Many times in this blog we have noted that the real news is the stuff not being published by the MSM, and on the "climate change" front that has never been more true. The silence speaks volumes. That particular silence is the one that attends the publication of the Booker column on 11 July, revealing to the world that the IPCC did after all have feet of clay in its claims on the Amazon, with the source of "Amazongate" finally traced to a Brazilian website.

View full article here

What is this "internal politics" and how can we help to push them to publish ?

Vintage 'climate change' story from Richard Black at BBC: lovely insects are returning to these shores, and their return is due to 'climate change'. But if they were here in the past, how come......?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10718550

I can't say at the moment ... I really can't, without getting people into trouble. I hope to reveal all shortly, but if you hit a wall going down a street some times on a Sunday, you might wonder what they all have in common.

Couple of typos: "Interestingly, the silence also comes at a time when not only has the IPCC case on the Amazon has been trashed" needs to drop a "has". Also the last paragraph needs tidying.

Another interesting blindspot for our SMS is the historical cold snap in South America:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/20/c ... ng-memory/

Dear Richard,

We (Amazon skeptics) have been proven right in many many counts of our Amazongate, and post-Amazongate analysis. And let me remind you - there are not a lot of Amazon skeptics out there...

1) Re the discrepancy - reconciliation needed between the remote sensing and field data
2) The stupid warmist blogs never understood the importance of Samanta and Saleska et al.
3) Predicted why RealClimate had to be cited in the literature
4) Some of our skeptical friends never understood (or refused to understand) the confusion sowed by Saleska et al into the warmist savanna dogma

Look at the Nature article - http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100720/pdf/466423a.pdf

Consider point (3). A RealClimate blog post, one with no substance, has been 'cited' in a review paper. This is now cited by a Nature item, to advance the case that remote sensing data and conclusions are inherently troublesome. Scientist Asner, now suggests that a new satellite due to be launched by NASA in 2020 will be the only one to resolve the issue. My conclusion on what Nature mag is trying to say, from this spin - the relevance of remote sensing data can be put away from a good amount of time.

On a 'no-news' day, this is what catches my eye and signals our imminent demise in the week when we remember the Battle of Britain. Did our pilots fight for this or for a people who would allow this to happen to our country? 60% of babies born in this country are non-white, of 3rd-world parentage. The UK will become of the 3rd-world.

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/third-world- ... ant-origin

The silence from the warmists may well be because they are praying/lobbying the PCC to come up with some weasel solution, that will deny you victory.....

Thnaks

From the same special issue (which replicates the Asner-Alencar review from March) - Anderson et al (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi- ... /HTMLSTART)

What are they trying to say?
Trees showed 'green-up' in the Amazon during this drought of 2005 because leaves fell off (or did not grow emergent canopy), reducing shadows.

Very interesting paper though and conclusions. Trees lost their uppermost canopy, reduced their shadow, appeared 'green', lost their water and died off during drought.

Saleska et al RIP

The Huete et al paper from 2006 you mentioned a couple of weeks ago seems to me to make the most sense. Vegetation responds to sunshine. If there is less cloud in the dry season more photosynthesis can take place. Grass expends the water it can get at sooner than deep rooted trees so one dies back while the other can flourish.

There is a chance the Anderson et al hypothesis is partly correct and Huete et al is too. Trees on the margins of surviving die off in drought conditions. This would increase tree mortality but at the same time open gaps in the canopy and reduce the stress on soil moisture as there are fewer trees drinking it. Those trees best placed to survive the drought are also those most able to take advantage of the increase in sunshine from reduced cloud cover and gaps in the canopy caused by tree deaths.

Yeah. So Anderson et al somehow attempts to reconcile the green-up observed during the drought of 2005 by saying, in effect, that the leaves fell off and therefore the canopy appears more green.

Really, if these basic ecophysiologic details are not fully worked out, how are they 'modelling' the whole Amazon forest?

You are right - this paper now is propping up some explanations that seem counter to Huete et al 2006 and Myneni et al 2007.

You could make an argument that since lower vegetation is shielded by the canopy it needs to be greener to catch what light it can. Thus if the top canopy defoliates the lower greener stuff might show more??
Not quite sure I buy that, is it what they're suggesting?

Phillips 2004 found that over a wide range of control plots recruitment exceeded mortality and put this down to the effects of sunlight and increased levels of C02. He also had an interesting paper in 2007 on anthropogenic edge effects and found the forests to be more resilient than studies by Nepstad among others had indicated. It is interesting that in AR4 there is a large body of work that has not rated a mention as it contradicts the more alarmists forecasts. I suspect if one had the time to check this would be true of many other regions.