MYTHS ABOUT TREES BITE THE DUST

Millions of pounds in overseas aid are wasted every year planting trees in dry countries in the belief that they help attract rainfall and act as storage for water, scientists said yesterday. In fact, forests usually increase evaporation and help to reduce the amount of water available for human consumption or growing crops, according to a four-year study. Research on water catchments on three continents says it is "a myth" that trees always increase the availability of water.

Even the cloud forests of tropical Costa Rica had less effect in stripping water out of clouds than previously assumed, according to the study, funded by the Department for International Development. In one part of a large study, Sampurno Bruijnzeel, of the Free University of Amsterdam and one of the world's leading experts on tropical forests, measured the overall amount of water flowing from wet, forested catchments in Costa Rica and found there was no more water than was flowing from surrounding grassland. While cloud forests were more effective at stripping water out of clouds, the researchers found that the evaporation was higher than on short vegetation.

The study, for the UK's Tropical Forestry Research Programme, will be controversial as it shows that converting cloud forests to pasture does not cause major reductions in water yields. In India, South Africa and Tanzania, the study showed that plantation forests actively wasted water and were "ineffective" or "counterproductive" at retaining water. Studies by Newcastle University in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh found that planting trees had a "negative" effect on the supply of water. The study suggests that efforts to convert agricultural land to forest caused a 16 to 26 per cent reduction in water yield. The study suggests that rainfall evaporates up to twice as fast in forests as it does in treeless areas.

Prof Ian Calder, of Newcastle University, one of the researchers, said: "Putting in more forestry in water-stressed catchments where the water table is 500 ft down and the ground water is being mined for uncontrolled crop irrigation will only aggravate matters." "The public perception is that where you plant trees, you will be increasing the ground water recharge. The evidence is the opposite," Prof Calder said.

Other "water myths" the study knocks down are that trees, particularly plantation trees, are always beneficial in preventing erosion and stopping floods. Prof Calder said the study showed that there might be some benefit with plantations taking up water in most years, and reducing annual floods, but in major 1-in-20-year floods, the benefits were "negligible".

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GREENIE BIAS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

Tim Worstall at his most sarcastic. Another big laugh for bloggers -- of whom Tim is of course one

As we all know, the major newspapers and media outlets do not have an agenda to push. Reporting is scrupulously fair and balanced, editorials are pondered and written using the exquisite tact and careful attention to facts for which the medium is famed and, in complete and total contrast to blogs, vague and general assertions are never used to support pre-existing prejudices. Those layers of editors and fact checkers (which as we know are not used in the Op-Eds, but are in the rest of the output) make certain that only those things that can be supported, checked and verified, are used for the edification of the readers. Quite.

In Tuesday's New York Times we have a short editorial on the subject of weather and global warming. A suitable subject no doubt, one of great importance even. What is happening, how it's happening and what we do about it, well, they are indeed some of the major questions of the age. This little supposition has -- well, given what we are told by the purveyors of this type of journalism, must have -- been checked for accuracy and only used to reach a conclusion, not to support one that had a previous existence:

Taking global warming seriously means, in part, understanding that it is a broad-scale pattern of incremental changes, a shifting of averages over the long term rather than the immediate cause of today's weather. It may not be possible to say that this heat wave or the drought that is afflicting Europe has been caused by global warming, especially when some of the records that fell recently were set many years ago.

The drought that is afflicting Europe? The one I am sitting in the middle of? The one where we are cowering fearfully awaiting the arrival of the autumn forest fire season? That one? Indeed, it may not be possible to say that this has been caused by global warming. In fact, if one did say it one would be wrong. Now I'm not sure how long the carrier mice that the NY Times uses to get information to the editorial board actually take to move information around but I would have thought that four days would be enough time. Enough time for this detailed report from the Guardian to impinge upon the consciousness perhaps?

The droughts in Europe may be shocking and they are predicted to carry on into next year. But, according to climate experts, they are the result of natural climate cycles and not global warming.

So that would be, no, the drought is not caused by global warming. It is therefore not only not possible to state that it has been, it is impermissible to say so. That is, that the implication is actually at odds with reality, is an untruth. The skill and verve with which our layers of expert thinkers report the truth can be further seen in this:

The real reason for the drought is essentially a lack of rainfall over the past nine months. In winter and spring, most reservoirs get replenished, but in the UK, for example, the past six months have seen barely two-thirds of the average expected rainfall.

Professor Saunders says that the current situation is a result of natural climate variability. Drought trends going back more than 100 years show this sort of natural cycle repeating itself time and again. He also rules out global warming as a contributing factor since it is expected to cause wetter winters.

Now it might seem a little droll to use the reporting of one avowedly left-wing newspaper to show the competence with which a liberal and avowedly impartial one sorts, collates and processes information; yet droll or not, instructive, no?

Our original implication is that the drought in Europe might be caused by global warming. The truth is that it is not. The further and deeper truth is that global warming is, in the opinion of those scientists studying the subject, likely to be the solution to the drought, quite the opposite of it being the cause.

A vote of thanks to the editorial board, the layers of editors and the fact checkers at the New York Times then, I feel it's only called for. Perhaps someone should give them a prize for the skill with which they approach such difficult subjects. And we must, of course, all thank the Lord that they're not like bloggers, throwing out untruths and factual errors to support their particular prejudices. Tsk, tsk, that would never do, the newspaper of record failing to use its greatest strength, the ability to check things before going to press.






MORE ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS REPORT

In fact, the report is a sensational document. It is, in effect, an attack on the Kyoto accord through its weakest point, the underlying science. The committee savages the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body on whose "research" Kyoto is built. The language, as befits their lordships, is suitably restrained: "We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process," they write, "with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations. There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC's emissions scenario exercise. . . the Government should press the IPCC to change their approach. There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports . . ."

There's much more, but you get the general idea. It's the nearest the Lords ever comes to blowing a raspberry. So who are these people to come up with such heretical ideas? The 13 committee members include two former chancellors of the Exchequer, a former governor of the Bank of England and three distinguished economists. Unlucky for some, you might say, including Sir David Wallace, the vice-president of the Royal Society.

He's the man who wrote, in his official capacity, to journalists in April warning that "there are some individuals on the fringes. . . who have been attempting to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change". He appealed for us "to be vigilant against attempts to present a distorted view of the scientific evidence".

Their lordships have taken him at his word, but their attempt at scientific rigour has produced quite the wrong answer, at least from his point of view. Let's hope he doesn't find himself in the position of that individual on the fringe he's urging us to avoid.

Coincidentally, the very day the Lords report came out, his position and that of the other Kyoto believers was already looking a little shaky. The environment was high up the agenda of the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, and the participants were faced with the choice of either casting America as a polluting pariah or signalling that the Kyoto accord was a blind alley, as President Bush had always maintained. To the surprise of many, they chose the latter.

The Americans had argued that both the science and economics of climate change were highly uncertain; that there was nothing in Kyoto for them other than extra costs; that it would all be pointless if developing countries are excluded from restrictions; and that the solution to global warming lay with technology rather than rationing. The logic of this position overcame the political warm glow that the other leaders might have felt from condemning America (again), and while it's something of an exaggeration to say that the Kyoto accord is dead, it's certainly looking very ill.

It was not helped last week by the US-led coup which launched the snappily named Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. Endorsed by Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan, the plan is to try to find practical solutions rather than don hair shirts. While Robert Zoellick, America's deputy secretary of state, claimed that "we are not detracting from Kyoto in any way", it looked suspiciously as though he was playing Brutus to the Kyoto Caesar.

If so, the European Union countries are playing the other senators, since they have no realistic chance of meeting the targets they have agreed for 2012. Having set themselves unrealistic limits on carbon dioxide emissions, with draconian penalties if they are missed, the outcome promises to be a re-run of the Stability and Growth Pact farce. Breaches of that pact, which was designed to control government deficits for countries in the European single currency, are now so widespread that it's essentially a dead letter.

Since signing up to Kyoto, the EU members have actually drifted further away from their targets. Twelve of the 15 original signatories are so far away that they are virtually certain to miss them, and to incur the eye-watering financial penalties as a result. Only Britain and Germany are closer, thanks to the switch from coal to gas here and the closure of East Germany's heavy industry there. The politicians may claim that we are "on track" to meet our targets, but as a whole the EU is already miles off.

Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute - and one of those people Sir David warned us journalists to beware of - goes further: "Given these penalties, Kyoto seems designed to fail. There is the increasing possibility that sufficient greenhouse gas credits will not exist at any price for the EU to try and buy its way to compliance even if it wished."

This is what their lordships seem to have grasped in their little-noticed report. They conclude: "The Kyoto protocol makes little difference to rates of warming, and has a naive compliance mechanism which can only deter other countries from signing up to subsequent tighter emissions targets. We urge the Government to take a lead in exploring alternative 'architectures' for future protocols, based perhaps on agreements on technology and its diffusion."

Hard though it may be for the hair-shirt brigade and the Royal Society to accept, there's an awful possibility that the Americans were right all along. The Kyoto accord looks like yesterday's approach to yesterday's conception of tomorrow's problem.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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