More Bad News for Copenhagen Kate

Those climate change deniers -- man, they aren't scientific, are they? So we've been told, repeatedly. Good thing that we have organizations like the U.N's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that maintain strict standards of scientific rigor. Right? Well, the British press continues to stay on the story. Needless to say, it keeps getting better and better.

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.

The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.

Is it too soon to say that the 2007 report is baked wind? The glaciers aren't melting and the rainforest isn't being destroyed by global warming, either. Tell you what -- believe in AGW if you'd wish. But y'all can stop telling me that your views are ungirded with "science."

Is it too soon to say that the 2007 report is baked wind? What say you, Rep. Knuth?