to upper reaches of the troposphere, the atmospheric conditions are severely unstable which allows sand and dust to enter the atmosphere and is having far-reaching effects.

In addition, the large shifting sand dunes and desertification of the land of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau also account for the increased sand and dust levels in the atmosphere. Now there are large and active sand dunes at the headlands of the Brahmaputra and its tributary valleys, the Yellow river and the Yangtze. Moreover, the area of desertification of the land has increased dramatically.

Restoring grasslands and controlling desertification have become an important part of China's fight against climate change, said Liu Tuo, director-general of the State Forestry Administration's national bureau to combat desertification.

While grasslands cover more than 40 percent of China, comprising about 400 million hectares, growing urbanization and overgrazing are encroaching on and damaging the country's green areas.

China already suffers from severe desertification (left), with about 2.6 million square kilometers of land - or more than 25 percent of the country's total land area - affected by the process, according to the latest statistics from the forestry administration.

It is estimated that desertification poses a threat to 400 million people who live in arid regions of China, which cover more than 33 percent of the country.

Zhang said sandstorms (right) follow a general route in China from the northwest to the southeast of the country.

Scientists found that sandstorms form above the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from December to March every year, before gradually moving to the north, Shanghai Morning Post reported earlier this month.

The newspaper quoted scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences as having said that the plateau is likely to succumb to desertification if no effective measures are taken to halt the process, especially with less rain and rising temperatures in the area.

The average temperature in China has risen 1.1 degrees over the past five decades, while there has been a corresponding rise of 0.77 degrees on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during the same period, according to Yang Weixi, chief engineer of the national bureau to combat desertification.

With the rising temperatures, the glacial area has contracted in western China and is currently 5.5 percent smaller than in the 1960s, Yang said.

Since the 1980s, the country's glaciers have lost nearly 587 billion cubic meters of water capacity, comparable to 10 times the annual runoff from the Yangtze River, he said.

There is expected to be a water shortage of about 20 billion cubic meters in western China by 2030, said Jiang Youxu, a scientist with the Research Institute of Forest Ecology, Environment and Protection at the Chinese Academy of Forestry.

Source:
China.org, "Warning over desertification", accessed November 24, 2010
The Daily Planet, "Sandstorms on the plateau", accessed November 24, 2010

Indonesia's billion-dollar forest deal in danger

Greenpeace on Tuesday warned that a billion-dollar deal between Norway and Indonesia to cut carbon emissions from deforestation is in danger of being hijacked by timber and oil palm companies.

The environmental group said "notorious industrial rainforest destroyers" such as palm oil and pulp producers intended to manipulate the funds to subsidize further conversion of natural forests to plantations.

The allegations came in a new Greenpeace report called "REDD Alert: Protection Money", expressing doubts about Indonesia's plans to use a UN-backed scheme to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).

It said Indonesia's greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction proposals "may create perverse incentives to clear forests and peatlands, create opportunities for corruption... and actually drive an increase in GHG emissions".

Under a REDD scheme announced in May, Norway has agreed to contribute up to a billion dollars to help preserve Indonesia's forests, partly through a two-year moratorium on new clearing of natural forests and peatlands from 2011.

Indonesia is the world's third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, due mainly to rampant deforestation by the palm oil and paper industries, fueled by corruption.

"Expansion plans show that these sectors intend to utilize the Indonesian government's ambiguous definitions of forests and degraded land to hijack the funds and use them to subsidize ongoing conversion of natural forests to plantations," the group said in a statement.

The industries' current expansion plans -- which have support within some government ministries -- seek to treble pulp and paper production by 2025 and double palm oil production by 2020, the report said.

"This expansion, coupled with weak definitions for degraded land in Indonesia, could see REDD funds which are designed to support protection of Indonesia's forests and peatlands actually being used to support their destruction," it added.

The areas earmarked included 40 percent of Indonesia's remaining natural forest -- an area the size of Norway and Denmark combined.

It also risked up to 80 percent of the country's remaining peatland -- which stores massive amounts of carbon -- and nearly 50 percent of the remaining forested orangutan habitat in Kalimantan, on Borneo island.

The forest and peatland carbon at risk amounted to four years? worth of global greenhouse emissions, the report said.

Greenpeace applauded Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's "progressive vision" on the need to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

But Greenpeace Southeast Asia forest campaigner Bustar Maitar said his plans were being "systematically undermined by the influence of the palm oil and pulp and paper industry".

With increased focus on productivity and higher yields, the palm and paper industry could reach its production targets without further deforestation, he added.

The report also criticized Indonesia for bundling plantation activity up with REDD-funded schemes to "rehabilitate" degraded or "idle" land, leading to forest replacement.

"Consequently, international REDD funds earmarked for forest protection may actually be used to subsidize their destruction, with significant climate, wildlife and social costs," it said.

Source:
Google Newsfeed, "Indonesia's billion-dollar forest deal in danger", accessed November 24, 2010

Next climate warming report will be dramatically worse: UN

United Nations leaders will demand "concrete results" from the looming Cancun climate summit as global warming is accelerating, a top UN organizer of the event said Monday.

Robert Orr, UN under secretary general for planning, said the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming will be much worse than the last one.

Representatives from 194 countries are to meet in the Mexican resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 for a new attempt to strike a deal to curb greenhouse gases after 2012.

Orr told reporters that negotiators heading for the Cancun conference "need to remind themselves, the longer we delay, the more we will pay both in terms of lives and in terms of money."

He said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would make it clear to world leaders in Cancun "that we should not take any comfort in the climate deniers' siren call."

"The evidence shows us quite the opposite-- that we can't rest easy at all" as scientists agree that climate change "is happening in an accelerated way."

"As preparations are underway for the next IPCC report, just about everything that you will see in the next report will be more dramatic than the last report, because that is where all the data is pointing."

The fourth IPCC assessment released in 2007 said that global warming is "unequivocal" and mainly caused by human activity.

Its next report, involving contributions from thousands of scientists around the world, is due in 2014.

With many countries fearful of a repeat of last year's bitter Copenhagen summit failure, Orr said that progress is possible in Cancun.

If governments "understand the peril that their populations are in, it is much easier to get over the political hurdles to do what you have to do," he said.

The United Nations wants breakthroughs on verifying deforestation and financing to combat the lost of tropical forests.

Efforts to speed up technology transfers to combat global warming and financing projects to slow the phenomenon could also be advanced, Orr said.

Thirty billion dollars of emergency funding over three years was agreed at Copenhagen and a UN panel on how to raise 100 billion dollars a year from 2020 has already delivered its report.

The panel recommended taxes on carbon emissions and international transport, including air tickets.

Orr said no one should expect "the final deal" in Cancun. But he said: "The time has come for some decisions on issues and therefore we do want some concrete results."

Source:
Google News Feed, "Next climate warming report will be dramatically worse: UN", accessed November 24, 2010

Marine life heading for new home

Northern New South Wales (NSW) will become home to large populations of marine life fleeing the Great Barrier Reef in search of cooler waters, a local researcher has said.

Southern Cross University's Professor Peter Harrison is part of the expert collaborative effort that recently produced the Coffs Harbour Subtropical Reefs Declaration.

The declaration urges the community to protect reefs south of the Great Barrier Reef as they will inevitably become the habitats for many migrating marine animals.

Prof Harrison said the ocean’s rising temperatures could not be ignored.

“We know that the sea temperatures are going to rise here faster than in other places and it is really important to have the science and networks in place so we can fully understand it and know how we are going to deal with it in thefuture,” he said.

“One of the driving forces behind this is that the Northern NSW environment is a climate change hot spot, which means the increase in sea temperatures are high and we are likely to see a change in the marine environment.”

Prof Harrison predicted marine life affected by rising water temperatures in the North Coast region would also migrate further south in search of cooler temperatures.

But not all Great Barrier Reef marine species will be able to adapt to this region’s marine environment.

“What we do have is some tropical species that come down in the East Australian Current from the Great Barrier Reef that are viable breeding populations,” he said.

“They (local reefs) do serve as an important refuge for some species, but not all will be able to survive here, it’s a bit cool for some.”

Prof Harrison also warns the combination of human population growth and climate change could have a significant impact on our marine environment.

Source:
The Northern Star, "Marine life heading for new home", accessed June 24, 2010

Dead Sea secrets to fight global warming

From a barge floating above the deepest point on earth, a research team hopes to drill through half a million years of history to uncover secrets of climate change and natural disasters.

The group started extracting layers of the earth's core on Sunday and plan to continue for about 2 months until they reach a depth of 1,200 meters below sea level.

The rig, which is operated by the Utah-based non-profit DOSECC Exploration Services, will drill a five-cm-wide hole and core samples will then be sent to be analyzed and archived, said operations manager Beau Marshall.

"We've drilled a lot of fresh water lakes, we've done some salt water activity as well, but the Dead Sea is quite unique," Marshall said.

"It's going to require us to keep everything well lubricated and cleaned up because the salt will wreak havoc on our equipment."

Like the rings on a tree trunk, sediment layers can tell the sea's history. The sea bed adds two layers of sediment every year and researchers hope they can analyze 500,000 years of geological history by extracting and studying the sediment layers.

"The sediments of the Dead Sea are the best climate and earthquake recorders for the entire Middle East," said project head Zvi Ben-Avraham (left on left of image) of the Israel Academy of Sciences, standing at the water's desert shore, which is already about 420 meters below sea level.

Ben-Avraham says the Dead Sea collects water run-off from the Sinai desert in Egypt up to the Golan Heights, which covers an area of about 42,000 square kilometers.

It also lies on a fault line between two continental plates which move at different speeds causing much tectonic activity.

Like trees have rings, the sea bed adds two layers of sediment every year. The team will analyze 500,000 years of geological history, deciphering patterns and using them to help understand the future, said Ben-Avraham.

Once extracted, the layer-cake of soil will be subjected to high-resolution examination by scientists from fields ranging from climate science to chemistry for clues about Earth's changing environment. (At left: example of sedimentary layers inland).

The team hopes to get new information on ancient rainfall, floods, droughts and earthquakes, and then use them in environmental studies to assist determining a way to fight global warming. Details about severe weather or major seismic activity could even provide insight into human migration in and out of the region.

"We believe that the results of this project will have vast implications in the fields of science and environment and will shed light on new natural resources," Zvi Ben-Avraham, a professor at Tel Aviv University, and Moti Stein, with the Israel Geological Survey, said in a joint statement.

"In addition, a historic hydro-geological environmental study of the Dead Sea will help unravel the mystery of human cultural evolution in this area," they added.

The study will also try to find an explanation for the Dead Sea's receding shoreline in recent years, which scientists blame on regional water mismanagement.

The project is part of the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, which has conducted studies across the globe in an effort to test geological models and find the best way to manage the earth's resources and environment.

Ben-Avraham said taking part in the Dead Sea project are members from around the world, including neighboring Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. The drilling falls within Israel's borders.

The Dead Sea is a 378-meters-deep lake known as one of the world's saltiest bodies of water. It owes its name to its hyper-saline quality which does not let animals flourish.

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. It was one of the world's first health resorts and its salt and minerals are used in cosmetics and herbal sachets. The Dead Sea is a favorite spot for tourists because of the buoyant and healing properties of its extremely salty waters. It is also among 14 finalists in a global Internet vote to choose seven wonders of the natural world.

Source:
PressTV, "Dead Sea secrets to fight global warming", accessed November 23, 2010
Yahoo News, "Researchers drill for secrets hidden under Dead Sea", accessed November 23, 2010
Reuters, "Researchers drill for secrets hidden under Dead Sea", accessed November 23, 2010
The Telegraph, "Scientists dig below Dead Sea to probe Earth's history", accessed November 23, 2010

US climate scientists fight back after year of scepticism

The fight is on. After a year of attacks, climate scientists in America today launch a new website aimed at closing the gap between scientific knowledge and public understanding of global warming.

Meanwhile, a few Republicans are beginning to question the new party line on rejecting any evidence that humans are changing the climate.

Friday's Washington Post features a very important op-ed by NRDC Action Fund board member and former House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican who represented New York's 24th congressional district for over two decades before retiring in 2007. Surveying the incoming class of Republicans, Boehlert worries that a stance of global warming denial has become all but synonymous with his party's identity. He issues a resonant plea for a change of course:

In a letter to the Washington Post, Sherwood Boehlert,(right) wrote: "I call on my fellow Republicans to open their minds to rethinking what has largely become our party's line: denying that climate change and global warming are occurring and that they are largely due to human activities."

Boehlert cites the trio of reports released in May, in which the prestigious and nonpartisan National Academy of Science concluded that "a strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." Our nation's most authoritative and respected scientific body couldn't make it any clearer or more conclusive. Boehlert concluded by pointing out the fact that the National Academy of Science reports concluded that "scientific evidence that the Earth is warming is now overwhelming." Party affiliation does not change that fact, Boehlert asserted.

The new climate change website by the new rapid response team of climate scientists promises to connect reporters and editors with a team of experts. In the build-up to today's launch the three scientists behind the project – John Abraham, Scott Mandia, and Ray Weymann – have come off almost as climate science super heroes, which in a sense they are.

Today's initiative comes just over a year after the world of climate science was shaken by the controversy over emails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia, and the discovery of false assertions over Himalayan glaciers in the UN climate body's 2007 report.

Meanwhile, the next Congress is expected to be heavily biased against climate science and action on climate change. More than half of its newly elected Republicans deny the existence of global warming, according to an analysis by Think Progress, a blog run by the Center for American Progress.

"Over the last year or two there has really been some backsliding in public concern about this issue," said Abraham. "We hope that if we do a better job communicating and getting the scientists more engaged in speaking to the public we can turn the dial on public opinion. We think the science is compelling."

Abraham may be familiar to some readers for dissecting – and comprehensively debunking – global warming denier Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (left), in 126 slides, called A Scientist Replies to Lord Monckton. But he admitted he and his colleagues could potentially be taking on much bigger opponents, given the highly charged politics around climate and energy policies in America.

The website offers an online form where journalists can put in a request for climate scientists. The three founders will then locate someone from their list of 50 volunteers with the right expertise. So far, they are getting about five media requests a day.

But Abraham and others are bracing for the Republicans to launch a whole new series of investigations into climate science after their takeover of the House of Representatives in the mid-term elections. In his piece in the Washington Post, Boehlert asked Republicans to rethink their position.

He said that as a Republican he understood opposition to government regulations for dealing with climate change. But he added: "What I find incomprehensible is the dogged determination by some to discredit distinguished scientists and their findings."

Boehlert's piece follows an outburst by a South Carolina Republican, Bob Inglis, who lost his seat to a Tea Party conservative who denies man-made climate change. In an exchange carried on the Think Progress blog, Inglis told his colleagues: "I would also suggest to my Free Enterprise colleagues – especially conservatives here – whether you think it's all a bunch of hooey, what we've talked about in this committee, the Chinese don't. And they plan on eating our lunch in this next century. They plan on innovating around these problems, and selling to us, and the rest of the world, the technology that'll lead the 21st century."

Inglis in Congress talking Climate Change

Source:
The Guardian,"US climate scientists fight back after year of scepticism", accessed November 23, 2010
Huffington Post, "Republicans for Science!", accessed November 23, 2010
ThinkProgress, "Republican Rep. Bob Inglis Blasts GOP For Denying Global Warming", accessed November 23, 2010
Washington Post, "Science the GOP can't wish away", accessed November 22, 2010